Sundaymail Editor
Elita Chikwati
THE Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) yesterday launched a US$2,5 billion Inclusive Digitalisation for East and Southern Africa (IDEA) programme, which is funded by the World Bank.
This initiative aims to empower 180 million individuals with internet access and provide digitally enabled services to 100 million people over the next eight years.
In a statement, COMESA said the programme will benefit women, refugees, host communities, private sector firms and public sector entities, among others.
The programme employs a Multiphase Programmatic Approach (MPA) to pool funding across multiple recipients to promote universal digital access, productive use and digital market integration.
“The first phase of the programme includes a US$10 million grant for the COMESA Secretariat and US$780 million in financing for operations in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Malawi,” said COMESA.
“The IDEA programme is expected to bring together 15+ countries, RECs (regional economic communities) and development partners under one programme to achieve the common goal of achieving digital access and leverage it for productive use over the eight-year period.”
Currently, in Eastern and Southern Africa, only 64 percent of the population is covered by high-speed internet and less than half (only 24 percent) are using the internet as of 2023.
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