CM/Res. 131(IX)
RESOLUTION ON TELECOMMUNICAITONS
The Council of Ministers of the Organization of African Unity, meeting in its Ninth Ordinary Session in Kinshasa, Congo, from 4 to 10 September 1967,
Noting that intra-African telecommunications services, initially designed to facilitate contact between the metropolitan States and their colonial territories are not only inadequate, inefficient and irrational, but out-dated in purpose as well;
Deeply convinced that this imposed interference of foreign countries in intra- African telecommunication links entails a serious handicap and permanent danger for both African security and sovereignty;
Convinced that intra-African contacts and direct communication links provide a good basis for continental understanding and co-operation, and the security of the continent;
Paying tribute to the efforts of the “Planning Committee for Africa” which drew up a telecommunications routing plan (in its last session in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia);
Noting that existing telecommunications tariffs and rates constitute a serious impediment to the development of intra-African lines;
URGES the international Committee (CCITT) charged with the formulation of a system of rates that is more rational and more favourable to the development of African networks to speed up its work and make known to Member States (through the ITU or any other competent organ) the system or systems envisaged before the next meeting of the Planning Committee for African so that this Committee can, at its forthcoming session, make practical decisions and take definite steps towards the setting up of an economic and rational African telecommunications network that is at once economic, rational and conducive to the integrated development of the continent;
RECOMMENDS:
priority it deserves in their development programmes;
That Member States in their telecommunications development plans in general, and in their utilization of space satellites by the installation of earth-stations in particular, keep in mind the wider utilization of both existing and planned installations by neighbouring sister States and that they should encourage, and initiate, if possible, the drawing up of joint telecommunications projects with their neighbours;
That training of telecommunications personnel should be geared to our needs and take place whenever possible in centres within the continent, in so far as training in foreign countries, attaining much higher levels of technology, tends to give little consideration, if any, to facilities and equipment available in our continent;
That Member States should try to standardize their telecommunications equipment with a view to facilitating the loan of skilled man-power available in sister States where similar equipment is used.