Director, ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau
10 January 2022
Thank you, Chair, for inviting me to make a few remarks at the start of another crucial year for our important work here at ITU. A very Happy New Year to all.
For many of us, the year has once again begun somewhat inauspiciously, with another surge in viral infections as the Omicron variant sweeps the world. Medical teams are once again being challenged.
Businesses are once again buckling under the strain of chronic staff absences and critical supply chain disruption. And, as before, virtual meetings and working from home rules are keeping us physically apart.
But we are reminded how lucky we are that the world can count on the always-on, seamlessly interoperable high-speed information and communication technologies that are the product of your global collaboration, through bodies such as this one, and through the technical working groups that so many of you are a part of.
Connectivity has been the critical key to resilience for countries, for companies, communities and citizens.
Those of us here today know that achieving that seamless global connectivity is far from a given.
It is forged through the dedication of engineers and policymakers like yourselves, working hard behind the scenes to create the networks and infrastructure that the whole world now relies on.
Your efforts are absolutely indispensable to the work of my own sector, because without global interoperability, our dream of a fully connected planet will never be realized.
Just a few weeks before the holidays, my Bureau released the latest figures on global ICT penetration.
Those figures reveal that almost 3 billion people remain completely excluded from the online interaction that is fast becoming the new normal for our post-pandemic world.
This crippling cost of digital exclusion is very real, is growing, and is now seriously jeopardizing the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
With three ITU major conferences scheduled for this year, the stakes – and our opportunities – have never been higher.
Maybe it's time to declare 2022 the 'Year of Digital Inclusion'.
Leveraging these three world conferences, we can finally make that quantum leap forward in our shared commitment to achieving universal connectivity.
Our World Telecommunication Development Conference, scheduled for mid-year, is our chance to mobilize the global community around new ways to facilitate infrastructure deployment; to promote more affordable and meaningful access; and to build greater confidence and security in digital networks and services.
Our preparations are well advanced with a succinct draft declaration under the conference theme of 'Connecting the Unconnected to Achieve Sustainable Development'.
We have our inputs to the thematic priorities, regional initiatives, study group questions and have made good progress on the resolutions.
In light of the urgency the pandemic has brought to our efforts, this next WTDC is taking on a new shape to respond to these new challenges.
Our Partner2Connect track aims to forge productive new connections between governments, business, the global investment community and other players to dramatically accelerate progress, particularly in hard-to-connect communities.
From next month, we'll be inviting ITU members and stakeholders to make bold and concrete commitments and pledges to connect the unconnected – and we'll be using WTDC to showcase those commitments to the whole world.
For the first time, we'll be bringing in the vital voice of youth through our Generation Connect Global Youth Summit, which will run just before the main conference.
And we are excited to have our first NoW4WTDC with momentum being driven in the six regional groups.
Dear colleagues,
The global collaboration so necessary to your work is the same spirit of collaboration we need to harness and to drive forward our digital development agenda.
You stand as a beacon for what can be achieved when we choose to actively work together, for the benefit of all.
I hope many of you will join us at this WTDC, and help us find new ways to energize global collaboration around digital inclusion, so that the chance to harness the transformational power of the technologies your work has created is put within reach of all the world's people.
Thank you.
