The ECA and the National Assembly of Niger Undertake to Promote the Use of ICTs in the Ecowas Area

2 May 2017
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United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Addis Ababa)

Niamey — The Sub-Regional Office for West Africa of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the National Assembly of Niger have established a partnership framework for the organisation of a Forum on ICTs in the ECOWAS area which will be held on May 3-5, 2017 in Niamey, Niger.

This partnership, which forms part of the fundamental mission of the ECA of providing support for regional integration and the promotion of international cooperation for the development of Africa, aims at contributing to promoting the use of ICTs in the ECOWAS area.

This is reflected in the technical assistance for the preparation of the Forum, by placing two ECA experts at their disposal to serve as members of the scientific committee as well as by the ECA assuming responsibility for the participation of fourteen parliamentarians as focal points from ECOWAS Member Countries.

The two ECA experts will serve in the technical supervision team for the Forum steering committee and will participate in running the Forum as a whole. They will also participate in the assessment of competition files at various levels and will contribute to the supervision of the teams for "drafting reports on the Forum".

For the Director of the ECA Sub-Regional Office for West Africa, Dr. Dimitri Sanga, "ICTs should play a key role in the process of the structural transformation of economies and the socioeconomic integration of the continent in the sense that they contribute, among other things, to facilitating business, creating jobs and extending the scope of investment opportunities. However, to permit them to play this role of catalyst for development, they must be accompanied by tangible policies and strategies based on an adequate political and regulatory environment along with quality infrastructures and human resources. All these issues end up requiring the approval of the elected representatives of the people. It is thus fully justifiable for the parliamentarians of our sub-region to meet to discuss these issues".

The general objective of the Inter-Parliamentary Forum on ICTs for Development in the ECOWAS area is to contribute to raising the awareness of parliamentarians in ECOWAS Member States on the need to speed up the transposition of community legal texts on ICTs to national bodies of law.

It will bring together the representatives of the national parliaments of ECOWAS Member States and parliamentarians from ECOWAS countries, as well as the private sector, civil society, international agencies and other institutions concerned with the development of ICTs and will be guided by experts and officials in charge of the governance of the ICT sector at the national level as well as at the community and international levels, notably the ECA.

Read the original article on UNECA.

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