Your Excellency Dr. Tarek Kamel,
Minister of ICT, Egypt,
Mr. Akossi Akossi, Secretary General, African Telecommunication Union (ATU)
Dr. Ahmed El Sherbini, Director, National Telecom Institute, Egypt
Dear Trainees,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Allow me first to thank you for giving me the opportunity to be present for this ceremony at the conclusion of the training of 24 delegates from 13 African Countries.

I seize this opportunity to pay homage to Egypt represented by His Excellency, Dr. Tarek Kamel, for this praiseworthy and excellent initiative.

It was during the Administrative Council Session of the African Telecommunication Union (ATU) in 2003, that the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in Egypt had committed to provide training on the new technologies for the benefit of African countries.

Since April 2004, four groups, representing more than 80 trainees from 46 countries of our continent, have been trained in different domains.

These training courses have been provided by the best trainers and experts of the National Telecommunication Institute of Egypt. I would like to express my thanks to Dr. Ahmed El Sherbini, Director of NTI, and all his team for their efforts in transforming this institute to be an excellent pole in the provision of training and research materials in the field of Telecommunication and Information Technologies.

Dear Trainees, the training that you have just followed will allow you to transfer your knowledge at the local level of your working post when you return to your countries.

This training will integrate perfectly in the implementation of projects carried out by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to connect Africa.

Within the resolutions of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), all the participants have agreed on recognizing that ICT is a powerful catalyst of development.

It is within this spirit, that ITU intensified its efforts to connect all the villages and all the cities of the world from here to 2015 as our efforts in fulfilling the United Nations MDGs.

In October 2007, ITU launched the initiative of Connect Africa Summit of Kigali in Rwanda. The participants have committed to connect all the capitals and major cities of the continent with broad-band infrastructure and to improve the liaisons with the rest of the world by 2012.

In addition, it was announced at Kigali that financing worth some US$ 55 billion is foreseen for ICT infrastructure development in Africa over the next few years.

This is why this training aspect is essential and indispensable in the implementation of this gigantic plan of ICTs development in Africa.
Dear Trainees, I wish you a safe return to your country hoping to see you participating in the different seminars and workshops which will be organized by ITU at the level of the Regional Offices of Africa and Arab Region. I wish all the trainees all the success in their endeavours.

And once again my sincere thanks to the Egyptian government, MCIT and NTI for this wonderful work.

Thank you for your kind attention.