Speech by Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, ITU Secretary-General
Geneva, 4 September 2007
 

This is a regional approach to the Millennium Development Goals. This is why we have launched the Connect the World, which has the regional or sub-regional level. We wish to face the problems together. We obviously are going to start with Africa, where the conditions exist to undertake massive development.
 

Africa needs ICTs in order to achieve its millennium goals but Africa leads the economic indicators for the very first time and in some cases there have been growth rates of 200 or 400 per cent, obviously the starting point was very low nevertheless this is a tremendous rate of growth and now in some countries, like the Orange Group had its largest profit in Africa. We can afford to have a focused more aggressive approach in order to achieve the goals. And this is why within the framework of the Connect the World we started with Connect Africa. We have the leaders Summit on 29-30 October in Kigali under the patronage of the President of Rwanda, His Excellency Mr Paul Kagame, and His Excellency, Mr John Kufour of Ghana who is President of the African Union. All African countries and their Presidents are invited to attend, the African Union, World Bank, Global Alliance which was set up by Kofi Annan after the WSIS and the African Development Bank, the African Telecommunication Union’s Secretary General, Mr. Akossi Akossi, as well as African Economic Commission and the African Solidarity Fund. We want to mobilize our partners so they will start implementing infrastructure in the continent. We will discuss regional and national projects and seek partners which will allow us to implement our programs, our plans. This is the Marshall Plan idea. We are expecting massive investment, as was obtained by Europe after the Second World War. At the same time, Member States are creating the necessary regulatory frameworks and having a business-like approach. We are not asking for charity; we want proper partnerships which will help us to develop our continent, where partners will also make profit. We want to be sure that we consider the continent as a whole so that we can deal with all ICT issues at continental level. We hope that this will be a win-win situation – developed countries will have something to gain, as will developing countries, and everybody will get out of this because all partners can be winners in this sort of situation; there are no losers. We maintain the Millennium Development Goals for 2015; we hope that the date established by Africa will be 2012, because we know that if we do not achieve our millennium goals, nobody else will because we are the tool that all other development objectives will be using.
 

BDT is doing its best to ensure this implementation and five regional projects which were decided in Doha will be integral part and will be discussed at the Kigali Conference – we are calling it a Summit, but it is not a Summit which will be issuing recommendations or we will be negotiating comments or statements – this will be pragmatic, practical conference. We will be discus on how we can create wealth. We are going beyond poverty alleviation but rather wealth creation. We will be creating enough jobs which will create wealth and I think that we all will be moving ahead together.
 

A few words about the Summit – all the projects which will be submitted have been designed by Africans for Africans. We want this partnership to work. We hope that something similar will be done next year in the other regions, in Asia, in Latin America, in the Caribbean, and I think we need to have these meetings in all regions to ensure that we all are at the same level and we can work together.