President Paul Kagame on Monday morning delivered a keynote address at the 2018 Spring Meeting of the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development in Kigali.
Kagame, who together with Mats Granryd, Director General of GSMA, are co-hosts of the meeting, underlined that Africa’s economic transformation requires broadband infrastructure.
"The reality is that all other digital services, whether in commerce or education or healthcare, run on top of broadband,” he said.
"Africa’s size, geography and settlement patterns mean that we must rely on a variety of different technologies to deliver broadband including satellite, fibre optic and mobile.”
President Kagame reminded the commissioners that it is up to them to lead the way in driving innovation both in policy and business models in order to speed up the provision of broadband where it has been slowest to reach.
This year's UN Broadband Commission meeting coincides with the Transform Africa Summit 2018, which also opened in the Rwandan capital of Kigali today.
Kagame said he had invited Broadband Commission members and most had accepted to extend their stay in Kigali to attend the Transform Africa Summit that ends Thursday.
The 2018 Spring Meeting of the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development comes hot on the heels of the release of the Commission’s new 2025 targets, which seek to fast-track the digital connectivity of millions of people worldwide that remain unconnected.