What is worse than wasting $106 Million on the wrong fiber optic cable?

From the press reports, it seems that Uganda's National Transmission Backbone Infrastructure and related e-Government Infrastructure projects are turning out to be a $106 million dollar white elephant.

  • The Monitor found that the contract with Huawei Technologies to lay fiber optic cable across Uganda was seriously flawed, with no quality checks and too shallow a cable install.
  • The New Vision found that Huawei Technologies is even laying outdated fiber - G652 instead of G655 - which will severely hamper even current uses of the bandwidth.

This project is funded by a concessional loan from the export/import bank (EXIM) of China, which Uganda has to pay back over 20 years. Yet this is a poor deal when compared with others. Rwanda spent $38m to cover a distance of 2,300km while Uganda will spend $61.6m to cover 2,100km - 2x the price per kilometer.

But think about the larger issue raised by National Information Technology Authority:

"Wasting $106m is bad enough. But the loss of the money is nothing compared to the long-term consequences of missing the ICT revolution."

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Submitted by Wayan Vota on Mon, 04/05/2010 - 05:07
Wayan Vota's picture

Wayan Vota

Inveneo

Wayan Vota is a technology expert focused on appropriate information and communication technologies (ICT) for rural and underserved areas of the developing world. He is a Senior Director at Inveneo and is the editor of ICTworks

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