Tuesday, 5 October Tanzania Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Finally, I wish to reiterate that Tanzania is committed to co-operate and share with other Member States, the ITU Secretariat and the regional offices to make ITU an eminent international body that plays an important role in enhancing development of all member coun-tries; Tanzania has 945,000 square kilometres and eighty five percent of our population lives in rural areas and the ma-jority have no access to basic communications infrastruc-ture. Economic viability of deployment of ICT infrastruc-ture in the sparsely populated areas and difficult terrain as such Tanzania has put its candidature to the is limited. To address these challenges, the Government has established the Universal Communications Access Fund (UCAF) where both the Government and all the operators will contribute to this Fund. This fund will sup-port seat of the Council representing Region D. operators in deployment of ICT infrastructure and Mr. Chairman, services to rural areas and un-served areas. on behalf of the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania, and my delegation, I would like to once again express my profound gratitude to the Government of Mexico for hosting this remarkable conference, and wish success in its deliberations. Mr. Chairman, It is 26 years since the launch of the Maitland Report (‘The Missing Link’) in Arusha, Tanzania, where issues of the telecommunication gaps between the rich and poor, urban and rural were identified and ways and means were proposed on how to tackle them. This was a crucial issue for ITU to continue addressing the se-rious gap between developed countries and the poor Developing Countries of the South. Mr. Chairman, We are attending this conference for the first time after our Eastern and Southern Countries have been connect-ed with Submarine Cables. This is one of Africa’s efforts to try to bridge the digital divide and secure reliable com-munications at affordable cost. However, in order for Tanzania to benefit from ICT development of its health, education and public services sector, the country needs to have a reliable infrastructure. Efforts are now under-way to develop fibre cables within the entire country and link up with her eight neighbouring countries. 87