Govt banks on TZ deal to cut Internet costs
Malawi and Tanzania have signed a memorandum of undertaking (MoU) on information and communications technology which will lead to a reduction in cost of Internet connectivity in Malawi.
The countries signed the agreement on Friday in Lilongwe during closed bilateral talks that President Lazarus Chakwera and his visiting Tanzanian counterpart Samia Suluhu Hassan presided over.
Minister of Information and Digitisation Moses Kunkuyu told reporters later that the MoU will lead to reduction of the country’s reliance on third party connectivity providers.
“There are a number of issues that are covered but major of them all is the affordability of data that is going to be enhanced by connecting Malawi to undersea cables through non-commercial avenues.
“Currently, we are connecting through the undersea cables in Tanzania and other countries through some vendors’ cables.
“And when we connect directly through State to State infrastructure in this case through Escom and TCL of Tanzania we are going to lower the running cost of bandwidth into the country,” he said.
The minister said this will “lower the overall cost of data for consumers in Malawi.”
Asked to estimate the reduction once the deal is finalised, Kunkuyu responded: “It will be a drastic reduction but we cannot give the figures now.”
His Tanzanian counterpart Nape Moses Nnauye said the partnership will also help the two countries strengthen their cyber security.
“This MoU was meant to be signed last year and there have been a lot of works that have been going on….I am happy that at last we have signed the MoU.
“We are determined to cooperate on cyber security, exchanging information. After signing this MoU, we are now going to have specific agreements which we will sign,” he said.
The MoU has been signed against a background that Malawians are paying more on internet data than their counterparts on the continent.
This is according to analysis by Statista, an online platform specialised in market and consumer data.
Published earlier this year the analysis shows that Internet data prices in Malawi are the third most expensive after Equatorial Guinea and Sao Tome.
