BDT Director's Corner: Activities

​BDT Director Doreen Bogdan-Martin opened the stage of the Ministerial Programme at GSMA's Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain.

In a keynote address on Digital Inclusion, the BDT Director underscored the vital need for collaboration across stakeholder groups in order to connect the 2.9 billion people that remain offline, and provide meaningful connectivity to the millions more who lack it, for their participation in the digital society.

She stated that ''Inclusion can't just be about the outcome of our efforts. For inclusion to really drive transformational change, we need to put the principle of inclusion at the very heart of the way we approach our goal.''

ITU's Partner2Connect Digital Coalition embodies that principle in its strategy to connect the hardest-to-connect communities around the world. Ms Bogdan-Martin extended an invitation to stakeholders to come together in Partner2Connect, to combine reach and resources to turn around the connectivity picture worldwide. ''We all do so much better, when we have everyone on board with us in our shared digital world and future,'' she said.