Keynote Address - National Higher Education Summit for Skill Development

Keynote Address - National Higher Education Summit for Skill Development

16 May 2018, Vigyan Bhawan, Delhi, India

Good morning,

It is a pleasure to be back here in New Delhi on a visit to India that will take me also to Mumbai for discussions on 5G and artificial intelligence (AI). These emerging technologies are opening new frontiers and also new possibilities. And ITU is at the forefront of this digital revolution. But with possibility comes responsibility. Let’s remember that 3.8 billion people are not using the internet. Education and skill development will be key to bridging the digital divide.

I want to thank Prof. N.K. Goyal and the CMAI Association of India for bringing us together to discuss how to give our young people the tools they need to navigate and succeed in today’s digital economy. Let me acknowledge the presence of Dr. Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and Prof. P.B. Sharma, President of the Association of Indian Universities (AIU). I’m pleased that we’re joined by so many leaders of higher education institutions here today who are on the frontline of India’s digital transformation.

I am reminded of Swami Vivekananda, one of India’s most influential spiritual teachers and a strong advocate of “Yuva Shakti” (youth power), who wrote: “a nation is advanced in proportion as education and intelligence spread among the masses.” And that’s exactly what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set out to do. With transformative campaigns like Digital India, Skill India and Make in India, the Prime Minister is trying to bring every part of India into the digital age. And the academic community has a central role to play.

Nowhere is it more evident than with the draft National Digital Communications Policy 2018 whose goal is to prepare the country and its citizens for the future. To deliver this ambitious national policy, your institutions will have to forge a coalition with key government and industry stakeholders. And ITU can help. We can help you bridge the digital skills gap. And so I’m calling on you to join us and take an active part in the work of ITU. Just a few months ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to IIT Gandhinagar and challenged you to enter the top 10 universities in the world. Become an Academia Member of ITU and come work with world-renowned universities.

When we welcomed our first Academia Members in 2011, there were 12 academic institutions. Today, some 150 Academia Members from over 50 Member States contribute to the work of our three Sectors. Take standards, for example. As you may know, the Study Groups of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Sector assemble experts from around the world to develop international standards which act as defining elements in the global infrastructure of information and communication technologies (ICTs). These standards are critical to the interoperability of ICTs, and they also substantially reduce costs through economies of scale.

Many of you may not know Recommendation H.264, a video coding standard from ITU. But chances are you’re all using it each time you watch a video on the internet or any other medium. This standard is a perfect example of how academia can make a significant impact on the ICT landscape. And ITU Study Groups are only one of the various platforms for your universities to engage in our activities.

This June ITU organizes its Global ICT Capacity Building Symposium (CBS) in the Dominican Republic. The theme is “Developing skills for the digital economy and society.” And we will focus on the role of universities in preparing tomorrow’s workforce. In November we celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Kaleidoscope academic conferences. And we’re calling for papers addressing advances in research on machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques for future communication networks. Hurry up, you have until 4 June.

To all the professors in the audience: what you have is in high demand. Your expertise and impartiality are invaluable in an organization like ITU where decisions and conclusions are almost always based on consensus. Right now, top researchers from some of the best universities in the world are speaking at the second edition of the AI for Good Global Summit organized by ITU in Geneva. And that’s why your institutions can join ITU at a substantially reduced membership fee. Because the intellectual and scientific contributions of these bodies far outweigh their financial contribution.

Yet the relatively low number of Industry and Academia Members from India does not reflect the importance of your country in today’s digital economy. Clearly with a well-developed ICT sector, there is a huge potential for greater involvement in ITU and for India to take a leadership role in many of our activities. I’m happy that ITU has a Centre of Excellence in broadband in Ghaziabad. And I was pleased to see that India made a very generous offer at our last Council in Geneva last month to host a South Asian Area Office and Technology Innovation Centre.

If India is a technology powerhouse, the entire South Asia region is fast emerging as a hub for technology innovation. All 48 ITU Council Member States supported the establishment of a South Asian Area Office, and the matter is now undergoing further consultation. But it’s clear that having such an office in this region would result in significant synergies and potential opportunities for enhanced engagement between ITU programmes and the Indian ICT sector and academia, not to mention the region as a whole.

There are now more people living in the South Asia region than there are in North America, Europe, West Asia and North Africa combined. India has its largest ever adolescent and youth population. And the country will continue to have one of the youngest populations in the world until 2030, the target year for achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This youth bulge is both an opportunity and a test for India. It’s an opportunity because India is home to a large highly educated population of some 250 million people speaking fluent English, with world-class engineering talent. The CEOs of tech giants and ITU Members like Google and Microsoft were born and educated in India. But this is also a test in part because youth are three times as likely as adults to be unemployed. The global youth employment crisis is one of the biggest development challenges faced by young people all over the world and in particular in emerging economies.

In response, the International Labour Organization (ILO), ITU and 20 other sister UN agencies have joined forces to launch the Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth, the first-ever, comprehensive United Nations system-wide effort for the promotion of youth employment worldwide. ITU and ILO are leading the Digital Skills for Decent Jobs Campaign whose goal is to equip 5 million young men and women with job-ready, transferable digital skills by 2030 in support of the SDGs. And we invite India to join this campaign.

As part of our commitment, ITU has developed a Digital Skills Toolkit to help stakeholders build their own national digital skills strategies. It is intended for policy makers and partners in the private sector, NGOs and academia. The toolkit highlights India’s Future Skills platform, which was launched last February to upskill 2 million technology professionals and 2 million other future employees and students over the next few years. This platform will make talent available for India and the Indian industry to embrace opportunities from emerging technologies ranging from AI to the internet of things to cloud computing to virtual reality. 

I started my speech by underlining the role of the academic community in unleashing India’s talent and bringing the country into the digital age, and by encouraging you to take a greater part in the work of ITU. Let me close with a final thought from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who recently described Digital India as “a journey bringing about digital inclusion for digital empowerment.”

It is true that digital inclusion can only be effective and meaningful if and when everyone feels empowered to use the technology. And that’s why skill development is so critical to bridging the digital divide.

So let us make this journey together. Let’s give our young people and everyone else the tools they need to navigate and succeed in today’s digital economy. Let us build a digital future where no one is left behind, where opportunities have no boundaries.

Thank you.