" [1]By Gilles Eric FOADEY
The NEPAD Heads of State and Government Orientation Committee meeting during the 15th Ordinary Session of the African Union held on 27 July in Kampala, Uganda made a decision to change the NEPAD e-Africa Commission into the NEPAD e-Africa Programme to drive the ICT priority sector. The name change is in line with the cohesion and rationalisation imperatives in implementing the continent development projects as well as with the new strategic orientation of the NEPAD Agency.
Set up by African Communications Ministers in October 2001, the NEPAD e-Africa Commission was adopted in 2002 by the NEPAD Heads of State and Government Implementing Committee as the task team responsible for developing policies as well as managing the structured development of the ICT sector in the context of NEPAD.
To that end, it had its own governance structure comprising of a Ministerial Commission and an executive Committee made up of senior government officials from the NEPAD HSGIC countries.
In January 2010, a decision of the African Union Assembly transformed the NEPAD Secretariat into the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency in order to finalize its integration within the structures and processes of the African Union. In the interest of coherence and complementarily, the Assembly had also decided in 2009 to reduce the high number of Specialised Technical Committees. Henceforth, all questions relating to ICT would be taken care of by the Committee on ICT Ministerial Conference (CITMC).
Based on these decisions, it became clear that there was a need to merge the governance structure of the NEPAD e-Africa Commission (Ministerial and Executive Committee) into the Committee on ICT Ministerial Conference, and to transform the NEPAD e-Africa Commission into the NEPAD e-Africa Programme. Further, the NEPAD e-Africa Programme would become a department within the NEPAD Agency charged with driving the ICT agenda.
Due to the cross-cutting nature of ICTs and the new strategic direction of the NEPAD Agency, the NEPAD e-Africa Programme is now housed within the Office of the NEPAD Agency’s Chief Executive Officer
With the mandate of accelerating Africa’s digital integration, in order to turn the continent into an information society and knowledge economy, the NEPAD e-Africa Programme should pursue more intersectoral initiatives with the objectives of entrenching ICT globally and within the NPCA programmes.The NEPAD e-Africa Programme will support the implementation of NEPAD projects through the application of ICTs and will recommend specific policies on the development and use of ICTs to improve the social and cultural development of the African Society.
The NEPAD e-Africa Programme is currently developing two priority programmes for the continent: the e-Schools initiative and NEPAD ICT Broadband Infrastructure Network.
