Opening Remarks by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-General
CMAI ICT World Education Excellence Awards 2022
International Conference on new dimensions in education and skilling post COVID & need for global alliances in higher education for sustainability & growth
25 February 2022
Namaste!
Let me begin by thanking the CMAI and my good friend Professor Goyal for inviting me to share my thoughts on education and skilling with you today. And thank you for your welcome and kind words Professor Khandal.
We cannot talk about this subject without recognising the impact COVID-19 had on learning for students, especially those not connected to the Internet. Now we have another crisis to deal with following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Let's give some thought today to the poor students in Ukraine.
At the pandemic's peak, some 1.6 billion school and college students had their studies interrupted.
As we enter the third year of the pandemic, more than 616 million students remain affected by full or partial school closures worldwide. A recent UN-backed report warned that these closures could cost today's students a staggering US$17 trillion in lost lifetime earnings.
Access to the Internet has proved to be extremely beneficial during the crisis in all areas of society and business. But the question is how many students affected by these closures have access to the Internet at home? How many can afford digital devices? And how many have the digital skills to use them?
These questions were addressed at the sixth ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum at the end of December last year. Over 400 top global representatives from the public and private sectors explored actions to boost universal, affordable and secure connectivity. They adopted a set of five Opinions to mobilize new and emerging technologies for sustainable development, including one on “Digital literacy and skills for inclusive access".
The Opinion calls for greater collaboration and coordination among governments, the private sector, international and intergovernmental organizations, civil society, the technical community and academia, especially in developing countries. It comes at a time when 96% of the unconnected live in developing countries, and when one of the main barriers to Internet uptake in these countries is people's lack of capacity and skills to use online platforms and resources to best advantage. These Opinions are available on the ITU website.
As Swami Vivekan-an-da once said, “A nation is advanced in proportion as education and intelligence spread among the masses." This thinking is at the heart of ITU's initiatives such as the ITU-ILO Digital Skills Campaign to equip 25 million young people with job-ready digital skills by 2030, and the new Joint Facility for Capacity Development led by ITU and UNDP.
Forging the right multistakeholder partnerships and alliances can achieve far-reaching results, where each brings their own specific competence and expertise to the table.
One example of this type of collaboration is the ITU-UNICEF Giga initiative to connect every school to the Internet. Giga has already mapped over 1 million schools in 42 countries on the “Project Connect" platform and is proposing the launch of a US$5 billion Giga-sourced capital, a key layer to fund connecting the remaining unconnected schools.
The UN Secretary-General has described this initiative as a key step in making access to the Internet a basic human right. In addition, according to UNICEF, connecting schools in countries with low broadband connectivity can potentially boost GDP by up to 20%.
So let me invite you all to engage with these ITU activities and become an academic member of ITU, if you are not already, and help us close the digital divide so that no one is left behind.
I have always advocated greater involvement of India in ITU's work, and with the opening of the ITU South Asian Area Office and Technology Innovation Centre in Delhi shortly I am sure this help.
This will be an active year for ITU. Next week the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly will start in Geneva. Unfortunately, this was to be help in Hyderabad in 2020 but was not possible due to Covid. We look forward to the next Assembly being in India. We will have the postponed World Telecommunication Development Conference in June, and the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in September and October.
It is going to be a challenging year but a challenge we are ready to embrace, and I encourage all our Indian partners to join us and take an active part in these important events.
Let me conclude by congratulating today's awardees in recognition of their excellence in education and the development of digital skills in India and around the world.
I wish you all every success in this endeavour.
Thank you.
