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W Cape initiates major ICT push

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 20 Feb 2012

Contrary to the scant mention that ICT-related issues and strategies traditionally receive during national and provincial legislatures' official opening speeches, the Western Cape has announced aggressive plans to harness broadband as an economic growth enabler.

Delivering her fourth State of the Province address on Friday, Western Cape premier Helen Zille stated the province aims to create the largest mesh network in the world, within the next two years. This project will connect all households in Khayelitsha, Mitchell's Plain and Saldanha Bay, including the footprint for the proposed Industrial Development Zone (IDZ).

“By 2020, we aim to have connected every citizen in the metropolitan area to affordable broadband infrastructure at network speeds in excess of 100Mbps, and all citizens in towns and villages to a broadband network,” said Zille.

“Our broadband strategy will involve partnerships with a number of potential stakeholders, including licensed telecom service providers, commercial banks, the IDC [Industrial Development Corporation] and the DBSA [Development Bank of Southern Africa], local businesses, as well as local and national government.”

Recognising the potential that information technology can play as a driver of economic development, Zille stated: “All of this constitutes a huge investment in growth-creating infrastructure, most of which will be used as a powerful magnet for further investment from other spheres of government and from the private sector.”

However, she noted that the overall impact on the Western Cape economy will only be fully appreciated when the City of Cape Town and other municipalities reveal their own infrastructure plans in their 2012/2013 budgets.

“We will really have achieved a catalytic aggregation of effort when all of the governments in the Western Cape coordinate their infrastructure investments against an agreed umbrella strategy and, in so doing, unlock significant private sector investment. Of course, our aim is to achieve optimal co-operative governance with the national government too, with the Saldanha IDZ as the pilot.”

Zille also announced that a special purpose vehicle or public-private partnership would be created to bring broadband access to every school, every provincial and every municipal government facility in the Western Cape and, ultimately, to every citizen, while driving down the cost of broadband access for business.

“This is a huge new development that will position the Western Cape as a broadband access leader in SA and support the existing information technology centres in every school in the province. As I indicated last year, during my State of the Province address, the World Bank estimates that every 10% increase in high-speed Internet connections in developing countries results in a 1.3% increase in economic growth.”

Alluding to World Bank findings, Zille noted that SA is lagging behind many other African countries in terms of Internet penetration growth. “To compound the problem in the Western Cape, only 20 provincial government buildings, around 50 City of Cape Town buildings and 50 municipal sites are connected at speeds of 100Mbps or more.

“By 2014, we aim to have connected 70% of government facilities and every school in the province to the broadband network and also ensure there is at least one public ICT access facility in every ward.”

The Western Cape government's clearly set out ICT plans are a complete contrast to president Jacob Zuma's recent State of the Nation address, which barely mentioned technology and focused instead on socio-economic issues, such as job creation and poverty alleviation. This evening, Gauteng premier Nomvula Mokonyane will deliver her State of the Province address, and is expected to largely zoom in on the province's crumbling healthcare infrastructure and supply chain, according to analysts.

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