Broadband Commission is co-chaired by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Mr Carlos Slim Helú

Leading lights from industry, civil society, UN agencies and the creative sphere, who together comprise the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, have emphasized the critical role of broadband networks in future global development.

Commissioners met in private session in Geneva on 11 July to set about defining a vision for accelerating the deployment of broadband networks worldwide, with the aim of improving the delivery of services across a huge range of social and business sectors, and accelerating progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The Commission is co-chaired by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Mr Carlos Slim Helú, Honorary Lifetime Chairman of Grupo Carso, with ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Touré and UNESCO Director-General, Ms Irina Bokova, serving as joint vice chairs.

It will deliver its outcomes to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 19 September 2010 at an official side event of the UN MDG Summit in New York, which starts on September 20.

These outcomes will be presented in the form of two reports, the first of which will reflect expert input from the Commissioners, and the second of which will comprise in-depth analysis of the challenges and opportunities in deploying broadband across a range of different types of economies.

The first report will also include a series of top-level Recommendations designed to serve as a global blueprint for rapid broadband development worldwide, while the second report will take into account local needs, financing constraints and technical hurdles, and make practical proposals on possible routes towards deployment of ubiquitous high-speed networks at affordable prices in every country worldwide.

“The global deployment of broadband networks will be as powerful a transformational force for the 21st century as the progressive installation of electricity networks was in the first decades of the 20th century,” said Dr Touré. “Just as connection to the power grid is now seen as a basic element of social and economic empowerment, so ubiquitous connectivity to broadband networks will be vital to the ongoing development of every nation worldwide.”

“The latest information and communication technologies (ICTs) have created new opportunities for the creation, preservation, dissemination and use of information,” said the UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, who was represented at the meeting by Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information Mr Janis Karklins. “We aim to go further, towards the construction of inclusive knowledge societies in which people can transform information into knowledge and understanding that empowers them to improve their livelihoods and contribute to their social and economic development. Universal access to broadband-enabled applications will be vital for achieving this goal.”

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame wants to secure a piece of the growing technology market that has already brought so much change to sub-Saharan Africa, and he’s starting young.

Kagame recently announced that he would provide a laptop for every child in his country between the ages of six and 18, [2] reports The Economist. The magazine suggests the move is based on both economic as well as educational motives: The President has made it clear that he intends to have 50,000 computer programmers by 2020 as a result of the laptop program.

To reach that goal, he is working with the American non-profit One Laptop per Child [3] (OLPC), an organization that is the first of its kind to provide durable and affordable laptops to many in the developing world. According to their website they believe (as I do) that a laptop can be a key for children to engage in their own education [4] more fully than traditional rote learning. OLPC claims their laptops offer a way for the user to connect with both their local and greater communities in order to expose them to a world that is often not available.

The more practical economic benefits of such a program are also apparent. The president has already purchased 100,000 laptops from OLPC, according to the Economist, and plans to buy 1.2 million more as early as 2012 [2]. Over the long term, the initiative will create more jobs for computer teachers and repairmen.
And Government agencies and businesspeople have already started programs to help educate a computer-savvy population [5] reports The New Times of Kigali.

Understandably, the plan has been criticized by many who think the money would be better spent on more visible and perhaps more necessary projects for the impoverished nation, including food distribution, health care subsidies and infrastructure development. Although the country must never lose focus on these persistent problems, there must also be room for the Rwandan Government to take risks on other fronts. The overall benefits of education are difficult to quantify but are nevertheless unquestionably valuable. Technology markets are on the rise throughout Africa, and President Kagame doesn’t seem to want to let this opportunity pass.

Source URL: http://www.globalenvision.org/2009/12/14/browsing-new-future-laptops-rwanda

Kigali — President Kagame is scheduled to participate in the African Union (AU) Summit of Heads of State that begins today in Addis Ababa. The theme of the summit is Information and Communications Technology.

President Kagame, a strong proponent of ICT as an engine of economic growth, is scheduled to deliver a keynote address to the summit entitled “Information and Communication Technologies in Africa: Challenges and Prospects for Development”.

The President, a member of the Advisory Council for the 2011 World Bank Development Report, is also scheduled to participate in a council meeting to be held at the AU headquarters immediately following the summit.

Other meetings that will be held on the sidelines of the summit include an ALMA (African Leaders Malaria Alliance) event and a round table discussion on ICT organised jointly by the African Development Bank and World Bank.