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Steering Committee Hails NEPAD e-Africa Commission Progress | 23 June 2008 |

The NEPAD e-Africa Commission Steering Committee that held its 9^th meeting on 11 June 2008 at CSIR in South Africa, hailed progress made by the organisation on  projects already approved by the Committee such as UHURUNET submarine cable, UMOJANET terrestrial cable, the Kigali Protocol,  the NEPAD e-Schools Initiative, and the NEPAD e-2010 Project.

The meeting was attended by representatives from Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa. Notable among them were Hon. Tom Amolo, High Commissioner, Kenya High Commission in South Africa; Mr Hon. Muhammad Zannah, Minister (Political), Nigeria High Commission in South Africa; and Mr Mamadou M. Seck, Director of NEPAD in Senegal.

The meeting particularly took note of the NEPAD e-Schools Initiative Stakeholders' conference organised by the NEPAD e-Africa Commission in Johannesburg, South Africa in April 2008, and the on-going activities with the various countries and agencies to develop this project.

Progress on NEPAD e-2010 Project

The NEPAD e-2010 Project was approved by the 7^th Steering Committee held in 2007 and since then, progress has been made on development of: the website portal, the software for the booking system, and the NEPAD Africa e-Payment Gateway.  The Kenya Government (through its Tourist Trust), with which the NEPAD e-Africa Commission has been working closely on this project, provided funds and seconded a person to help the establishment of the e-payment gateway in Kenya.

The NEPAD Africa e-Payment Gateway

The NEPAD Africa e-Payment Gateway is an e-tourism project intended to benefit the African continent by reducing the costs of doing tourism business.  The project will enable African citizens and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) of African countries to receive direct payments from anywhere in the world at a more cost effective and efficient method akin to that used in developed economies.   The objective is to bring revenue directly into Africa using an African owned and operated infrastructure that will directly impact the GDP of African economies.

Dr Henry Chasia, the NEPAD e-Africa Commission Executive Deputy Chairperson says that while engaging in this project, his organisation will seek to enhance policy and regulatory reforms intended to facilitate and accelerate electronic commerce.

Ms Lyndall  Shope-Mafole, the Director General for the South African Department of Communications and one of the Executive Committee members, emphasized the importance of the project to the South African government in its efforts to ensure that all African countries participate in, and benefit from the FIFA World Cup 2010, which will be hosted by South Africa.

Says Ahmed Kassam, the Project Manager, "The project is intended to provide African businesses, citizens as well as governments with efficient and affordable access to electronic commerce platforms; and provide each country with the ability to increase tourism and SME sector revenues without incurring the high costs charged by existing third party platforms residing outside of Africa.  The project could secure e-Tourism transactions by creating an Escrow account that would hold the payment until the customer was satisfied."

The project is a joint partnership between African and international investors initially targeting the tourism sector but broad in scope to cater for the SMEs in other non-tourism sectors that do not have the resources to market and conduct electronic commerce through the Internet independently.  However, it is intended that African entities will hold the majority of shares in the venture. 

The NEPAD e-Africa Commission has already signed an MOU with the Commonwealth Business Council (CBC) to support the design, development and roll-out of the gateway.  The cost of deploying this payment gateway is about USD 100 million, and is estimated  to be more economical that if each country was to design and implement its own gateway.

The Executive Committee also resolved to convene an e-Africa Commission meeting in August, 2008. The Commission consists of Ministers responsible for ICT in the HSGIC, AU Commissioners for Infrastructure and Energy, and Human Resources, Science & Technology, CEO of the NEPAD Secretariat and Executive Deputy Chairperson of the NEPAD e-Africa Commission, and will be chaired by the Minister in charge of ICT in the country chairing the HSGIC.

For more information, please contact:

Samuel Mikenga

Communications Manager

NEPAD e-Africa Commission

Email: SMikenga@eafricacommission.org

Email: SamuelM@nepad.org

Email: s.mikenga@paris.com

Tel: +27 12 841 4523 (office)

Tel: +27  725 296 769 (mobile)

Fax: +27 12 841 4094

Website: www.eafricacommission.org