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Completing the revolution : The challenge of rural telephony in Africa
By Murali Shanmugavelan and Kitty Wariock, The Panos Institute
April, 2004

http://www.panos.org.uk/resources/reportdetails.asp?id=1069

Introduction
Communication is widely seen as an essential part of – and a tool for – development. But in the recent excitement about bridging the ‘digital divide’ and promoting Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for development, it is often forgotten that most rural Africans do not yet have access to a basic telephone service. For instance, in rural areas of Malawi there is only one telephone for every 1,250 people.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which aims to create an inclusive information society, made no specific reference to basic telephone services in the Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action that were agreed at its first meeting in Geneva in December 2003. Yet without this basic infrastructure, it is doubtful if many of the internet-based ICTs that WSIS focuses on can be made available to rural areas.

Since the mid-1990s and the World Trade Organisation’s Basic Telecommunication Services Agreement (BTA) of 1998, national telecommunications providers, which were often inefficient and burdened with outdated technologies and infrastructure, have lost their monopolies.

Competition from private providers is intended to increase efficiency, speed up the introduction of new technologies and bring down costs, with the assumption, often unspoken, that this will gradually lead to the provision of services in rural areas.

New technologies, particularly mobile phones, have greatly simplified the provision of services and reduced the costs of infrastructure, and the spread of mobile phones in Africa has been very rapid – the number of mobile users has multiplied by 131 times in only six years in Uganda, and mobile users outnumber fixed-line customers in many countries.

But most of this growth has been in urban areas, leaving a widening communication gap between rural and urban communities. Mobiles are still expensive to buy and use for poor and rural people. Besides, since many governments have delayed full liberalisation in order to protect their incumbent telecommunications providers, the full potential of competition has not yet been seen.

The slow progress in rural areas is often hidden – for instance, rural statistics are not disaggregated from overall national statistics. This both reflects and contributes to the lack of priority given to the sector.

This Panos Report examines the progress towards universal telephone access in Africa and outlines some fundamental questions: whether mobile telephones will provide the solution for rural areas or whether fixed lines should still be the goal; whether governments have done enough to liberalise the market and allow competition; and whether, ultimately, the market will provide access for rural people or whether this sector needs significant subsidy, in the same way as roads and other essential services are generally subsidised.

The report calls for much more attention to be paid in national and global policy-making to providing rural telephony – for instance, in the second stage of WSIS in 2005. If this is not done, rural Africa will continue to lag behind and that, in turn, may undermine the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

Download this report at:
http://www.panos.org.uk/resources/reportdownload.asp?type=report&id=1069

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