President Paul Kagame speaking at the Global Broadband Commission meeting.
The chair of the Global Broadband Commission, President Paul Kagame has called upon global leaders of government and business personalities to fast-track internet connectivity all around the planet emphasizing that it’s key to accelerating progress mostly in the developing countries.
This call was made on September 18th 2016 during the meeting of United Nation Broadband commission held on the sidelines of ongoing United Nations General Assembly in New York at the UN headquarters.
“The broadband cannot solve all world problems but we know it can accelerate progress in overcoming biggest obstacles to global prosperity and well-being,” Kagame said.
Half of the world population has no access to broadband connectivity because of their governments are unwilling to put more money from the national budget into it and the developing countries from African Continent topped the list.
In this respect, President Kagame urged developing countries to invest increasingly more efforts to advance Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) saying, “Developing countries have to work harder and smarter to both catch up and take advantage of the next phase of the digital revolution, we must therefore remain ambitious.”
Regional integrations for instance the East African Community (EAC) provides huge socio-economic opportunities. As for Rwanda’s head of state, it contributes to acceleration of ICTs mostly broadband connectivity since member states can plan together and pull together resources as well as attract investors as a big market.
However, UN Broadband Commission project aims at rolling out internet and broadband connectivity to schools appears to be a wake-up call to governments to invest into this sector.
He said “ Education has been singled out and targeted to be serviced in these broad bands using satellite may awaken those governments… tying the two together-internet and broadband-that are to service directly education as one of the targeted may incentivize governments probably to start thinking how they should invest in this technology…”
Unlike to other developing countries, Rwanda has made tremendous strides in ICTs. It was ranked the first country with the fastest internet in Africa in 2013 taking over Madagascar.
According to Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA), out of estimate 11 million of Rwandans, cellular phone owners rose from 8.93 million to 9.025 million between June and July 2016 registering an increase of 1.5 per cent where phones are used for connecting people and various mobile transactions.
As from 2015, 15 districts and the City of Kigali are connected to 4 GLTE technology and 26 districts out of 30 are currently connected to the network.
Under smart Rwanda 2020, the Government targets 24/7 self-service government, driving cashless and paperless economy with 95 per cent services will be delivered online by 2017.
Currently, Irembo platform provides 18 integrated government e-services to businesses and citizens, 30 e-services by central Government and 100 e-services local Government via internet and mobile phones as from June 2014, among others.