IT Director of the Global Digital Solidarity Fund

Thanks to new opportunities offered by innovative information technologies, an information society in which solidarity prevails is no longer a utopian dream. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals is now a real possibility.

Since its creation, the Global Digital Solidarity Fund has supported the idea that reducing the digital divide and achieving the Millennium Development Goals rests on five concepts:

• connectivity
• accessibility
• content
• training
• solidarity

These objectives are now shared by public authorities and the private sector.

The new technological opportunities emerging in today’s market have made achieving the Millennium Goals a real possibility. However, those goals will only be achieved if access to new information technologies is made available to all developing countries. It is in this context that the DSF devised an innovative financing mechanism, the “1% digital solidarity”, designed to facilitate, within the framework of a new private-public partnership, achievement of those goals.

The development of these technologies does, however, require resources and a political will that is broadly shared by all public and private stakeholders concerned with ensuring access to knowledge for all the world’s countries, particularly developing countries.

Mehdy Davary
IT Director of the Global Digital Solidarity Fund