Ethiopia Doing Quite Lot of Connectivity: ITU Regional Director for Africa

Addis Ababa February  24/2024 (ENA) Ethiopia is doing quite a lot in terms of connectivity and practically improving daily in this regard, International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Regional Director for Africa Anne-Rachel Inne said.

In an exclusive interview with ENA, Inne said Ethiopia is one of the countries in Africa that has opened up its telecom market.

“Now we have two operators, Ethio telecom and Safaricom,” she said, adding the ITU is the UN agency and all telecommunication operators, just like mobile network operators, are members.

One of the things that the ITU helps countries do in this case, Ethiopia, is to look into what we can help in terms of regulation, policies that are good for the country and good for operators that want to come in the country, according to the director.

“Ethiopia is one of the members of ITU, which means as you have seen, it (Ethiopia) is doing quite a lot in terms of connectivity and improving practically daily. This is wonderful.”

“We are looking to stay behind Ethiopia to make sure that this is for the benefit of its people,” she elaborated.

Moreover, she elaborated that we have been doing quite a lot actually in telecommunications and infrastructure for connectivity on the continent, including Ethiopia.

We are in the process of mapping countries to see where the schools are and how they can be connected, she said.

Then, we could see if we could supply infrastructure facilities such as fiber and satellites,  she said, adding where appropriate, providing trainings to teaches by organizations like UNESCO.

“We are hoping for connecting schools, once we map those schools and we look into how we take connectivity to the schools, it will also help us in terms of augmenting the infrastructure in the countries,” she added.

She elaborated what we are trying is to make sure that locally, all of the schools are known; then we can tell how to connect them, for example, if we ever end up in another case where people have to stay home that kids will have access to education.

She stressed that connectivity not just for the sake of connectivity but for citizens, for young people, adults, for schools, lifelong education, including people with disabilities, we really want everybody to be included.

“We are connecting schools; we are also hoping that we will augment the infrastructure for connectivity on the African continent,” she said.

Recall that the International Telecommunication Union has launched Digital Transformation Centers (DTC) in Addis Ababa in 2022 with a view to enhancing the digital capacities of citizens in the country.

The DTC initiative will also help Ethiopia to enhance the use of digital technology for teaching and learning, administration, research, among others.