I have to say given the small window of
opportunity to make a career in the field, the profiles of some of the Ethiopian IT gurus and the
activities of the infant IT groups awed me a lot.2
I believe the writer, like any other western
visitor, expected a better ICT infrastructure that matched the construction boom he noticed. But the
reality fell far from his expectation and after discussing with the IT professionals there, he pointed
the finger at the guilty party: the government.
I don’t want to echo the ideas of the blogger, but I agree
with his conclusion and in this piece I want to talk about where in the government is the gigantic
roadblock and what are the solutions according to my view.
I doubt that any one, including the government, would deny that a failure of the ICT system which
the government tightly controls and monitors is its fault. And the biggest barrier is the ICT policy of
the Ethiopian government. I am not talking about the “symbolic” policy whose mission states:
To develop Ethiopia into a socially progressive and prosperous nation with a globally
competitive, modern, dynamic and robust economy through the development,
deployment and exploitation of ICT within the economy and the society at large.
I am also not talking about the ambitious words of the prime minister in 2005 which includes
“ … in two or three years … we would also like to provide a bit of telemedicine”.3
(Reading this brought a smirk to my face. Either someone didn’t know what telemedicine is
or was hallucinating )
I am talking about the politically biased, bureaucratic, unfairly expensive and comparatively
backward ICT system currently existing in the country. It is well known that ICT is becoming a
driving engine for the development of a country.
It can be used in various aspects of a society from
education to health system, agriculture to governance, businesses to military development. One of
the outputs of a developed ICT infrastructure is a fast flow of information. A new paradigm of
information flow arises within ICT which makes it easy to exchange information between
individuals as well as broadcast an information to certain targets. And this is where it gets
unnerving for certain governments.
Undemocratic countries, such as Ethiopia, are known to deny
the public of this freedom of information, and it is not challenging to figure out why this is. The role of
ICT in recent North Africa revolutions can attest to why such governments are chilly when it comes
their population accessing a certain information. Looking at the case of Ethiopia, even with less
than 0.5% of population using Internet, the government is wary of certain websites and currently
blocks websites of a number of opposition parties, activists and international organizations.
It is
trivial to guess how much the government will be irritated and worried, if more and more people are
connected to the internet and hence they prefer to hide the people in closed cage where information
is coming from state-controlled media. It is no doubt that governments have legal right to block the
spread of any information deemed dangerous for the population. And most of these undemocratic
governments use this as a cover to block everything they think is dangerous.
This has issues with all
aspects of the governance from the legislative to the judicial but a democratic government that is
striving for the betterment of the life of the people under its administration should have an evidence-based ICT policy with a
proper legal institution that protects freedom of speech. The government can challenge contents of
an information source and is expected to explain why certain websites are blocked in a court of law.
Due to its interaction with various bodies of the government, it is evident that this problem in the
ICT can not be solved by copying the best policy in the world alone. The government must
implement political as well as democratic reforms in the country, so that the government focuses on
whats important than what information is out there to block.
Another big problem in the ICT field is the state monopoly of the field that has a quality of service
and business side implications of the ICT sector.
World famous economists have indicated that
privatization of telecom monopolies have yielded a better performance in both the quality as well as
price of the services from the companies.4 These researches recommend countries to go realize a
telecom reform to privatize the industry, with proper legislation of course, to see a better mainline,
payphone, connection percapita and a lower local rates.
As these companies are also internet service
providers, the privatization plays a great role in augmenting the internet usage in a country.
Comparing Kenya, which had a telecom reform in 1998/1999 and Ethiopia, between 2000 and
2009, the percentage of internet users in Kenya grew more than ten folds to reach 8.6% while that
of Ethiopia’s grew from almost 0 to 0.4%, that is out of the 80 million population only 360,000 uses
internet.5
Looking at another comparison point, mobile phone subscribers out of 100 people jumped in
Ethiopia from 0.1 to 1.5 between 2002 and 2007 while that of Kenya’s sky rocketed from 3.7 to
30.2 in the same period.6 Looking the rank of Ethiopia on IT usage, the country is at the bottom of
the list almost in every aspect with no sign of improvement. I recommend the government
immediately start the reform of the telecom industry to encourage privatization and competitiveness
in the ICT market with proper legal framework in behind.
Another problem in the ICT sector is lack of adequate management. Currently there is a ministry of
communication and information technology (MCIT) to implement, monitor, evaluate and improve
various projects at national level and regional ICT agencies which perform the same activities at
state level.
Let me begin my point by talking about the websites of the major players in the ICT
field. It is amusing to see none of the major institutes have a well informative website to see their
activities. Especially the website by Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation (currently Ethio-
Telecom) shows rates of phone calls next to a president’s message in the home page making it look
like a beginner blog rather than a leader telecom company.
This clearly shows lack of
professionalism even at the lowest point of the hierarchy. Professionalism of the management at the
ministry is also questionable with former assistant librarian, no need to mention names, and a
number of ‘non-professional’ individuals in various high-profile positions. This is the result of the regime’s preference of
people with political credentials than professional ones. This lack of professionalism leads to the emergence of a dubious
organization like that of Information Network Security Agency (INSA).
INSA, an organization supposedly created to protect the “existing” IT infrastructure of the country is seen
installing security cameras to government offices, developing softwares like an IT firm. I guess
because there is no work to be done by their reliable information guards (according to some
sources the recruitment of the employees is fishy), the agency decided to make some money by
being an information systems company part time.
I would not be foolish enough to say there are no
highly skilled professionals in the offices though but their work is shadowed by the ineffectiveness
of the whole organization. I can surely state that having professionals with international experience
in the IT field will definitely better the activities of these government offices.
A case in point, for instance, is the effective IT division at the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange which is run
by top professionals who understand the broader out of the box feature of information technology.
A
few recommendations for improvement in the whole organizational aspect include revision of the
IT and computer science curriculum to focus on quality and entrepreneurship, introduce policies
and regulations to help new entrepreneurs in the IT field, bring transparency in the activities of the
offices and establish a board of highly qualified professionals to devise policies and overview the
activity of all ICT sector in the country.
To finalize, political interference, lack of professionalism and state monopoly are the biggest road
blocks standing in front of ICT development of Ethiopia. They are not problems that can be solved
overnight but the government should start the initiative to have a reform to bring a much needed
improvement in ICT secto,r which can be used as a major tool in the fight against poverty.
Comparing the development of two countries which happened at different era in time, for example
development of Europe in the industrial revolution and development of Singapore in the 1970s, it is
clear that they are unique in the sense that the knowledge and resource available at those two times
are different. For countries envisioning development in the 21st century, ICT is a new core tool that
has to be used for faster growth.
