The African Internet Service Providers Association (AfrISPA) has released the African Regulatory Index Reports for 20 countries in Africa through the website of Catalising Access to ICTs in Africa (CATIA) website. The purpose of the studies is to investigate how regulatory regimes impact the operations and growth of the Internet Service Providers. The reports aim to provide Internet Service Providers with the information needed to lobby for liberalization, resulting in increased competition, higher quality of service, lower costs of Internet access and increase reach of the Internet into under-served areas.

The growth of Internet access on the African continent is slow and unequally distributed over the regions. Large areas of Africa have little or no access to affordable Internet, but also in the urban centers prices for Internet access are high. This has a negative impact on the socio-economic growth and the participation of Africa in the knowledge society. The regulatory bodies in these countries play in important role in facilitating and accelerating (or obstructing) access. In order to better understand the cause of the slow growth the African Internet Providers Association (AfriSPA) commissioned a study of the regulatory regimes in selected African countries, with particular emphasis on how these regulatory regimes impact the operations and growth of the Internet Service Providers (ISP). The research was conducted by the Kenyan based Technology Consulting Group.
AfrISPA provided a list of 34 countries within Africa for the study. It prioritized 14 of these and requested the researchers to cover as many of the others as feasible. At present the reports of 2o countries have been released. According to the researchers four more will follow.
All the reports have a similar structure and aim to reveal the same issues:
- Regulations that govern operators and service providers of Internet services;
- Market structure within the communications sector;
- Legislation relating to the communications sector;
- Dispute resolution mechanisms available within the sector;
- Communications Licensing regime;
- Privileges/Obligations of various licensees; and
- State of liberalization of the communications sector.
The reports provide a wealth of information for researchers and decision makers who want to understand challenges that the African telecommunication sector is faced with. Unfortunately, the reports are hard to trace (and not listed on the website of AfrISPA) and the restrictive copyright prevents widespread distribution of the documents. A more open license like the Creative Commons would increase the possible impact of this important research work.
Now that the most advanced countries in Africa have been covered, we are eagerly waiting to get a more in depth understanding of the situation in the 'blank spots' in Africa. If we take a look at Acacia's Atlas mapping the growth of ICT and Internet in Africa we are eagerly waiting for the reports describing the situation in the least developed countries in the heart of Africa, (Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Sudan and Ethiopia), and along the West coast (Sierra Leone, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau) and the South East coast (Mozambique).

The African Regulatory Index Reports can be found and downloaded at the website of CATIA:
- Egypt Report (draft June 2005)
- Mauritius Report (draft June 2005)
- Malawi Report (draft June 2005)
- Zambia Report (draft June 2005)
- Kenya Report (draft June 2005)
- Rwanda Report (draft June 2005)
- Tanzania Report (draft June 2005)
- Uganda Report (draft June 2005)
- Gambia, Nigeria, Zambia and Swaziland (January - March 2006)
- Angola, Burkina Faso, Djibouti and Togo Report (June 2006)
- Cameroon, Gabon, Madagascar and Mali Report (June 2006)

This article has also been published at the website of the World Dialogue on Regulation (WDR) - www.regulateonline.org