| Information note to the press |
International Telecommunication Union
For immediate release |
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MEDIA ADVISORY — MEDIA ADVISORY — MEDIA
ADVISORY
Expanding Africa’s Broadband Capacity
Topic of Connect Africa Summit in Kigali,
29-30 October 2007
Geneva, 9 October 2007
| What: |
Connect Africa Summit |
| When: |
29-30
October 2007 |
|
Where: |
Kigali,
Rwanda |
| Why: |
The main
goal of the Summit is to help bring connectivity to Africa and promote
"Connect Africa", a new partnership that seeks to expand the information
and communication technology infrastructure of the continent, especially
Internet broadband. |
| Who: |
Some 500
participants are expected to attend the Connect Africa Summit.
Participants include the patrons of the initiative, Rwanda’s President
Paul Kagame and Ghana’s President John Kufuor, who is also the African
Union Chairman. High-level participants include International
Telecommunication Union Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré; Chairman of
the African Union Commission Alpha Oumar Konare; President of the
African Development Bank Donald Kaberuka; and Intel Corporation Chairman
Craig Barrett, who is also the Chair of the UN Global Alliance for ICT
and Development. Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank Group,
will make a contribution by video link. The Presidents of several
African nations are expected to participate.
The event will bring together political leaders, including Ministers
and Heads of State, CEOs and senior executives of global and African IT
companies, leaders from civil society and heads of international and
regional development banks. Industry leaders including Cisco, GSM
Association, Ericsson, Huawei, British Telecom, Qualcomm, NTT DoCoMo,
Neustar, Safaricom, Nokia-Siemens and Microsoft will attend and announce
new initiatives to help bring connectivity to Africa. |
The Summit sessions are designed for television to encourage interactive
participation and key sessions will be moderated by Stephen Cole, a renowned TV
anchor with Al Jazeera International. The event’s press conferences will be
webcast live, and time slots for telephone interviews with prominent
participants will be allocated for those journalists who cannot attend.
The event is organized by the International Telecommunication Union, the
African Union, the World Bank Group and the Global Alliance for ICT and
Development, in partnership with the African Development Bank, the African
Telecommunication Union, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and the Global
Digital Solidarity Fund.
For media information: visit the newsroom
here.
For media accreditation: see
here.
For further information, click
here or contact:
Sanjay Acharya
Chief, Media Relations and Public Information
ITU
Tel: +41 22 730 5046
Mobile: +41 79 249 4861
Fax: +41 22 730 5939
E-mail
Contact: in New York Enrica Murmura, Tel: +1 212 963-5913, E-mail
murmura@un.org;
in Washington, DC Henny Rahardja, Tel. +1 202 473 4857, E-mail
HRahardja@worldbank.org;
in Tunis, Emmanuel K. Ngwainmbi, Tel: +216 71 10 26 27, E-mail
e.ngwainmbi@afdb.org.
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