Speech by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-GeneralOpening remarks - CITEL High-Level Meeting on "Digital Inclusion for Development in the Americas"
12 March 2018, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Andres Ibarra, Minister of Modernization, Argentina
Jorge Faurie, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Argentina
Luis Almagro, Secretary General OAS (Organization of American States)
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen
Buenos Dias. Es un gran placer estar aquí.
Good morning.
I would like to thank the Argentine Republic and the OAS for inviting ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao to participate in this event. Unfortunately, he was not able to be here and sends his apologies and best wishes. However, his misfortune is my good fortune! I am very pleased to be back in the beautiful city of Buenos Aires!
I am sure everyone here recognises the importance of ICTs to social, economic and environmentally sustainable development and the need to ensure that all citizens benefit from the educational, health, employment and social advantages it can bring.
Next week in Geneva ITU hosts the WSIS Forum, the world’s largest ICTs for development event and I hope to see many you there. This year it will be the biggest and best event ever with a high level of participation from government, industry, academia and civil society. A truly multi-stakeholder event.
More and more organisations and industries are embracing the technology, and it is now widely recognised as being essential to achieve the 2030 sustainable development agenda.
Membership of ITU is widening as a result, Internet companies, financial institutions, motor manufacturers and others are joining. Collaboration, coordination and cooperation are now the key words. This is why we are happy to be with you today and am pleased to see that OAS recognises the importance of working together with ITU and ECLAC. We need to combine our efforts, consolidate our resources, avoid duplication of effort and work towards the common good.
We would very much like to see more participation from this region in ITU activities. We are trying to facilitate this in a number of ways. We provide remote participation to most of our meetings, we are increasing the translation of documents and the ITU webpages through outsourcing to interested Member States, including I am pleased to say Argentina, and we are trialling machine translation and remote interpretation. We have also established a number of regional study groups that meet in the region and work in Spanish.
We already have a number of universities in this region members of ITU, including 19 from Argentina, and have started a trial to facilitate SMEs and start-ups to participate in our work free of charge.
ITU has a long tradition of working closely with CITEL. We have often held join events, especially to prepare for ITU world conferences. We are keen to have more join activities in the region and appreciate very much countries hosting ITU events such as the WTDC here in Buenos Aires last November, the Green Standards Week in Colombia last April, and the Kaleidoscope Academic Conference in Argentina in November this year.
At a time when emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, the Internet of things and 5G offer the potential to transform businesses and people’s lives, close to 3.9 billion people are still not connected. Most of these are in rural areas. This is due to the poor return on investment caused by difficult terrain and sparsely populated areas. It is true not only in developing countries but also developed countries. I was brought up in a small village in Wales and still today it has poor connection.
Bringing connectivity to these areas is essential not only for social, education, health and other benefits but also to enable small rural businesses to thrive and to reverse the trend to urbanisation.
It will require incentives for private sector to invest in the networks including public/private partnerships, but people will also need to be convinced of the value of paying for the connection. This means encouraging local content in the local language, and building ICT skills in local communities.
ITU is adopting international standards to ensure that 5G brings ultra-reliable, very low-latency communications with improved energy efficiency, and enhanced privacy and security, and next year’s World Radiocommunication Conference will decide on the global frequency allocations for 5G. The conference will also consider allocations for High Altitude Platforms and innovative satellite networks. These developments have great potential to will bring low cost connectivity to rural areas and ensure digital inclusion for everyone.
As His Holiness Pope Francis said, “The only future worth building includes everyone.”
ITU and the OAS have common objectives and common membership. As we reflect today on digital inclusion for development, let’s commit to work together to ensure that we build a digital future that truly benefits everyone.
I look forward to the discussion and any suggestions on how ITU and OAS, with ECLAC’s support, can better serve the region’s needs.
Thank you, Muchas gracias