Africa CAN

On the 29th of August 2006, seven (7) Southern and Eastern African countries signed the Inter-Governmental Protocol of the Inter-Government Authority (IGA) of the East and Southern African Submarine System (EASSy) which is the governmental framework through the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) within which the cable is going to be owned, built and operated.

The protocol, which is the outcome of an African led consultative process, mandates that the EASSy cable has an African majority ownership. The current proposal for the cable is a combination of debt and equity financing of 70% against 30% for the total cost of three hundred million dollars ($300,000,000). The question must be asked why do we want to saddle Africa with another debt if the business proposition of the cable is viable?

The NEPAD E-Africa Commission, which is facilitating this process with the government’s mandate to have an African majority ownership of the cable based on an Open Access structure, must consider my proposal not to accrue debt for this project because much of the money can be raised through equity and stocks on the continent.

The EASSy Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) must be owned in a public private partnership with the participation of governments, private sector, educational institutions, network operators, civil society and the consumer.

The EASSy SPV should be listed on the various country stock exchanges so that it works within the stock exchange discipline, which allows it stocks to be traded without burdening the company to make huge profits to pay it shareholders. This approach meets the current “regulated return on investment” clause in the protocol in that the company would not be bent on paying it’s investors huge profits so would price capacity at cost however the investors can trade their stocks in the company on the stock exchanges to make profit based on the performance of the company.

Governments and public institutions must be able to invest public funds, pension funds etc into the EASSy SPV. The stock market would serve as a platform to trade these shares later or an exist strategy to recoup the investment.

For the “indigenous” private enterprises the proposal is to lower the financial uptake for equity from the current one ($1,000,000) to two ($2,000,000) million dollars to between hundreds of thousand of dollars and one million dollars ($1,000,000). This must include not only Eastern and Southern Africa private enterprise.
Educational institutions who consume a lot bandwidth must also be allowed to invest like the UbuntuNet Alliance which has about three million dollars ($3,000,000) for the purposes of participation in the EASSy SPV.

Civil Society and Consumers must be allow to purchase shares or bonds of the EASSy cable on the stock market – hence my proposal is for the various governments to guarantee the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of the EASSy SPV on the various country stock exchanges.

The trading of stocks of the EASSy SPV on the exchanges would seek to rapidly expand the participation of the African people and create the African ownership, which is the flagship of NEPAD.

The process would also generate long-term activities on the exchanges and create a trading post for a critical regional infrastructure company, which would ensure effective and efficient management of the enterprise.

This would also have an impact on the stock markets in that trading of an “unusual” entity would create innovation, ensure that our financial sector is able to re-engineer to scale with development interest – that private interest is at par with development goals to create a win-win situation.

The stock market serves as the platform for trading the stocks of the EASSy SPV so that should the company be doing well then the investors can make money by trading their shares; otherwise the stock market is a good exit strategy for those who want to dispose off their shares if the company does do well in their opinion.

Why should we saddle Africa with an EASSy debt when the viability of the project can guarantee raising equity for it implementation ensuring that an African led process, is African financed without debt?