Whenever Information and Communication Technology (ICT) gurus hold their meetings, it would be in a high-tech, multi-media set up. But new concepts are now emerging and bringing in new approaches. Recently, the East African Community Interim Woking Group on e-government met with Botswana government officials at a grass thatched hall near Gaborone to discuss areas of cooperation in the field of e-policy and its implementation.

The Mokolodi Game Reserve venue was chosen to specifically to give a “Baraza ambiance” to the one-day workshop duped “Kitso ke Kabelano”, which means “knowledge sharing” in the local Tsotswana language. The meeting was also convened as a precursor to the World Information Forum (WITFOR), which was held in Gaborone 30th August to 2nd September, 2005.

The forum was an initiative of Botswana Governement through the Department of Technology (DIT) in the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Canadian e-Policy Resource Centre (CePRC) and the East African Community. The participants discussed openly issues surrounding policy formulation, e-Strategies and Institutional frameworks that would see ICT play a crucial role in improving governance, public service delivery and development in general.

The meeting called for a total commitment among African states to a speed development and implementation of ICT policies so as to accelerate development especially for Africa’s service based agricultural economy. “We need to use technology to improve on what we already doing, do it better, cheaper and more efficiently through technology”, said Enock Yonazi, the Communication Expert at the East African Community.

The CePRC’s Director Wendy Ace said Africa has the ability to easily adopt new and advance technologies in relation to western nations who’ve invested heavily on proprietary technologies. “Africa is more agile in accepting new technologies but she cautioned against “model mis-match”, saying Africa is should only pick practices that best suit her.

The more than 60 participants noted that ICT initiatives and policies need to be locally owned by the communities that they are meant to benefit including. Such policies should also be pegged to national development plans of the individual countries and/or region. The meeting called for the harmonisation of ICT policies among regional organisations such as IGAD, SADC and EAC to make sure that Africa invests its scarce resources in initiatives that have a bigger impact to the people.

The participants also recommended a holistic approach in planning and implementing ICT initiatives as opposed to the piecemeal approach that is common across Africa, with many observing that this kind of approach is expensive, ineffective and creates room for duplication and waste. The Mokolodi meeting also attracted participants from ECOWAS, UNCEA, SADC and EAC.