By Emmanuel Elebeke, who was in Ouagadougou
ICT worst headache, Cybercrime, dominated discussions at this year’s African ICT Best Practices Forum  in Ouagadougou, the Burkina Faso capital, last week.

F-R: Togolese President, Faure Essozimna Gnassingbe and the host President, Blaise Complaore flanked by other world leaders from various part of the world at the opening session of the conference last week held at the international conference centre, Ouagadougou, the Burkina Faso capital.

The event which is in its third edition, attracted world leaders and experts in the industry who unanimously agreed that only a seamless regional response from African countries could tame the Cyber crime menace and allow the region’s burgeoning ICT infrastructural growth to breathe.

Notable professionals, mainly from the ICT sector who saw the event as a rallying point to discuss and proffer possible solutions to sustain Africa’s ICT growth, reasoned that since internet and indeed ICT in its entirety has aided Africans to a borderless and unlimited access to the world informay superhighway and as well hand a great majority of people unquantifiable power to achieve set goals, African leaders must  work in concerted effort at ensuring that such opportunity is translated into positive change that will enable the continent leapfrog beyond its present status.

Their resolve was that rather than doing nothing and becoming a weak link, no thanks to Cybercrime and other vices, Africa must rise and now, as a matter of fact.

Themed the “African ICT Best Practices Forum 2010” , the event provided almost all the speakers, the opportunity to emphasize on the dangers of cybercrime relate different sordid stories and critical damages the menace has caused and lend solid support to any idea that can stamp it out of the system.

However, it was also a unanimous agreement that for success to be recorded, two things must give. One, there must be a change of attitude by African leaders towards embracing ICT and secondly  implementation of proactive policies that will encourage ICT  best practices in the industry must be entrenched in respective African states.

As deliberations progressed at the conference, emotions were high for Africa to popularize its mission in application of ICT best practices to facilitate actions capable of driving growth in the industry in a faster manner and ensure speedy penetration of access to all the people in the region.

In his welcome address, the President of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore expressed his country’s happiness for  Microsoft and European Union to partner with Burkina Faso on the conference, adding that the benefit of achieving a good level of ICT best practices in Africa would rub off on his country, afterall.

He  regretted the effect of Cybercrime to Africa and its  development and reiterated his commitment towards the development and support for ICT sector in the sub region.

He said access to information had become an indispensable factor in the building of modern economy and must be jealously guided to fast track economic growth and protect intellectual property.

“Our world has entered an era where access to information and knowledge is a determining factor in increased competitively and economic growth. And faced with digital divide that threatens to intensify their marginalization, developing countries are required to accelerate the uptake of digital communication infrastructure and take advantage of the opportunities offered by new technologies”, he stated.

He urged African nations and their advising institutions and indeed ICT experts to share experiences and drive together the formation of an inclusive information society that will sustain development among all the member nations of the continent.

Also in his own address, Microsoft Chairman for Africa, Dr. Cheick Diarra said the growing ICT infrastructure in Africa has become a major enabler of development in the continent. And for this to happen, he said that the infrastructure and intellectual property  must be protected from Cybercrime and enhanced through a collaborative efforts among stakeholders in the African states.

He described Cybercrime as a cankerworm that must be fought for total eliminated, particularly in Africa to so that the people can have the full benefits of  ICTs.

To him, African leaders, require enabling laws, commitment and strong political will to make this happen.
According to him, recent advances in ICT, which are delivering new ways of computing like cloud computing in IT friendly environment call for attention since they can also serve as tools to fight Cybercrime.

He urged the participants to use the medium as a vehicle to consolidate their national efforts into a seamless regional response that will at the long run enable a sustained growth and development of the region.

In his own address, the President of International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Dr Hamadoun Toure expressed fear that  Cybercrime has become a global concern that no single nation can boast of resolving except through a co-operation at both regional and global levels since more and more people depend on technology.

For him, “there is no doubt that there is a problem created by Cybercrime. The prevention is not only issue of legislation but culture and action. No body can be totally protected without a comparative and dynamic solutions.

And since ICT has changed Africa, because of their dependence on mobile technology, a holistic and dynamic solutions are needed to protect Cyber property,” he pointed out. He therefore called for collaboration among African nations in the fight against Cybercrime and enforcement of best practices in the ICT sector.

His views were corroborated by the Chairman of International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats (IMPACT), Mohd Amin, who spoke on the topic “Fighting Cyber threat through public-private partnership”.

Amin said that the cost of Cyber threat has far exceeded drug trade within the short time of its existence and added that governments can no longer do much on their own without the support from the private sector.

He called on African countries to see how they can plug in on the benefits of  IMPACT to ensure that they were not left behind in the course of change brought by emerging technologies.

Aggregating views of the participants, the event which was attended by two heads of  state, 339 participants from 55 countries; 32 speakers from 19 countries, 14 ministers from 10 countries, 42 countries from Africa; 13 non-African countries including Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, Malaysia, Netherlands, Parkistan, Swizerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, USA and United Arab Emirates, agreed on the following recommendations:

*That all African nations must be politically involved at the highest level of ICT development
*Put a mechanism in place for people working in the field to implement recommendations;
*Enter into multi/bilateral agreements on ICT and draw the attention of financial institutions for massive investment into ICT;

*Establish a unit for Cyber security for Africa; translate ICT information into native languages to propagate the gospel of ICT to local level;

*Put a mechanism for reformation of hackers, capacity building; development of public private partnership ; and
*Enforce regional cooperation and implementation of enabling laws.