BRINGING MORE OF AFRICA ONLINE MUST BE FOLLOWED UP BY PROVIDING CONTENT, SOFTWARE,

STRESSES SECRETARY-GENERAL IN MESSAGE TO MEETING ON COMPUTER ACCESS FOR STUDENTS

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message to the meeting on the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development initiative for computer access to students in developing countries, as delivered in Las Vegas today, 8 January, by Guido Bertucci, Director, Division for Public Administration and Development Management, Department of Economic and Social Affairs:

I am pleased to send my greetings to this diverse gathering of officials and experts committed to our shared goal of bridging the digital divide.  You are going beyond words to take action on a concrete, time-bound initiative to give millions of children in 60 developing countries access to computers.

You bring together a broad range of players with the influence, expertise and technology needed to design a viable and sustainable partnership.  And you are acting at a propitious time, building on the momentum generated by last October’s Connect Africa Summit in Kigali.

Bringing more of Africa online is only a first step which must be followed by the provision of content, computers and software to give meaning to this emerging connectivity.  And to have a broader positive impact on society as a whole, these must be made available in schools, where eager young students can use them to learn and share new skills, achieving a breakthrough in education that will help foster development for generations to come.

Your full engagement is vital to realizing this vision.  The United Nations family stands ready to assist with infrastructure, support networks and outreach to the international community to bolster your efforts.

Working together, we can make good on promises to bridge the digital divide, student by student, classroom by classroom and country by country.  I welcome your best efforts towards this end, and look forward to hearing back from you on plans to see this initiative through to fruition.

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For information media • not an official record