Agenda

Ayman El-Sherbiny has more than 30 years of experience in the Telecom and IT domain; a senior International Development Strategist in the United Nations, and a former senior executive in a number of major multinational Technology companies, as well as in the Telecom and Internet Sector in Egypt and the Arab Region during the nineties till 2002. By mid-nineties, he became a serial entrepreneur. He co-founded and led, as President & CEO, several renowned ICT companies, including establishing two of the five licensed Internet Operators; acquiring more than 40% of internet market share in a record time, in addition to one of the leading systems integrators and one of the pioneering e-commerce companies & the first WAP partner to the main GSM operator. In 1999, he participated in co-drafting the first Telecom Law of Egypt that triggered the liberalization of the sector, instigated the National TRA of Egypt, and fuelled competition in the sector.
By 2002, he joined the UN, and participated in establishing the ICT Division of ESCWA, spearheading Arab efforts pertaining to the WSIS in 2003 and 2005. Since 2011, he assumed the leadership for information society, digital economy and digital development as the Chief of Information and Communication Technology Policies at the ESCWA. During 20 years of tenure in the UN, he authored tens of publications on the Information Society; and has co-founded the Arab Internet Governance Forum and the Arab High-Level Forum on WSIS and 2030 Agenda; and the ESCWA-LAS joint project on Developing and Deployment of the Arab Digital Agenda. He led several international and regional initiatives including on Arabic Domain Names across several geographical groups. He is a regular speaker in international conferences. His current work focuses on global and regional Digital Cooperation and Development, Arab Digital Agenda, and the Summit for the Future.

Passionate about economic development and the public-private work that makes it possible. Marco Llinas has over 20 years of experience working, both in the private sector and in the public sector, on agendas and policies related to competitiveness, productive development, industrial policy, regional development, trade policy, education, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He is the author of the book "Cluster Initiatives: a Concrete and Effective Way to 'Move the Needle' on Productivity" (www.marcollinas.com), in which, based on the state of the art of the literature on productive development and the experience of having led agendas in the field, he aims to provide insights to the regions of developing countries to improve their productivity, and thus achieve higher levels of prosperity and well-being.

Dr. Mactar Seck has been involved in the telecommunication, ICT4D including Digital Id , Digital Trade and digital economy as well as in STI field over the last 20 years, specializing in areas such as digital policy strategy and regulatory framework, internet governance issues, digital infrastructures including Broadband, nanotechnology, Internet related research (IoT, Cloud services, artificial intelligence, digital payment systems,) etc.), integrated services digital networks including digital ID, digital economy, tax policy platforms, etc.
Working as the Chief of Technology and Innovation Section and Coordinator the Digital Centre of Excellence on Digital ID, digital trade and Digital economy a Digital Economy at the Economic Commission for Africa, He assisted several African countries, international and regional organizations to formulate, implement and evaluate policies and strategies in digital technologies/applications for achieving SDGs. He is also the WSIS and Internet Governance Forum focal point of UNECA.
Before joining ECA, He held several position in Senegal (Director General of the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority, Executive Secretary of the Senegalese High Council of Industry, Chief of Teleservices and Innovation Division at the national Telecom operator (Sonatel), etc.). He served as a senior researcher at TDF C2R Group France Telecom and was awarded a European patent on data/image compression systems. Lauréat of the « Grand Prix du Président de la République du Sénégal pour les Sciences et l ’Innovation » Edition 1996, He is also Member of the Senegalese Academy of Sciences and Technology.
 

Tiziana Bonapace is the Director of Information and Communications Technology and Disaster Risk Reduction Division at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP). With a career spanning over 30 years in the UN, she has held various roles, including Head of the Subregional Office for North and Central Asia. Bonapace, an international development economist, joined the UN in 1990 as a UNIDO associate expert before joining ESCAP’s trade and investment program in 1992. She specialized in WTO-related issues and coordinated the flagship Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific. Passionate about regional connectivity, she has worked extensively on infrastructure integration and market competitiveness since 2011. In 2016, she assumed leadership of ESCAP’s ICT and Disaster Risk Reduction program, organizing three Ministerial Conferences on the subjects. Bonapace’s diverse background includes living and working in Italy, Thailand, Kazakhstan, and South Africa, where she earned her master’s degree in economics and commerce and lectured at universities. 

InKyung Choi leads the Statistical Management and Modernisation Unit of the Statistics Division at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). As UNECE Secretariat for the High-Level Group for the Modernisation of Official Statistics (HLG-MOS), she has extensive international collaboration experience on emerging technologies and modernisation topics, such as AI and standards. Prior to joining UNECE, she worked at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). She holds a master’s degree in Statistics from Korea University and a Ph.D. in Geospatial Statistics from Purdue University.