25 November 2007
Kampala — Mozambique has been praised as one of the Commonwealth members that has made good strides in reducing the digital divide, through the implementation of policies to expand access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).
According to Mozambican Foreign Minister Alcinda Abreu, Mozambique received praise for its computerisation drive during sessions behind closed doors of the Commonwealth summit in Kampala.
She said that the heads of state and government also discussed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), agreed by virtually every government in the world at the UN's Millennium Summit in 2000. They concluded that more attention had to be given to the targets laid down in 2000, and more help given to Commonwealth member states to achieve the MDGs.
The leaders at the summit also considered international trade as crucial in the fight against poverty and underdevelopment. "The Commonwealth is concerned to ensure that the least developed countries can make advances", said Abreu.
The summit has been marred by violence on Friday on the streets of Kampala. Supporters of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), protesting against human rights violations by the Ugandan government, left the area that the police had allocated to the demonstration.
When they tried to move elsewhere in the city, clashes broke out between protestors and the police, in which at least two people were seriously injured.
FDC leader Kizza Besigye suggested that the Commonwealth should suspend Uganda, just as it had suspended Pakistan. "What is happening in Pakistan also happened here", he claimed. "Musharraf has been asked to leave the Commonwealth. Why not here ?"
But the FDC must have been disappointed that only about 100 people turned up to hear Besigye denounce the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, for meeting with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
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