Opening remarks - WSIS Hackathon "Hack Against Hunger"

Opening remarks - WSIS Hackathon "Hack Against Hunger"

18 March 2018, ITU Headquarters, Geneva

On behalf of ITU welcome to this hackathon entitled Hack Against Hunger organised by ITU and FAO. I am pleased to be joined by Samuel Varas, Director of IT Division at FAO. This is the first event of this year’s WSIS Forum.

It is nice to see so many young and enthusiastic participants and good regional and gender balance amongst you. I would like to congratulate the winners from the hackathons held in Rwanda and the Caribbean who have joined us here.

As you know ITU is the UN agency for ICTs and host of the WSIS Forum. ITU is committed to connecting all the world's people – wherever they live and whatever their means. Through our work, we protect and support everyone's fundamental right to communicate.

ITU is a bit different to most UN agencies as we have a large private sector membership – nearly 600 private sector companies are members of ITU – and we also have around 130 universities who are members. I hope your university is a member or if not you can persuade it to become a member!

It is clear that ICTs can improve people’s lives in particular our health, education, environment and are widely recognized as the means to achieve the UN’s sustainable development goals – in particular the goal of ending hunger.

Today, more than 800 million people worldwide are undernourished, while more than a billion tons of food never make it to the table and a lot of food that does then goes to waste.

So that is why we are here together today – to develop solutions to help this important goal.

E-Agriculture is also a WSIS Action Line that is co-facilitated by ITU and FAO.

So let me thank FAO for partnering with us to organize this hackathon and thank the FAO and ITU WSIS teams who have worked very hard hand-in-hand to ensure a successful Hackathon.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Governments and other organisations who have sponsored some of the students participating in this Hackathon.

Thank you all for being here and I am sure you will set a high standard for the competitions to come in the next years.

By the way UNESCO will join ITU in co-organising next year’s hackathon under the theme of “Hacking Solutions for Lifelong Learning and Livelihoods” so I hope to see you back for that!

I wish you every success and look forward to the results of the Hackathon.