Director’s Message

Dear friends,

With the calendar year drawing to a close, it is time once again to look back over the past 12 months, take stock of the defining moments of 2021, and start readying ourselves for the many challenges ahead in 2022.

This year’s BDT in Review confirms that we have many reasons to be proud.

While COVID-19 prevented us from meeting face-to-face, thanks to connectivity and the commitment of our members and partners, we nevertheless succeeded in stepping-up efforts to make ourselves an indispensable partner for our Member States in their digital transformation journeys.

Our project portfolio continued to grow – reaching an overall portfolio of CHF 18 million in 2021, the largest figure in the last 15 years – following the positive trend achieved over the past two years. In 2021 we signed a total of 21 new projects and 46 new partnership agreements, and we are also excited to have welcomed 14 new members into the BDT fold.

Our new youth initiative, Generation Connect, goes from strength to strength, with Generation Connect Youth Groups now working actively in every ITU region, and the establishment of the Generation Connect Visionaries Board comprising eight dynamic young leaders and eight distinguished high-level appointees. This Board is now providing strategic guidance on preparations for our first-ever WTDC Generation Connect Youth Summit, which will be held just ahead of the next World Telecommunication Development Conference next year.

The next WTDC comes at a crucial time for global connectivity, with the UN Common Agenda recognizing the digital divide as one of the global ‘grand canyons’ that must be urgently addressed if we have any hope of meeting our 2030 Agenda targets and making good our pledge to ‘Leave No-one Behind’.

While BDT’s new Facts and Figures report estimates that 4.9 billion people are now online, the gap between the digitally rich and digitally poor remains a stark reflection of global inequality, with over 90 per cent of the 2.9 billion offline living in the developing world.

With the pandemic accentuating and accelerating our dependence on technology, we urgently need to bring online those still cut-off from the transformational power of the internet.

At the same time, we need to ensure that the 4.9 billion already online are meaningfully connected, through connectivity that is affordable, reliable, accessible, fast, and safe, while ensuring that they are also equipped with the skills to fully leverage the power of digital services and applications. All this has concrete implications for BDT’s work in promoting regulatory best practice, digital skills, cybersecurity, digital innovation, digital gender equality, and much more.

BDT’s new Partner2Connect Digital Coalition, launched on the side lines of the UN General Assembly this year in close cooperation with the Office of the United Nations Envoy on Technology, is designed to serve as a leadership platform to engage all stakeholders around the urgent need to mobilize new resources, partnerships, and commitments to achieve universal meaningful connectivity. It will be a key element of our next World Telecommunication Development Conference, and I encourage all ITU members, partners, and every organization working in the digital space, to join, so that we can leverage our shared resources to bridge the digital divide and get the rest of the world online, fast.

As I look back over 2021, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank our members and partners for their steadfast and resolute support during a particularly challenging year.

Last but not least, I want to thank my amazing staff for their resilience, dedication, and hard work. They are the engine of the BDT.

I look forward to strengthening BDT’s collaboration with all members and partners, and to working alongside you at our World Telecommunication Development Conference in June 2022, as we shape the digital future together. With connectivity now front and centre of the political agenda in so many countries, we have a unique opportunity to use digital to totally rewrite the global development paradigm. We must not miss our moment.

Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Director, Telecommunication Development Bureau
International Telecommunication Union