Ending Africa’s digital exploitation
DID you know that when Africans make international calls amongst themselves, the traffic they generate usually has to transit through a hub that is located outside their continent? Did you know that the cost of such communications is higher compared to what Europeans or Americans pay while transacting within their respective blocs despite having higher levels of income?
The economic value at stake is significant.
Smart Africa estimates that its 24-member countries lose about $3,5 billion annually just to the fraud or grey traffic linked to this inadequate set-up.
The situation brings to mind the wellknown travel experience, whereby to fly from one African capital to another, sometimes in the same region, people needed to transit through a European airport unnecessarily paying more in the process to European airlines and hospitality institutions.
It is against this backdrop that on July 18, 2016, the One Africa Network (OAN) initiative was launched by Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda and his counterpart Gabon president Ali Bongo Ondimba.
The event took place during a Smart Africa board meeting that happened on the sidelines of the African Union Summit in Kigali.
While presiding at the launch, both leaders emphasised that the mission of the OAN is to make intra-African communications secure and affordable, in order to accelerate the socio-economic integration of the continent.
The milestone was a fulfilment of a promise made earlier when the OAN initiative received endorsement from the 24th Assembly of the African Union in January 2015 through a resolution.
Subsequently, Smart Africa initiated the design, development and deployment of the African Regional Exchange and Financial Settlement Platform that will work as a clearing house to keep and account for the continent’s traffic at home. The initiative has the following major objectives:
1. Assert the sovereignty of African nations to oversee their own voice, data and financial transactions’ traffic and reclaim associated benefits
2. Boost intra-African trade and the socio-economic transformation agenda
3. Support African continental integration efforts, especially the free movement of people, goods and services across the continent
4. Protect African borders from telecom fraud and grey traffic while tackling the associated economic and security threats that such traffic represent.
5. Improve the quality of service and affordability of communications within Africa
The launch of the One Africa Network followed a successful proof of concept that was implemented in the four countries of East Africa Community’s Northern Corridor: Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Uganda. Within six months of the launch of the project, dubbed One Network Area, the traffic between countries had increased by 800 percent and the revenues realised by operators had increased, despite the price per minute of international calls having dropped. This means that the explanation for the high price paid by Africans when they communicate cannot be construed as a commercial imperative.
The explanation cannot also be technical since the bulk of communications infrastructure is now based on IP (internet protocol), therefore eliminating distance as a significant cost factor. What is clear, is that the persistence of high roaming and international calling fees is a form of digital exploitation that seeks to maximise providers’ interests and other motives through the old divide-and-rule technique.
The public needs to be advised that the traffic of voice and messages represent just the tip of the iceberg of the overall intra-African communications. The much larger part of this business is made of data (internet traffic) and financial flows exchange.
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