Governance Challenges: Assessing Participation in WSIS from Africa and its Private Sector

From the document summary:

"In the wake of the Tunis meeting, this report attempts to assess African involvement in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) by looking particularly at how its private sector fared at the event. There is unanimous recognition today that the African private sector plays a fundamental role in the development process, considering it is the main source of jobs and wealth. This is why when WSIS moved to include private sector and civil society in decision-making - a process hitherto in the hands of States - it marked the advent of a new era that would pave the way to 'new global governance for the 21st century'.

The present study reviews African participation on the whole, and the private sector’s role in particular, by processing statistics on participants in the different stages of the summit as well as their contributions at each stage, and then breaking down, collating, and analysing the results of surveys on private sector players in three different and related forums (the Accra Regional Preparatory Meeting for the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in February 2005, the Dakar West Africa Regional Forum in May 2005, and the Senegal ICT [information and communication technology] private sector survey in August 2005).

On the whole, comparing African private sector participation with that of the continent’s other entities (governments and civil society) in all the stages of WSIS (except the Tunis Summit), the private sector was the least mobilized of these with a ratio of representatives that never exceeded 8% of total African presence, while the ratio of civil society participants in Prepcom 1 of phase 2 stood at 41% and that of government representatives at 91% during Prepcoms 2 and 3 of phase 1.

The lists of participants and other sources of information on the WSIS (presentations, discussion forums, etc.) confirm the low political support Africa’s private sector puts into the event. In fact, sector initiatives were limited to sporadic and symbolic actions by AfrISPA [Association of African Internet Service Provider Associations] and, to a lesser extent, by AFRINIC [An African Regional Internet Registry](two organisations working on technical Internet issues), a discussion session now and then on WSIS throughout during workshops, and the participation of a few individuals on some discussions lists. But it is also worth noting that there was relative private sector mobilisation, at the national level, in some countries like Kenya.

Quantitative and qualitative assessments of African involvement suggest that the real objective of WSIS may have been misunderstood. Several respondents seemed to see the WSIS as some sort of major international trade fair for ICTs. From the global perspective, the private sector was not very mobilized, even though its ability to influence things is far from insignificant. As the surveys suggest, low private sector mobilisation comes from an overall lack of information, resources, interest and individual capacity to influence decision-making, not from the (purely advisory) role UN authorities assigned to the sector. This contrasts sharply with current discourse and commitment to harnessing and building on the business world’s growing commitment to WSIS.

Let us not forget also that as telecoms are the dominant component of the ICT sector, some players may probably have felt they had nothing to do in a summit where much of the talk would be on telecoms infrastructure. In light of this, the key question finally is: was WSIS an appropriate forum for expressing the concerns of the private sector? Indeed, the voices of States are all-powerful in these summits organised by the UN. Other participants see themselves reduced to mere spectators of the decision making process. That is why players like the private sector should aim to lobby and sensitise governments to their concerns before the summit. After taking a hard look at this point, we found that African States have a problem with governance at both the national and international levels. The private sector in particular should strive in all respects to get better organised. In this way it can play a pro-active role in the enforcement of decisions that govern how it operates."