Full speech of COMSA president at ICT Africa 2011 opening

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It’s the third and last day of the ICT Africa 2011 exhibition. We post below a speech at the opening of the exhibition by the Computer Suppliers Association of Zimbabwe (COMSA)  president, Atwell Mukusha.

COMSA President, Atwell Mukusha

It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Information Communications Technology Africa known as ICT Africa 2011 Exhibition and Conference 14th edition. ICT Africa is an event organised by the Computer Suppliers Association of Zimbabwe in conjunction with the Ministry of information Communications Technology and is an event which features exhibitions and conferencing and is open to all members of the public and all traders. We are having the conference running in parallel to the exhibition and tomorrow will see the career guidance sessions being presented to school children by ICT industry players.

This event has witnessed a remarkable resurgence over the number of years. This year event has seen a total of 71 exhibitors participating at this exhibition from a figure of about 60 exhibitors in 2010 showing an increase of over 18% but has also shown an increase of space taken up by the ICT players. We also like to welcome three international exhibitors at this conference as well.

As this event has now turned out to be a national event in our calendar over the years the timing of the exhibition and conference is ideal. The market has matured significantly over the past three years, with a multiplication of ICT service providers and vendors, and increasingly sophisticated installations by major companies.

This has largely been attributed to some of the policies within government that of promoting indigenisation where within our sector 98% of our industry is indigenous and we applaud the government for such efforts. However our position on indigenisation as a sector have been forwarded to the Ministry in this regard. Another milestone I can share with you is our lobbying and advocacy to the Minister of ICT to forward to the Ministry of Finance for the removal of duties on hardware and software which gave the industry a reprieve in recapitalising our businesses. At this juncture I would like to urge my fellow ICT players to stop the profiteering of hardware gadgets and software and please pass the reprieve to the end user/consumers which will see a reduction of prices of ICT gadgets and software and thus making hem affordable.

We have seen serious and rapid growth and investment by ICT Players in ICT infrastructure with the installation of fibre optic cable connecting  us to the  rest of the world through the submarine cable which has also seen most parts of the country being linked nationwide allowing wide coverage. We need to start developing new services and applications that take advantage of this bandwidth explosion and are relevant to improving the quality of life for all Zimbabweans.

I hope issues like this will be thoroughly discussed during the conference.

And just as importantly, we need to plan now to break down the internal monopolistic barriers that could continue to maintain bandwidth costs at a high level despite international availability. We need to ensure that the benefits of low-cost bandwidth will be passed on to end-users throughout this vast country.

Government and the private sector need to put their heads together to agree an optimum strategy for the rapid roll-out of low-cost bandwidth on a shared infrastructure basis.

It is time for us to move beyond greed, to a new era of creativeness where collaboration for the common good mediates cut-throat competition, and where corporate social responsibility becomes more than just a token line item in the annual marketing budget.

Currently I am reliably informed by the industry players that mobile penetration is approximately 67% and internet connectivity is about 22%. I would like top urge ICT players in the industry to also consider giving our educational institutions subsidised tariff for internet connectivity with the aim of promoting knowledge based society.

I would like to urge the government to engage COMSA and Computer Society of Zimbabwe and other key stakeholders on the policy and frameworks regarding the eGovernment framework which will allow the public service to offer services to the public efficiently. We are local Zimbabweans and we have the capacity to develop home grown solutions. There is also the ICT Draft Bill which is still under consideration which we feel will need a review since times have changed and we need it to be more relevant to today everchanging technology. The PPPs policy framework is also another area we want to see developed.

Now that we are now connected to the outside world I feel that we should not forget about the dangers of the cyber space and as ICT professionals we have to ask ourselves, what is our role in the fight against cyber crime? We need to educate our users about the do’s and don’t’s of ICTs.

To the end users and corporate citizens we have ICT bodies which can address issues to do with standards, training and professional development:

  • Firstly, Computer Suppliers Association of Zimbabwe (COMSA) which consists of the vendors and service providers of ICT products and  services, who subscribe to a code of business ethics. Of course, some exhibitors are not members but am sure they have realised the efforts COMSA has done previously. But at least a bench-mark of ethical behaviour has been established to which the industry as a whole has aspired. The association plays valuable roles, such as lobbying and advising the government on legislation and regulations affecting the industry. Such as working with universities and other training institutions on course content and qualification standards; also working with them on internship and mentoring programmes; even creating scholarship programmes. The country needs to rapidly increase the pool of qualified ICT professionals and this challenge cannot be left entirely to government.
  • Secondly, there is Computer Society of Zimbabwe for ICT professionals which represents the interests of ICT users. This also has a code of conduct for the members and its objectives include issues of professional development, education, lobbying and advising government. Unfortunately ICT professionals across Africa tend to work in isolation, with very little dialogue with, or support from, fellow professionals. We need to create a more supportive, intellectually stimulating environment for ICT professionals to improve standards across the board and help stem the brain drain which continues to erode the county’s ICT skills capacity.

In conclusion I will be the one to admit that this event is a true example of a Public Private Partnership we have demonstrated with Ministry of ICT and COMSA and I hope it will continue to prosper and would like to thank the Ministry of ICT for their open door policy.

Lastly I would like to share with you a quote from one of the famous entrepreneur of all time Steven P. Jobs, the Apple Inc. chairman and co-founder who pioneered the personal-computer industry and changed the way people think about technology, who died on Wednesday at the age of 56.

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected”

I hope ICT in Zimbabwe will be centred on excellence.

3 comments

  1. Pete

    well  done comsa president for organising this event. At least we have some developments in the ICT industry which we have seen and attributed to your leadership. I wish to see other members joining hands with COMSA

  2. Tendy Fish

    do you have a video clip….dont like the reading!
     

    1. L.S.M. Kabweza

      sorry @facebook-1046543763:disqus  we don’t have a video of this speech. But even if we had, bandwidth issues would limit our capacity to provide it.

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