دستور کار جهانی و ICT4D در آفریقا: محدودیت های بومی سازی، هنجار جهانی  Global agenda and ICT4D in Africa: Constraints of localizing ‘universal norm

1. Introduction More than ever, the multilateral trade agreements and consensus reached at the meetings of international organizations such as World Trade Organization (WTO) and International Telecommunication Union (ITU) are shaping nation-states’ communication policy agendas and development priorities. Examples of these influential international agreements include the 1997 WTO Basic Telecommunications Agreement, and General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). At the regional level, this emerging order became more apparent in the African context with the 1996 United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) sponsored “Africa Information Society Initiative (AISI): An action framework to build information and communication technologies (ICTs) infrastructure in Africa.” The AISI, which African ministers of economic planning and social development endorsed at the UNECA’s Conference for African Ministers in Addis Ababa in May 1996, is the primary framework upon which the current ICT activities and policies in Africa are based on. As the African regional framework for the ICT for development (ICT4D) agenda, the AISI’s primary objectives were to foster digital connectivity and to create “a sustainable information society” by the year 2010 (UNECA, 1996/2003). That is, a sustainable information society in Africa where: Every man and woman, school child, village, government office and business can access information and knowledge resources through computers and telecommunications; Access is available to international, regional and national “information highways,” providing “off-ramps” in the villages and in the information area catering specifically to grass-roots society; A vibrant business sector that exhibits strong leadership capable of forging the build-up of the information society; African information resources reflect the needs of government, business, culture, education, tourism, energy, health, transport and natural resource management; Information and knowledge are disseminated and used by business, the public at large and disenfranchised groups, such as women and the poor, enabling them to make rational choices in matters related to the economy (free markets) (UNECA’s AISI document, par.18. Emphasis added). However, while there is a marginal improvement in the diffusion and usage of ICTs between 1996 and 2014, “Africa [still] remains the deepest part of the global digital divide” (Hafkin, 2001, p. 326) as it was in 1990s when the AISI was initiated. Many villages across the continent are still without electricity, telephone and Internet services, in spite of the AISI’s strategic goals to get every African village connected by 2010 (Foster & Briceño-Garmendia, 2010). Only about 10 percent of the rural areas in the sub-Saharan African region have electricity and less than 7 percent of them have mobile service coverage (ITU, 2008). Over 80 percent of the African population is not wired to the Internet (African Development Bank, 2013). Overall, the continent lags behind the rest of the world in ICT penetration rates. Table 1 shows the statistical comparison of ICT penetration rates between Africa and other regions of the world. Why is there a huge gap between the AISI vision and the “reality” on the ground? Within the conceptual framework of Amartya Sen’s capability approach, this paper assesses the challenges and obstacles that confronted the socio-political buyin of the AISI and ICT4D agenda in Africa.