Telecommunications Policies for Sub-Saharan Africa

The study ' s main purpose is to consider how the World Bank ' s global strategy for the telecommunication sector can be applied in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. This report assesses the sector ' s performance, identifies strategies of sector reform applicable to the region, reviews reform underway as of 1995 in five countries, offers some suggestions on appropriate regulatory regimes, and discusses the prospects for attracting private sector financing. The report reviews international experience with restructuring and makes a detailed examination of reforms in progress in Benin, Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda. The need for telecommunication sector reforms being widely recognized, a growing number of countries in this region are at some stage of designing or implementing reforms that seek to attract private investment and open the markets to some degree of competition. Three distinct types of reform strategy are identified, which combine different market structures: incumbent strategy, competitive entry strategy, and complementary entry strategy. This classification of reform strategies is then applied to SSA countries. Generally, no single blueprint for reform will fit all of the countries; rather, strategies can be combined in a variety of ways.