Africa Regional World Summit for Information Society (WSIS) Follow-up and Annual Review under the theme “Information and Communication Technologies for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals” and the Expert Group Meeting (EGM) on “Fostering African private sector in the big data era” are organized by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). The meeting will take place from 3 to 6 December 2019 in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), in its Resolution A/Res/70/125 extended the mandate of the WSIS process to 2025, and called for the continuation of the work of the United Nations Group on the Information Society in coordinating the work of United Nations agencies, according to their mandates and competencies, and invited the regional commissions to continue their work in implementation of the WSIS action lines and their contributions to the reviews thereof, including through regional reviews.

In this context, the ninth Joint AUC-ECA Annual Meetings of the AU Conference of Ministers of the Economy and Planning held in March 2016, adopted resolution (941(XLIX) requesting ECA in collaboration with other partners to take all the necessary steps to organize on an annual basis an African regional review of progress made in the implementation of the WSIS outcomes in support to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the AU’s Agenda 2063.

The main objective of the 2019 regional WSIS follow up and review is to assess progress in Africa in the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines in furtherance of efforts to achieve the targets of Agenda 2030 and the aspirations of the African Union's Agenda 2063. The WSIS-SDG Matrix, developed by UN WSIS Action Line Facilitator and presented at the WSIS Forum 2015, will serve as the mechanism to map, analyze and coordinate the implementation of WSIS Action Lines, and more specifically, ICTs as enablers and accelerators of the SDGs. The objective of the EGM is to assess assesses the broad concept and characteristics of big data, trends in the development and challenges for Africa of potential impact of big data with particular focus on fostering the role of the private sector in realizing the potential of big data for socio-economic growth of the continent.

In the context of its commitment to provide policy research and advice to its member States, ECA undertook an assessment and prepared other reports on the progress made in the last year by African countries to implement the WSIS outcomes. These relevant reports, together with a number of country reports by national focal points, will be presented at the meeting.

Participants will include representatives of African governments, private sector and civil society, international organizations and other stakeholders in Africa's development.

For further information, including registration information, please contact:

Mr. Mactar Seck
Green Economy and Technology Section
Technology, Climate Change, Natural resources Division
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
P.O. Box 3001, Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA
email: seck8@un.org
Tel:+251.11.544.3424