President Thabo Mbeki, communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri and Department of Communications director-general Lyndall Shope-Mafole are leading a South African delegation to the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which begins in Tunis today.
Control of the Internet and ICT for developing nations is expected to be a strong focus. The event is driven by the International Telecommunications Union and follows years of preparatory meetings around the world and the first phase of WSIS in Geneva in 2003.
The summit, attended by the leaders of 45 countries and around 10 000 participants from 120 nations, will run until 18 November. It aims to be a "summit of solutions", which will focus on strategies to bridge the digital divide by harnessing the power of ICT.
Executives from over 200 ICT companies are also taking part, including Alcatel, Ericsson, France Telecom, Google, Huawei, Infosys, Intel, KDDI, Microsoft, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Skype, Sun Microsystems, Telef'onica and WorldSpace.
"The Southern African Non-Governmental Organisation Network (Sangonet) is among the South African representatives at the summit.
WSIS presents an opportunity to develop a framework for addressing key international issues such as Internet governance and financing mechanisms, while from a South African perspective, it is an opportunity to once again highlight local issues such as the high cost of telecommunications," says Sangonet executive director David Barnard.
The CSIR`s national research centre for ICT, the Meraka Institute, will be part of the Department of Communications` delegation at the ICT4All exhibition which runs alongside the summit.
The World Bank`s InfoDev will present a case study on MoPay, a Cape-based mobile payments and communications company, at the event.
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