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ITU celebrates telecoms, information society day

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 18 May 2016
We must urgently continue to pursue the goal of bringing the rest of the world's people online, says the ITU's Houlin Zhao.
We must urgently continue to pursue the goal of bringing the rest of the world's people online, says the ITU's Houlin Zhao.

Yesterday, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) commemorated World Telecommunication and Information Society Day.

It marks the 151st anniversary of the establishment of the ITU, which was founded in Paris on 17 May 1865.

The ITU celebrated the fact that billions of people around the world are now connected to a smart, networked environment, and looked ahead to new and previously unimaginable possibilities of communicating.

"These welcome developments make it even more urgent that we continue to pursue our goal of bringing the rest of the world's people online, so that they too can access and create extraordinary social and economic benefits," says ITU secretary-general Houlin Zhao.

United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, in a message to people around the world, said: "Information and communication technologies provide smart solutions to address climate change, hunger, poverty and other global challenges.

"They are key instruments for providing mobile healthcare and access to education, empowering women, improving efficiencies in industrial and agricultural production, and safeguarding the environment."

Michael Moller, director-general of the UN Office at Geneva, represented Ban Ki-moon.

The celebrations in Geneva yesterday brought together leading academics, incubators and entrepreneurs to discuss the significance of ICT entrepreneurship to create social impact.

Keynote addresses and an interactive panel discussion focused on ICT entrepreneurs and start-ups and small to medium enterprises (SMEs) which have a key role in ensuring economic growth in a sustainable and inclusive manner.

The ITU says SMEs are often the source of innovative ICT-enabled solutions that make a long-lasting impact on global, regional and national economies, and are an important source of new jobs, especially for the youth. SMEs make up more than 90% of all businesses worldwide, and represent a "path out of poverty" for many developing countries, it notes.

Whurley, co-founder of Honest Dollar, a start-up based in Austin, Texas, which aims to bring honesty, transparency and simplicity to the financial services industry, urged governments to apply better interventions to support small businesses.

Alexandre Weber, co-founder of Seedstars World, a business incubator in more than 50 emerging markets, focused on creating ideas, programmes, platforms and products for start-ups and ventures, and provided a status update on the emerging market tech start-up scene.

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