2020 Regional Development Forum for Africa (RDF-AFR)
OPENING REMARKS
Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Director, Telecommunication Development Bureau
International Telecommunication Union
6 October 2020 (12:00 CEST)
Event website: http://itu.int/go/RDF-AFR2020
HE Minister Kafwaya, Minister of Transport and Communication in Zambia and our kind host
Eng Lungu Permanent Secretary Ministry of Transport and communications
Secretary-General, African Telecommunications Union John Omo,
ITU Regional Director for Africa, Andrew Rugege
Excellencies, Distinguished colleagues ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning, afternoon and evening. Bonjour à tous.
It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the 2020 Regional Development Forum for Africa, with its strong focus on digital development, partnerships and funding.
This forum will provide us with a platform where we can convene, share and exchange, and together co-create the future we want. Many of you joined our preparatory/co-creation sessions yesterday and I hope you found them useful.
ITU's efforts right across the African continent are aimed at helping leverage the power of collaboration to help all countries in the region access the support and investment they need to drive their digital transformation and accelerate progress towards the SDGs by our deadline of 2030, now just over nine years away.
Over the past few months, COVID-19 has put the spotlight on connectivity, universal access and resilient ICT infrastructures. It became clear what it meant to not be connected. We all moved online over night,our work, our schooling, our shopping... but what happened to those 3.6 billion not connected?
Connectivity is now at the top of global agendas. That came across so clearly at the UN General Assembly last month, where connectivity featured prominently in the UN75 declaration that stated digital technologies have a potential to accelerate the realization of the 2030 Agenda and that We must ensure safe and affordable digital access for all.
This message was also made very clearly in HoS statements, in more than 40 side events, in the Broadband Commission manifesto, and in the main high level digital cooperation event that ITU was pleased to co-organize, having co-lead the action lines on connectivity and capacity building..
There is no longer any doubt that the ICT sector underpins every single economic activity and serves as a vital delivery mechanism for a range of essential social services, as well as an important driver of critical environmental protection.
The simple reality is that, in today's world, robust and resilient ICT networks, including broadband networks, need to be considered basic infrastructure, as fundamental to the social and economic health of nations and their populations as networks like water, roads or power.
Broadband is that catalyst that could accelerate progress towards the SDGs, as new devices like low-cost IoT sensors, new delivery platforms like low-cost satellites and HAPs, and new applications like Big Data and AI change the game.
When the UNSG launched the digital cooperation roadmap in June of this year, he said very clearly that the digital divide is now a matter of life or death. He urged us to move forward, together, with increased cooperation based on mutual trust.
So how do we get there?
How do we achieve safe, trusted, universal, affordable, meaningful connectivity for all?
Let's look at the numbers.
Right now less than one third of Africa's people are online, fewer than 1 in 5 African households have any kind of internet access. Mobile broadband is used by just a third of the population.
I mention these statistics, because understanding the scale and nature of the challenge ahead of us is critical to getting us to where we want to go.
Let's look at the cost.
Last year, the Broadband Commission's Digital Moonshot for Africa Working Group estimated that $9 billion in investment would be needed to double broadband connectivity across the continent by the end of 2021. Attracting that investment will need bold and innovative new models, supported by solid, transparent policy and regulatory frameworks.
So can it be done?
Absolutely! Without question. Let me state categorically that the challenges we face are by no means insurmountable.
We have so much on our side:
- We have the largely untapped potential of African markets for digital goods and services;
- We have Africa's youthful demographic, which makes it fertile ground for digital innovation and uptake. I get excited when I think about what we can achieve by matching the incredible potential of universal broadband to the untapped drive and energy of a vast and youthful continent like Africa. As you can see we have weaved that youth element into our program this week.
What else do we have?
- We have excellent examples of government commitment to digital transformation as the engine of national development, which are showing others what can be achieved, given the political will and vision.
- And we have some incredible partnerships. Great examples of digital cooperation in the making that we will hear more about this week.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Our RDFs serve an important function to look at the challenges we face, take stock of where we are in implementing our Buenos Aires Action plan and the resulting programmes and regional initiatives, exchange experiences and forge partnerships to progress meaningful connectivity.
As you will see from our agenda and our programme this week, in collaboration with our sister organizations in the UN system, the UN Resident Coordinators (our DCO regional Director), and with support from international financial institutions (ADB), national development agencies, Smart Africa, the private sector and industry partners, we are working with governments to implement a broad portfolio of projects and initiatives targeting a number of connectivity priority areas.
To be effective, we must ensure that we work in coordinated and complementary manner, leveraging synergies and scaling up good efforts.
Our ultimate goal is simple: when it comes to digital transformation, we must ensure we leave no-one behind.
For us, it's the 5th generation collaborative ICT regulatory measures and tools included in the output of ITU's Global Symposium for Regulators last month should serve as the guiding standard for national regulators and policy makers as they strive to maximize the opportunities afforded by digital transformation.
Today's digital policy and regulatory frameworks need to be fit-for-purpose. They need to be:
- up-to-date,
- flexible,
- incentive-based and market-driven,
- to support digital transformation across sectors, and across geographies.
And above all, they need to be collaborative. Because one thing is absolutely certain: no-one is going to be able to meet this challenge alone.
At ITU, we are working very actively with our 193 Member States and 900 sector and academia members to achieve the goal of universal connectivity for Africa, through a comprehensive portfolio of joint initiatives.
One of these is Giga – a joint initiative between ITU, UNICEF and others to connect every school to the internet, and every young person to information, opportunity, and choice.
We are already working closely with a number of governments, including Rwanda, Kenya, Niger, Sierra Leone, Togo and Benin, here on the African continent, in an effort to ensure that, next time around, millions of children kept out of school do not lose access to the life-changing power of education simply because of lack of connectivity.
Another is our new Connect2Recover initiative, which we launched with the generous support of Japan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and which aims to help reinforce the provision of affordable and reliable connectivity in beneficiary countries, as they adjust to the 'new normal'.
Other examples of pan-continental multi-stakeholder projects now underway include the PRIDA initiative with the African Union and the European Commission involving all African countries, which strives to foster universally accessible and affordable broadband, and a capacity building partnership with the African Union and our sister agency the ILO (very happy to have regional director and friend Cynthia from ILO with us), launched in February, to equip young people with digital skills by 2030.
We encourage all those with a stake in advancing Africa's connectivity agenda to partner with us, so that, together, we can help Africa 'build back better with broadband'.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The UN Secretary-General's Roadmap for Digital Cooperation emphasizes the fact that bringing universal connectivity to the African continent will be, and must be, built on win-win partnerships between governments, between ICT regulators, between operators and equipment manufacturers, between platform providers like OTT players, and between locally-based innovators who can develop compelling services that speak to the needs of local people and communities.
At the governmental level, part of this new spirit of collaboration will also mean moving away from silos to embrace a new, holistic, 'Whole of Government approach' that treats digital as the foundational platform for all other services.
The interrelatedness of the SDGs provides a great opportunity for common approaches and integration within and across institutions. And while COVID has taken away so much, it has at least accorded us the full attention of global leaders, and presented us with an unprecedented opportunity to make real and rapid strides forward in connecting the continent.
Ladies and gentlemen,
We recently concluded the UN75th Partnership Dialogue for Connectivity. In its communique it urged “innovative thinking, the willingness to experiment, an openness to learning, broad collaboration and a strong vision" as we work to confront and overcome these challenges. These are the principles I urge you to take on board this week in our discussions.
So that we can conceive and implement solutions that meet the unique needs of the region, and its many diverse communities.
Next year ITU will convene the World Telecommunication Development Conference for the first time on the African continent in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
We need to seize this unique opportunity to harness an unprecedented tide of political will, and put digital at the very heart of Africa's future
Thank you.
