The Council of Ministers held this Wednesday, August 17 approved the communication from the Ministry in charge of Digital Development and Telecommunications on the completion of the project for the Modernization of Telecommunications Networks in Madagascar (MRTM).
ACCORDING to officials, the project that has come to an end consists of providing autonomous, efficient and secure technological support to strengthen digital inclusion in the Public Administration sector, with a view to good governance and increased accountability. towards citizens. More specifically, it involves setting up new telecommunications infrastructure including a data management center, an optical fiber link, videoconferencing devices, drones and surveillance cameras and 4G secure walkie-talkies for the forces. defense and security.
Still within the framework of the implementation of the project, a series of training sessions was held until last May in Antananarivo. Tahina Razafindramalo, Minister of Digital Development, Digital Transformation, Posts and Telecommunications, during the launch of these trainings, stressed that the goal is to allow the effectiveness of e-governance, the modernization of public services, to boost the digital economy and reduce the cost of internal telecommunications at the level of the administrative machine.
For the Minister of the MNDPT, human capital is essential for the operation and sustainability of the project, hence the importance of these training sessions provided by the technical partner Huawei. These training sessions brought together around fifty participants from all the ministries working with the MNDPT. A few weeks earlier, the ministry signed a memorandum of understanding with the Town Hall of Antananarivo, Naina Andriantsitohaina, for the installation of infrastructure related to the project.
We also know that this project entrusted to Huawei, which saw its effective launch in 2020, provided for an envelope of 47.2 million USD financed by Exim Bank of China. “The modernization of the Malagasy public administration will be carried out by the Huawei company with financing from Exim Bank of China worth 179.5 billion ariary. It will consist of providing the public administration with a modern fiber optic and LTE network equipped with secure infrastructure. New technologies will be deployed and put at the service of the public administration”, it was indicated on the occasion of the launch of the project.
Several objectives
It should also be recalled that in December 2019, during the signing between the Republic of Madagascar, represented by Prime Minister Christian Ntsay, and the People’s Republic of China, represented by its ambassador, Yang Xiaorong, of the project agreement at the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Anosy, it was indicated that to align with the objectives of emergence of the country, the Malagasy administration badly needed digitized public services through a system that takes into account budgetary constraints.
Prime Minister Christian Ntsay, who also declared that the government now has “a tool that will contribute to securing the city of Antananarivo, all with a view to improving the investment climate, aiming, among other things, for development through socio-economic and environmental investments, so that the efforts made in such a reform lead to real transformations at the level of the city, even for all of Madagascar”.
To shed more light on the opinion on the ins and outs of this initiative, the MPTDN noted, for its part, that the project to modernize the State telecom network aimed at several objectives, in particular the efficiency of the administration with the establishment of inter-ministerial communication networks and a secure mobile network, the facilitation of inter-departmental data exchanges by limiting the risks linked to cyberattacks, the optimization of public expenditure on communications, the strengthening of the public security, improving the management of urban telecom traffic and promoting the administration’s digital culture.
Finally, the press release which followed the Council of Ministers made a point of specifying that the project does not only concern Antananarivo but the whole country. It was thus highlighted the initiative to set up a national data center which will collect and manage all of the administration’s data throughout the territory. The installation of 1100 cameras on 300 sites was also reported as well as the setting up of “command centers” piloted by the National Police.