Senior Government officials, Heads of Regulatory Authorities and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) of the Northern Corridor Integration Projects (NCIPs) ICT Infrastructure Development Cluster convened in Kampala from the 29th February to 1st March 2024 chaired by Dr. Aminah Zawedde, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of ICT & National Guidance, Uganda and Chair of the ICT Cluster.

The meeting was a follow up of the November 2023 Nairobi ICT Ministerial directive for the ICT stakeholders to jointly update the status of implementation of One Network Area (ONA) in NCIPs Partner States and resolve complaints of non-compliance to the ONA framework. The ONA is a multi-country initiative for a harmonized enabling environment for the international mobile roaming market with the objective of enhancing affordable access to roaming services for both voice and data. Participants were cognizant of the emerging challenges on the unknowns of ONA, such as permanent roamers and increasing traffic, to which the meeting agreed on mitigating actions and addressing of emerging issues.

Some of these include; review of the ONA framework and ONA under the East African Community (EAC), development of a Fair Usage Policy and dispute resolution and escalation mechanism. It was encouraging to note that during the two-day meeting, all partner states were complying with the guiding principles of the ONA framework, as directed by the 14th Summit of Heads of State in Nairobi.