East Africa should integrate its ICT resources for efficiency

One celebrated telecommunications engineer recently told me that telecom networks are built never to fail.

They are packed with redundancy systems that make them resistant to any sort of attack that could cause denial of service.

This wisdom was challenged last week when the country experienced what could be termed one of the worst outages ever since the landing of the fibre optic cable.

Network outages are not a new phenomenon.

They do happen but they can be prevented, at the infrastructure level, through diligent network planning and redundancy.

For instance when the South Tower of the World Trade Centre collapsed on Deutsche Bank’s New York facility, the German banking giant lost its connection to the US markets.

Almost immediately, however, backup systems in Ireland kicked in, and Deutsche Bank went on to clear more than $300 billion in transactions that same day.

Several reasons have been levelled for the outages including vandalism or sabotage.

But the causes notwithstanding, several weaknesses emerge from this situation.

That one, the networks are not resilient enough to withstand external attacks and the physical security or protection of the said networks is wanting.

The sheer outcry from consumers also indicates the level of dependency that the country has been on these networks.

There have been emails flying around in the Kenyan blogosphere, of how the regulator should intervene and force operators to share infrastructure and ensure full redundancy and physical protection of the optical fibre network as critical infrastructure.

While others have argued for the enactment of a law to protect critical infrastructure with stiff penalties for offenders as this affects the country’s competitiveness.

But, Eric Aligula, a Policy Analyst and Head of the Infrastructure and Economic Services Division at the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) summed this well for us “…investment in transport and ICT infrastructure is premised on the desire to establish Kenya as the region’s communications hub. The assurance that Kenya can and will (provide) consistent, reliable and affordable access to these critical infrastructures is critical to achieving these goals.”

He goes on further to call for “players in the ICT Sector to team up with other sectors to insist on the development of a national, perhaps regional Critical Infrastructure Protection Policy complete with accompanying reviews and enhancements in the legal and institutional frameworks."

This, I totally agree with. However, since the targets of attacks on our critical infrastructure would likely include both facilities in the economy and those in the government, the elimination of this potential vulnerability requires a closely coordinated effort by both the government and the private sector.

The policy should provide some form of a private-public partnership arrangement.

And to succeed, this partnership must be genuine, mutual and cooperative.

A good example of this kind of Policy is the American Presidential Directive of 1998 later revised in 2003 and the European Commission’s directive of 2006.

In both cases, critical infrastructure referred to the interconnected networks of economic, social and governance systems and assets.

To us just like the American and Europeans, a combination of ICT services are now the platform for the provision of energy, transportation, communications, as well as safety, financial, and health services.

These are what the policy should seek to protect since they form the bedrock for economic activity.

Although the motive in both cases was to protect critical infrastructure from terrorist attacks, the underlying principles of prevention, preparedness and response to attacks is still relevant to us. And these are what should form the basis of the policy.

Hare is a Director at the African eDevelopment Resource Centre. Follow him on Twitter@hareharry