ITU Council: Focus on Cyber Security and ICT Infrastructure in Developing World
ITU’s annual Council meeting, in session 4-14 September in Geneva, Switzerland, is focusing on cyber security and building telecommunication and ICT infrastructure. Ministerial representatives of 7 countries addressed the assembly.
For the first time in ITU’s history, the Council meeting opened with such a ‘high-level segment’. It is indicative of the importance attributed to the mission of ITU in connecting the world, in developing new standards for state-of-the-art information, ICT and managing spectrum in an increasingly wireless environment.
Confidence and security in using information and communication technologies are fundamental in building an inclusive, secure and global information society. The legal, technical and institutional challenges posed by cyber threats and cyber crime are global and far reaching, and can only be addressed through a coherent strategy taking into account the role of different stakeholders and existing initiatives, within a framework of international cooperation, according to ITU.
In Cameroon, the greatest cyber attacks range from piracy, the spread of illicit content such as pedophilia, pornography, money laundering and drug trafficking, as well as identity fraud, commented Maïgari Bello Bouba, Minister of Post and Telecommunications. He added that Cameroon plans to develop by 2012 an optical fiber based next generation network to meet the chronic lack of broadband.
TU is organizing a series of multi stakeholder initiatives in different parts of the world with the key objective of accelerating ICT investment and broadband access in under-served areas, as well as supporting broader social and economic development. The first of these initiatives is Connect Africa, a summit to be held in Kigali, Rwanda, on 29-30 October 2007.
“The lack of investment in reliable and affordable infrastructure has undermined the development of necessary infrastructure and thus resulted in persistently high connectivity costs in developing countries relative to those in the developed world,” said South Africa’s Minister of Communications, Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri. “As developing countries grapple with challenges regarding the provision of basic services such as water, sanitation, electricity and housing to the poor, deliberate efforts must also be made to create a policy and regulatory environment to enable the provision of ICT connectivity”.
Burkina Faso’s Minister of Post and ICT, Mr. Joachim Tankoano, called on ITU to increase its assistance to developing countries in the formulation and implementation of their national strategies for telecommunications/ICT development. These include the development of broadband infrastructure by promoting new public-private partnerships; the RASCOM project in efforts to launch the first pan-African satellite for telecommunications; strengthening and harmonizing policy and regulatory frameworks to promote the integration of African ICT markets; bridge the standardization gap between the developing and the developed world; facilitate equitable access to the radio frequency spectrum and satellite orbits; and capacity building.
Ghana’s Minister of Communications, Mr. Benjamin Aggrey Ntim, said that in Africa, ICT/telecommunications was not a matter of choice but a necessity. “We recognize that ICT is an indispensable tool for enhancing development and providing opportunities in the achievement of our developmental objectives, in particular the Millennium Development Goals.” He stressed that governments owe it to their citizens to play key collaborative roles in pursuing infrastructure development programs in the communications sector, including the energy sector. In Ghana, telephone subscription reached 6.7 million this year, representing a teledensity of 32 per cent.
Source: ITU
