ICT Ministry holds validation workshop for National ICT policy framework

Today we attended the validation workshop of the National ICT Policy Framework conducted by the Ministry of ICT at a hotel in Harare. You will remember that Zimbabwe’s ICT policy is under review and in June & July review workshops were carried out around the country by the ministry.

The validation workshop today was basically the ministry getting the people that contributed to the document in the consultative process to ‘validate’ it. The event was attended by about 150 people from various provinces in the country.

We had the opportunity to talk to Ministry of ICT permanent secretary Eng. Sam Kundishora about the process and he told us that they are working with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to benchmark Zimbabwe’s ICT policy against other policies in the region and beyond. UNECA has been working with other African governments coming up with similar policies. An official from the UNECA HQ in Addis Ababa was at the workshop today and commended the consultative approach taken by Zimbabwe in developing the policy.

About the validation workshop today, Kundishora said at the end of the day that they had collected a lot of information and they are going to compile a new draft document to be presented to the steering committee of the National Economic Consultative Forum (NECF) on the 27^th of November. After the NECF have approved the draft, it will then be passed on the cabinet for approval, and Kundishora says he hopes this will take place before the end of 2012.

You can download the draft policy framework on the Ministry’s website or here.  The document covers the background of the process, the objectives of the policy, the state of ICT in Zimbabwe and policy statements on a number of sub-sectors like Governance, Education, Agriculture, Tourism, Health, Transport, Content Development, Research, Innovation and others.

Here are some pictures we took at the event. You can view more pictures on our Facebook page here.