Digital Reach

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ORLD LEADERS MEETING

in Geneva in 2003 and again

in Tunis in 2005 have put their full commitment

behind building the Information Society and

connecting people to the benefits of information and commu-

nication technology (ICT).

On 16 June 2005, the International Telecommunication Union

(ITU) launched a major new development drive to bring the

benefits of ICT to the estimated one billion people worldwide

for whom making a simple telephone call remains out of reach.

Called Connect the World, the initiative is a global multi-stake-

holder effort established within the context of the World Summit

on the Information Society (WSIS) to encourage new projects and

partnerships to bridge the digital divide. By showcasing devel-

opment efforts now underway and by identifying areas where

needs are the most pressing, Connect the World will create a crit-

ical mass that will generate the momentum needed to connect

all communities by 2015.

The Connect the World platform will support a global online

community that is greater than the sum of its parts by leveraging

the skills and experience of a diverse range of players to achieve

a common goal: the empowerment of all the world’s people

through ICT.

The challenge

At present, ITU estimates that around 800 000 villages – or

30 per cent of all villages worldwide – are still without any

kind of connection. It would take an estimated USD1 billion

to connect all villages through shared community access points

such as a school, hospital or post office. From there, villages

could expand access through various local solutions.

Levering partnerships

Connect the World places strong emphasis on the importance of

partnerships between the public and private sectors, United

Nations (UN) agencies and civil society. It has 22 founding part-

ners, including leading corporate players such as Alcatel, Huawei,

Intel, Microsoft, KDDI, Telefónica, Infosys and WorldSpace,

whose CEOs have all embraced the goals of the initiative.

Founding partners also include governments and government

agencies including Egypt, France, Senegal and the Korea Agency

for Digital Opportunity and Promotion, regional and international

organizations including UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organisation (UNESCO), the Universal Postal Union, the

European Commission, the International Telecommunication

Satellite Organization, RASCOM and the United Nations Fund

for International Partnerships (UNFIP), as well as a range of orga-

nizations from civil society including Télécoms Sans Frontières

(TSF), the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) and

Child Helpline International.

Connect the World is an open-ended initiative. Since its launch,

new organizations continue to join, and new partners are actively

welcome.

Creating partnerships to connect the world to information and

communication technologies is in fact one of the Millennium

Development Goals. Connect the World will contribute in achiev-

ing several other global challenges and development targets

through expanded access to ICT.

ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi said: “No one living in

today’s interconnected world can doubt the importance of ICT in

achieving development goals. It’s important to remember, however,

that it’s not ICT that will solve the problem of the digital divide,

it’s people. More than that, it’s people working in partnership. So

while Connect the World is about harnessing the power of ICT,

it's also about harnessing the power of partnership.”

Building blocks

Connect the World comprises three key building blocks –

Enabling Environment, Infrastructure & Readiness, and

Applications & Services – which together constitute the primary

areas that need to be addressed when developing concrete

measures to accelerate ICT development. All Connect the World

founding partners have current development projects in one or

more of these areas. They will be encouraged to develop new part-

nerships and initiatives, while additional partners will be actively

sought in areas not adequately covered to ensure underserved

communities get what they need where it’s needed most.

Projects at a glance

As more partners join, Connect the World will grow to include

many promising projects that will contribute to the shared goal

of connecting all communities by 2015. The following is just a

glimpse at some of the many important initiatives currently under-

way by some of our founding partners.

MSSRF is leading a project in India to transform the lives of

the rural poor through improved access to information. MSSRF’s

‘Mission 2007: Every village a knowledge centre’ aims to take

the knowledge revolution to the more than 637 000 villages in

India by 15 August 2007. To achieve this, MSSRF has set up

one of the largest multi-stakeholder partnerships in the history

of development. The focus is on information sharing and knowl-

edge generation at the village level. Knowledge centres provide

information related to health, agriculture, fishing, education,

markets, crop diseases and animal husbandry.

The government of France is supporting the establishment of

an African Internet Registry and the creation of local Internet

registries to allocate Internet resources (IP addresses) on the entire

African continent. It is also helping set up African national domain

name entities (Network Information Centres) to manage Africa’s

Connect the world: the road ahead

International Telecommunication Union