[Kictanet] Fwd: [Fibre-for-africa] Yesterday's Nepad meeting

[Bill Kagai]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Vincent Waiswa Bagiire <vincent at cipesa.org>
Date: Apr 7, 2006 10:44 AM
Subject: [Fibre-for-africa] Yesterday's Nepad meeting
To: Private list for use by EASSY Workshop Participants
<fibre-for-africa at lists.apc.org>


Dear All,

Where as I was unable to attend the NEPAD meeting yesterday, we asked
one of our colleagues based in South Africa to attend and provide us
with an update. Below is the feed back she has provided. Anriette and
any one else who attended please chime in here.



Just a brief overview of what occurred at the NEPAD EASSy meeting yesterday:
The following made presentations:

(1)IDC: consultants hired by NEPAD to look at Special Purpose Vehicle
(SPV) models for financing the cable (no report submitted, and came
under fire);
(2)Presentation from the inter-governmental forum (IGA) (rather
defensive delivery);
(3)World Bank (regional policy dept): presented their SPV model
(noticeably professional and concrete);
(4)EASSy consortium: gave an update on where they are currently and
what they think of the proposed SPV ideas (are ready to start building
and aren't going to wait for governments to sort out their regulatory
stuff);
(5)Consultants for the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization
(CTO): their research into legal and regulatory changes required to
support EASSy. (we have their report, their presentation was somewhat
feeble, eg, they gave inappropriate examples of "success stories" of
OA initiatives in other countries, which were all in municipalities,
some of which are known to be failing)

Each session was followed by Q&A. Unfortunately I did not realize the
meeting concludes today
(April 07 was not on the agenda?), so I don't know what the outcome
was. But I can give you the following overall impressions for you to
muse over:

(1) This was a very high-level meeting between representatives of
regulators, governments, and telcos (APC and AfrISPA also there).

(2)  A lot of frustration over IDC failing to submit a report to the
group prior to this meeting, and a lot of embarrassing excuses from
NEPAD chair.

(3) There were 7 action points from the last meeting, but NEPAD had
only made progress on 2, and there was some disagreement over the
exact brief for some.

(4) Frustration from the telcos (mostly Telkom and MTN), wanting
greater detail of IDC's SPV model, with the presenter giving
inadequate answers.

(5) ***interesting*** Telcos stating bluntly that without the report,
and action from last meeting, the process would likely stall. At this
point, Lyndal Shope-Mafoli (our DG) stepped in and put her foot down,
stating that she wanted to remind everyone that this was a NEPAD-led
initiative, and governments would determine how this cable would be
built. Governments would then ask the telcos if they wanted to
participate. She said she had spoken to the CEOs of six of her telcos
and all had agreed to invest. So, "there is no room for negotiation
here: this is a development issue and one led by government, not the
telcos".

(6) But then a speaker from Kenya cautioned her on this approach - he
sited the (disastrous) examples of COMTEL and RASCOM, ie,
government-led initiatives tend to come to nothing. Also, Kenya is
getting several offers (mostly from India) for alternative cables,
which they are having to turn down so that they don't "sell out" their
"brothers" in the SADC region. But it's getting hard for them to
continue this - under a lot of public pressure for affordable
bandwidth - and they want a timeline asap.

(7) The timeline was mentioned by Rwanda, Botswana, Kenya and Tanzania
as too long.

(8) Rwanda is particularly cheesed-off: they've applied to join EASSy,
but do not hear anything and ask "why must we come with a begging
bowl, just because we don't have any operators"?

(9) The question of why companies need an international gateway
license came up several times. Answers from NEPAD and EASSy varied
from "it was a compromise made at the beginning to appease telcos for
us adopting OA principals" to a less compromising answer along the
lines of "anyone can join, you just need a gateway license"
...inferring that countries must get on with issuing more of these,
ie, liberalize faster.

(10) WB stressed the need for NEPAD/IGA to stick to policy, and leave
the cable to others - governments are not in the business of building
cables themselves. (Got the impression the WB model for SPV is
preferred over IDC's)

(11) EASSy stressed that they are NOT opposed to any SPV model, as
long as it is run on a commercial basis (ha ha, very good).

(12) APC raised intelligent questions asking if their would be any
civil society input to EASSy shareholders agreement, academica,
umbrella orgs etc, but didn't get good answers.

Compiled by Jennifer Huesler on behalf of CIPESA for the EASSy task force.

Regards,
Vincent


--
Vincent Waiswa Bagiire,
Director, CIPESA
Plot 30, Bukoto Street, P.O. Box 26970 Kampala
Tel: 256-41-533057
Fax: 256-41-533054
Cell: 256-77-702256 or 256-71-702256
Email: vincent at cipesa.org
www.cipesa.org


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