The top three donors—the EU institutions, Japan and the World Bank—provided close to half off all disbursements during that period. It includes fibre connectivity projects with regional and national submarine backbones, policy interventions to promote open, transparent and non-discriminatory access to ICT networks, and simplified licencing procedures for networks and e-applications. An AfDB assessment found that while considerable progress has been made in the area of broadband connectivity, about 87% of the African population is still unable to connect to the internet (AfDB, 2013).