The future of ICT Policy in Africa

I have returned from a workshop on ICT Policy and Regulation Visioning in Africa - trying to figure out what the priorities are in terms of ICT policy and what the next step is. What I found particularly refreshing and exciting about this workshop was that it was African perspectives and ideas about an African problem/issue. Although funding for the projects will come from Europe or America, the ideas for how we deal with our own issues is coming from us - Africans and we are (I hope) not willing to settle for being told how to deal with our problems from people who have no idea.

While it was exciting to see the progress that has and is being made across the continent, it also made me realise how much is still to be done. There were many important issues which came out of the two-day workshop, but the most important one is that this is a process which is on-going, so even in countries that have well-estblished ICT policies, there are areas of concern, areas of learning and developments which need to be undertaken.

I came back to Grahamstown in RSA with a renewed sense of what the needs are and faith in the fact that highly-skilled and committed Africans are dealing with them.