Ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you happen to be, and let me add my welcome to this High-Level Policy Session on Bridging Digital Divides.
We are very grateful to the excellent panellists we have speaking at this session for sparing their time to be with us, and many thanks to Eleanor Sarpong for acting as the high-level track facilitator.
This topic is at the core of ITU’s mission as the UN specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs). The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the importance of being connected like never before, to keep abreast of health advice, to continue working and studying, shopping and staying in touch with loved ones.
However, as we know this has benefited to just over half the world’s population. Around 3.7 billion people are still unconnected, mostly those living in rural areas and remote communities, which is why bringing these people online is more important now than ever before and why this session offers the opportunity to exchange best practices, success stories and good ideas on how to address this vital challenge.
Although connectivity is a problem for remote and sparsely populated communities due to the challenges of terrain, and the return on investment, it is not simply a problem of connectivity as statistic show over 90% of the world population is covered by at least 3G. It is more a problem of affordability, having the relevant content in the local language, making people aware of the benefits and giving them the digital skills to take advantage of the connection.
Under the leadership of ITU, the WSIS Forum serves as a global multistakeholder platform to bring together world leaders, international organisations, private sector, academia, and civil society - all major stakeholders to discuss, share experiences, and foster partnerships to address these and other key issues that are necessary to build a truly global information society, and strengthen the impact of ICTs for sustainable development.
Cross-industry and public-private sector collaboration is essential, this has driven the work of ITU from its beginning 155 years ago, and this multistakeholder approach to collaboration is at the heart of the WSIS Forum.
ITU has been working with all WSIS stakeholders to strengthen the alignment of the WSIS process with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development so that the WSIS Action Lines are now a key framework for progress on the implementation of the SDGs.
So let me thank you all for joining us, I will now hand back to Eleanor to pose questions to our excellent speakers. I am sure we will have a very enlightening and fruitful discussion.