Our Continent has gone a long way since 2007. The time is ripe to take another major step. From mobile telephony to broadband. From Connect to Transform. Transform our businesses, jobs, lifestyles, education, healthcare, government, and cities. ICT-driven Africa shall and will be a place where people prosper, communities enjoy strong bonds, businesses thrive, and governments enable strong and sustainable development as well as efficiently and effectively serve their people.

The ITU Connect Africa Summit in 2007 was the first of the ITU Connect events which have since taken place all around the world; the last in the current series will be held in just two weeks time in Bangkok, for the Asia-Pacific region.

Connect Africa set forward a number of concrete goals for this great continent, and in the context of Transform Africa this is a good opportunity to remind ourselves of them: The first goal was to interconnect all African capitals and major cities with ICT broadband infrastructure and strengthen connectivity to the rest of the world. The second goal was to connect African villages to broadband ICT services by 2015 and implement shared access initiatives such as community tele-centres and village phones. The third goal was to adopt key regulatory measures that promote affordable, widespread access to a full range of broadband ICT services, including technology- and service-neutral licensing/authorization practices, allocating spectrum for multiple, competitive broadband wireless service providers, creating national Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) and implementing competition in the provision of international Internet connectivity.Read More