Gambia

Excellences 
Secretary General, ITU Distinguished Delegates 

On behalf of the Government and people of the Republic of The Gambia, I extend our profound gratitude to the Government of Romania for hosting the 2022 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference. Thank you for the warm welcome and hospitality accorded to my delegation and I since our arrival in this beautiful city of Bucharest. 

Excellencies, the ITU-PP 22 is hosted at a crucial time when the world is recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and global food crises especially in developing countries as a result of the war in Ukraine. 

The Gambia is aware of this fact and is taking into account, increasing evidence of the positive correlation between ICTs and improved economic growth. 

The Government of The Gambia under the able leadership of His Excellency President Adama Barrow, continues to pursue the realization of its digital transformation agenda. To this end, it has recently decoupled the then Ministry of Information and Communications Infrastructure into two new standalone Ministries: Namely 

• The Ministry of Information Service 
• The Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy 

This policy decision is a clear testament of the growing recognition of the impact of digital technologies on The Gambia’s development process and the increased political will to support the digital transformation process. 

The Gambian Government has identified ICTs as a priority sector in the Recovery Focused National Development Plan (RF-NDP) which is currently being formulated. In this regard, digitization of the economy is one of the main pillars of this development plan. 

Its goal is to make digitization a catalyst for accelerating economic growth, improving efficiency in both public and private sector and strengthening competitiveness in all sectors of the economy. 

In this regard, my ministry has initiated many large number of structural projects, including: 

• The review of Information Communication Technology Act to introduce major reforms in the legal and regulatory framework to better take into account innovative and emerging technologies. 
• Securing a second backup Submarine cable to support the only existing ACE cable. 
• Development of a Digital Economy Master Plan currently supported by the EU; 
• Development of E-Government systems and Platforms 
• Introduction of National ID Systems. 
• Improvement of Digital Payment Systems and gateways; 
• Implementation of a robust digital literacy program to develop and strengthen digital skills. 
• Establishment of Tier 3 National Datacenter, to a name a few. 

It is our strong conviction that with these major restructuring, The Gambia will leapfrog into the Digital Economy and promote the achievement of the SDG’s. 

Excellences Distinguish delegates 

The utilization of ICTs in providing services remains a challenge in The Gambia. The country’s internet penetration rate stood at 51.0 percent of the total population at the start of 2022, with internet users increased by 2.9 percent between 2021 and 2022. 

In the face of numerous challenges, the ICT sector contribution continues to rise over the years as it accounted for 3.5 percent of GDP in 2019 and 3.7 percent in 2020. Other progress registered include: 

• Recent growth of e-commerce platforms and the uptake of mobile money and other digital financial services. 
• Development and approval of Universal Access fund (UAF) to ensure universal access to quality broadband services. 

• The integration of edtech and agtech in the education and agricultural sectors, especially in rural Gambia, 
• Digital health interventions include the deployment of smart ICT driven systems and applications to support the provision of quality health service delivery. 

• To this end, the Ministry of Health has commenced registration and issuance of digital birth certificate and health insurance ID to all Gambians, in June this Year. 

• Youth unemployment, support have been provided to digital startups through trainings and provision of seed capital. Government has also earmarked the establishment of rural information and innovation hubs towards ensuring digital inclusion and utilizing innovation to transform socioeconomic activities of people at the grassroots. 

• Similarly, my Ministry has since 2020, started rolling out digital addressing system in the Capital City and key towns in urban arears to boost postal services and e-commerce. 

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In conclusion, please allow me to sincerely commend the ITU for successfully organizing this very important forum and for its continued support over the years. 

I wish to reaffirm The Gambia’s commitment to further collaborate with ITU and we look forward to its support in our quest to transform our economy into a Digital Economy. 

On a final note, I wish to solicit the support of all member states for The Gambia’s candidate, H.E Ambassador Prof. Muhammadou Kah, who is vying for the position of Director, BDT. Please vote for him 

Thank you