I H T ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT T Ma Connecting the world
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* 13 International Herald Tribune | ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT | Thursday, May 3, 2007 ITU | Digital development A global mission to connect the unconnected Connecting the world ITU A snapshot of the digital divide ITU Regulatory framework | Toward open markets Leveling the playing field for operators and start-ups Development programs | Education and human resources The age of enlightenment, 21st-century style Partnerships | Multistakeholder initiative International partners mobilize to ‘Connect the World’ Connecting the world did not involve the reporting or editorial departments of the IHT. It was sponsored by the International Telecommunication Union, which provided the text. For information on the IHT Advertising Supplements program: supplements@iht.com ITU’s Connect the World mission includes projects like Village Phone, which provides local livelihoods as well as ICT development. I n a bid to identify and implement innova- tive and successful new strategies to leapfrog the digital divide, the Internation- al Telecommunication Union is leading a global multistakeholder development part- nership comprising major information and communication technology companies, de- velopment agencies, international and re- gional organizations, civil society and govern- ments. Called Connect the World, the initiative was launched in 2005 in the lead-up to ITU’s holding of the UN World Summit on the Infor- mation Society in Tunis as part of its commit- ment to bringing the power of communica- tions and access to information to people the world over. Now, 18 months later, the original 22 founding partners — which include giants like Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Huawei, Intel and Microsoft, along with UN agencies, nongov- ernmental organizations and governments from the developed and developing worlds — have been joined by a host of new players, all of whom are actively involved in hands-on projects at the grassroots level designed to bring ICT access to the estimated one billion people still unconnected. The program is predominantly focused on rural communities — far and away the most marginalized, with an estimated 800,000 vil- lages worldwide still lacking telephone ser- vice and access to basic information re- sources like TV and radio. It is structured around three key domains — Enabling Envir- onment, Infrastructure and Readiness, and Applications and Services — which ITU ex- perts say constitute the primary building blocks that must be addressed to reach the WSIS goal of connecting all the world’s people by 2015. ‘‘It’s clear that no single player has the re- sources or expertise to meet this tremendous challenge alone,’’ says ITU Secretary General Hamadoun I. Touré. ‘‘That’s why ITU conceived Connect the World around the model of public- private partnership. We’re now working with 50 partners from government, business and civil society, with a steady stream of new members lining up to join.’’ Sharing the vision that hybrid strategies that incorporate education, microcredit and entrepreneurship can help communities out of poverty, ITU has joined with like-minded partners through the UN Advisers Group on Inclusive Financial Sectors. The group of more than 20 global financial experts from governments, central banks, regulatory agencies, microfinance institutions, the private sector, civil society, development agencies and academia work together to make financial services accessible for the poor and for small enterprises across the globe. ITU is also currently working with the microcredit pioneer Grameen, the organiza- tion founded by the Nobel laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus, and other partners, on effective ways of combining Grameen’s mi- crocredit expertise with ITU’s experience im- plementing global ICT development pro- grams that can help the poor earn a sustainable income. Empowering the network To that end, ITU, Grameen, Cisco Sys- tems, Qualcomm and the newly formed con- sortium Enclusion recently launched a virtual global ICT Empowerment Network consisting of numerous independent, self-financed groups of partners. Each group will focus on at least one of three workstreams. The workstream on ICT solutions focuses on developing and implementing low-cost ICT solutions; one example is Enclusion’s plan to provide affordable ICT access by expanding the reach of existing GSM networks in re- mote rural areas. Using very low-cost VHF ra- dio, local farmers and small businesses will be able to access low-bandwidth data ser- vices such as SMS and e-mail for microcredit applications. Short-range voice capability to unserved and hard-to-reach villages will also be provided. Under the Sustainable Business Models workstream, promising young entrepreneurs can have their business plans assessed for potential microcredit financing; graduates of ITU’s Internet Training Centers will be the first to gain access to business-plan mentoring and microcredit start-up capital to launch their own ICT-related businesses. Under this workstream, the ITU is also working with Grameen and the GSM Association to spread the village phone and shared-access models, which provide microcredit to local entrepreneurs in developing countries so they are able to purchase a mobile phone and then resell airtime to others in their com- munities. This creates opportunities for the entrepreneurs as well as spreading access to ICTs in underserved communities. The third workstream on Capacity Build- ing will leverage Grameen’s microcredit financing and expertise to expand the avail- ability of loans for students in ICT-related studies. To begin with, Grameen will provide microcredit-financed loans to eligible stu- dents at ITU Internet Training Centers as well as to eligible applicants to ITU’s Youth Educa- tion Scheme. Over time, ITU and Grameen will encourage additional ICT training programs to join the network and expand the availabil- ity of microcredit loans for additional stu- dents. Connect the World partner Cisco Sys- tems has already pledged $1 million to the new network, with the money principally go- ing to fund student and entrepreneurial loans. The ICT Empowerment Network repre- sents the first concrete collaboration to emerge from a broader cooperation agree- ment signed between Grameen and ITU at the ITU Telecom World 2006 event in Hong Kong last December. ITU’s cooperative efforts are proving particularly fruitful in education through partnerships with local universities and educational authorities. A t first glance, poring over musty legis- lation and reviewing arcane regulatory criteria don’t sound like very hands-on ways of bringing access to information and communications technology to poor commu- nities. ‘‘In fact, getting the regulatory frame- work right has a massive impact on a coun- try’s ability to unleash the development po- tential of ICTs,’’ explains the International Telecommunication Union’s head of regula- tory and market environment, Doreen Bog- dan. ‘‘Markets need to be open enough to encourage competition and allow estab- lished operators and start-ups to provide sought-after services to end users. Con- sumers need affordable access to appro- priate technologies, and companies need a stable and transparent operating environ- ment with sufficient profit incentive to en- courage them to develop and expand their services.’’ That usually means that countries must comprehensively revise current licensing re- gimes to make it easier for new service pro- viders to enter the market. It also means en- suring that sufficient radio-frequency spectrum is available for the wireless ser- vices that are often easier and more cost-ef- fective to deploy than traditional fixed-line networks. Finally, it means ensuring that competing operators and service providers can seamlessly interconnect with one anoth- er, so that users of different networks can communicate with one another. ‘‘Regulators in the world’s developed markets have already begun updating their regulatory frameworks to take account of emerging technologies and user demand for new services,’’ says Susan Schorr, ITU regu- latory specialist. ‘‘But developing countries seeking to revise their regulations to harness the potential of new technologies often lack the skills, expertise and human resources to overhaul markets governed by legislation that can be decades out of step with techno- logical change.’’ ‘‘Telecommunications can define a coun- try’s success — or lack of it — in the world economy,’’ says Ernest Chukwuka Ndukwe, chief executive officer of the Nigerian Com- munication Commission. ‘‘The telecom regu- lator’s role is to create a level playing field, at- tract investment and foster competition and growth in the ICT sector.’’ To help governments in under-resourced nations reconfigure their markets in a way that encourages both investment and local entrepreneurship, ITU is partnering with the World Bank’s infoDev program to develop an online ICT Regulation Toolkit. Conceived as a permanently evolving resource, the kit con- sists of a series of modules on key regulato- ry issues including service authorization; le- gal and institutional aspects of regulation; competition and price regulation, including in- terconnection; new technologies; and radio spectrum management. A further module on universal access is currently under develop- ment. Regulatory reform is also a key element of ITU’s Connect the World initiative, through its Enabling Environment building block. ITU recently helped 15 West African countries develop a common regulatory framework through an ICT Market Harmonization project funded by the European Union and adopted by the heads of state and government of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). The agency is now working to ex- pand this project to cover the entire African continent, in line with recent decisions of the 2006 ITU World Telecommunication Devel- opment Conference. ITU also holds the only annual gathering for the world’s ICT regulators. The Global Symposium for Regulators seeks to pro- mote information exchange and adoption of regulatory best practices and to tackle topic- al issues confronting regulators worldwide. The most recent event, held in Dubai in Feb- ruary, debated the regulatory implications of emerging ‘‘next-generation networks,’’ which pose special challenges by blurring the boundaries between previously disparate technologies. J ust over 20 years ago, the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations agency for information and communication technologies, commissioned a report entitled ‘‘The Missing Link.’’ The first study to provide a coherent global picture of the state of access to ICT worldwide and to quantify the impact of access on economic development, it painted a disturbing picture. In the developed world, the landline tele- communication networks that had long served as engines of economic growth were assuming a new importance. Networked computing — a development that would quickly give rise to the Internet — meant that the advantages of fast, reliable communica- tions networks were snowballing, providing a new conduit for economic growth. Developing countries, with their chronic- ally poor network penetration, were suddenly falling even further behind the global growth curve. While no one had yet coined the term ‘‘digital divide,’’ the gulf that separated the world’s information haves and have-nots was fast turning into a chasm so wide it might never be bridged. Sami Al Basheer Al-Morshid, director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bu- reau, says convincing governments of the critical importance of ICTs to economic per- formance and establishing a regulatory envir- onment that stimulates private-sector in- vestment has been vital to start redress the balance. ‘‘We’ve been emphasizing this strongly for many years, with some good results,’’ he says. ‘‘In addition, the UN World Summit on the Information Society, held in 2003 in Geneva and in 2005 in Tunis, helped focus global attention on the problem by bringing together key stakeholders from new con- stituencies spanning all sectors of the com- munity.’’ With objectives set by world leaders dur- ing WSIS and priorities developed at ITU’s own World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC-06), ITU activities around the world are designed to meet a broad range of needs. Its E-Strategies program, for example, fo- cuses on delivering expertise and seed fund- ing in six priority areas: Internet Protocol net- work development, e-services (agriculture, health, e-government, education and e-com- merce), multipurpose community telecen- ters, cybersecurity, e-legislation and commu- nity programs designed to build ICT awareness. ‘‘We’re striving to bring sustainable, af- fordable improvements to the daily lives of ordinary people,’’ says E-Strategies Unit Chief Robert Shaw. ‘‘The aim is to empower communities to develop their own ICT capa- city and resources according to their unique needs.’’ ITU’s network of field offices, strategically located throughout Africa, the Asia-Pacific re- gion, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Commonwealth of Independent States, also focuses on building solid relationships with local authorities and communities, with a view to promoting sustainable ICT access initiatives that enjoy the support of public and private sector partners. International Telecommunication Union’s 2005 statistics paint a stark picture of the information gap that continues to separate the rich from the poor. • In 2005, fewer than four out of every 100 Africans used the Internet, compared with one out of every two people living in the Group of 8 nations. • The G-8 is home to just 15 percent of the world’s population, yet has 45 percent of the world’s Internet users. • At 2004-05 growth rates, less than 25 percent of people living in the developing world will be online by 2010, compared with 55 percent of the inhabitants of the developed world who were already online by 2005. • An estimated 30 percent of all villages worldwide still have no access to basic telephone service. • Seventy-nine percent of Africa’s 27 million fixed phone lines are located in just six of its 54 nations. • Access to broadband — the ‘‘big pipe’’ connections increasingly vital to Internet access — now extends to 13 percent of the population in high-income countries. It remains close to zero in the developing world. • Some 30 countries still rely on a single 10Mbps international connection to serve their entire population; in wealthy countries, consumers can now buy their own personal 10Mbps connection at very affordable prices. The International Telecommunication Union’s initiatives play a vital role in promoting the use of information and communication technologies to enhance economic performance N elson Mandela famously said that education is the most powerful weapon humankind has at its dispos- al for changing the world. A strong advocate of this view, the Inter- national Telecommunication Union’s Tele- communication Development Sector is making human resource development a top priority through a variety of diverse develop- ment programs. One example is ITU’s work with the Con- nect the World partners Cisco Systems and the European Commission on its Internet Training Centers Initiative (ITCI), designed to help developing countries build their own pool of ‘‘new economy’’ professionals who will drive ongoing information and communi- cation technology growth at a local level. ITU’s work with Cisco — which earned the UN agency a Cisco Partnership Award earlier this year — has already seen the es- tablishment of 66 centers in 56 nations, 20 of which are UN-designated Least De- veloped Countries (LDCs). The ITCI program already boasts more than 3,000 graduates, with another 3,000+ students currently en- rolled. As well as creating a skilled local work force, the initiative also seeks to break en- trenched gender barriers, targeting an annu- al intake of 30 percent female students. The project’s success recently prompted ITU to redouble its efforts through a new partnership with the EC, adding 12 new cen- ters, six in LDCs. The curriculum provides two streams for beginners and advanced students, including a course on Free and Open Source Software (Floss) for dynamic Web design and a basic ICT course focusing on using computers and applications donated by Microsoft, another Connect the World partner, through its Unlimited Poten- tial program. Funding and resources Complementing the emphasis on Inter- net skills, ITU has also provided some $9 million in seed funding, along with organiza- tional and intellectual resources, for the es- tablishment of a number of ICT Centers of Excellence. Designed to offer face-to-face work- shops as well as distance-learning sessions to high-level ICT managers and policymakers in government and the private sector, the centers serve as regional focal points for professional development, research and in- formation exchange. Thanks to substantial support from multilateral and regional or- ganizations and local business, there are now ITU Centers of Excellence serving east and west Africa, Latin America (including the Caribbean), the Arab states, the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and the Commonwealth of In- dependent States countries. Recognizing the vital importance of de- veloping the skills of young people — partic- ularly in the developing world, where under- 25s account for more than half the total population — ITU also partners with a host of leading ICT manufacturers and service providers to fund YES, the ICT Youth Educa- tion Scheme. Since its inception in 2003, the program has awarded more than 50 educational scholarships to disadvantaged tertiary stu- dents to enable them to pursue their stud- ies. Active partners include Alcatel-Lucent, Thales Communications, Vodafone, Nokia Communications, NTI of Egypt and Anacom, Portugal’s national telecommunications regulator.
Transcript of I H T ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT T Ma Connecting the world
* 13International Herald Tribune | ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT | Thursday,May 3, 2007
ITU | Digital development
A global missionto connectthe unconnected
Connecting the world
ITU
A snapshot of the digital divide
ITU
Regulatory framework | Toward open markets
Leveling the playing field for operators and start-ups
Development programs | Education and human resources
The age of enlightenment, 21st-century style
Partnerships | Multistakeholder initiative
International partners mobilize to ‘Connect the World’
Connecting the world did not involve the reporting or editorial departments of the IHT. Itwas sponsored by the International Telecommunication Union, which provided the text.
For information on the IHT Advertising Supplements program: [email protected]
ITU’s Connect the Worldmission includesprojects like VillagePhone, which provideslocal livelihoods as wellas ICT development.
I n a bid to identify and implement innova-tive and successful new strategies toleapfrog the digital divide, the Internation-
al Telecommunication Union is leading aglobal multistakeholder development part-nership comprising major information andcommunication technology companies, de-velopment agencies, international and re-gional organizations, civil society and govern-ments.
Called Connect the World, the initiativewas launched in 2005 in the lead-up to ITU’sholding of the UN World Summit on the Infor-mation Society in Tunis as part of its commit-ment to bringing the power of communica-tions and access to information to peoplethe world over.
Now, 18 months later, the original 22founding partners — which include giantslike Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Huawei, Intel andMicrosoft, along with UN agencies, nongov-ernmental organizations and governmentsfrom the developed and developing worlds— have been joined by a host of new players,all of whom are actively involved in hands-onprojects at the grassroots level designed tobring ICT access to the estimated one billionpeople still unconnected.
The program is predominantly focused onrural communities — far and away the mostmarginalized, with an estimated 800,000 vil-lages worldwide still lacking telephone ser-vice and access to basic information re-sources like TV and radio. It is structuredaround three key domains — Enabling Envir-onment, Infrastructure and Readiness, andApplications and Services — which ITU ex-perts say constitute the primary buildingblocks that must be addressed to reach theWSIS goal of connecting all the world’speople by 2015.
‘‘It’s clear that no single player has the re-sources or expertise to meet this tremendouschallenge alone,’’ says ITU Secretary GeneralHamadoun I. Touré. ‘‘That’s why ITU conceived
Connect the World around the model of public-private partnership. We’re now working with50 partners from government, business andcivil society, with a steady stream of newmembers lining up to join.’’
Sharing the vision that hybrid strategiesthat incorporate education, microcredit andentrepreneurship can help communities outof poverty, ITU has joined with like-mindedpartners through the UN Advisers Group onInclusive Financial Sectors. The group ofmore than 20 global financial experts fromgovernments, central banks, regulatoryagencies, microfinance institutions, theprivate sector, civil society, developmentagencies and academia work together tomake financial services accessible for thepoor and for small enterprises across theglobe. ITU is also currently working with themicrocredit pioneer Grameen, the organiza-tion founded by the Nobel laureate Dr.Muhammad Yunus, and other partners, oneffective ways of combining Grameen’s mi-crocredit expertise with ITU’s experience im-plementing global ICT development pro-grams that can help the poor earn asustainable income.
Empowering the network
To that end, ITU, Grameen, Cisco Sys-tems, Qualcomm and the newly formed con-sortium Enclusion recently launched a virtualglobal ICT Empowerment Network consistingof numerous independent, self-financedgroups of partners. Each group will focus onat least one of three workstreams.
The workstream on ICT solutions focuseson developing and implementing low-cost ICTsolutions; one example is Enclusion’s plan toprovide affordable ICT access by expandingthe reach of existing GSM networks in re-mote rural areas. Using very low-cost VHF ra-dio, local farmers and small businesses willbe able to access low-bandwidth data ser-vices such as SMS and e-mail for microcredit
applications. Short-range voice capability tounserved and hard-to-reach villages will alsobe provided.
Under the Sustainable Business Modelsworkstream, promising young entrepreneurscan have their business plans assessed forpotential microcredit financing; graduates ofITU’s Internet Training Centers will be the firstto gain access to business-plan mentoringand microcredit start-up capital to launchtheir own ICT-related businesses. Under thisworkstream, the ITU is also working withGrameen and the GSM Association tospread the village phone and shared-accessmodels, which provide microcredit to localentrepreneurs in developing countries sothey are able to purchase a mobile phoneand then resell airtime to others in their com-munities. This creates opportunities for theentrepreneurs as well as spreading accessto ICTs in underserved communities.
The third workstream on Capacity Build-ing will leverage Grameen’s microcreditfinancing and expertise to expand the avail-ability of loans for students in ICT-relatedstudies. To begin with, Grameen will providemicrocredit-financed loans to eligible stu-dents at ITU Internet Training Centers as wellas to eligible applicants to ITU’s Youth Educa-tion Scheme. Over time, ITU and Grameen willencourage additional ICT training programsto join the network and expand the availabil-ity of microcredit loans for additional stu-dents.
Connect the World partner Cisco Sys-tems has already pledged $1 million to thenew network, with the money principally go-ing to fund student and entrepreneurialloans.
The ICT Empowerment Network repre-sents the first concrete collaboration toemerge from a broader cooperation agree-ment signed between Grameen and ITU atthe ITU Telecom World 2006 event in HongKong last December.�
ITU’s cooperative efforts are proving particularly fruitful in education through partnerships with local universities and educational authorities.
A t first glance, poring over musty legis-lation and reviewing arcane regulatorycriteria don’t sound like very hands-on
ways of bringing access to information andcommunications technology to poor commu-nities.
‘‘In fact, getting the regulatory frame-work right has a massive impact on a coun-try’s ability to unleash the development po-tential of ICTs,’’ explains the InternationalTelecommunication Union’s head of regula-tory and market environment, Doreen Bog-dan. ‘‘Markets need to be open enough toencourage competition and allow estab-lished operators and start-ups to providesought-after services to end users. Con-sumers need affordable access to appro-priate technologies, and companies need astable and transparent operating environ-ment with sufficient profit incentive to en-courage them to develop and expand theirservices.’’
That usually means that countries mustcomprehensively revise current licensing re-gimes to make it easier for new service pro-viders to enter the market. It also means en-suring that sufficient radio-frequencyspectrum is available for the wireless ser-vices that are often easier and more cost-ef-fective to deploy than traditional fixed-linenetworks. Finally, it means ensuring thatcompeting operators and service providerscan seamlessly interconnect with one anoth-er, so that users of different networks cancommunicate with one another.
‘‘Regulators in the world’s developed
markets have already begun updating theirregulatory frameworks to take account ofemerging technologies and user demand fornew services,’’ says Susan Schorr, ITU regu-latory specialist. ‘‘But developing countriesseeking to revise their regulations to harnessthe potential of new technologies often lackthe skills, expertise and human resources tooverhaul markets governed by legislationthat can be decades out of step with techno-logical change.’’
‘‘Telecommunications can define a coun-try’s success — or lack of it — in the worldeconomy,’’ says Ernest Chukwuka Ndukwe,chief executive officer of the Nigerian Com-munication Commission. ‘‘The telecom regu-lator’s role is to create a level playing field, at-tract investment and foster competition andgrowth in the ICT sector.’’
To help governments in under-resourcednations reconfigure their markets in a waythat encourages both investment and localentrepreneurship, ITU is partnering with theWorld Bank’s infoDev program to develop anonline ICT Regulation Toolkit. Conceived as apermanently evolving resource, the kit con-sists of a series of modules on key regulato-ry issues including service authorization; le-gal and institutional aspects of regulation;competition and price regulation, including in-
terconnection; new technologies; and radiospectrum management. A further module onuniversal access is currently under develop-ment.
Regulatory reform is also a key elementof ITU’s Connect the World initiative, throughits Enabling Environment building block. ITUrecently helped 15 West African countriesdevelop a common regulatory frameworkthrough an ICT Market Harmonization projectfunded by the European Union and adoptedby the heads of state and government of theEconomic Community of West African States(Ecowas). The agency is now working to ex-pand this project to cover the entire Africancontinent, in line with recent decisions of the2006 ITU World Telecommunication Devel-opment Conference.
ITU also holds the only annual gatheringfor the world’s ICT regulators. The GlobalSymposium for Regulators seeks to pro-mote information exchange and adoption ofregulatory best practices and to tackle topic-al issues confronting regulators worldwide.The most recent event, held in Dubai in Feb-ruary, debated the regulatory implications ofemerging ‘‘next-generation networks,’’ whichpose special challenges by blurring theboundaries between previously disparatetechnologies.�
J ust over 20 years ago, the InternationalTelecommunication Union, the UnitedNations agency for information and
communication technologies, commissioneda report entitled ‘‘The Missing Link.’’ The firststudy to provide a coherent global picture ofthe state of access to ICT worldwide and toquantify the impact of access on economicdevelopment, it painted a disturbing picture.
In the developed world, the landline tele-communication networks that had longserved as engines of economic growth wereassuming a new importance. Networkedcomputing — a development that wouldquickly give rise to the Internet — meant thatthe advantages of fast, reliable communica-tions networks were snowballing, providing anew conduit for economic growth.
Developing countries, with their chronic-ally poor network penetration, were suddenlyfalling even further behind the global growthcurve. While no one had yet coined the term‘‘digital divide,’’ the gulf that separated theworld’s information haves and have-notswas fast turning into a chasm so wide itmight never be bridged.
Sami Al Basheer Al-Morshid, director ofITU’s Telecommunication Development Bu-reau, says convincing governments of thecritical importance of ICTs to economic per-formance and establishing a regulatory envir-onment that stimulates private-sector in-vestment has been vital to start redress thebalance.
‘‘We’ve been emphasizing this stronglyfor many years, with some good results,’’ hesays. ‘‘In addition, the UN World Summit onthe Information Society, held in 2003 inGeneva and in 2005 in Tunis, helped focusglobal attention on the problem by bringingtogether key stakeholders from new con-stituencies spanning all sectors of the com-munity.’’
With objectives set by world leaders dur-ing WSIS and priorities developed at ITU’sown World Telecommunication Development
Conference (WTDC-06), ITU activities aroundthe world are designed to meet a broadrange of needs.
Its E-Strategies program, for example, fo-cuses on delivering expertise and seed fund-ing in six priority areas: Internet Protocol net-work development, e-services (agriculture,health, e-government, education and e-com-merce), multipurpose community telecen-ters, cybersecurity, e-legislation and commu-nity programs designed to build ICTawareness.
‘‘We’re striving to bring sustainable, af-fordable improvements to the daily lives of
ordinary people,’’ says E-Strategies UnitChief Robert Shaw. ‘‘The aim is to empowercommunities to develop their own ICT capa-city and resources according to their uniqueneeds.’’
ITU’s network of field offices, strategicallylocated throughout Africa, the Asia-Pacific re-gion, Latin America and the Caribbean, andthe Commonwealth of Independent States,also focuses on building solid relationshipswith local authorities and communities, witha view to promoting sustainable ICT accessinitiatives that enjoy the support of publicand private sector partners.�
International TelecommunicationUnion’s 2005 statistics paint a starkpicture of the information gap thatcontinues to separate the rich from thepoor.
• In 2005, fewer than four out of every100 Africans used the Internet,compared with one out of every twopeople living in the Group of 8 nations.
• The G-8 is home to just 15 percent ofthe world’s population, yet has 45percent of the world’s Internet users.
• At 2004-05 growth rates, less than 25percent of people living in thedeveloping world will be online by 2010,compared with 55 percent of theinhabitants of the developed world whowere already online by 2005.
• An estimated 30 percent of all villagesworldwide still have no access to basictelephone service.
• Seventy-nine percent of Africa’s 27million fixed phone lines are located injust six of its 54 nations.
• Access to broadband — the ‘‘big pipe’’connections increasingly vital toInternet access — now extends to 13percent of the population in high-incomecountries. It remains close to zero in thedeveloping world.
• Some 30 countries still rely on a single10Mbps international connection toserve their entire population; in wealthycountries, consumers can now buy theirown personal 10Mbps connection atvery affordable prices.
The International
Telecommunication
Union’s initiatives
play a vital role in
promoting the use
of information and
communication
technologies to
enhance economic
performance
N elson Mandela famously said thateducation is the most powerfulweapon humankind has at its dispos-
al for changing the world.A strong advocate of this view, the Inter-
national Telecommunication Union’s Tele-communication Development Sector ismaking human resource development a toppriority through a variety of diverse develop-ment programs.
One example is ITU’s work with the Con-nect the World partners Cisco Systems andthe European Commission on its InternetTraining Centers Initiative (ITCI), designed tohelp developing countries build their ownpool of ‘‘new economy’’ professionals whowill drive ongoing information and communi-cation technology growth at a local level.
ITU’s work with Cisco — which earnedthe UN agency a Cisco Partnership Awardearlier this year — has already seen the es-tablishment of 66 centers in 56 nations, 20of which are UN-designated Least De-veloped Countries (LDCs). The ITCI programalready boasts more than 3,000 graduates,with another 3,000+ students currently en-rolled. As well as creating a skilled local work
force, the initiative also seeks to break en-trenched gender barriers, targeting an annu-al intake of 30 percent female students.
The project’s success recently promptedITU to redouble its efforts through a newpartnership with the EC, adding 12 new cen-ters, six in LDCs. The curriculum providestwo streams for beginners and advancedstudents, including a course on Free andOpen Source Software (Floss) for dynamicWeb design and a basic ICT course focusingon using computers and applicationsdonated by Microsoft, another Connect theWorld partner, through its Unlimited Poten-tial program.
Funding and resources
Complementing the emphasis on Inter-net skills, ITU has also provided some $9million in seed funding, along with organiza-tional and intellectual resources, for the es-tablishment of a number of ICT Centers ofExcellence.
Designed to offer face-to-face work-shops as well as distance-learning sessionsto high-level ICT managers and policymakersin government and the private sector, the
centers serve as regional focal points forprofessional development, research and in-formation exchange. Thanks to substantialsupport from multilateral and regional or-ganizations and local business, there arenow ITU Centers of Excellence serving eastand west Africa, Latin America (including theCaribbean), the Arab states, the Asia-Pacificregion, Europe and the Commonwealth of In-dependent States countries.
Recognizing the vital importance of de-veloping the skills of young people — partic-ularly in the developing world, where under-25s account for more than half the totalpopulation — ITU also partners with a hostof leading ICT manufacturers and serviceproviders to fund YES, the ICT Youth Educa-tion Scheme.
Since its inception in 2003, the programhas awarded more than 50 educationalscholarships to disadvantaged tertiary stu-dents to enable them to pursue their stud-ies. Active partners include Alcatel-Lucent,Thales Communications, Vodafone, NokiaCommunications, NTI of Egypt and Anacom,Portugal’s national telecommunicationsregulator.�
