Lack of investment and the rise of protectionism threaten the world's ability to spread internet connectivity to almost half of the global population who currently live without it, according to LI Yong, Director-General, UNIDO, and Houlin Zhao, Secretary-General, ITU, who addressed the Virtual Edition of the Global Manufacturing and Industrialization Summit. More than half the world's population is now online, however connecting the rest of the world's citizens, estimated at around 3.8 billion people, could prove far tougher and take many more years as they reside in developing or Least Developed Countries (LDCs) where connectivity rates can be below 20%. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is considered a prerequisite for countries to achieve sustainable development and adopt the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution.

Houlin Zhao, Secretary-General, ITU said the pandemic had demonstrated that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is more important than ever for human society. However, he pointed out that, by some estimates, investment of around $100bn could be required to achieve universal, affordable and good quality internet access just in Africa by 2030.

"We would like to see everybody connected affordably by 2030, so this is a real challenge," Zhao said. "Those that are not connected yet live mainly in poor or remote areas, and you cannot just use the same strategy to bring these people online. This will require investment and the only way is through public-private partnerships. And in the ICT field, we know that the majority of investments come from private sector."

LI Yong, Director-General, UNIDO agreed that funding for infrastructure was an issue but that this also had to go hand-in-hand with government policies to initiate digitalization programmes. He added: "The second part is the private sector should be actively encouraged to be involved in digital technology development. This is a very important process and the international community also needs to be united, particularly when we talk about the big gap between the advanced countries and developing countries."

Asked how countries would work together to find the investment needed to achieve universal connectivity when some countries, notably the US and China, have been withdrawing into intellectual protectionism, Yong said: "Protectionism is really an obstacle to multilateralism and to technology advancement. And also, it will hurt the private sector's ability to innovate. And this is something that will stop things moving forward. We should stand together to fight against protectionism."

Source- Press Release