Access to personal computer’ll boost attainment of MDGs – Ekeh

The Managing Director, Technology Distributions Limited, Mrs. Chioma Ekeh, has said that ownership of Personal Computers will accelerate the attainment of the Millenium Development Goals in Nigeria and Africa in general.

She said this while congratulating the Heads of States of the African Union for choosing “Youth Empowerment for Sustainable Development,” as the theme of the 17th African Union Summit which ended on July 1, 2011 (today), at Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. Ekeh said that the choice of the theme was timely, commendable and a bright response to the Arab spring.

She, however, advised the AU chieftains to anchor youth development in the continent on Information Communications Technology starting from availability and access to Personal Computers.

She agreed that there was an urgent need to arrest the restiveness of unemployed youths but that such an empowerment must begin with the provision of ICT tools in order to be sustainable.

She urged the AU Summit to look beyond fiscal credit as means of empowerment and set in place policies designed to achieve the ownership of ICT products like PCs, printers and Internet access for the majority of African youths.

The AU, she added, should make it mandatory for its member states to give the provision of ICT products priority and use the peer review policy to nudge members to compliance.

She also noted that Africans should be persuaded that they must consistently buy products made in their countries or within the region to ensure national development.

In addition, she said that the AU should honour African investors who made substantial investments in Africa.Ekeh said that TD believed that the expansion of indigenous businesses across national boundaries should be encouraged and promoted by all relevant authorities in furtherance of the African Union’s objectives of regional cooperation, integration and development.

She recalled that TD partnered the African Union when it declared the ICT sector as a “sector of top priority”. Subsequently, in 2010 TD adopted the African Digital Agenda, propagated by the African Union Commission as a coherent and integrated approach for the implementation and follow-up on the ICT declaration, as the platform for her operations in West Africa, she explained.

According to her, TD has used the African Digital Agenda to become an industry benchmark for dynamism, efficiency and competitiveness in the West African region while impacting on local markets.

SOURCE: PUNCH