Of the more important recent events which have helped to accelerate connectivity in Africa was the Addis Symposium on Telematics for Development in April 1995. The recommendations it produced stimulated the subsequent Conference of African Ministers responsible for planning to instruct the UN Economic Commission for Africa to set up a 'High-level Working Group' to chart Africa's path onto the information highway. Hosted by the Egyptian Cabinet Information and Decision Support Centre in Cairo and supported by Unesco, the ITU and the IDRC, the expert group developed a framework document entitled the African Information Society Initiative, which was adopted at the subsequent meeting of the Conference of African Ministers. However the conference also served to point out how far behind the countries of the South were in being able to exploit the potential benefits of improved use of ICTs, stimulating many to call for drastic measures. It identified a substantial number of ICT related development projects being planned or in process in Africa.
Assistance is in the form of equipment, expertise, training and free circuits for the first year.
The Department of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands is considering funding high bandwidth Internet connections to universities in 8 African countries. UNDP's Africa Bureau has agreed to fund 10 sub-regional telematics policy and sensitization workshops in Africa. UNDP's SDNP is assisting with local telematics network development in Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Malawi, Mozambique and Tunisia. UNEP's Mercure project uses VSAT technology to establish an environmental information exchange network in Africa. These and over 100 other finalised projects were identified during the study, with others added subsequently in preparation for this report, indicating an unexpectedly high level of activity in this area from the international community.