By David Muwanga

ACCRA- The UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has for several years implemented an ICT advisory programme aimed at helping African countries provide ICT services to enrich the lives of poor people in Africa.
This programme, known as National Information Communication Infrastructure (NICI) or e-strategies, seeks to help countries create an enabling environment for ICT-enabled projects that will bring health services, education, income generation and access to markets closer to the poor."
One specific aspect of the programme that is being implemented in thirty African countries is to realign the country’s development goals, more precisely the poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP) objectives with the ICT policy," ECA consultant Dr Baharul Islam told participants at a workshop ahead of the African regional preparatory meeting for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) on Saturday.So far thirty African countries have already developed national ICT strategies and more have expressed interest in initiating national policies."
For example in Gambia the NICI process is geared towards recognizing the areas where ICT would contribute to the attaining the overall objectives of the four strategic issues identified in the PRSP," he said. These objectives include enhancing the productive capacity of the poor, broadening access to and the performance of social services, local level capacity building and promoting participatory communication process."
In Gambia, the NICI policy aims at supporting achievement of higher growth rates in all spheres of socio-economic activities using ICT as a platform to exchange data, information, knowledge and a tool to implement applications and provide services in order to ‘leapfrog’ several stages of development through a participatory approach in building human resources and a conducive environment," he said.
Speaking at the workshop was Ghana’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) representative Dr Justine Chisenga, who said that rural people constitute 75 percent of the people in the world who live on less than one dollar per day."
The advent of information communication technology has served only to widen the gap between them and others who don’t have access to such technologies. FAO and other partners are working on an integrated set of activities to bridge the rural, digital divide," he said.
Chisenga said FAO is setting up rural community radios that will be linked to the internet for the people to source information on commodities and markets. "We have already done this with East European farmers who are sharing information on the Agroweb central and East European networks (which) provide information on agricultural institutions". The networks also provide information about upcoming events that might be of interest to the farmers. "The information exchange network that was established with support from the organisation in Latin America enabled a farmers association to sell its produce at twelve percent more than the price offered by local buyers," he said.
However Sizo Mhlanga, ECA regional advisor observed, "The process cannot go without challenges, there is a problem of getting everybody involved, you find institutional infrastructure lacking and lack of specific leadership responsible."
Quoting Rwanda as an example, Mhlanga said that "There is political will in Rwanda to implement a national ICT policy because President Paul Kagame is the driving force behind its implementation, so everybody has to get involved."