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RDF Summary of discussions
Report by the Chairman
The Regional Preparatory Meeting for WTDC-17 for Africa (RPM-AFR) took place in
Kigali, Rwanda from 6 to 8 December 2016, preceded by the Regional Development Forum for Africa (RDF-AFR) on 5 December 2016. Both events were organized at the kind invitation of the Ministry of Youth and ICT of Rwanda.
In line with Resolution 31 (Rev. Hyderabad, 2010), the Regional Preparatory Meeting aims at engaging the membership in the preparations of the World Telecommunication Development Conference 2017 (WTDC-17) in order to achieve regional coordination before the conference itself. It also seeks to identify issues at the regional level that need to be addressed to foster the development of telecommunications and ICTs, taking into account the most pressing needs faced by the Member States and Sector Members of the region.
Regional Development Forums provide an opportunity for high-level dialogue, cooperation and partnerships among telecommunication and ICT policy-makers, regulators, industry, academia, regional and international development agencies and organizations on specific regional telecommunication and ICT issues.
RPM-AFR was attended by
168 participants representing 25 Member States and
5 ITU-D Sector Members of the region,2 Specialized Agencies of the United Nations and 11 Observer Member States and ITU-D Sector Members of other regions.
RPM-AFR approved the report by the Chairman, which includes the conclusion of the debates on each contribution, as well as the following areas, priorities and way forward in updating the regional initiatives:
- Strengthening human and institutional capacity building
- Strengthening and harmonizing policy and regulatory frameworks
- Smart and sustainable broadband infrastructure and interconnectivity for equitable access for all in Africa
- Spectrum management and transition to digital broadcasting
- Strengthening the security of ICT infrastructure and building confidence in the use of Telecommunications/ICT applications
- Support for ICT-centric innovation clusters in Africa
- Policy, regulatory and technical support, as well as specialized training programmes for human capacity building in selected flagship initiatives related to Smart Africa.
RPM-AFR agreed to use document RPM-AFR16/INF/6 (Brainstorming for the preparation of the regional initiatives 2018-2021) as a generic framework that may be further improved according to Member States' needs as well as Resolution 17 (WTDC-14, Dubai) as reference on the implementation approach. It was further agreed that ATU would coordinate the process of collecting proposals from Member States toward elaboration of Africa Common Proposal to WTDC-17.
Outcomes of RPMs will be consolidated at the inter-regional coordination meeting and discussed at TDAG 2017 in May. The outcomes of TDAG will be submitted to WTDC-17 as draft documents for consideration.