The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Government of Italy and the Ministry of Communications and Digital Transformation held a working seminar this Thursday, February 20, to discuss the ‘Digital Readiness Assessment’ and strategies to boost digital transformation in the country, where it was concluded that technological infrastructure, low connectivity and digital literacy are still major challenges in the digitalisation process.
The event, which brought together key institutions in the digital sector, such as the National Institute of Information and Communication Technologies (INTIC), the National Institute of Electronic Government (INAGE), the National Communications Institute of Mozambique (INCM), the Universal Access Service Fund (FSAU), the Centre for Research and Technology Transfer (CITT) and the company Tmcel, aimed to assess Mozambique’s digital readiness and identify priority areas for investment and public policies to promote digital inclusion and sustainable technological development.
UNDP Decentralisation Programme associate Danilo Jone pointed to connectivity throughout the country as one of the main challenges. ‘It’s difficult to have a quality Internet connection throughout the country. If you go to an administrative post, you certainly won’t be able to get a connection at that time. These difficulties also end up affecting the functioning of the public administration itself,’ he said, highlighting other challenges: ’In addition to the issue of connectivity, we have the connection infrastructure itself, as well as making the Internet available in schools.’
Faced with the problems mapped out, he explained that the UNDP and other partners have been carrying out a series of activities and initiatives to respond to the connectivity challenge. ‘As a community, we’ve been working at district level, and one of the issues we’ve encountered is precisely this, which has to do with connectivity. We are now running a project called ‘Connecting Communities’, which is being implemented in Nampula province. One of the main components of the initiative is the installation of digital squares, which is also part of the government’s central plans for digital transformation,’ he explained.
The source emphasised that the project is funded by the Italian government, which has entrusted the UNDP with its implementation in Mozambique. As well as focussing on connectivity, the project seeks to improve digital public infrastructures.
‘One of the issues I mentioned earlier is digital literacy. In remote areas, people don’t know the digital environment well. We can provide Internet to communities, but if people don’t know how to use it, we won’t get very far,’ he said, emphasising the need to improve people’s knowledge of information and communication technologies.
Speaking about the event, Danilo Jone explained that the workshop is one stage of a mission by the Italian Agency for Digitalisation and the UNDP, which is coming to the country to launch an initiative called ‘Digital Flagship for Africa’. ‘Throughout the week, we had several meetings with various institutions involved in the country’s digital transformation process. We organised this workshop so that we could reflect more broadly, discuss the challenges and, above all, understand the government’s priorities in terms of digital transformation over the next few years,’ he concluded.
Text: Nário Sixpene
