The President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame has reiterated the need for internet connectivity in the African continent to be affordable, accessible, and meaningful to the groups.
According to him, digital inclusion goes beyond connectivity, and if people have connectivity but cannot afford to access it, that connectivity is meaningless.
Addressing delegates at the opening of the first Mobile World Congress (MWC) Africa 2022 as a keynote speaker on the theme: Building a Digital Future Together in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, President Kagame stressed again that if people could access the connectivity but it does not address their specific economic, health, educational and other needs, that connectivity is meaningless.
Explaining further how connectivity will have real meaning in the lives of people, President Kagame believes that a strong public and private sector partnership is needed, adding that in Rwanda, partnership with the private sector has resulted in the high-skilled youthful workforce, which has given birth to lots of innovative start-ups in the country.
He noted that in Rwanda the partnership between the government and the private sector has been very deliberate and the message is driven regularly across the entire ecosystem to ensure that everyone is playing their part to bridge the digital gap.
The GSMA flagship event comes to Africa for the first time and brings together over 2,000 participants from across 75 operators and almost 400 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, to be addressed by at least 187 speakers in 47 sessions.
In what was described as shocking statistics about the digital divide in Africa, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) reports that in Africa in 2021, only 33 percent of the population was using the internet, meaning an estimated 871 million people are not realizing digital dividends.
This is in spite of the fact that several African governments, including Ghana, brag about having built substantial infrastructure geared toward driving digital inclusion.
President Kagame said it is common knowledge that technology is catalytic to national and human development and yet almost half of Africa’s population does not have access, in spite of the usual boast by governments about having built infrastructure.
“Digital infrastructure is key, but it is not enough,” he said. “We must make the infrastructure meaningful to our people through deliberate partnerships with the private sector.”
By: Kanto Okanta
