Know Your Members Series- 1st Session
Opening Remarks
Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Director,
ITU, Telecommunication Development Bureau
15 April 2021
Good morning, good evening and good afternoon,
I am pleased to see all of you, at this first of our “Know Your Members" Series. Nothing is so satisfying to us, than to be able to get together even amidst the pandemic and engage despite the limitations of the virtual space.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated our dependence on digital technologies and highlighted the life-saving benefits of connectivity.
On the other hand, the pandemic is a wake-up call for more effective cooperation and collaboration. Our objective of this forum is to exchange views with you on ongoing and planned work in the ITU-D sector, and also talk about how we can strengthen our relationship in our joint efforts to connect the unconnected.
Today's session specifically targets the Academia and Research Institutes Community, which currently stands at 160 in number. We appreciate the great work you are doing and your continued active participation in the work of the three sectors of the Union, and your role in provision of the evidence in the policy making process.
The pandemic has helped us realize that we really must be agile and move swiftly to close the connectivity gap. We would like to hear from you, how we can exchange information and also get feedback from you on a regular basis in order to generate value not only for BDT but also for your as our members.
The past 12 months have remained busy despite the pandemic, as we made every effort to keep pace with the rapid changes, continue with implementation of our programmes and also serve the membership as effectively as we could.
ITU as a whole has worked collaboratively with the private sector for over 150 years, and last year, our Development Sector forged 42 partnerships, 26 of which represent yearly commitments of almost 15 million US dollars. This is a big achievement spanning core development issues ranging from: digital inclusion, innovation, youth empowerment and gender equality, digital skills, the digital transformation of government services, to name a few.
Some of the flagship initiatives include our Connect2Recover project which we launched in partnership with the governments of Japan and Saudi Arabia to help countries better leverage digital technologies to support pandemic recovery and preparedness for a post-COVID normal. At the very initial, we are undertaking a comprehensive study to develop a country digital resiliency assessment methodology.
Our innovative partnership with UNICEF and other collaborators, under the Giga banner aims to connect every school to the Internet, and every child, every young person, and every community to information, opportunity and choice. Giga has now mapped over 800,000 schools in 30 countries. We are now working actively with 19 governments and are well on our way to connecting over 86,000 schools, and more than 25 million students and teachers.
Through Giga, we hope to test innovative technologies and business models to support affordable connectivity to rural and hard-to-reach areas; test the positioning of connected schools as 'nodes' for extending connectivity into the broader community, as well as new ways to raise funds and pay for connectivity services.
While the digital era has brought society many benefits, more challenges are also on the rise, including the growing digital divides, cyber threats, and human rights violations online. Last year we updated our Child Online Protection guidelines noting that more and more children are now joining the online world, particularly faster than had been expected, the need for their safeguard their safety online has never been more urgent.
The UN Secretary General's Roadmap on Digital Cooperation identified the achievement of universal connectivity by 2030 as one eight key areas for actions. In this context, ITU is leading a multi-stakeholder working group to develop a baseline for universal and meaningful digital connectivity. This baseline will inform countries on where they stand today in terms of meaningful connectivity, and will therefore form the starting points for setting connectivity targets for 2030.
There are many more initiatives, including Digital Transformation Centres which we launched with Cisco to help develop digital skills in countries, I-CoDI, the International Centre of Digital Innovation to help ITU Members, Sector Members and other key stakeholders to integrate innovation into their national development agendas and activities, EQUALS Global Partnership to promote the inclusivity of women, among many others.
It is our desire to find ways to engage more members, more partners and new communities in our work so that we can together, create a more connected, resilient, prosperous, inclusive and sustainable world for all.
All these activities I have mentioned and the many others in BDT are open to our Research and Academia members. I believe that there are many great opportunities for collaboration with this community to help identify the policy needs through academic knowledge and research. We count on your expertise and critical role in research, study group work, undertaking missions for us to enrich our events, and consulting especially on editing study group reports which form the basis of the policy recommendations and decisions emanating from ITU-D.
As I conclude, I would also like to encourage you to actively participate in the preparations and the World Telecommunication Development Conference, WTDC 2021, scheduled for 8-19 November 2021, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In particular, the Academic session as a side event to the Road to Addis Series which will take place on the 20th of May this year. This event is open for all stakeholders and I look forward to your participation and your relevant networks including students.
I look forward to benefitting from your suggestions on how we could bring more value to Academia and strengthen your participation in the work of ITU-D.
We have a series of events that are helping build momentum to the conference, and I take this opportunity to invite you to our next Road to Addis series event on the financing theme, scheduled for 28th April 2021. The team will provide the details, but in the meantime, we also share the link in the chat.
I am keen to listen to your ideas on how we can generate value to your membership. It is indisputable that working together, we can increase the tempo to connect the 3.7 Billion people that remain offline today.
