The present but non-existing ICT in Ethiopia

I follow what's the current buzz in the tech world from the famous technology affiliated blog, TechCrunch¹. This week there was a piece about the vaporous Information Communication Technology sector of Ethiopia from a blogger who visited the country and had discussions with some people in the field.

I have to say given the small window of opportunity to make a career in the field, the profiles of some of the Ethiopian IT gurus and the activities of the infant IT groups awed me a lot.²

I believe the writer, like any other western visitor, expected a better ICT infrastructure that matched the construction boom he noticed. But the reality fell far from his expectation and after discussing with the IT professionals there, he pointed the finger at the guilty party: the government.

I don't want to echo the ideas of the blogger, but I agree with his conclusion and in this piece I want to talk about where in the government is the gigantic roadblock and what are the solutions according to my view.

I doubt that any one, including the government, would deny that a failure of the ICT system which the government tightly controls and monitors is its fault. And the biggest barrier is the ICT policy of the Ethiopian government. I am not talking about the “symbolic” policy whose mission states:

To develop Ethiopia into a socially progressive and prosperous nation with a globally competitive, modern, dynamic and robust economy through the development, deployment and exploitation of ICT within the economy and the society at large.

I am also not talking about the ambitious words of the prime minister in 2005 which includes

“ ... in two or three years ... we would also like to provide a bit of telemedicine”.³

(Reading this brought a smirk to my face. Either someone didn't know what telemedicine is or was hallucinating )

I am talking about the politically biased, bureaucratic, unfairly expensive and comparatively backward ICT system currently existing in the country. It is well known that ICT is becoming a driving engine for the development of a country.

It can be used in various aspects of a society from education to health system, agriculture to governance, businesses to military development. One of the outputs of a developed ICT infrastructure is a fast flow of information. A new paradigm of information flow arises within ICT which makes it easy to exchange information between individuals as well as broadcast an information to certain targets. And this is where it gets unnerving for certain governments.

Undemocratic countries, such as Ethiopia, are known to deny the public of this freedom of information, and it is not challenging to figure out why this is. The role of ICT in recent North Africa revolutions can attest to why such governments are chilly when it comes their population accessing a certain information. Looking at the case of Ethiopia, even with less than 0.5% of population using Internet, the government is wary of certain websites and currently blocks websites of a number of opposition parties, activists and international organizations.

It is trivial to guess how much the government will be irritated and worried, if more and more people are connected to the internet and hence they prefer to hide the people in closed cage where information is coming from state-controlled media. It is no doubt that governments have legal right to block the spread of any information deemed dangerous for the population. And most of these undemocratic governments use this as a cover to block everything they think is dangerous.

This has issues with all aspects of the governance from the legislative to the judicial but a democratic government that is striving for the betterment of the life of the people under its administration should have an evidence-based ICT policy with a proper legal institution that protects freedom of speech. The government can challenge contents of an information source and is expected to explain why certain websites are blocked in a court of law. Due to its interaction with various bodies of the government, it is evident that this problem in the

ICT can not be solved by copying the best policy in the world alone. The government must implement political as well as democratic reforms in the country, so that the government focuses on whats important than what information is out there to block.

Another big problem in the ICT field is the state monopoly of the field that has a quality of service and business side implications of the ICT sector.

World famous economists have indicated that privatization of telecom monopolies have yielded a better performance in both the quality as well as price of the services from the companies.⁴ These researches recommend countries to go realize a telecom reform to privatize the industry, with proper legislation of course, to see a better mainline, payphone, connection percapita and a lower local rates. As these companies are also internet service providers, the privatization plays a great role in augmenting the internet usage in a country.

Comparing Kenya, which had a telecom reform in 1998/1999 and Ethiopia, between 2000 and 2009, the percentage of internet users in Kenya grew more than ten folds to reach 8.6% while that of Ethiopia's grew from almost 0 to 0.4%, that is out of the 80 million population only 360,000 uses internet.⁵

Looking at another comparison point, mobile phone subscribers out of 100 people jumped in Ethiopia from 0.1 to 1.5 between 2002 and 2007 while that of Kenya's sky rocketed from 3.7 to 30.2 in the same period.⁶ Looking the rank of Ethiopia on IT usage, the country is at the bottom of the list almost in every aspect with no sign of improvement. I recommend the government immediately start the reform of the telecom industry to encourage privatization and competitiveness in the ICT market with proper legal framework in behind.

Another problem in the ICT sector is lack of adequate management. Currently there is a ministry of communication and information technology (MCIT) to implement, monitor, evaluate and improve various projects at national level and regional ICT agencies which perform the same activities at state level.

Let me begin my point by talking about the websites of the major players in the ICT field. It is amusing to see none of the major institutes have a well informative website to see their activities. Especially the website by Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation (currently Ethio- Telecom) shows rates of phone calls next to a president's message in the home page making it look like a beginner blog rather than a leader telecom company.

This clearly shows lack of professionalism even at the lowest point of the hierarchy. Professionalism of the management at the ministry is also questionable with former assistant librarian, no need to mention names, and a number of 'non-professional' individuals in various high-profile positions. This is the result of the regime's preference of people with political credentials than professional ones. This lack of professionalism leads to the emergence of a dubious organization like that of Information Network Security Agency (INSA).

INSA, an organization supposedly created to protect the “existing” IT infrastructure of the country is seen installing security cameras to government offices, developing softwares like an IT firm. I guess because there is no work to be done by their reliable information guards (according to some sources the recruitment of the employees is fishy), the agency decided to make some money by being an information systems company part time.

I would not be foolish enough to say there are no highly skilled professionals in the offices though but their work is shadowed by the ineffectiveness of the whole organization. I can surely state that having professionals with international experience in the IT field will definitely better the activities of these government offices. A case in point, for instance, is the effective IT division at the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange which is run by top professionals who understand the broader out of the box feature of information technology.

A few recommendations for improvement in the whole organizational aspect include revision of the IT and computer science curriculum to focus on quality and entrepreneurship, introduce policies and regulations to help new entrepreneurs in the IT field, bring transparency in the activities of the offices and establish a board of highly qualified professionals to devise policies and overview the activity of all ICT sector in the country.

To finalize, political interference, lack of professionalism and state monopoly are the biggest road blocks standing in front of ICT development of Ethiopia. They are not problems that can be solved overnight but the government should start the initiative to have a reform to bring a much needed improvement in ICT secto,r which can be used as a major tool in the fight against poverty.

Comparing the development of two countries which happened at different era in time, for example development of Europe in the industrial revolution and development of Singapore in the 1970s, it is clear that they are unique in the sense that the knowledge and resource available at those two times are different. For countries envisioning development in the 21st century, ICT is a new core tool that has to be used for faster growth.