In the city of Kigali, there is a three-day meeting of COMESA member countries for the participants to agree on the cost of calls for residents.
It is something that the participating officials say that if approved by the member countries, will help COMESA citizens to make free calls to each other and further promote trade.
One of the officials representing COMESA says that the participants of the three-day meeting are people from the Ministries of Technology or Commerce.
That is Leonard Chitundu who says that usually when communication is expensive, it affects the competition.
“The problem was that it was expensive. That’s why we want the price to go down, not to continue from people moving from one country to another.”
It was expensive because calling someone in the COMESA countries and you are also in that country cost at least one dollar($) per person per minute.
Golden Karema, who represented the Ministry of Technology and Innovation and was the chief guest at the meeting, said that the meeting will last for three days and will discuss the contents of the agreement that will regulate the cheap call.
He says that after the approval of the contents, the document will be approved by each country and signed so that the contributions come into force.
Karema says that not only calls will be considered, but also how sending text messages (SMS) and murandasi will be done without costing the people.
He said, “This will make every member country feel at home, people will feel free to work.”
The goal is that a person will not be cheap by going to another country or by calling a friend’s home or a business they have a relationship with.
Regarding what Rwanda will benefit from, Golden Karema says that traders will work well with their trading partners in COMESA as it is with their trading partners in the East African Community.
Giving an example of the importance of Rwanda, Karema says that when the prices were set at the same level in the EAC, the number of callers in the region increased nine times.
I believe that this process has made the companies that sell these services (telecommunication operators) benefit from this improvement and the people will be like that.
In the same way, Rwanda will also benefit from this activity in the COMESA trade community.
COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) was established on December 8, 1994.
Rwanda joined in 2004, which is made up of 20 countries.
The COMESA countries cover an area of 12,873,957 square kilometers and have a population of 406,102,471.
