CONGO-BRAZZAVILLE’S DIGITAL GOVERNANCE

In today’s digital age it is extremely sad to see that in Congo-Brazzaville out of a small population of 4.4 million people only 1% have access to PC’s; additionally only 23% have access to TV and 56% access to Radio. However all hope is not lost as the government has announced the launch of a digital governance agency. Its main commission is to play watchdog to the country’s information and technology projects, as well as to control the implementation.

 

It has been a long time coming that the country gets an ICT upgrade, in 2008 a policy was adopted to improve the situation but its implementation was inadequate and ineffective. The policy aimed at transforming the country’s ICT sector by increasing infrastructures, recruiting specialists, and educating the population on how they can benefit from the upgrade. According to local technology analyst Jean-Albert Longange the biggest problem in 2008 was that the policy was not properly monitored. For this reason it is easy to see why there is a critical need for a digital governance agency.  This could be the missing ingredient that the country needs in its recipe to catch up to the digital revolution, and the World Bank thinks so too as they have pledged to partially fund the agency. With the digital governance agency the government hopes that the problems of 2008 will remain a distant memory.

 

As usual there is a lesson that all entrepreneurs can learn from this. Namely, when all your plans that you spent months working on do not work – as with the initial 2008 policy- you have to go back to the drawing board. There is absolutely nothing wrong with realizing you have made a mistake and rectifying it. At the end of the day, entrepreneurs that acknowledge their mistakes and learn from them are usually more successful than those that do not.

 

Photo credits: govtech.com, ejournalafrica.com 

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