STATEMENT by Katherine Sierra, World Bank
Infrastructure Vice President
and Head of Delegation
Reaching Across Sectors
Dear Heads of state, ministers, members
of delegations from the private and public sectors, partners
and representatives of civil society:
As we gather here in Tunis, millions of
people across the world are using ICTs to generate income
for their families and deliver better services to their
communities and clients.
Young people in Kenya are selling shoes
worldwide over the Internet, fishermen and wholesalers on
Lake Victoria are communicating through mobile phones, and
midwives in India are using PDAs to store and retrieve
information as they deliver immunizations to pregnant
mothers.
For all of us here at the UN World Summit
on the Information Society, our role is to keep supporting
these developments and step up our efforts in expanding
access and use of ICTs to maximize their impact on poverty
reduction and economic growth for all, but particularly for
the poor in low-income urban and rural areas.
The information revolution is a reality.
It is essential for governments to see the potential of
these technologies and turn them into enabling tools for
promoting social and economic development. Exploiting the
potential of information technologies will unleash the
potential of human capital, foster entrepreneurship and
innovation, and create employment opportunities for the
youth.
Huge progress
We know that huge progress in access to
ICTs has already been made in the past 20 years, but many
more challenges remain ahead of us.
In 1980, developing countries accounted
for only 20 percent of the world’s telephone lines. But
today, 60 percent of mobile and fixed phones are in the
developing world.
Over that same period, the number of
telephone subscribers in developing countries rose by over
30 times, from 1.4 to 40 subscribers per 100 people.
Telephone services now reach many small cities and towns,
and by 2005 half of the world’s households had a telephone.
Infrastructure costs per subscriber were
slashed with the advent of mobile services and increased
competition. Investment cost per subscriber has declined
from over US$1,000 to about US$100 in less than 10 years,
and over 130 countries have at least three competing
cellular service providers.
There is no question that this expansion
and access revolution has been driven by technology
advances, private investments and competition, which fueled
demand growth and network expansion. But for ICT to fulfill
its full potential as a significant catalyst for stimulating
economic growth and poverty alleviation in support of the
Millennium Development Goals, we all know that there still
are great challenges to overcome.
Main challenges
To build on the successes of the past
decade in increasing voice connectivity in developing
countries, we must now work to extend access to the next
billions of low-income populations and bring down costs to
affordable levels.
To achieve this requires the
participation of all stakeholders: suppliers to develop
innovative solutions that would bring down the cost of
infrastructure and terminal equipment; financiers to provide
cost-effective capital in support of ICT infrastructure and
applications; development institutions to back governments
in providing incentives and "catalytic" subsidies through
such schemes as output based aid to encourage the private
sector to invest in areas that are less commercially
attractive; and governments to ensure a level play field
competitive environments and eliminate any unnecessary
barriers for access, such as excessive taxation of hand sets
and computers.
However, access is not only about voice;
Internet and broadband services are equally important. New
technologies are quite promising and offer alternative
solutions, particularly wireless which will build on the
growing cellular platform in developing countries. However,
major regulatory impediments to broadband remain. For
instance, nearly fifty percent of the world’s countries
still retain monopolies on backbone and international
services, and the average cost of international connectivity
in developing countries is about 2 to 3 times higher than in
more advanced economies. It is then imperative that more
investments be directed towards increasing broadband
connectivity accompanied with further liberalization of
international services to put an end to remaining
monopolies, similar to what was the case for local voice
services.
Last but not least, and once access is
secured at affordable prices, the challenge will be to
establish the right modalities for the effective use of ICTs
as cross-cutting enablers and development tools; to have the
political will and drive to implement the policies and
institutional reforms necessary for mainstreaming ICTs in
the delivery of public and private services; and to upgrade
and modernize the educational programs to create the needed
local human capacity.
We are all motivated by the excitement
and promise of the e-Development agenda, but we are also
learning that success in this area is hard-earned. The
emerging lessons found in our E-Development report presented
at this summit show us that ICT-enabled programs are
successful when they are suitable to the level of a
country’s development and relevant to the needs of the
users. They succeed when the programs are integrated with
infrastructure, applications and skills development. They
need to be designed and integrated within a broader process
of institutional and business change, and coordinated as
part of an overall development strategy. Needless to say,
continuous monitoring and evaluation is also critical for
success.
World Bank Group Support
The World Bank Group today is supporting
efforts to tackle some of these challenges with ICT projects
in more than 80 countries and an overall portfolio amounting
to more than US$3 billion over the past five years. The Bank
is engaged in helping governments improve their investment
climates for private sector participation, particularly
through policy reform and most recently through specific
e-government initiatives. The private sector arm of the Bank
Group, the IFC, is the largest multilateral financier of
ICTs in developing countries, and has since 1992 provided
private companies with about six billion dollars in
financing with a mobilization rate of 1 to 9. We are also
pleased to chair the infoDev partnership which brings
together valuable partners in the generation of innovative
thinking and creative initiatives in the field of ICTs.
The World Bank Group is keen to maintain
its partnership with all stakeholders in harnessing the ICT
revolution for growth, poverty reduction and progress
towards the MDGs. We are committed to improving access
through IFC investments in the private sector and World Bank
financing for public-private partnerships that extend the
reach of the latest technologies and serve the needs of the
urban and rural poor. We will also be glad to share
infoDev’s analytical work, knowledge and toolkits with the
development community.
We are already moving ahead with clients
to mainstream ICT in the country and sector programs that we
support. And wherever ICT becomes a priority area in the
poverty reduction and development strategies of our clients,
the World Bank will continue to be both ready and eager to
respond.
Let me conclude by stressing that we view
this Summit not only as a forum to discuss ICT technology,
but also as an opportunity to build an Information Society
in ways that exploit today’s modern and powerful enabling
tools for promoting openness and participation of people,
the free flow of information and personal expression, while
providing a platform for transparency and accountability in
the behavior of governments and private businesses, all of
which are critical for economic growth and poverty
alleviation.
Thank you. |