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July 7, 2004
Mohan Kaul: This Forum Will Not Be Another Talk Shop
This morning in Pointe-Aux-Piments, Mauritius, Mohan Kaul of the Commonwealth Business Council opened the ICT Stakeholders Forum. "This forum will not be another talk shop," he said. Instead, it would be "a multi-stakeholder discussion on actual projects" involving education technology, e-health, Internet access and technologies for small and medium enterprises.
"The widespread convergence of ICTs has change the world… But 95% of people are still out of this change," he said. "So the digital divide between countries and within countries is a major challenge ahead." Kaul noted that the Commonwealth Business Council held a summit in London last October prior to the first WSIS meeting in Geneva. The recommendation coming out of that event was that Commonwealth ICT ministers should focus on local and national initiatives that implement e-gov ernment projects, support e-schools, for example. But at WSIS, delegates were "disillusioned and impatient" about seeing ICTs put into action as a tool for development. So the council decided to host an event in Mauritius that would focus on projects on the ground in least-developed countries (LDCs) working to bridge the divide.
Posted by acarvin at July 7, 2004 4:41 AM
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