Hello, and welcome to this edition of  Africa Express here on China Radio International. I'm your host, Wei Tong. 

African countries have made commitments to invest more than fifty billion US dollars in their information and communication technology industry. This came at the end of a two-day summit recently held in Kigali, Rwanda, which brought together African political leaders, executives of information and communication technologies companies, and heads of development banks.

Some parts of the African continent are lagging behind in development which, in turn, affects its ability to eradicate poverty on the continent. But African countries have the potential to speed up their development using information and communication technologies.

So when the one thousand or so participants gathered in Kigali, they heard that companies are ready to invest in information and technologies in Africa. In fact, technology giant GSM pledged fifty billion dollars in additional investments in the information technology sector.

In addition to that the World Bank doubled its commitment to two billion dollars. One of the participants in Kigali meeting, Sarbuland Khan, the Executive Coordinator of the Global Alliance for Information Communication Technology for Development says there is enough evidence that these technologies are engines of growth where they have been deployed effectively.

CUT 1: Sarbuland Khan

“And it has accelerated services, education health, business, e-government, but it has also improved productivity for both labor and capital and as a result accelerated overall patterns of growth in the world. Even Africa is growing much faster. The rate of growth now has doubled in Africa than it was ten years ago.”

Mr. Khan says a good example of using information and communication technologies is Rwanda. He recalls that ten years ago the country was in a crisis caused by genocide and conflict but has picked itself up using these technologies.

CUT 2: Sarbuland Khan

“Today the Rwandan government is paper free. The cabinet of this country works without paper. And its health system, the entire country's health system has been corrected so that the government is functioning more efficiently. The results are visible. If you go to Kigali today, it is almost a miracle. This city is clean. This city is stable, peaceful, growing and President Kagame has the vision to do it effectively, although it is still very small the results are already visible.”

It is generally accepted that investment by the private sector will help the continent transform its economies. In fact, Rwandan President Paul Kagame set the tone at the beginning of the meeting when he said the continent needs investment and trade as opposed to aid and charity. But of course, for Africa to effectively use these technologies, it needs trained people. Michael Rawding of Microsoft Corporation says his company is already training people on the continent.

CUT 3: Michael Rawding

“We have trained over 20,000 teachers and those 20,000 teachers have access to over 21 million students. Basically we are helping to enable teachers to use technology to be more effective in the classroom. We have also focused on jobs and skills that will lead to economic opportunity for people.”

Mr. Rawding says Microsoft Corporation has also established information academies in twenty countries in Africa in order to meet the demand for skilled people in information and communication technologies.

CUT 4: Michael Rawding

“Now once you have a broad base of people that are trained in IT, what we are going to do is help them take the next level and create innovation and through this innovation create new jobs and new companies. So we have a program called the Microsoft innovation centers where we co-locate within academic institutions or government institutions innovation centers that are very advanced, that are focused on entrepreneurs and small companies that enable them to obtain skills, both technological skills and business skills to really go into business for themselves and to accelerate the growth of their companies that are IT-related companies.”

The Connect Africa Summit in Kigali pledged to ensure that the African continent is fully connected by 2012. And it hopes that villages and rural areas will also be connected by 2015.

Now that wraps up this edition of  Africa Express. If you would like to listen to this or other stories again, you can log onto our website at www.crienglish.com. And you can also contact us via email at africaexpress@crifm.com. I am Wei Tong. Hope you can tune into our program next time! Bye for now!