CTO CEO Sees Bumpy Ride ...

...in Roadmap for Networking the Commonwealth for Development

The Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO), Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, said at a lecture last night at the British Houses of Parliament that the Commonwealth faces significant challenges in implementing declarations of Heads of State in using ICTs to network their nations for development. The CTO CEO was speaking as the Gladwyn lecturer at a forum organised by the Council for Education in the Commonwealth (CEC) and chaired by Hon Tim Boswell MP. Gladwyn lectures have brought a number of distinguished international speakers to speak to members of the CEC and other invited guests.

In his lecture, Dr Spio-Garbrah commended Commonwealth Heads of State for issuing a ?Malta Declaration on Networking the Commonwealth for Development? in which they also endorsed the ?Commonwealth Action Programme for the Digital Divide? as a road map for the Commonwealth. He also noted that the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) took place on 25-27 November, only a week after the conclusion of the much larger World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis on 16-18 November. However, there seemed to be little thematic carry-over from Tunis to Malta, as the two seminal global events--only thirty minutes air-flight from each other--seemed to be progressing in parallel lines. One, the WSIS, led by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), was within the ambit of the UN family, while the other, with no clear institutional leadership, was managed by the Commonwealth Secretariat for the Commonwealth family of organisations and associations. For a variety of reasons, Dr Spio-Garbrah, therefore sees ?bumpy rides? in the road map to be used for networking the Commonwealth for development.

Dr Spio-Garbrah stated that whereas the theme for the CHOGM aimed at focussing attention on the digital divide and how networking within the Commonwealth could help address developmental issues amongst and within nations, the Heads of State?s concerns and interest in bridging the digital divide ended up as only a small paragraph 52 in a 60 paragraph final Communique dominated by political and other socio-economic issues. ?In view of what ICTs can do to help solve some of the problems identified by Heads of State in the areas of trade, aid, debt, terrorism, corruption, etc, it would have been quite instructive if Heads of State had seen it fit to weave the role of ICTs into some of these understandably topical issues?, the CTO CEO said in a separate interview.

While Dr Spio-Garbrah noted the considerable improvements that have taken place in the ICT sector of most Commonwealth countries in the last decade, he pointed out that in view of the structural, organisational, legal, and administrative arrangements amongst Commonwealth organisations, they are unlikely to make the necessary progress in fulfilling the wishes of their Heads of State in networking the Commonwealth for development. He argued that unlike the United Nations, whose agencies recognise each others specialisations and are better able to permit the most relevant UN agency to take leadership on issues that affect the global community, the Commonwealth family consisted of some 95 independent organisations and associations, many quite protective of their independence from the Commonwealth Secretariat, and unable or unwilling to be led by others. He suggested, for example, that whereas in the case of the UN-led two-phase WSIS, the ITU had been recognised by other UN agencies as the lead body to help to move and manage the agenda, such an understanding had been impossible within the Commonwealth. Furthermore, whereas the UN Secretary General can summon heads of UN agencies to bi-annual meetings in order to coordinate action on global issues, such an arrangement will be difficult in the Commonwealth, as the various agencies have their own separate constitutions. Memberships and budgets, and do not report to the Secretary General of the Commonwealth Secretariat.

The CEO of the CTO stated that fairly simple initiatives such as hyper-linking the websites of Commonwealth agencies and associations is yet to be attempted, nor are the views of important agencies of the Commonwealth, such as the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA), actively solicited in efforts to use ICTs to promote development. Dr Spio-Garbrah, a former Minister of Education and of Communication of Ghana, stated that radio and television broadcasting have the greatest prospects for bringing both formal and informal knowledge and education to Commonwealth citizens. ?Yet, as a lapse in both policy and regulation, I know of no Commonwealth developing country where a provision in a license for a radio or TV station requires the operator to devote say 10 percent of total broadcasting time to educational content.?

Pressed during question time by a diplomat from Cyprus as to how Commonwealth countries could ensure that educational content on broadcasting stations met acceptable standards to facilitate certification by students and candidates who studied through distance learning mechanisms, Dr Spio-Garbrah indicated that there is a wealth of experience from past correspondence schools and existing virtual colleges, open universities and distance learning academies, as well as from experts in curriculum development, e-content development, and from certification and accreditation bodies within the Commonwealth to ensure good quality content and acceptable certificates from e-learning modes.

Responding to other questions from representatives of some other Commonwealth agencies, the CTO CEO remarked that although the Tunis WSIS had focussed on the role of the Internet and the challenge of providing adequate financing for bridging the digital divide, the Malta Summit had not focussed on these issues. Both Summits, however, had agreed some financial arrangements for implementing aspects of their decisions, with a Digital Solidarity Fund established within the WSIS process, and a Special Fund approved within the Commonwealth process. However, both of these funds are voluntary in nature, have as yet to receive any commitments from the major international development partners or agencies, and are therefore not expected to be significantly successful in mobilising the needed funds, especially for the major investments in infrastructure that a region such as Africa needs if it is to develop knowledge economies and societies, Dr Spio-Garbrah said.

A former senior official of the African Development Bank and the World Bank Group, Dr Spio-Garbrah pointed out that these and other multilateral financial institutions abandoned investments in ICT infrastructure in developing countries throughout most of the 1990s, expecting that the private sector alone would fill the gap. Simultaneously, the multilateral and bilateral agencies, in the name of privatisation and liberalisation, prevented developing country governments from using public funds to invest in the sector. The results of these policies is that whereas as private capital has made and continues to make considerable profit in the mobile, IT and Internet sectors of developing countries, most of these countries have lost some 10 years of possible investments in backbone infrastructure through which they could have made greater advances in building knowledge economies. Although some multilaterals are now coming back into financing ICT infrastructure, the lost decade of investments is such that most African countries, for example, now need to ?cheetah-pole-vault? and not just ?leap-frog? if they are to catch up with the rest of the world.

The CTO CEO?s views on ICTs, the digital divide and the Commonwealth have in recent months been ventilated in such publications as the CHOGM Reference Report 2005 (p. 40), the Commonwealth Finance Ministers Reference Report (p. 105), and in several speeches and presentations to audiences in a number of Commonwealth countries.

Further information on Gladwyn lectures may be obtained from Megan Warner of the CEC at 01 865 310578 or maweductaion@easynet.co.uk or maweducation.dmi@btinternet.com

Further information on this lecture, the CTO and its services may be obtained from www.cto.int or by contacting Marcel Belingue at m.belingue@cto.int or Bhavna Kerai at b.kerai@cto.int, tel. +44 207 930 5511.