African countries to be cautious over telecom infrastructure privatisation
African countries attending the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation Summit in Nigeria have been urged to exercise discretion while privatising their telecommunication infrastructure.
According to The Punch the advice was given by Chief Executive Officer of the organisation, Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, who was speaking during the Monday night opening ceremony.
He said there was a need to carefully determine what aspects of national telecommunications infrastructure that needs to be sold.
Even when that has been done, Spio-Garbrah said policy makers and telecommunications regulators need to ensure that foreign investments in the sector bring about the integration of local content.
He said Africa and the Commonwealth need to implement policies that support transparent partial or full privatisation of incumbent fixed-line monopolies, but which also give governments and workers a say in how the ICT sector is run.
According to him, privatisation of state monopolies should not mean that the entire ownership and total control of important strategic communications infrastructure of the fibre backbone should be held solely by foreigner interests.
He said, “There are few governments which will allow their national road networks or national railway infrastructure to be owned entirely by foreigners. In similar vein, it is critical that governments and regulators understand which aspects of a state-owned telephone company’s assts should be fully privatised, which should be partially privatised and which could be government owned or controlled.
“Similarly, while inviting foreign capital and management to invest in the mobile and Internet sectors of Commonwealth countries, governments and regulators must be mindful of ensuring that such investments lead to the development of local industries and partnerships, local skills and capacity, local content and some local ownership.”
The CTO boss said although there were tremendous opportunities in the sector, there had also been strategic errors in policy implementation among member countries of the Commonwealth.
By ITnewsAfrica.com Reporter
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