The representative of South Africa observed that one of the fundamental ICT tools available to all to accelerate implementation of the SDGs is digital public infrastructure. She noted that ICT transcends geographical boundaries - connecting people from various ends of the world and creating a network of endless opportunities: “This experience should be available to all,” she emphasized. With the shared goal of “leaving no one behind”, the growth of ICT should not only be sustainable, but inclusive. However, while developed countries are phasing out older-generation networks to adopt advanced networks like 5G, low-income countries have to work with 2G and 3G networks because of the barriers to 5G deployment, including high infrastructure costs, unreliable electricity and regulatory constraints. He estimated that only 36 per cent of the population in the least developed countries use the Internet, compared to the 66 per cent average for the world.Įchoing that concern, Brunei Darussalam’s delegate stressed that digital inequity “leaves 2.7 billion people still offline”. The representative of Nepal, speaking for the Group of Least Developed Countries, noted that digital technologies have the potential to bridge economic and educational disparities. In the ensuing debate, most speakers deplored that the digital gap between developed and developing countries is widening rather than closing as new technologies emerge and advance - threatening to leave the world’s poorest permanently excluded from the fourth industrial revolution. Developing countries should cultivate and empower local research and innovation ecosystems by providing local actors with the necessary knowledge resources and creating an enabling institutional and regulatory environment. Turning to the Secretary-General’s report on Science, technology and innovation for sustainable development (document A/78/232), he stressed its emphasis that the digital divide and the associated inequalities in technology diffusion affect people’s access to the benefits of technologies and risk further exacerbating social divides. “There is a risk that the data economy will be permanently dominated by a few stakeholders from a handful of technologically advanced economies,” he warned. Stressing the need to fully integrate the digital dimension into addressing poverty, gender equality and climate change, he noted that although 63 per cent of the world’s population is connected, least developed countries still only count 27 per cent of their populations as Internet users. A widening digital divide and severely lagging Internet-use in developing countries threaten to leave those States in the technological wake and preclude progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a senior United Nations official and Member States told the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) today as it took up information and communications technology (ICT) questions.Īngel Gonzalez Sanz, Head of Science, Technology and Innovation in the Division on Technology and Logistics of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), introduced the Secretary-General’s report on Progress made in the implementation of and follow-up to the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society at the regional and international levels (document A/78/62−E/2023/49), spotlighting three key aspects: the changing context of digital cooperation the impact of conflict and the risk of cyberconflict and data governance.
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