Kathy Gibson reports from Africa Tech Festival – Infrastructure gaps inhibit access for hundreds of millions of unconnected Africans – but the bigger issue is our inability to orchestrate the networks that we do have.
That’s the word from Funke Opeke, MD of MainOne, speaking on a panel at the Africa Tech Festival this morning.
“Considerable progress has been made in connecting Africa, and there is a lot more work to be done,” she says. “But, thinking about the access gap that we have, it is not so much an infrastructure issue but an access and enablement issue.
“We have been unable to orchestrate all the investments to make the most impact.”
She explains that, while governments have put together broadband plans and infrastructure has been built by various parties, the structures for infrastructure sharing – and the ability to drive services to the last mile – have not been great.
“In an environment where capital is constrained, this is compounding it further, and we are not seeing the gap closed as quickly as it should.
“So, yes, there is a funding gap – but there is also an orchestration gap.”
Opeke points to the fact that many African cities are oversupplied with fibre networks, but rural or semi-urban areas in the same countries have little or no connectivity.
“We have not been good at network sharing and proper planning.”
Another shortfall she identifies is the issue of unbundling. “So most of the infrastructure that we have is deployed by private players to serve their own customers.”
To alleviate these issues, Opeke suggest that operators get better at partnering, and that governments get smart about accelerating infrastructure builds through policies and public-private partnerships (PPPs). “We need to look at outcomes-based builds that are sustainable and deliver services to the people.”
Oke Kehinde Afolabi, representative of the African Union 6th Region (AU6R)and Economic Community of Africa Sixth Region (ECASR) to Nigeria and ECOWAS, says there is more of an appetite for countries to work together.
“The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) has encouraged collaboration. Covid was also a wake-up call, when we had to work with a lot of tech-led solutions.”
Afolabi adds that the role of the AU is to assist member counties with policy support and to encourage the adoption of PPPs.
“Our long-term vision, Agenda 2063, is to realise the integrated, prosperous, and peaceful Africa that we all want to see.”
An example of co-operation and localisation is how YouTube operates in Africa.
The company recognises the challenges of connectivity and affordability of both data and devices, so it uses coding and compression algorithms to ensure video uses as little data as possible. It also caches content with operators around the world so data doesn’t have to travel across continents or through undersea cables to reach users.
YouTube also encourages local content creators, and last year paid out $70-billion to creators, to help funnel money back to local economies.