When The United Republic of Tanzania passed the Tanzania Communication Act no. 18 of 1993 it lead to the opening of the telecommunications markets and the establishment of Tanzania Communication Commission. It later merged with Tanzania Broadcasting Commission and became the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA, www.tcra.go.tz/), established by the TCRA Act no.12 of 2003. In September 2005, the Government of Tanzania and Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) introduced a converged licensing framework and the concept of technology neutrality, which was meant to enhance the provision of communication services in the country. It has worked and the mobile market in Tanzania has been growing at more than 60% per year in the last five years and passed the 17 million subscriber mark in December 2009 (TCRA 2009).
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East Africa’s most prosperous economy is not surprisingly the regions mobile technology cluster. Kenya with its capital Nairobi, has a vibrant ICT community with a number of top-class, innovative technology firms and research and development facilities. With the deregulation of the telecommunications sector,Kenya moved beyond a duopoly consisting of Safaricom and Kencell (today Zain Kenya…tomorrow Bharti) at the end of 2008 when Orange Kenya and Yu launched services as the third and fourth players. Combined, the total subscriber base is over 18,5 million users (CCK 2009) out of a population of about 40 million (UN 2009).
The deregulation, together with the introduction of a single license for ICT service providers, have in many ways leveled the playing field for other service providers and lead to increased competition. In this streamlined licensing framework, a holder of a single license can offer many different services without additional licenses. Also, during 2009, the telecommunication regulator in Kenya “established policy guidelines on infrastructure sharing in an effort to ease the investment burden of new entrants into the market and avoid duplication of resources” (CCK 2009). As a result, Zain Kenya and Yu agreed to share infrastructure. Continue Reading…
UN’s International Telecommunication Union, ITU, estimated that there were 4.6 billion mobile phone subscriptions globally by the end of 2009 (ITU 2009b), two-thirds of them in the developing world. A quarter of a billion mobile subscribers can be found on the African continent and the number is constantly increasing as it is the region with the highest annual growth rate in mobile subscribers (ITU 2009a). Continue Reading…
My good friend Johan Hellström from Upgraid works deep in the innards of research and has in the past organized a number M4D events through out EastAfrica. He just shared with me a SIDA report paper that he did, and thought it best to regurgitate its contents. The report was commissioned by Sida, Department for Human Development,Team for Knowledge, ICT and Education.
I will share it in a 4 part series here.
* The broad summary
* Overview of East Africa’s ICT sector and mobile market
* Major operators in East Africa, mobile phones and their usage
* Innovation, a look at the mobile applications, issues and challenges
This report gives an overview of the current state of mobile phone use and services in East Africa. It outlines major trends and main obstacles for increased use as well as key opportunities and potential for scaling-up mobile applications. The report draws on secondary data and statistics as well as field work carried out in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya during 2008 and 2009.
The report identifies relevant applications in an East African context for reaching and empowering the poor and contribute to social and economic development. The identified mobile applications, range from small pilots to scaled-up initiatives – from simple agricultural, market or health information services to fairly advanced financial and government transaction services. Continue Reading…
First things first, i have to mention that it took us longer to get from the airport to our hotel than from Nairobi to to Entebe. The weather is quite lovely and the company of other participants flying in made for interesting conversation as we navigated the 8pm traffic jams of kampala. I am at the moment not sure of the entire composition of the delegates to the workshop but at last check it looked something like this:-
Government representatives:
Uganda, Ministry of ICT
ICT Committee of Parliament, Uganda
The President’s Office, Public Service Management, Tanzania
Regulator:
UCC Uganda
TCRA Tanzania
Rwanda Utility Regulatory Agency
Civil society organisations:
I-Network Uganda
UNDP, Uganda
WOUGNET
SchoolNet, Uganda
BROSDI
Fahamu Kenya
School Ventures, Kenya
KICTANET, Kenya
Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH)
D-tree International
Privet sector:
TrueAfrican
Dmark mobile
Yo! Uganda Limited
Application Laboratory (MTN/Grameen)
Nkoola Institutional Development Associates Ltd
Mountbatten Ltd.
Mobile Planet
Symbiotic Media Consortium
E-Fulusi Africa (T) Limited
Starfish Mobile East Africa LTD
Ericsson
Nokia Siemens Networks
Knowledge Consulting
Bangens Consulting
net4dev
Academia:
Makerere University, Uganda
Uganda Institute of Information and Communications Technology (UICT)
Research and Education Network of Uganda
University of Nairobi, School of Computing and Inforamtics
Strathmore University, Faculty of Inforamtion Technology, Kenya
Catholic University, Kenya
University of Dar, University Computing Center
Rwanda Education and Research Network
National University of Rwanda
Kigali Institute of Science and Technology
Forum for Pedagogy in Higher Education and Flexible Learning, Mid Sweden University
DSV/KTH
Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM), School of Environment and Development, The University of Manchester
Open University
UC Berkeley School of Information
The Edge Institute/ Research ICT Africa (RIA)
Operators:
MTN
Zain
Development partners:
Sida/Embassy of Sweden, Dar es Salaam
Sida/Embassy of Sweden, Kampala
USAID, Kampala
IDRC
Sida
SPIDER
I will put up more details as the workshop progresses.
