[WSIS CS-Plenary] Mali's Hamadoun Toure, new Secretary-General of the ITU

[Jean-Louis FULLSACK]

Dear Francis and all
I also congratulate Mr Touré for his election as Secretary general of ITU, and I'm happy for my African friends for them to have one of theirs at the head of this oldest UN Agency.
However I'd be less enthusiastic as Francis for at least three reasons :
-          Mr Touré was the Director of the Development Bureau of ITU (ITU-D) during eight years, and during his mandate most of the insiders and observers admit that telecom development in Africa has got more "asymmetric" than ever.  Whereas the mobile "market" grew substantially, especially in large metropolitan areas, managing even new generation wireless (so called 3G wireless) services to be deployed in these privileged areas, the villages and largest country areas of the continent still are waiting for their hypothetical connection to the ICT/telecom network. What’s more, some African countries have even declined in terms of telecom services to their population ( Central African Republic, DR Congo, etc) during these years. At last, the pan-African network Panaftel, established in the eighties for interconnecting African countries, steadily declined as did most of the fixed terrestrial networks in a large number of African countries.  
-          Instead of network development, the priority of ITU-D during Mr Touré’s mandate was telecom sector “reform”, i.e. deregulation following –and in some cases even exceeding-  the Worldbank credo and demand. So far this “sector reform” didn’t prove its efficiency. Moreover, it left some African countries in a more critical situation and demonstrated large collapses (Guinea, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, …). Who will ever try to appraise the huge amount of money lost in this process ?   
-          As far as recent African network development is concerned, ITU is remarkably absent from both the design devising and the decision making processes. This is largely demonstrated in the SAT-3/WASC sub-marine cable, the EASSy project, Infinity project, EADTS, etc, but also in major countries’ ICT/telecoms Master Plans design (Cameroon, DR Congo, …). Here is the true place for ITU-D for proving its commitment and its competence for actual African telecoms development. 
Should I add that during the entire WSIS process, ITU wasn’t very “SC friendly” and failed to keep the leadership in large debates on how to bridge actually the digital divide and how to finance this profound injustice.
Therefore; let’s keep cool and let the new SG take the most urgent and still awaited decisions such as real and concrete actions on bridging the “digital divide” ; more than twenty years after the Maitland’s Report it is highest time to awake in the (ITU) “ tower” !  And second, let the new SG take the appropriate decisions as soon as possible on an actual CS inclusive ITU, especially in the view of implementing the WSIS Action plan objectives and its follow-up on a real muliti-stakeholder basis.  For both these issues, I simply recall the three proposals CSDPTT submitted to the ITU Council in January (in the view of the Plenipotentiary Conference), without any reaction nor response of ITU-D since then despite it was in the very centre of these proposals. 
Best
Jean-Louis Fullsack
CSDPTT - France



> Message du 13/11/06 20:08
> De : "Dr. Francis MUGUET" 
> A : plenary at wsis-cs.org
> Copie à : 
> Objet : [WSIS CS-Plenary] Mali's Hamadoun Toure, new Secretary-General of the ITU
> 
> [Please note that by using 'REPLY', your response goes to the entire list. Kindly use individual addresses for responses intended for specific people]
> 
> Click http://wsis.funredes.org/plenary/ to access automatic translation of this message!
> _______________________________________
> 
> Dear friends
> 
> ( un msg en français suit )
> 
> Since this excellent piece of news has not been seemingly posted
> on the plenary list.
> Congratulatiions to first African Secretary-General of the ITU,
> who, coincidence or fate, belongs to the same country
> as Adama Samassékou to whom WSIS Civil Society owes so much.
> 
> ---------------------
> http://allafrica.com/stories/200611130952.html
> 
> An African, Mali's Hamadoun Toure, Friday became the new
> Secretary-General of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
> after polling 95 votes over Germany's Mr. Mathias Kurth, who got 60
> votes for the exalted position.
> 
> Member states of the ITU elected Mr Touré of Mali as Secretary-General
> for a four-year term. The election took place in Antalya, Turkey during
> the 17th ITU Plenipotentiary Conference. Mr Touré won the position with
> 95 votes with 155 countries present and voting, and thus the required
> majority for election was 78 votes.
> 
> The majority emerged in the third round of voting, with Mr Mathias Kurth
> of Germany receiving 60 votes.
> 
> The election showed the deft diplomacy of Toure who had come to the ITU
> conference last year in Abuja with one message from the Malian
> government: "To support the country to run for the highest position at
> the ITU." Every country-delegate present pledged to support Mali, and by
> implication, Toure. But that development effectively killed the spirit
> of every person who would have been eyeing that position and vouchsafed
> it for Toure. Last weekend, he triumphed.
> 
> Addressing the Conference after the results of the vote, Mr Touré told
> the 1500 delegates from around the world that he would work with
> transparency, objectivity and vigour to realize the two main objectives
> that were central to his campaign: to eliminate the digital divide and
> to ensure that cyberspace would become more secure. He said, "The
> Millennium Development Goals that were endorsed by all the world's
> leaders as well as the WSIS resolutions are the ingredients we need to
> get down to work."
> 
> Mr Hamadoun Touré holds a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from
> the Technical Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications of
> Leningrad and Doctor of Philosophy Degree (PhD) from the University of
> Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics of Moscow. After six
> years at the Office des Postes et Télécommunications du Mali (OPT) Mali,
> he joined Intelsat as Group Director & Regional Director in 1985 until
> he became Director-General, Africa, of ICO Global Communications in
> 1996. Elected Director of ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau in
> 1998, he was elected for a second term in 2002.
> 
> In the election, Houlin Zhao of China was elected Deputy
> Secretary-General in the first round with 93 votes. Carlos Sánchez of
> Spain obtained 34 votes while T. Ayhan Beydoan of Turkey received 28.
> John Ray Kwabena Tandoh of Ghana had announced the withdrawal of his
> candidature prior to the start of the election.
> 
> Thanking the members and, in particular, the People's Republic of China,
> for placing their confidence in him, Houlin Zhao remarked that the post
> of Deputy Secretary-General holds a strategic importance in the Union.
> He said that he would do his best to assist the Secretary-General elect
> and the three Directors as well as the membership to make ITU a more
> dynamic organization that would contribute to the emerging global
> Information Society. As outgoing Director of TSB, he said he was
> confident that "ITU-T will meet the future challenges of ICT
> standardization this century."
> 
> Graduated from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China
> in 1975, Mr Zhao received a Master degree of Science in telematics,
> University of Essex (United Kingdom) in 1985. From 1975 to 1986, he held
> various engineering positions at Ministry of Posts and
> Telecommunications, China. In 1986, he joined ITU as a staff member of
> the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB) until his election as
> Director of the TSB in 1998. He was re-elected in his position at the
> 2002 Marrakesh Plenipotentiary Conference.
> 
> Outgoing Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi leaves behind him a more
> efficient and effective organization, offering a wider portfolio of more
> relevant services that led to a 19 per cent increase in private sector
> membership and a recommitment of the private sector to the work of ITU.
> His tenure was characterized by efficiency measures that led to savings
> equivalent to CHF 75 million out of a total budget of CHF 335 million on
> average per biennium as well as the introduction of operational
> planning, results-based budgeting and time-tracking across the
> organization, resulting in a substantial overhaul of the organization.
> Along with cost recovery, these measures created new sources of revenue
> that led to a reduction in the contributions to be paid by members,
> despite growing demands and cost increases.
> 
> From a strategic perspective, Mr Utsumi successfully refocused ITU as a
> policy-oriented organization by introducing new issues to ensure its
> continuing relevance, with the successful organization of the World
> Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) which provides a common
> understanding and vision as well as a clear roadmap to building the
> Information Society by 2015. He also strengthened the role of ITU in the
> coordination of policy issues among Member States. Through this process,
> ITU has asserted its leading role in the broader domain of the
> Information Society.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Francis F. MUGUET Ph.D
> 
> MDPI Foundation Open Access Journals
> Associate Publisher
> http://www.mdpi.org http://www.mdpi.net
> muguet at mdpi.org muguet at mdpi.net
> 
> ENSTA Paris, France
> KNIS lab. Director
> "Knowledge Networks & Information Society" (KNIS)
> muguet at ensta.fr http://www.ensta.fr/~muguet
> 
> World Summit On the Information Society (WSIS)
> Civil Society Working Groups
> Scientific Information : http://www.wsis-si.org chair
> Patents & Copyrights : http://www.wsis-pct.org co-chair
> Financing Mechanismns : http://www.wsis-finance.org web
> 
> UNMSP project : http://www.unmsp.org
> WTIS initiative: http://www.wtis.org
> ------------------------------------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> Plenary mailing list
> Plenary at wsis-cs.org
> http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/plenary
> 
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/pipermail/plenary/attachments/20061115/bae5a772/attachment.html