Information and Communications (ICT) industry players, last week gathered in Lagos for the 2012 West Africa Information and Communications Technology (WAFICT) Congress to discuss policy objectives and strategies in bridging digital divide in West African countries, using broadband. Emma Okonji reports on the planned strategy to deepen broadband penetration.
Lamy: Aid for Trade can play ?catalytic role? in trade finance for developing countries Director-General Pascal Lamy, in opening the Aid for Trade Workshop on Trade Finance at the WTO on 15 May 2012, said that ?only a third of the poorest countries benefit regularly from services offered by trade finance programmes?. He said that Aid for Trade, by encouraging sound banking and financial policies, ?can play a catalytic role by helping address trade finance access and architecture issues?.
Lamy: Aid for Trade can play ?catalytic role? in trade finance for developing countries Director-General Pascal Lamy, in opening the WTO Symposium on the 15th Anniversary of the Information Technology Agreement on 14 May 2012, said that ?15 years ago a group of visionaries conquered what appeared to be insurmountable obstacles and negotiated one of the most successful trade agreements ever. Today, their successors have the responsibility to further expand that legacy.?
Lamy: Members continue to explore opportunities for Doha progress Director-General Pascal Lamy reported to the General Council on 1 May 2012 that on the Doha Round, ?my conversations over the past few weeks with Ministers and delegations have provided me with a sense that Members wish to continue to explore any opportunities to gain the necessary traction and make tangible progress soon.? He added that the recent G-20 Trade Ministerial in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico supported giving ?fresh impetus to the Doha negotiations towards results in areas with potential for prompt resolution ? such as trade facilitation ? while intensifying efforts to find ways and approaches to overcome the most critical and fundamental stalemates in specially challenging areas.?
At $200 per computer, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has sold or facilitated donations of about 2.5 million laptops to classrooms in 42 different countries.
A new digital divide is opening up between countries that make effective use of information and communications technology, and those that do not, argue the authors of a new report published Wednesday by Insead and the World Economic Forum.
Visa has been hard at work on a mobile digital wallet that it hopes to roll out early next year. But that's not the only mobile market the credit card company has its eye on.
The situation of Internet connectivity in India is like our roads. It is not about how much Internet is available in India, but the quality of its bandwidth
There is a concept in telecommunications called "the last mile," that part of any phone system that is the most difficult to connect -- the part that goes from the main lines into people's homes. Prem Kalra, the director of the new Indian Institute of Technology in Rajasthan, one of the elite M.I.T.'s of India, has dedicated his school to overcoming a different challenge: connecting "the last person."
Last week, I received an email about a problem my company was having with our online shop. I happened to be out of the office, so I pulled out my laptop, plugged in a 3G mobile broadband dongle, and went online to try and fix it - something countless workers and commuters do every day. The difference was that I was standing in a field near Atbara in North Sudan, while villagers were making mud bricks a few meters away.
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