A Proposal to Modernize Africa's Communications

Acha Leke & Stephen Okelo-Odongo*

In most African countries today, the telephone density is quite low, on the order of 1 phone per 200 people. There is typically one television station serving each nation, broadcasting for 4 to 8 hours a day. To improve the current state of affairs, the Afronetwork Corporation has proposed to offer telecommunications services in cooperation with post and telecommunications agencies in some West African countries.

The objective of the Afronetwork project is to provide every rural community and urban family with a telephone system and at least eight channels of television coverage within eight years of obtaining a license. This will be accomplished by expanding satellite, cellular telephone, and fiber optic networks. The project has been divided into five phases, each one taking about two years to complete. The goal at the end of the ten year period is to have one telephone for every four people, which is about half the telephone density of western countries. The primary technical support for this project is being provided by the Communications Satellite Planning Center (CSPC) at Stanford University.

Overview

Initial contacts have been made with Africa's political leaders over the last five years. Besides CSPC at Stanford, Afronetwork has recruited other major players to develop a strategy. Amsterdam Pacific, a US investment bank, has signed on to provide financial advisory services. The international arm of Japan's NTT has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to assist the CSPC at Stanford in providing detailed planning for the modernization of national networks. Texcom Corporation, an African-American firm experienced in installing satellites, fiber optics, and telephony systems, will train local personnel to install and operate the new systems. RASCOM, the Pan-African satellite planning body, recently agreed with Afronetwork to become a partner in developing continental satellite services for Africa; the partnership also calls for Afronetwork to provide assistance to RASCOM's member nations if requested.

Afronetwork's proposal involves a rapid modernization of broad telecommunications services, funded by revenues from lucrative long distance services. Modern technologies allow the expansion of services at costs only a fraction of those ten years ago. A main concern of the African post and telecommunications agencies is how to modernize while maintaining national autonomy and national employment. The proposed contracts call for training of the ministries' own staff to install and operate the new systems.

The Afronet proposals being reviewed by the nations call for the new facilities to become 80% owned by the nation as the seed investment is repaid. The issue of national sovereignty is addressed with each country, allowing for a modernized government corporation. Alternatively the new facilities could be sold to national investors by the government; the corporation then becomes privatized but regulated by a national telecommunications commission. The nation's choice has more to do with its international negotiations with monetary bodies, and its responses to national political issues. Once the national partnership agreements are concluded, the expansion is carried out in five phases over ten years.

In the first phase, new and improved services will be provided to the current customers at a considerably reduced cost. These services include VSAT satellite ground stations for data communications to businesses. This will allow rural and urban offices to communicate with each other and with other countries. Urban cellular services for car and pocket telephones will also be available, and a satellite trunk relay system with stations carrying 30 to 120 channels major cities will be installed. This system will be used initially to handle long distance phone calls while the fiber optics network is put in place. The income derived from these long distance charges will be used to finance the construction of a number of new and upgraded services.

The backbone fiber network will be installed during the second phase. It will have a carrying capacity for the targeted telephone density of one phone per four people. In addition, telephone and data services will gradually be transferred from the satellite to the fiber network, leaving the satellite primarily for television distribution. In rural areas, base stations with 20 km coverage radius will be built. Construction of these stations will begin in areas given high priority, based on the size of the community. The stations closest to the fiber network will be directly connected to it while the others will be linked via radio relay. New electronic switches will be placed in urban business centers to handle increased traffic. The targeted phone density at the end of this phase is one phone per 100 people in the urban regions and one per 200 people in the rural areas.

In the third phase, the rural telephone system will be expanded by connecting medium-sized towns to the fiber backbone through smaller capacity feeder lines. This will relieve the rural cellular system of crowding and provide fiber services to rural towns. New fiber lines as well as new electronic switches will be added, increasing the urban telephone density to one phone per ten people and the rural to one per 100 people. This telephone, data, and television network will offer modern communications services at a fraction of the current cost and will be built to full CCITT standards.

The national partnership will continue to expand its services during the last two phases, reaching a final telephone density of one phone per four people in the urban as well as the rural regions. Wide band data services such as access to worldwide information banks, electronic document transfer, electronic mail, and video teleconferencing will be available at low cost. Satellites will be used mainly for television coverage while the fiber and base station networks will provide phone coverage.

African countries and their citizens will be the main beneficiaries of the Afronetwork project. The national partnerships will not only provide efficient and low cost communication services, but also reinvest earnings into the expansion of the African infrastructure. Africans will be employed in the different stages of the project: laying of the fiber, installing the base stations, managing the branch offices, providing technical support, and maintaining the network. By the beginning of Phase III, it is expected that the electronic switches will be manufactured by African electronics corporations.

Afronetwork has also committed to direct 1% of its gross revenues to education and health care. A small fraction of the money will go to universities in western countries to support African researchers dealing with distance learning, part will be given to rural school boards in the communities served by Afronet branch offices, and part to local rural health services enabling them to create adult education programs in health maintenance and preventive medicine. Furthermore, this project will provide universal TV coverage with a potential capacity of up to 360 channels spanning the whole continent.

The proposed plan aims to turn the management of Africa's telecommunications services over to the emerging planners in Africa, breaking historic dependencies and supporting independent economic growth.

The Stanford team includes eight Africans from six different African countries, coordinating with the Center for African Studies at Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley. Afronetwork and RASCOM also hope to attract Africans from telecommunications corporations around the world to return to the continent and take part in the project. Telecommunications and television are only two of the important areas in Africa's economic growth. It is hoped that lessons learned in the Afronetwork planning can also be applied to other sectors of Africa's economies.

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* Acha Leke and Stephen Okelo-Odongo are at the Communications Satellite Planing Center, School of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94035. Phone: (415) 497-2199. Copyright 1995 by Acha Leke and Stephen Okelo. No part of this article may be copied or used without the express consent of the authors.