6 - Univers discursif et réforme des télécommunications : étude comparée du Sénégal et de l’Afrique du Sud

Abstract

With the communication utopia (Breton 1997) claiming more ground, and through
transparency it theoretically guarantees, communication has now become invested
with the power to enhance societal life. We are not concerned, in this regard, with
inter-subjective communication, as exemplified in the Greek agora or the African
palaver tree models (Diagne 2006). Progressively, views sympathetic to the
liberalisation of the telecommunication sector have emerged, leading to a
widespread deregulation of this sector at global level. As early as 1984, the Maitland
Committee set up by the International Telecommunications Organisation carried
out an audit of the telecommunication infrastructures of Africa and as it turned
out, the situation was particularly desperate throughout the continent. As a result,
the development of the telecommunication sector has been perceived as the
missing link between the countries of the South and those of the North. This
paper seeks to highlight the circumstances that led to the emergence of both
logical thinking and the resulting series of changes that occurred in the
telecommunication sector. Special attention is paid to the external as well as
exclusively national factors that determined the conception and the implementation
of a structural reform of the telecommunication sector in African countries. This
study uses a comparative approach and is based on a case study and secondary
data obtained from the review of relevant literature. It focuses on two African
countries, Senegal and South Africa, which contrast markedly in terms of language,
cultural area, demography as well as colonial heritage. In spite of the surface
differences, the comparative analysis of the major steps in the reform of their
telecommunication sectors suggests, paradoxically, a parallel evolution of the
said process in the two countries.