APC announces civil society workshop for Connect Africa Summit in Kigali

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, 11 octobre 2007

The Association for
Progressive Communications (APC), in collaboration with its partners, is
convening a civil society workshop on Sunday October 2007 in Kigali, Rwanda, to
accompany the Connect Africa Summit,
taking place 29-30 October 2007.

The Connect Africa Summit marks the launch
of a global
multi-stakeholder partnership to mobilize the human, financial and technical
resources required to bridge major gaps in information and communication
technology (ICT) infrastructure across the region. It also provides an
opportunity for civil society organizations to review the connectivity
situation in Africa. Building upon the success of the Mombasa workshop in March
2006, in which APC and its civil society partners articulated a number of
concerns surrounding ownership and control of the East African Submarine cable
System (EASSy) to the EASSy consortium and other stakeholders, the aim of the
civil society workshop will be to:

• Review developments across Africa with respect to open access to ICT
  infrastructure over the last eighteen months, including the issue of the regulation
  of submarine cables on both the east and west coasts;

• Produce a set of recommendations on open access to ICT infrastructure In
  Africa to be presented to the Connect Africa Summit; and

• Draw the attention of the media to these recommendations.

Unlike
the Mombasa workshop, which involved a broad range of stakeholders in
its consultation, the Kigali workshop will be limited to civil society
organizations and their representatives in order to review the
situation regarding connectivity in Africa and to make recommendations
from a civil society perspective.

(END/2007)