December 2021
13 – 17 December 2021
Digital inclusion: Americas
ITU Americas held a bilateral meeting on 15 December 2021 with Cuba Ministry of Communications officials to have a debrief about Accessible Americas 2021 and discuss joint efforts and collaboration opportunities in 2022 and beyond.
Capacity development: Asia and Pacific
ITU co-organized Trends in Cyber Security & Blockchain Technology with ALTTC, India under the auspices of CoE programme in Asia and the Pacific from 13-24 December. A total of 46 participants took part in this training to learn and discuss trends in cybersecurity and blockchain, with a particular focus on use cases from India.
Cybersecurity: Arab States
ITU Arab Regional Office recently participated in the first Arab International Digital Cooperation and Development Forum (DCDF) 2021 organized by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN ESCWA), in partnership with the League of Arab States and key actors in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and Internet Governance Forum (IGF), including ITU, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The Forum aimed to bring together the regional cybersecurity community to review major regional cybersecurity trends and consider improvements based on the five pillars of ITU Global Cybersecurity Agenda (GCA) and The Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI).
Digital inclusion: Asia and Pacific
ITU co-organised a joint session with UNDESA / DPIDG / UNPOG during the 2021 Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Summit in the Republic of Korea on 16 December 2021. The session entitled “Digital Transformation for the Next Normal: Toward an Inclusive and People-Centered Digital Society in the Post-COVID-19 Era” aimed to bring together speakers representing various stakeholders, to discuss this issue and to support our members and the public in their accelerated efforts to recover from COVID and achieve the SDGs faster. ITU staff delivered opening and closing remarks and shared a presentation on ITU Facts and Figures 2021, digital government, GovStack, the Smart Islands initiative, the Partner2Connect Digital Coalition, WTDC, and highlighted the partnerships between ITU and UN DESA / DPIDG / UNPOG to achieve greater digital transformation in communities in Asia and the Pacific.
Digital inclusion: Africa
The Regional Office for Africa met on 16 December with Smart Africa’s project officer dealing with digital inclusion and a team of consultants working on the Smart Africa blueprint aimed at assisting governments in developing national plans to connect women and girls to technology. The first phase of this work is a landscape analysis where input from ITU was sought. ITU took the opportunity to speak more generally about ongoing work and available platforms, such as EQUALS, Girls in ICT, African Girls Can Code, and Africa Network of Women for WTDC, to ensure that existing work is leveraged. Ideally, the work on the blueprint would build further on such work and contribute to reporting on identified targets and indicators, to scale efforts in the region.
Capacity development: Arab States
The ITU regional office for Arab States is organizing the 6th Steering Committee Meeting for the Centers of Excellence Network for the Arab Region on 20th December. The meeting aims to review the operation of the Centers of Excellence Network by providing information on the implementation of training courses during 2021, in addition to presenting and approving the training courses planned for 2022.
Click here to read highlights from 29 November - 10 December 2021.