International Telecommunication
Union (ITU)
Pursuant
to point 43 (f) [1] under Commitment 4 of the Brussels Programme
of Action, (Building productive capacities to make globalization
work for LDCs), International Telecommunication Union is providing
assistance to least developed countries (LDCs) in the following
priority areas:
-
Introduction of new technologies
e.g. assistance was provided to Nepal in its migration from a Public
Switched Telephone Network to an Internet Protocol network;
-
Sector reform and restructuring
e.g. Guinea Bissau received assistance in a very comprehensive sectoral
study;
-
Rural telecommunication development
e.g. Mozambique received assistance in the development of its universal
access policy and Niger got assistance in the modernization of that
country’s 7 provincial towns;
-
Human resource development/management
e.g. Eritrea received assistance in the development of business
plan for the establishment of a telecommunication training college;
-
Financing, tariffs and partnerships
e.g. a Partnership Round Table was held in November 2001 to promote
projects from six countries namely, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique,
Nepal, Niger and Yemen.
In
2002 efforts are focused on concentrating assistance on eight LDCs
(Bhutan, Central African Republic, Djibouti, Haiti, Kiribati, Malawi,
Mali and Zambia). Priority areas are also in the above listed areas.
Following
all the efforts made in the post-Third United Nations Conference
on LDCs, teledensities in least developed countries have significantly
improved. By end of 2001, out of the 49 countries, 26 had a combined
(fixed and mobile) teledensity above 1. Cape Verde is leading with
14,27 main lines and Maldives follows with 10.09 main lines. Some
of the LDCs have by far higher teledensities than most non-LDCs.
Ten of the LDCs enjoyed mobile teledensities above 1 by end of 2001
and have even risen further during the first quarter of 2002.
Special
assistance was also provided to countries emerging out of war situations
(Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra
Leone and Somalia), otherwise known as Countries in Special Need.
ITU has devoted a lot of resources in assisting these countries.
In 2002, this list was expanded to include Afghanstan, East Timor,
Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. In 2001, CHF 1,242,000
was provided to these countries as a group from ITU’s Telecom Surplus
Funds. In 2002, Burundi and Rwanda received US$ 1,000,000 each for
purposes of reconstructing their telecommunication infrastructures
destroyed by war. Each of the countries will reconstruct 4 rural
telecommunication networks destroyed by war or whose installation
was disrupted by war. Although, these countries’ telecommunications
is characterized by feeble fixed main line teledensity, this is
somewhat propped up by robust growth of the cellular networks.
Assessment
of Implementation of Deliverables as presented to the Third United
Nations Conference on LDCs
a)
The Telecommunication Development Bureau’s (BDT) Sector Reform
Unit provided assistance to LDCs in restructuring of their telecommunication
sectors. An online forum was launched to help telecommunication
regulators to exchange views on how to handle regulatory issues
that may help attract investment into the sector. A Global Symposium
for Regulators was held in December 2001, attracting 370 delegates
from over 100 Member States, including representatives from 72 regulatory
bodies, communications ministers and policy-makers as well as 21
Sector Member companies. Representatives from least developed countries
were provided with fellowships to allow them to attend and participate
in this event. At the regional level, BDT assisted the African regulators
community to launch the African Telecommunication Regulators’ Network
at the Forum on Telecommunication Regulation in Africa and the Arab
States held in Morocco in September 2001.
b)
Rural Development and Universal Service/Access: The implementation
of ten MCT [2] pilot projects in different countries was pursued,
focusing expanding services and increasing the potential for sustainability.
Various new projects following different organizational and implementation
models have been initiated. The projects involve a number of international
and national partners, both public and private. A number of training
seminars were recently held focusing on strategies for sustainable
universal access in four participating countries, three of which
are LDCs i.e. Burkina Faso, Malawi and Nepal. This included training
of senior policy-makers, regulators, operators and representatives
of the private sector from the four countries.
c)
Finance and economics, including WTO issues, tariffs, accounting rates
etc: Five seminars and five workshops
were organized in the Africa and Asia-Pacific regions. The seminars
were mainly oriented towards propagating the guidelines for pricing
both frequency usage and telecommunication services including interconnection.
Significant room has been left for the present and future situations
of Internet Protocol-based networks in relation to settlement regimes
and congestion-dependent pricing principles. Ethiopia and Sierra
Leone are some of the LDCs that received assistance in setting up
a mechanism for financing universal service.
d)
Development of partnership with the private sector: Two meetings were held in Geneva and followed by presentations made
at Supercomm in Atlanta focusing on the Americas region. The region
has one LDC, Haiti. However, forging partnership with organizations
in all regions will certainly benefit LDCs irrespective of where
they are located. Other two private-sector coordination meetings
were held in the Arab region in Casablanca and in the Asia region
in Bangalore. More partnership meetings are scheduled for the whole
period leading to 2010.
e)
Capacity building through human resources development and management: Within the framework of various projects (Centres of Excellence,
Global Telecommunication University/Institute, Management Development
for Telecommunications, Virtual Training Centre, etc), over 70 training
workshops were organized in both distance-learning and face-to-face
approaches. Subjects covered varied from business planning, spectrum
management, and technology awareness to regulatory issues. Seven
new training partnerships with members were established, and the
resulting training materials and subsequent workshops were/will
be of great value to LDCs. The fifth Centre of Excellence (CoE)
for the Arab region was created and so joins those created for English-Speaking
Africa, Americas, and Asia and the Pacific, where a comprehensive
training programme including seven parallel streams has been maintained.
f)
E-Strategy: In the framework of E-strategy activities, many projects to build
e-transaction infrastructures and Internet Protocol-based e-services
(such as e-commerce, e-government and e-marketplace) were initiated.
Today, some 220 organizations all over the world are participating
in infrastructure deployment activities undertaken by BDT. Major
efforts were undertaken to establish partnerships, with emphasis
on technology deployment. This has tremendously benefited LDCs whose
transportation systems are highly under-developed and would rely
more on electronic commerce transactions in both South-South and
South – North trading.
ITU’s
Special Programme for LDCs in the next four years (2003 – 2006)
ITU
recently held its World Telecommunication Development Conference
in Istanbul, Turkey and came up with a multi-pronged Action Plan
to guide the BDT in its work in the next four years. The Istanbul
Action Plan underlines the leading role, which ITU can play in bridging
the digital divide. The Conference stressed the need to develop
larger scale partnerships (public-private, public-public and South-South)
to better implement strategies for ICT development, enhance cooperation,
particularly with regional organizations and the private sector,
and reinforce and support regional initiatives for ICT development,
such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD),
the Connectivity Agenda for the Americas region and the Tokyo Declaration
of the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity Summit on the Information Society,
and increasing available resources for telecommunication development
and direct a greater share to least developed countries through
aggressive resource mobilization. The Action Plan adopted by the
Conference contains a Special Programme for LDCs whose goal is to
provide focused and differentiated assistance to the world’s
least developed countries in all the development activities of ITU
in order to fully meet the urban telecommunication needs of LDCs
and provide access in rural areas. The Special Programme for LDCs
will for the next four years be implemented using a biennial approach
i.e. direct concentrated assistance will be given to about twelve
countries over a period of two years to allow for a sustained follow-up
or actions taken, including possible evaluation, and a mustering
of partnerships through partnership roundtables and other means
of mobilizing resources. Priority areas for this programme over
the coming four years will be: development of rural telecommunications
to bring about easy access to telecommunication services in the
rural areas where the majority of the population LDCs lives; development
of infrastructure and introduction of new technologies and services
through which LDCs will receive assistance on technological choice;
sector restructuring to bring about liberalization and competition
and, possibly, privatization as applicable with the objective of
inducing faster network growth and better management of the sector;
human resources development/management; financing and partnerships,
aimed at pooling resources and directing the aggregated resources
to LDCs so as to avoid duplication of effort and wastage of resources.
Geneva, 22 May 2002
"Special Programme for the Least Developed Countries 2002-2003:
Making a Difference" (pdf)
ITU website on LDCs
|
