Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Stop conferences, act now


Several Heads of State attending the ‘Connect Africa’ Summit in Kigali have called for an end to unproductive conferences. They said it was time to quickly put into action what has already been discussed.

“For over the past years, we have been attending unending summits…I was afraid that this will also turn out to be one of them but after finding out what was on the agenda, I don’t regret having came,” Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said.

Wade who is also the chairman of ICT in Africa said that this should be the last meeting to bring people together before the implementation of previous resolutions.

Malawian President Dr Bingwa wa Muthalika echoed the same remarks saying that several conferences have taken place and others followed without any fulfilling earlier commitments.

“All that changes are slogans and themes but in the end you find them the same, Africans should be in a driver’s seat to lead the way for Information Technology in Africa and we should not be there as a passenger but as a driver,” Muthalika, one of the five African Heads of State attending the high level summit, said.

He said: “Through technology, I want at one time to travel from Lilongwe (in Malawi) to Senegal by train; we must open our infrastructures to serve continental purposes if we need to develop.”


Stephen here.
Kigali

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well said.