April-May - Volume 1, Issue 3

African E-Strategies: Acting Upon, Instead of Repeating Studies

E-Readiness assessments and e-strategies seem to be all the rage at the moment. In an understandable desire to try and understand the impact of ICT on their countries, African governments (and their external funders) commission these documents to help provide a focus for action.

Sadly all too often these studies are long on aspirations and short on implementation and action. The more complicated task of knitting together active initiators of a strategy in government, the private sector and civil society is sometimes overlooked or avoided. Margareet Visser of Durban-based Bridges.org provides an overview of a field littered with forgotten studies.

Too often e-readiness assessments commissioned by developing countries sit unused on shelves while the consultants who write them, profit. And to add insult to injury, often the leaders of these countries do not do their homework. They commission even more reports without being aware that assessments have already been undertaken in their own back yard.

Bridges.org, an international NGO that helps people in developing countries use technology to improve their lives, warns that money is being wasted on e-assessments that are not followed up with planned action. In its study "E-Readiness Assessments: Who is doing What, and Where?" Bridges.org noted that a total of 84 countries have already been assessed and currently at least five more initiatives are underway to conduct further e-readiness assessments.
Sixteen countries have been assessed for e-readiness at least five times by different organisations, while many of the poorest countries, which have the most to gain from the information technology revolution, have never been assessed. India topped the list, with a total of eight e-assessments, followed by Egypt and China, which both had six. South Africa benefited from four assessments; many other Southern African countries had none.

Bridges.org has had first hand experience of this duplication. Recently it was approached by the World Bank to submit a bid for e-readiness assessment work in Thailand, but it declined, in part because that country had already been assessed five times. Bridges.org has also seen cases where substantial assessments have been done, but no one in government has read the reports or has any idea of what the next steps should be.

Just doing e-readiness assessment will never be enough. It is necessary to draw up a detailed action plan, or "e-strategy", that maps out concrete steps to improve ICT access and use throughout society. But Bridges.org found that at the moment there are relatively few resources or best practice guides for developing countries on how to translate their vision into action in a way which is appropriate for the local economic, governmental and cultural environment.

However, a few general principles are emerging that can help African
countries not repeat many of the mistakes already made.

First, governments must get public "buy-in" for their ICT goals and strategies so that citizens will not reject their plans. "Ownership" is another phrase used to describe the same need to get a wide spectrum of people involved in implementation.

Too often citizens feel excluded from the process of restructuring and believe that their views are not valued. For example, in South Africa the powerful labour organizations have staged strikes against the Government and threatened to withdraw support because they do not feel their concerns have been addressed in the program for telecommunications reform. The government will build greater support and buy-in if stakeholders are included when goals are set, information is collected, and the strategies are developed.

Second, the results of assessments must be circulated for public use to
catalyze action in the business and the wider community so that others can put the concepts into practice in their own spheres.

Third, African countries should be wary of those trying to sell them a universal answer on how to put plans into action. Instead, they should take into account their local circumstances such as their macro-economic environment, socio-cultural factors and the level of trust that citizens have in their technology and their government.

Fourth, e-strategies should comprise small, achievable steps that deliver sustainable results. This is the best approach to narrow the digital divide and to ensure that valuable resources used to measure that e-readiness are not wasted.

Finally, in the ideal world, there would be a central repository for e-readiness assessment results and best practices which would be widely and freely available to those who need it most. There is a pressing need for this type of information, and it would make a valuable contribution to the work that many agencies and governments are involved in. Whilst some of the information is publicly available now - provided that one knows where to look - much is not, and this challenging issue needs to be addressed as well.

Whether a Government chooses to use an external consultant will depend on the levels of expertise it has at its disposal. If a consultant designs an e-readiness assessment that is of relevance to a specific country, it would be more appropriate than using a "blue print assessment tool" designed for the developed world.

Also, if the assessment is structured in such a way that it measures outcomes than can be converted into implementation targets. Beware vaguely expressed, generalised outcomes. It is also be important to ask the question whether the consultant is actually doing an assessment that provide the type of information that the funder is looking for or will have long-term use in the country itself. Are they looking for e-commerce (narrowly), or are they looking at ways to bridge the internal digital divide?