eLearning Africa: Sharing Infrastructure Must Be Top Priority

News release 

The African Union’s Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy, HE Mrs Elham Mahmood Ahmed Ibrahim, will tell participants at this year’s eLearning Africa conference that sharing infrastructure must be a top priority for African governments. 

Mrs Ibrahim, who will be a keynote speaker at eLearning Africa in Cairo on May 24, is convinced that, by sharing telecommunications infrastructure, African countries could save billions of dollars and speed up the provision of universal broadband access, which will have a major impact on education outcomes.

“A review of infrastructure-sharing experiences found that developing countries can save billions and speed broadband access by sharing infrastructure,” Mrs Ibrahim said in a pre-conference interview with eLearning Africa’s news service. “These savings can be obtained both through sharing telecom infrastructure, such as ducts, fibres and masts, as well as sharing with other utility infrastructure, such as roads, power grids, fuel pipelines and rail lines.”

Better access to education and training through improvements in communications is a crucial element of the African Union’s 2063 Vision for a ‘transformed continent’ and Mrs Ibrahim will stress the importance of improvements in infrastructure for meeting the AU’s targets.