A Special
Development Initiative
TELECOM events
are staged for the benefit of its Member States and Sector Members, but
– as a business-oriented, semi-commercial organization within the ITU
–T ELECOM also generates income. The income over expenditure, which
comes from the TELECOM events, is then used for specific telecommunication
development projects, primarily in the world ’s least developed
countries. Projects undertaken by this Programme are grouped into the
areas of Human Resource Development ,Sector Reform and Infrastructure
Development ,Assistance to Countries in Special Need ,and Application of
New Technologies .
The Human Resource
Development component
of the Programme focuses on the establishment of five Centres of
Excellence. A total of nine million Swiss Francs has been allocated by the
ITU to these Centres of Excellence as seed funding; the commitment of
these ITU funds forms the nucleus on which substantial further
contributions are being raised, in cash and in kind. Two of the Centres
are sited in Africa, one in the Arab States, and specifically in Dakar,
Senegal, and Nairobi, Kenya, where existing regional training
institutions, l ’ESMT and AFRALTI, are being transformed into Centres of
Excellence, and which then will be extended to other training facilities
in Africa. The other two Centres, which are being created in the Americas
and Asia-Pacific Regions. All Centres of Excellence aim to link, differ
somewhat from the approach taken in Africa, in that a number of existing
training and research institutes in their regions are being linked into a
virtual networks of Centres of Excellence. The primary mandate of these
Centres of Excellence is to train public officials in policy and
regulatory issues.
The Sector Reform
and Infrastructure Development
component, to which four million Swiss Francs have been allocated, has
will enlisted the commitment and cooperation of national governments,
regional and international organizations and the private sector to assist
African countries in reforming their telecommunication sector, to provide
support for the RASCOM project, to modernize the Panaftel network in
Africa, and to enhance local and regional manufacturing capabilities in
Africa.
An Assistance to
Countries in Special Need component is being implemented in accordance
with Resolutions which were adopted by the ITU ’s 1994 Kyoto and 1998
Minneapolis Plenipotentiary Conferences. One project being carried out in
this component of the Programme aims to assist the Telecommunication
Regulatory Agency of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the development of a short term
telecommunication master plan. Another project provides technical
assistance to the Palestine Authority in the development of its
telecommunication network In the area of Application of New Technologies
,four million Swiss Francs have been committed as seed funding for pilot
projects which demonstrate and extend the benefits of communications
technology to the public. Projects are currently underway in India and
Morocco in the area of tele-education, and in at least twenty countries
Morocco and Venezuela in the area of electronic commerce. Community
multipurpose telecentres are being implemented in Mali, Uganda,
Mozambique, Benin, Tanzania and Vietnam. In the field of telemedicine ten
projects are currently underway in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique,
Senegal, Venezuela, Bhutan, Myanmar, Georgia and Malta.
For further
information,please contact:
Pierre Gagné
Chief, Policies, Strategies and Financing Department (PSF)
ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT)
Tel: +41 22 730 5784
Fax: +41 22 730 5184
E-mail: pierre.gagne@itu.int
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