From Future500 Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has issued a call for youth around the world to use the Internet and information technology to drive forward positive social change. His call demonstrates the breadth of attention the potential of ICT tools to advance poverty, education, health and human rights goals worldwide continues to draw from international diplomats, aid groups, governments and the private sector.
From virtual classrooms to medical information delivered via text message, from crowd sourcing crisis information to coordinating humanitarian response efforts new partnerships between the public, private and NGO sectors are exploring how to harness the power of technology.
Ban believes ICT tools can be used to overcome the myriad challenges to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which aim to drastically improve performance in eight areas by 2015 including poverty reduction, maternal mortality, universal education and gender equality.
“It is young people like you who are leading this revolution, who are not only finding their voices online but are using the technology to shape a better future for all of us,” Ban told schoolchildren at the recent International School-UN Conference.
The wide availability and ease of access to ICT makes it a powerful vehicle for reaching far-flung communities across the globe. Over 5.3 billion people, for example, currently use cellular telephones and 90% of the world’s population lives in areas with coverage, in addition to the 2 billion people worldwide with Internet access. Over 70% of cellular telephone subscriptions are in the developing word. This has led to explosive development of mobile health technologies – mHealth applications – that allow patients and medical professionals to prevent, diagnose and treat a growing list of conditions from afar.
One of the UN’s chief areas of ICT-related focus is to see broadband access available everywhere and the world body is encouraging governments to adopt plans to increase availability and view broadband as a development tool. Already 98 countries have countrywide broadband plans in place according to the International Telecommunications Union.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) signed a $12 million agreement earlier this month with the Commission of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) to create a virtual library to support the efforts of regional universities by providing ICT infrastructure such as fiber optic equipment and computers to institutions in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, Mali, Senegal and Togo. The project will also set up a cyber-institute for educators to take training courses and help create a central database for student scoring to harmonize regional standards
Tags: ban ki-moon, broadband access, ict, mHealth, unesco, united nations
