Media Home
UN Web TV
UN Audiovisual Library
UN PhotoDOHA / LDC5 DIGITAL CONNECTIVITY
Download
There is no media available to download.
Share
STORY: DOHA / LDC5 DIGITAL CONNECTIVITY
TRT: 03:42
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 06 MAR 2023, DOHA, QATAR
1. Various shots, LDC5 venue, participants, conference room
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Hakainde Hichilema, President, Zambia:
“Despite the digital wave around the globe, millions of our people in LDCs are still unable to enjoy the inherent benefits of these technologies.
3. Wide shot, Hichilema at podium
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Hakainde Hichilema, President, Zambia:
“Digital connectivity is no longer an option for LDCs but a lifeline. It can play a critical role in creating new opportunities. It can help us LDCs unlock our respective potentials to maintain sustainable development.”
5. Wide shot, Hichilema at podium
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Chris Sharrock, Vice President, UN Affairs and International Organisations, Microsoft:
“We should not forget that connectivity is not an end in itself. It is a means. It's a means to the tool, to having access to the tools that are going to make someone more productive in their work, that is going to make someone more creative and expressing themselves, as education and health care become progressively reliant on these things. On access to these things, it's going to be an essential fundamental need to actually advance people's well-being and their lives, and so we just can't lose sight of that.”
7. Wide shot, speakers at podium
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Chris Sharrock, Vice President, UN Affairs and International Organisations, Microsoft:
“We made a commitment through our Airband initiative to expand Internet access to a quarter of a billion people worldwide, and we have the Viaset partnership that was already referred to, that was the first 10 million in that direction. We also have the commitment to have 100 million more people online in Africa, and the partnership with Liquid is taking us to the first 20 million of those.”
9. Wide shot, speakers at podium
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Chris Sharrock, Vice President, UN Affairs and International Organisations, Microsoft:
“Partnership has to be absolutely at the heart of this approach, even for a company as big as ours. When you're faced with a challenge at this scale, you're only going to make progress by partnering.”
11. Wide shot, speakers at podium
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Haoliang Xu, Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Bureau of Policy and Programme Support, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP):
“Digitalization is seen as a way to leap forward the development and helping, you know, the population to access new possibilities such as electronic commerce services provided by electronic means in remote areas. So digitalization is seen as an important means to deal with some of these challenges.”
13. Wide shot, LDC5 venue, exterior
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Haoliang Xu, Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Bureau of Policy and Programme Support, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP):
“One of the major challenges in digital areas is the lack of access of the population to the internet. In developed countries, 88 percent of the population has access to internet. In the LDCs, the average is 36 percent. For women in LDCs is only 30 percent.”
15. Wide shot, LDC5 flags, exterior
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Haoliang Xu, Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Bureau of Policy and Programme Support, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP):
“The private sector is important, but you need the public incentives, you need the international partners to support because, for LDCs, some are very, very small and don’t have economy of scale, so you need to look at how the private sector can invest but also get back in return.”
17. Wide shot, LDC5 flags, exterior
Today (6 Mar), the Fifth UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5) in Doha, Qatar, turned its attention to one of our most nettlesome global challenges: closing the staggeringly wide digital divide between nations.
A series of roundtable discussions saw global leaders confront two of the most fundamental hurdles facing LDCs: how to use better science, technology, and innovation (STI) and how to promote structural transformations that can help overcome the real impediments faced by those on the margins of society.
STI is critical in LDCs’ efforts to drive poverty eradication, transition to sustainable development, and become globally competitive.
However, due to structural constraints, these vulnerable countries often need help to reap technological development's full economic and social benefits.
According to many speakers today, the key is finding ways to connect those left behind, sustainably address the divide, and foster conditions for more inclusive digital access.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Internet access are key building blocks of the digital economy and have been recognized as important drivers for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Connectivity has the potential to sustain families, communities, and businesses through online work, e-learning, e-commerce, online health services, etc.
But this connectivity can only be fully exploited with the right skills, tools, and enabling environments.
Hakainde Hichilema, President of Zambia, said, “Despite the digital wave around the globe, millions of our people in LDCs are still unable to enjoy the inherent benefits of these technologies.”
He also said, “Digital connectivity is no longer an option for LDCs but a lifeline. It can play a critical role in creating new opportunities. It can help us LDCs unlock our respective potentials to maintain sustainable development.”
Chris Sharrock, Vice President of UN Affairs and International Organisations at Microsoft, said, “We should not forget that connectivity is not an end in itself. It is a means.”
He also said, “We made a commitment through our Airband initiative to expand Internet access to a quarter of a billion people worldwide, and we have the Viaset partnership that was already referred to, that was the first 10 million in that direction. We also have the commitment to have 100 million more people online in Africa, and the partnership with Liquid is taking us to the first 20 million of those.”
Sharrock continued, “Partnership has to be absolutely at the heart of this approach, even for a company as big as ours. When you're faced with a challenge at this scale, you're only going to make progress by partnering.”
In an interview today in Doha, Haoliang Xu, Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Bureau of Policy and Programme Support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) explained,
“Digitalization is seen as a way to leap forward the development and helping, you know, the population to access new possibilities such as electronic commerce services provided by electronic means in remote areas. So, digitalization is seen as an important means to deal with some of these challenges.”
He continued, “One of the major challenges in digital areas is the lack of access of the population to the internet. In developed countries, 88 percent of the population has access to internet. In the LDCs, the average is 36 percent. For women in LDCs is only 30 percent.”
He concluded, “the private sector is important, but you need the public incentives, you need the international partners to support because, for LDCs, some are very, very small and don’t have economy of scale, so you need to look at how the private sector can invest but also get back in return.”
