African Regional Action Plan on the Knowledge Economy (ARAPKE): A Framework for Action

Persons with disability
- Develop innovative solutions
- Promote and encourage inclusion / involvement of persons with disabilities in the Information Society development
- Build special ICT centers equipped with suitable facilities
- Develop crash programmes

Enabling envrionment
- To establish regional sub/regional coordination mechanisms
- To establish legal/regulatory framework for ICT development in Africa

Infrastructure and access
- Development of Telecommunications backbones
- Development of exchange points
- Expansion of infrastructure, especially to rural areas
- Establishing a conducive policy and regulatory environment
- Creating Universal Access service

Resource Mobilization & partnership
- Resource Mobilization Conferences
- Preparation of Project Proposals for bilateral and international partners
- Projects for the Digital Solidarity Fund
- Creating Specialized and dedicated funding institutions

e-Strategies and Policies
- Developing NICI Plans & their linkages with MDGs, PRSPs
- Developing / Implementing sectoral strategies: e-education, e-Government, e-health, e tourism, e-commerce, etc.
- Developing / Implementing sub-Regional strategies
- Regional and Sub/regional approaches and methodologies to pilot ICT development processes
- Establishment of regional and sub regional online ICT Observatories

Information Society Indicators
- Creating an homogenous framework for the countries’ epreparation assessment
- Collecting Information Society indicators to measure ICT penetration, deployment and impact to be used as input into the e-Strategies elaboration processes
- Collecting indicators on WSIS implementation

Capacity building
- Human Resources for the KE
- Training Institutions & Networks
- Training material
- Generalization of Information Technology at the School / University

Internet Governance
- Regional and Sub regional Governance Instances (Hierarchical ascendant approach)
- Legal Framework on e-commerce
- Digital Transaction & Security
- Spam
- Internet Exchange Points
- AfriNic & other Networks
- Managing CCTLDs

Media
- Sensitization plans at local, national, sub-regional and regional levels

Harnessing the Digital Diaspora
- Turn the digital gap into a digital opportunity
- Build a platform which aims at using ICTs for the development of Africa

African Languages
- Develop and establish regional policy and strategies for promoting African Language in the cyberspace
- Promote research and development on African Language in the cyberspace
- Establish and sustain a broad program of capacity building on African Language in the cyberspace

Women and the Information Society
- National machineries for using ICT to empower women
- Involvement on e-strategy planning and implementation and in sectoral activities, especially SMMEs