MACRA set for 3rd national ICT survey to monitor its development progress and trends

* Information collected during the survey will be used by policy makers and stakeholders

* To point out existing gaps in communication sectors in the country and help to analyze areas we are performing well in ICT

By Petro Mkandawire, MANA

Malawi Communication Regulatory Authority (MACRA) says it’s geared to conduct its third national survey on access and use of ICT services by households and individuals, which will provide the progress and trends of ICT development in the country.

In an interview, MACRA’s Communication Director, Zadziko Mankhambo said the survey provides status of demand for services across the country, critical information among users and it will help to provide information to other international bodies like International Telecommunication Union (ITU) — since they request information in order to assess how countries are performing in ICT development.

“Information collected during the survey will be used by policy makers and stakeholders to point out existing gaps in communication sectors in the country and it will help to analyze areas in which we are performing well as a country in ICT,” Mankhambo said.

He added that policy makers will be able to utilize the statistics collected through survey for designing, implementation of relevant polices, programs, assessing implementation of forthcoming National Digital Policy, which will replace old national ICT policy and give insights to MACRA operators to see which areas they need to address.

Speaking with board chairperson of National Statistics Office, Lizzie Chikoti added credence to the initiative, saying “the survey is imperative for the growth of the communication landscape, coverage of various sectors and it will help in obtaining quality statistics that is internationally comparable”.

“We want a greater improvement in ICT development in this country and we expect a lot of progress and being the third survey, we believe the experience in the previous two surveys will help to have well legible statistic for the ITU to have well assessable data,” she said.

Access and use of ICT services by households and individuals is key in monitoring the progress of the country towards becoming an information society and the data collection exercise for the survey is set to commence in April 2023.