East Africa Community sets the pace for e-government
17 November 2004

The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in collaboration with the East African Community (EAC) and the Advancing IT Knowledge in Africa-Tanzania (AITEC-Tanzania), is organizing a regional workshop on e-government strategy from 17 to 19 November 2004 at the International Conference Center in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The workshop, based on the framework of AISI implementation activities at sub-regional level, will combine expertise from diverse arrays of Government including ICT policymakers, civil society, private sector and e-government planning executives from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia. About 50 participants are expected to examine, consolidate, share views and extend the existing consensus on strategic priorities for EAC on eGovernment activities between its member States - Kenya, Tazania and Uganda.

As an outcome of the workshop, ECA will assist the East Africa Community secretariat to formulate a regional e-Government strategy and masterplan as a tool for achieving regional integration objectives between the three East African countries.

The goal is to promote collective efforts to complement the NICI process by establishing a region-wide approach to e-Government. According to the EAC secretariat, "through such efforts, issues of infrastructure and interconnectivity between the three countries will be addressed, as well as the harmonization of national regulatory and legal frameworks that allow the effective operationalization of e-Government activities."

"ECA would like to see concrete collaborative programmes emerge out of this workshop", says Aida Opoku-Mensah, Officer-in-charge Development Information Services Division (DISD). "We hope to establish modalities for an e-Government subregional working group to develop an e-government observatory and applications to support delivery of services in the 3 countries." To this end, Ms. Opoku-Menah sees a critical role for research institutions, such as the University Council for East Africa, which is already collaborating with ECA through the VarsityNet R&D programme, which includes local language applications. Amongst other activities, such an observatory would form the basis for research and provide much-needed data on the social, economic and political impacts of e-Government.

"The benefits of a sub-regional strategy is that it facilitates dialogue, builds political consensus and can assist countries to develop a common vision, sharing of experiences and presents a good mechanism for collaboration on cross-border political issues and cross-border data flows" says Ms. Opoku-Mensah.

For more information, please contact Ms. Aida Opoku-Mensah, Officer in Charge, Development Information Services Division (DISD) at aopoku-mensah@uneca.org. For more information on AISI, please visit the site at http://www.uneca.org/aisi/.