Industry Advisory Group on Development Issues and Private Sector Chief Regulatory Officers' (IAGDI-CRO) Meeting
Industry and Private Sector: Contributing to the Partner2Connect Digital Coalition
Opening Remarks
Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Director, ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau
24 February 2022
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening everyone, welcome, and thank you for joining us today for this IAGDI-CRO meeting on ITU's new Partner2Connect Digital Coalition.
To give all our private sector and industry members an opportunity to participate, we've organized two sessions of this meeting to accommodate as much as possible your different time zones.
At BDT, we regard IAGDI-CRO as one of the key platforms to engage the private sector in our work.
And we also know that your contributions have never been needed more, as governments around the world struggle to get back on their feet after the economic battering inflicted over the past two years.
COVID has shown us just how important it is to be connected, and brought new urgency to global efforts to connected the unconnected. But with government finances hit hard by the fallout, it's increasingly clear that collaboration and public-private partnership are the only viable way forward.
We need a much more cooperative, holistic and cross-sectoral approach if we are to succeed in bridging global and regional connectivity gaps.
That's why, last September on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, we launched the Partner2Connect Digital Coalition in collaboration with the Office of the UN Secretary-General's Envoy on Technology.
The latest figures from ITU, released at the end of last year, estimate that 2.9 billion people remain completely and totally offline, and that hundreds of millions more lack the affordable, accessible and reliable connectivity that would meaningfully change their lives.
Partner2Connect is a leadership-level multistakeholder alliance aimed at fostering meaningful connectivity and digital transformation in the hardest-to-connect communities globally, with a focus on, but not limited to, Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island Developing States.
We're looking to mobilize resources through concrete commitments and pledges across four Focus Areas:
- Connecting people everywhere, which tackles the issue of ''access''
- Empowering communities, which seeks to drive ''adoption''
- Building digital ecosystems, which stimulates ''value creation'' so that people can leverage connectivity in ways that are meaningful to them, and
- Incentivizing investments, to ''accelerate'' the pace of our work.
In a moment, we're going to hear from speakers who will share more information on how Partner2Connect works, and the role that you can play.
But let me just note that our World Telecommunication Development Conference, which will be held this coming June in Kigali, Rwanda, will for the first time feature a special Partner2Connect Digital Development Roundtable programme that will give a more active role to our private sector partners.
That programme will focus on showcasing the commitments and pledges we garner through P2C to the whole world, and to giving P2C supporters a privileged opportunity to meet with other leaders and top officials from government and industry, to help them forge new alliances and strategies to drive digital development.
I would like to take this opportunity extend a special invitation to each of our IAGDO-CRO members to make a commitment through the P2C Pledging Platform, and to take your place as a key player in this roundtable programme. This isn't about resolutions or declarations of intent. It's about clear, concrete commitments. We need your energy, your expertise, your resources – and, critically, your voice at the table.
I am greatly encouraged that quite a few of you present today have already decided to join the Partner2Connect Digital Coalition. I hope, during this session, we succeed in convincing those of you still not onboard to step up, seize the challenge – and the opportunities – and work alongside us to connect the unconnected.
One last word. You may already know that this year, WTDC will be preceded by the first-ever global Youth Summit. We are encouraging all ITU-D members to encourage youth participation by sponsoring young people aged 18-24 to participate in their delegations to WTDC.
Our Generation Connect team can give you more information, and I hope very much that we can count on you to support your region's young digital leaders, and give them an opportunity to share their ideas and vision for a more connected world.
Thank you very much for your time, and I now hand the floor to Cosmas to take this session forward.
