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International e-Partnership Summit

Date: 23 Mar 2007
Speaker: Secretary-General Don McKinnon
Location: New Delhi, India

Commonwealth Connects: the International e-Partnership Summit - Speech by Don McKinnon

Your Excellency, Mr President,

Ministers, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

I’m delighted to be here today. Few places could be more appropriate to have this e-Partnership summit than here in India, home to nothing short of a technological revolution in recent years.

And it is a great honour to have President Abdul Kalam here today: thank you for being with us.

Ladies and gentlemen: if, as you put your mobile phone on ‘Silent’ a few minutes ago, you wondered whether this much-discussed ‘digital divide’ was quite as divisive as people are claiming, then consider this. Three quarters of the people on this planet, that’s about 4½ billion people, have never heard a dial tone of any kind.

You people are silenced until lunchtime; billions more are silenced for a lifetime.

So this is no time for philosophical debate about the quality of our landline or mobile telephone conversations.

But it is a time to ask what a telephone call can do. 

• It can make contact with a doctor in an emergency. 
• It can arrange transport to get a child to or from school. 
• It can help business – is the market on Tuesday or Wednesday? And at what price can I sell?

And if the telephone can do that, then the internet can do so much more. 600 million users – a tenth of the world’s population – would agree. But the rest of the world would know no better.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope that I have made a ‘high-speed connection’ to launch this conference. The Digital Divide is a reality – and it must be tackled.

Let me quote you former World Bank President Jim Wolfensohn, who gave last year’s Commonwealth Lecture.

We have a ‘three-speed world’, he said: the rich, the big ‘wannabes’, and the poor. And if ‘three-speed’ implies that the gears can change, then we have to make sure that the cabling is in full working order. And right now, both within gears and between them, there is a serious disconnect.

Now some of that ‘disconnection’ has to do with things like failures in democratic government and institutions. Some of it has to do with lack of food, water, natural resources and above all health and education. Some, to do with war and conflict.

But a sizeable portion of it has to do with the haves and have-nots of technology: what we call the Digital Divide.

Our conference today – and our Commonwealth task in the next 5 to 10 years – is to bridge that Divide. Our task is to unleash human potential by sharing what we call our ‘common ICT-wealth’ across the 53-nation Commonwealth.

To play its part in ‘Bridging the digital divide’ was the task given to the Commonwealth by our Heads of Government when they met in Malta in November 2005.

My message today – to you and to them – is that we have come a very long way in that time, but that we need to go a great deal further.

Our leaders will rightly ask what we have done and what we can do, when they meet again in Uganda in November. I want to show them ways to help their poorest people. I want to be able to show that our contribution stands proud alongside those of other international organisations, of national governments, and of companies like Microsoft and Cisco who are here today.

There are two issues at stake here for the Commonwealth.

The first is ‘relevance’ – and whether we are meeting our member countries’ needs.

The second is ‘development’ – and whether we are bettering the lot of the 800 million Commonwealth citizens who live on a dollar a day, who are often denied the fruits of human development in health and education, and of economic development in new jobs and livelihoods.

Technology – and the bridging of the digital divide – is a vital means to that end.

So what has this meant in practice? Thus far, for the Commonwealth, three things.

First, a portal website which is our official domain of best policy and practice.

Second, the ‘match-making’ of the people who need help with the people who can give that help.

Third, a launch pad for small, practical and of course sustainable programmes in our member countries.

I’d just like to say a little more about each.

First, the website, at http://www.commonwealthconnects.net/. The site has seen more than 70% growth in traffic since we launched it last August – but it needs more users, and so I ask you today to contribute to it and to take from it.

The site can be approached via the five main subjects it deals with: 

• First, policy and regulation – agreeing national Information and Communication Technology strategies, and the laws and frameworks to enact them 
• Second, education – teaching people how to use information technology, and how to teach others using technology
• Third, entrepreneurship – encouraging IT-based small businesses
• Fourth, local access – quite literally providing the wherewithal to ‘connect’ far-flung communities
• Fifth, regional networks sharing local information – having connected far-flung communities, then connecting groups of far-flung communities.
• The Commonwealth Connects website can also be approached via the five main tools which it applies to those policy areas.
• First, the ‘skills exchange’, where experts can post their CVs, and where countries post the tasks that they need help with. India has offered us top-class expertise, thought not through the site: so I call on you all to use this part of the site – whether you’re ‘buying’ or ‘selling’.
• Second, the ‘expert forums’…. which host online debate on IT matters – everything from Internet banking, to technology and its relationship with both poverty and gender. Those debates are gathering steam. 
• Third, the ‘digital library’: a repository of best national and international practice, for developed and developing country environments alike. You can get the latest on monitoring and evaluating e-strategies, on guidebooks on ‘Internet Protocol’ networks, and more. 
• Fourth, the ‘project marketplace’: currently home to over 150 new project proposals from governments, NGOs or individuals, seeking support either from sponsors or from Commonwealth Connects.

I went ‘surfing’ last week, and in three clicks I went from an Indian proposal to provide internet advice to farmers about the types of soil on their farm and thereby best crops to grow in it…..

…. to a proposal for training journalists in rural Pakistan on how to use technology to create more opportunities for free speech….

…. to a proposal to teach teachers and their pupils in Sierra Leone how to use the Internet to expand their own knowledge.

· Fifth, the ‘software directory’, where you can download - for free - the softwares to allow you to do everything from managing websites for NGOs and schools, to managing small businesses.

The website may be the centre-piece of the Commonwealth Connects programme, but – as I say – it’s the first of three elements.

The second is the ‘match-making’. Here, the most effective work we can do is to fill gaps and give strategic direction to national ICT strategies.

Some of you will know that last week the Commonwealth Secretariat published a major benchmarking study which found that only 15 of our Commonwealth member countries had coherent national strategies, and that the remaining 38 actively needed help.

Work has begun to give them that help. We are already working with the Government of Belize, and several other similar assignments are under discussion.

And the third is the hands-on and practical projects, of which three are underway using 2006 funding – with a further small selection for 2007 to be made in the next few months, from among those 150 new proposals I mentioned.

In Trinidad and Tobago, we’re in the process of establishing a refurbishment centre for used computers, so that they can be re-used in schools, community access centres and libraries.

In Cameroon, a Commonwealth project is underway which will lead nearly 2 million women to practical advice on setting up small businesses, using the medium of community radio via the web.

In India and Sri Lanka, we are setting up websites to make for better coordination among civil society organisations involved in Tsunami reconstruction work. In eight eastern districts of Sri Lanka, and in Tamilnadu and Puducherry here in India, over 40,000 families are benefiting.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is ‘bridging the digital divide’ in practice.

For Vijay, for the people of Tamilnadu and for millions of others, the practicality of ‘bridging the digital divide’ means using technology to ‘transform societies’.

Those two words will resonate with anyone who is thinking ahead to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Kampala, since ‘Transforming societies’ is the theme of that meeting.

Heads of Government will look critically at our work. They will ask questions.

• Are we ‘transforming societies’ and lives?
• Can we really make a difference – for the good?
• Are we bringing advice to the people who most need it?
• Is our website really a crossroads for sharing ideas and skills?
• Do we have the prospect of more government funding – on top of that so generously provided by India, Malta, Trinidad & Tobago and Mozambique – to keep this work going?

It’s your challenge in the next eight hours of plenary and roundtable debate, and our collective challenge in the next eight months, to ensure that the answer to all these questions is ‘yes’.

We have come a long way; we have much further to go.

Sincere thanks to you all – not just for being here, but for everything you are doing to make technology the vehicle for progress that it so obviously can be.

I wish you a very successful conference.

ENDS

Download the speech: International e-Partnership Summit