BY MEHARI BEYENE
Yilkal Abate is vice president of ICTET, an association of private sector information communication technology companies, and country manager at Afmobi. He earned MBA from MIT and has over 20 years of experience in the development of information technology solutions, risk management tools, software apps, and web technologies in the financial, education and consulting industries.
He has previously worked at liberty mutual in Boston, AIG in NY, and analysis international Ltd. UK. He was also the founding curator of the Addis hub for global shapers, a World Economic Forum initiative.
Regarding digital economy, Yilkal Abate pointed out that establishing digital literacy charter is the cornerstone of digital Policy. And it is critical for the digital economy as well as for the future of the country. People’s access to digital skills should be established as basic rights. This right could be described in a national digital literacy charter that ensures social participation.
He indicated as: “this charter should cover access to at least basic digital skills such as using computers and accessing digital information. Just like the “Meserete Timhirt” (Illiteracy Eradicating) campaign of the late 1970s that shaped decades of literacy success of reading, writing and in arithmetic tool, for job market, and social participation, such a charter will enable the participation of the country’s citizens in the economy of the 21st century. Digital skills framework through a country-wide digital policy can help increase the participation of the country in the global community economically, socially, politically, and scientifically.
He projected that digital literacy charter is consistent with the World Bank’s digital economy for Africa initiative that advocates for digital universal access. Digital literacy levels in terms of basic, intermediate, advanced levels, need to cascade from the national Information and communication technology policy goals down to skills taught at primary, secondary, technical and vocational education and training as well as tertiary curriculums.
“Instead, the redesigning of education for blended and online teaching, learning, and collaboration efforts could offer a competitive solution. In addition, new opportunities are arising in Ethiopia in the form of the soon-to-be-launched telecom liberalization drive that could allow raising funds in new license issuance and acquisition fees. These funds could then be used to cover the costs associated with universal access,” he noted.
Concerning the expansion of high-speed and high bandwidth connectivity of national internet accessibility, he mentioned that a sustained national digital literacy campaign is feasible if, and only if, there is a reliable universal access to digital tools and the internet. Current connectivity penetration in Ethiopia stands at a total of 45.6 million telephone subscribers and 44.03 million mobile subscribers, and 22.74 million overall internet users. Presently, one plausible way to increase internet penetration in a meaningful way in Ethiopia is to expand connectivity to the high-bandwidth and high-speed global submarine fiber cables off-Djibouti, supplemented by connections via Sudan, Kenya and, potentially, other neighboring countries for redundancy.
As to him, the current redundant satellite link at Sululta offers 400 Mbps downstream and 100 Mbps upstream Provisioning additional bandwidth in the range of 5G networks using these satellite links will be prohibitively expensive. Consequently, this predominantly satellite-based access approach will continue to contribute towards severely handicapping the growth of information communication technology services in the country, unless new developments in satellite technology such as starlink of Space X offer a reasonably competitive cost.
He recommend completing and bringing online a redundant, reliable, and practical high-speed and high-bandwidth optical fiber connectivity to and from Djibouti and other neighboring countries such as Kenya and Sudan. This high-bandwidth connectivity will encourage utilization of cloud computing services already provisioned in the region.
For instance, he pointed out that Ethio-telecom half-year, from July – December 2019 performance report have been raised as the main barriers towards physical fiber optics connection to nodes in Djibouti. This risk can be managed by running future fiber optic lines parallel to the railway line. Lessons from other large infrastructure projects in the country and other countries suggest that equity and inclusion and community ownership around the potential fiber optic line will help minimize security and theft risks. We also propose that this connectivity could eventually form the backbone of East-West fiber-optic link from Djibouti to Ethiopia, South Sudan, Central African Republic, and northern Democratic Republic of Congo.
He stated that Ethiopia should work to position itself as the preferred wired fiber connection route in and out of South Sudan as part of an east-west Africa land-based fiber highway. Ethiopia should also explore what the next level of Woredanet, SchoolNet, HealthNet, AgriNet should be by factoring this extended fiber optics link, current global technology trends, and the service needs of citizens as outlined in United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the country’s own mid average-income earning goals, and the other grand challenges. Understandably, this requires an adaptive approach with a dense network for policy formulation, implementation and problem solving which again requires the country to strengthen its policy making approach as a learning ecosystem.
In the establishment of Ethiopia as leader in Artificial Intelligence technology in Africa, he pointed out that to address the grand challenges and as well to realize demographic dividends, achieve gender parity, realize sustainability, and become a middle-income nation, Ethiopia must systematically leverage emerging technologies, including Artificial Intelligence.
He remarked that the convergence of the exponential growth of in the last two years, increasing connectivity enabled by 4G, and now 5G wireless technologies, and advances in computing capabilities, have enabled Artificial intelligence to be one of the dominant emerging technologies. In fact, despite some concerns in the potential abuse of the technology, leadership in AI technology is being aggressively pursued by several countries to gain a strategic advantage.
In the Ethiopian context, he noted that Artificial Intelligence offers significant strategic opportunities in some key emerging areas such as renewable energy generation and management, e-healthcare, rural development, smart agriculture, climate change-resistant seed breeding, and natural resources management.
With no complex network of legacy systems that could inhibit leapfrogging to more current technologies, he pointed out that Ethiopia is already taking some critical steps in establishing a digital ecosystem, such as launching its first satellite (ETRSS-1), a digital identity pilot, e-customs, e-tax, government e-Service portal and an e-payment. A national digital strategy was also recently made public. Taken together, these developments are helping to lay the groundwork for formulating forward-looking Artificial Intelligence.
To establish a strong Artificial Intelligence, he went to say that national ecosystem and maintain sustained growth within, a bold vision is needed. This vision must recognize that leadership in Artificial Intelligence is now universally considered a matter of national security with several implications and, therefore, an opportunity for Ethiopia to not only secure its own digital destiny but also assume leadership in the African market.
