Gordon Feller Urban Age Institute, USA GordonFeller@UrbanAge.org

Ethiopia has no coherent policy in place to support the growth of IT industry. The Government of Ethiopia has embarked on a major effort to put in place many of the building blocks required for developing a robust ICT sector in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia has no coherent policy in place to support the growth of IT industry. Existing high import tariffs (40%) on computer and communications equipment make the widespread use of such systems rather expensive, particularly for smaller businesses and institutions.

Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) is the incumbent public telecom operator, with a monopoly over all telecom services in the country (fixed, mobile, Internet and data communications). Independent Very Small Aperture Terminal Satellite (VSAT) connections and satellite phones are not allowed, and call-back services are illegal.

The national telecommunication switching capacity of Ethiopia is about 550000 lines, of which about 340000 are currently in use. About 60 percent of telephones are concentrated in Addis Ababa, the capital city. Ethiopia’s teledensity is about 0.54, one of the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa. Use of mobile phones in Ethiopia is limited to 90000, but it is growing. Costs are relatively affordable, but service quality and availability are low. ETC plans to introduce pre-paid and subscriber mobile lines (about 400,000 new lines during 2004-2005) to alleviate the situation.

The number of Internet accounts in Ethiopia is still limited to only 6000. Despite the availability of the nationwide local call tariff for dial-up Internet users, the distribution of Internet users is still strongly skewed to the capital (94% are located in Addis Ababa). This is partly due to the limited availability of telecom infrastructure, and partly because of the low level of computerisation outside the capital.

For Ethiopia to meet its development objectives using ICTs as enablers, considerable investments are needed in institutional and sector capacity building efforts. The same is true about human resource development needs, and communications and information technology infrastructure. Appropriate policy and regulatory reforms are needed to ensure equitable, reliable, and affordable access to information and communication technologies. In response to these challenges, the government has embarked on a major effort to put in place many of the building blocks required for developing a robust ICT sector in Ethiopia.

Signs of change
ICT development in Ethiopia has been treated in an ad hoc manner. But there are signs that this is changing. The ‘ICT Policy Paper of 2003’ provides a framework for defining the direction of the sector and its development objectives. It also sets the stage for institutional arrangements for policy development, and the promotion and regulation of the ICT sector. The Ethiopian Telecommunications Agency (ETA) is the new regulator. However, it does not have any spectrum management and monitoring activities due to lack of licensing schemes, human resources, and monitoring equipment. The government has recently established the Ethiopian ICT Development Authority (EICTDA) to propose policy and to coordinate a multi-sectoral effort for development of the ICT sector. Two key telecommunications agencies (ETA and ETC) now have newly appointed managing directors and the new management teams are keen on advancing the ICT sector development objectives. All these developments could facilitate the steady growth and development of the sector.

Education and training
Considerable efforts are under way to increase the number of trained ICT professionals in Ethiopia. These include vocational training programmess offered by various institutions, as well as college and university level degree programmess in computer science, electronics, telecommunications and information theory, software engineering and programming, technical management, and design and maintenance of management information systems.

ETC’s Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (ITIT) provides basic training in plant maintenance, telegraph and telex, switching, transmission, traffic and management of telecommunication networks. ITIT has recently begun basic training on computer applications and is planning to offer graduate courses in telecom engineering, management and information technologies in 2004 - 2005. Since 1992, the private sector has been providing basic computer and software applications training. The growth of computer training centers in the country, despite their uneven quality, has improved the general level of computer literacy and resulted in more skilled computer usage.