Tuesday, April 24, 2007

My Presentation at the African E-Governance Forum 2007

Understanding how African Youths are Engaging in E-Governance and Influencing its Future: What have been the major barriers to success and how can other African countries best utilize the Nigerian experience

I got to the venue of the event on the third day to discover that my presentation have been moved up the agenda. From the initial agenda, I was to be the last speaker at the conference. The new schedule meant I will come up much earlier than I had prepared for. Thus, I started the normal mental preparedness towards my presentation.

My session was chaired by Mrs. Dorothy K. Gordon, Director General, Ghana-India Kofi Annan Center of Excellence in ICT and also has other tow young speakers. The first was Mr. Saqib Nazir, CEO of CIS Ghana while the second was the other youth speaker, Nii Kpakpo Sylvester from Leadership Strategic Africa. Saqib was the first to make his presentation which exposed the latest technology that is available for enhancing democracy in Africa. Then came my turn.

As a build up to my presentation, I had hosted a questionnaire online at www.peerenergy.55uk.net/egov.php to get inputs from African youths from different parts of the world on each of the points I wanted to speak on. The response to the questionnaire had been good. I opened with the definition and goals of E-Governance. The other issues of E-Governance I spoke on were Skill and Capacity Building, Transparency and Access to Information, Access to Public Services, Challenges of E-Governance and how African youths are prepared to influence its future. In between these, I also paid tribute to African youths who, despite the challenges they face are still willing to contribute to the development of the continent. I also had the opportunity of showcasing my works in the IET Nigeria Younger Members Network (www.ietnymn.org), AfriHUB (www.afrihub.com) and Peer eNeRGy (www.peerenergy.55uk.net) to the audience.


Monday, April 23, 2007

The First Two Days at the African E-Governance Forum 2007

It seems to me that the day breaks much earlier in Ghana than Nigeria. It was some minutes to six in the morning by my time but looking out of the window revealed that the day was already bright and by some minutes past six, the morning sun was coming out. I had to jump out of the bed to confirm the time from the receptionist. This was another surprise and the first for the day.

Bright was my first visitor as he came to take me to their house before I started leaving for the venue of the event. I also remembered I did not pick some documents I needed from Nigeria and thus had to quickly use the internet to print out some documents from my email box.

I chartered a cab to take us directly to the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel, venue of the event. We spent about an hour in the hold-up which immediately brought back the memories of home, especially Lagos to me.

I got to the venue about an hour behind schedule but discovered that the event has not started as the Ghanaian Vice-President, expected to open the event, was still being expected.

After about 30 minutes, we were all informed of his arrival and had to stand up to welcome him. He came with the Minister for Communication and a High Chief who eventually chaired the opening session.

Alhaji Aliu Mahama, Ghanaian Vice-President, while delivering his opening speech called for the early implementation of Africa’s broadband infrastructure program so as to facilitate the continent’s development with the use of ICT. He noted that E-Governance offers African countries an opportunity to step-up their industrial development and transform their economies into service-driven and high value-added information economies able to compete in the global market.

Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, the CEO of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, in his own welcome address gave a critical overview and objectives of E-Governance. While noting that without good governance, the “e” in e-governance is useless, he stressed the importance and continuous relevance of old ICTs such as radio in ensuring the interaction between government, its agencies and the citizens.

Over the three days event, the different presentations showcased best practices of successful e-government initiatives from different parts of the world and also strategised on how African countries can tap into its potentials.

One of the projects showcased was the Ghana Community Network Services (GCNet), a public private partnership initiative between the government of Ghana and other partners, which has made the inspection of goods at the different ports in Ghana and its clearance much easier. This has reduced the time it takes to clear goods at the port and has also led to increased revenue for the government. This is one of the examples of successful e-governance projects in the world.

Another project was the Canadian e-Government initiative. Mr. Jacques Bouchard, Senior Policy Advisor, Canadian e-Policy Resource Center, noted the enthusiasm and commitment of the Canadian government to see that the initiative succeeds. This he said was very important during the implementation of the project. He shared the lessons and challenges of the project with all the participants.

Another project was e-Macao Project which was an example used by Dr. Tomaz Janowski, Head, Center for Electronic Governance, United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology, during his presentation titled “Building a Foundation for Sustainable Electronic Government: From Experience, to Lessons, to a Framework.” The project had a two-year timeline to establish a good foundation for Electronic Government development in Macao through readiness assessment, software research and development and technology training of the government IT staff. The implementation was divided into five phases of Survey (assess the readiness for e-government, Development (develop e-government systems), Dissemination (raise awareness, transfer project experience), Training (build capacity for government workforce) and Research (conduct e-government research and problem-solving) with the deadline for the project met.

One very interesting thing to note after all the sessions was the rate of feedbacks and discussions. Most of the time, the Chair of each session had to cut these short in order to keep to the time limit of each of the sessions. This is an indication that the participants were following the presenters and are eager to contribute ideas that will lead to the e-development of the continent. This is also an indicator that a future edition of the event is necessary to evaluate the progress made from the outcome of this particular edition.

Monday, April 09, 2007

26 March 2007 – The Journey to Ghana

I woke up very early to prepare for the journey ahead but behold just some minutes to the time I intended to step out, it started to rain very heavily that I was scared I would not be able to go out after all. However, the heavy rain subsided and turned to light shower. I went out amidst this and found my way to the park.

Getting to the park, I realized I was among the first set of people to get there probably due to the rain. After a very short time, we started the formalities of checking in and about 30 minutes later, we were all on-board the bus to Accra. I opted to go by road after I was told I will pass through other two African countries before getting to Ghana. I love to visit places and I felt this will be an opportunity to see those countries.

While welcoming us on board, the hostess had informed us we will pass through three different borders before getting to Accra and gave us what I termed the “rules of engagement”. The first border we got to was the Seme Border, which is the border between Nigeria and the Republic of Benin. The hostess, who had collected all our traveling documents, went down for the normal immigration bureaucracies. Our passports were stamped for leaving Nigeria and entering Benin at this place. However, we spent more than an hour at this border. Later, we learnt the Benin Immigration authorities had told her to make the photocopies of the data pages of all our passports and submit this but there was no electricity supply at that moment so she had to find a way around this which took quite long. I don’t know whether to blame the authorities in charge of electricity supply in Benin Republic or Nigeria for this.

The ride through the Republic of Benin was very smooth and impressive. The roads were wider and cleaner than I could have imagined of the small West African country. After a long ride again, we came to the next border, the La Condji Border between the Repbulic of Benin and Togo. We had been told we will all come down from the bus and pass through the border on foot with our ticket while the hostess handle the stamping of our passports. We had also been told we will have the opportunity to change the Naira to Cedi at this border, all within fifteen minutes. The funny aspect of changing my currency was the amount it came to in Cedi. I was surprised when the little amount I had was converted to millions of Cedi. After this, I proceeded to buy some souvenirs but was also surprised at the amount. They were either forty or fifty thousand cedi. This sounded like naira to me but after converting it to get the equivalent in Naira, it became another surprise. It then occurred to me that I will have to have a calculator with me for all my transactions on this journey. I didn’t buy as much as I would have loved to because of the many things I envisaged ahead of me.

After La Condji, we finally got to the last border, the Aflao Border between Togo and Ghana. Here we were delayed for about two hours and it was not funny to me that the second bus that left Lagos after us met and left us here. It was a very big relief when we were allowed to leave the border. The road from here to Accra was the roughest since the journey started and I feel such a road linking Ghana to Togo should have been in a better shape.

We got to Accra around 7pm and the process of getting down of the bus and getting our luggage did not take more than ten minutes. I had known I had to buy a SIM Card so I can be in touch with home and my hosts in Ghana. I later found out I paid more than three times the amount I had thought and was supposed to pay for this. However, it was an inevitable investment.

I had contacted three people in Accra to help arrange an accommodation for me with the hope of taking the best out of the three. However, I got another contact just a day to my departure who promised to meet me at the park. I started calling her but she did not pick her phone. I then called the second person who confirmed he had booked a room for me at a hotel not too far from the park. I got a cab to take me there after my friend had described the place to the driver on phone. Two of the people I met in the bus that took me to Accra also joined me after their initial arrangement did not work out. We were on the way to the hotel when my former contact called that she had sent someone to pick me up from the park. I had to drop from the cab and started a long but interesting walk to the park.

There, I met Bright who would prove a very good host and help throughout my stay. We left the park together and went to the hotel his mum had booked for me. It was quite more expensive than I thought but I had to settle for it as my host promised a better arrangement the following day.

I settled down and made some calls to Nigeria to inform them of my safe trip to Ghana. Later I ordered for food and had the first taste of the Ghanaian food before retiring to bed after an eventful day.

Speaking at the African E-Governance Forum

A very cool morning early March while I was at work, I got a call from the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation's office in London seeking my consent to be a speaker at the African E-Governance Forum that held from 27 - 29 March 2007 at the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel, Accra, Ghana.

I was also informed that we were only two youths from Africa that were invited to speak at the forum. After a little bit of further discussion, I consented to the request seeing it as another pedestal to showcase the abundant intellectual gifts of African youths. Over the next few days, we agreed on the topic of my presentation, format and duration.

The next few posts will feature how my journey and presentation at the Forum went.