By Emeka Aginam

At the end of the 5th annual e-governance African forum held last week in Yaoundé, Cameroon, African leaders from both public and private sector stakeholders have resoled to intensify all efforts to improve governance and service delivery through the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs).

The forum organized by the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO), and hosted by the Government of Cameroon through its Ministry of Posts and Telecoms and the Telecommunications Regulatory Board (TRB), the conference was under the theme “Governance, Service Delivery and Democracy through the use of ICTs’ was attended by some 150 delegates from twenty countries spread across the world, including Africa,

Discussions at the conference centered on important e_Governance issues from the perspectives of policy, regulation, infrastructure financing, network development and public-private-partnerships.

Declaring the conference open through a speech delivered on his behalf by the Cameroon’s Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Hon Jean_Pierre Biyiti bi Essam, the Prime Minister and Head of Government of Cameroon, H.E. Philemon Yang said that Cameroon acknowledges the great potential that ICTs can bring to the country and has embraced a number of initiatives in a bid to expedite the development of programmes in various areas of the country.

He said, “As a country we believe in the potential benefits of adopting governance processes that allow for greater participation of the people”.

He also acknowledged that ICTs, through e_Governance can help the country and the rest of Africa to accelerate its socio_economic development.

In his welcoming remarks, the CTO’s CEO, Dr. Ekwow Spio_Garbrah, emphasised what effective e_Governance was all about, noting that increasingly most countries have recognised the need to have a National e-Governance Policy in order to translate their e-Gov vision into reality.

He noted the growing and enormous power of ICTs to transform nations and society, and urged developing countries, especially those in Africa to “cheetah pole_vault” policies, regulations and technology, and not just “leap-frog” them, if they hoped to catch up with the industrialised world.

He recommended that countries adopt the “PROFIT” model in examining what progress they were making in their e_government efforts.

He described the model as permitting countries to examine their e_Governance policies (the P), their regulations (the R), their operating environment (the O), the available financing (the F), the state of ICT infrastructure (the I), and the technological choices (the T) that they need to make to make e_governance initiatives more affordable to citizens, businesses and communities.

An address on “Smarter e_Government” by a representative of Huawei Technologies, Mr. He Ming, Vice-President of Network Solutions, focused on some of the partnerships and technological innovation that is making it possible for many countries to provide numerous e_Gov solutions that empower citizens and make governments far more efficient.

He noted that good e-Gov initiatives allow the public to enhance their trust in governments, and this in turn allows for smarter governments.

By driving transformation through ICTs, governments can “leapfrog” to higher service levels, he said. Emerging governments are now becoming more interconnected, he said.