Toure launches Mobile Africa

•As CTO partners Telecom Digest

The Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU),
Dr. Hamadoun Toure, has launched Mobile Africa from the stables of Nigeria-based IT & Telecom Digest.

This is coming as the Commonwealth Telecommunication Organisation (CTO) sealed partnership deal with the organizers of the West Africa Congress on ICT (WAFICT).

Toure also commended the organisation on its 10 years of offering IT & Telecom Digest to the people of the continent, via unparalleled and sustained reportage of activities, operations and policy issues in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

He expressed delight over the pioneering and informative role that IT & Telecom Digest, which has kept the telecom sector in Africa and Nigeria, precisely on the front burner for global attention.

“I like to commend you for this quality magazine that you have been producing with such high standard, informative and incisive reports and articles, which consistently tell the world about potentials, opportunities and operations in the ICT sector in Nigeria in particular and Africa in general,” Dr. Toure said when he received the Editor-in-Chief of IT & Telecom Digest, Mr. Mkpe Abang, in audience at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Spain.

It was double honour for the publication as Dr. Toure also launched Mobile Africa newspaper, the new publication recently introduced by the magazine.

“I am proud of your work and I am especially excited that you have even now introduced this newspaper specifically for mobile in Africa; it shows that you are moving with the times, and sometimes even ahead of the events. I do wish you well,” Toure asserted.

According to Abang, Mobile Africa, would focus on just mobile, noting that from mobile telephony to mobile internet, value added services on mobile telephony, to name a few.

“It will also focus on what mobile operators are doing, what is in vogue, the fashion in mobile telephony, the youth and mobile phones, among other areas,” he explained, stressing that Mobile Africa would also devote special attention to impact of mobile telephone on youths in tertiary institutions, because “these are the leaders of tomorrow.”

Mobile Africa, he said, would start up as a bi-weekly, but would soon stabilise as a weekly.

“Because, mobile deserves special attention because of what it has done in our lives as a nation and as a continent,” Abang said.

In a related development, the London-based Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) has sealed partnership deal with IT & Telecom Digest on its 2nd Annual West African ICT Congress 2010 (WAFICT 2010).

The event, scheduled to take place from June 1-3, 2010, at the ultra-modern Eko Hotel Expo Centre in Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria, will bring together telecom experts, policy makers, regulatory agencies, investors, operators, technology and equipment manufacturers and other key stakeholders from the West African sub-region to deliberate on strategies to promote the development of ICTs in West Africa.

The conference, initiated in 2009 by IT & Telecom Digest, will run alongside the West African International Telecommunications and Information Technology exhibition (W.Afri.Tel), now in its 10th year. Following the collaborative agreement between CTO and IT & Telecom Digest, West Africa, a region whose telecom industry has been the centre of attention across the world in the past decade, will benefit from the rich knowledge, expert resources and an array of international speaker line up, rarely seen in the sub-region.

Speaking on the partnership, Chief Executive, CTO, Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, described the collaboration as timely.

He also said that the region and indeed, many other developing countries in Africa within the Commonwealth, need the expertise and knowledge that the CTO can bring to the table.

“Collaborating with IT & Telecom Digest, a magazine that has for the past decade, been an effective player in helping promote the growth of the sub-region’s telecom sector, will provide additional benefits to the governments, operators, and people alike,” he said.


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