Rationale

While investment in ICT infrastructure in Africa has improved dramatically in recent years, there is a need to ensure that the huge potential of ICT and the promises of the Information Societies are geared towards poverty reduction and improving the quality of life for all.

As institutions that exercise oversight, representative and legislative functions, Parliaments play a key role in promoting enabling frameworks for the development of comprehensive and sustainable ICT policies and national e-strategies.

The benefits of the information technology revolution are still unevenly distributed between the developed and developing countries, and within societies themselves. The diffusion of ICT, however, provides unprecedented opportunities for countries to harness new effective tools for development and provide better services and management of information and knowledge.

In order to promote the development of a fair Information Society, “affirmative” attention should be given to the special needs of marginalized and vulnerable groups of society, the “have-nots”, women, and in general the disadvantaged and poorer sections of all societies, both in rural and urban areas.

Enabling legal frameworks are essential elements in promoting and supporting the diffusion and deployment of ICT in favour of development and should also be the guiding force in the construction of accessible, equitable and democratic knowledge-based societies. Parliaments, as representatives of the diverse political and social fabric of a country, are best suited to bring into the modernization process the needs of all stakeholders and make sure that the process does not marginalize minorities or leave behind any sectors of society. Parliaments have the duty to make sure that the ICT revolution is not driven by technologies but by people's needs. African parliaments need to rise up to the challenge of providing legal environments that can facilitate harnessing of ICT potential for social and economic development as well as strengthening of good governance and citizens' participation.

Context

The “Digital Divide” is growing not just between developed and developing nations but also within nations, and especially so within African nations. Efforts to bridge the “digital gap” have traditionally focused on technology infrastructure issues and the related access to this physical infrastructure.

It is now evident that physical access to ICT is only the first critical step towards building a real access, able to lead to the creation of opportunities for economic and social empowerment and development for all. A new paradigm “access divide” that comprises a wider set of factors like education, content, etc. , along with the physical access, seems to better describe the challenges to be faced by many countries.

Against this background, there is a need to coherently address an ample range of issues, such as legal enabling environments, education directly supportive of technology, culture of technology, language of technology, etc. An “access-for-opportunity” vision creating synergies among the many entangled aspects of the Information Society, of which physical infrastructure is a building block, would lead to the formation of positive cycles of technology and knowledge enabling greater economic and social opportunities for all.

Furthermore, the development of the Information Society at national and global levels has raised new questions regarding individual and collective rights.  ICT have also brought about borderless patterns of communication and dissemination of information that demands not only national legal framework but also more importantly international and regional frameworks.

A common African legislative framework could be one of the key enablers for the rapid and sustainable growth of the Information Society in the continent. With a legal environment enabling the development of converging ICT infrastructures and services, human capacity and ensuring an open, free and secure information and communication space, African countries could better reap the benefits of the knowledge economy and attempt to narrow the gap between e-haves and e-have-nots.

The legislative frameworks will have to deal, among others, with the following issues:

• the need to build confidence and security in the use of ICT;
• safeguard data privacy and consumer interests;
• create trust in cyberspace transactions and build confidence in e-commerce (cyber-crime enforcement, digital contracts, online intellectual property and copyright protection);
• reinforce international co-operation for the fight against cyber-crime;
• adopt appropriate global and regional technical standards to foster the deployment and use of ICT.