Addis Ababa, May 1, 2007

Mr. Abdoulie Janneh, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa,
Mr. Brahima Sanou, ITU Regional Representative for Africa,
Ms. Aida Opoku-Mensah, Director, ISTD,
Prof. S. Yunkap Kwankam, Coordinator, eHealth, World Health Organization (WHO)
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all, I would like to extend warm greetings from Mrs. Regina Amadi-Njoku, the ILO Regional Director for Africa, who could not be with us this morning due to prior commitment. She wishes you the best during your deliberations.

As you are aware, employment promotion has been at the core of ILO’s mandate since its inception in 1919. Today this mandate has been translated into two key messages namely, a fair globalization that benefits all, and making decent work a global goal through placing decent employment at the heart of socio-economic policies. Decent work means productive work in which workers’ basic rights are protected, which generates adequate income, with adequate social protection and conducive environment for social dialogue as a means of industrial conflict prevention and resolution. It also means sufficient work, in the sense that all should have full access to income-earning opportunities.

Therefore any effort by sister UN agencies, international organisations, development partners, research institutions, and other stakeholders that is linked to employment and decent work generally is most welcome. We are therefore happy to be associated with the event of today.

The growth in the ICT sector in the recent past has been driven largely by globalization. However, the 2005 Report of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All, called for globalization with a strong social dimension based on universally shared values, and respect for human rights and individual dignity; a globalization that is fair, inclusive, democratically governed and provides opportunities and tangible benefits for all countries and people.

The Decent Work Agenda has proved to have considerable resonance in national debates about development in this era of globalization. It connects local and national politics to the global level of policy discourse. It helps to ensure ownership by countries of their development strategies while connecting to frameworks such as CCA-UNDAF, PRSPs, and NEPAD..

At Ouagadougou AU Summit in September 2004, Africa gave the world the momentum to implement the decent work agenda. The historic outcomes of the Ouagadougou Summit resulted in the consensus that decent and productive employment is one of the surest routes out of poverty.

Since then the momentum of making decent work a truly global agenda continues to take shape, notably during UN General Assembly in September 2005, world leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the goal of full and productive employment alongside the MDGs. This was further endorsed by the July 2006 High Level Segment of the UN’s ECOSOC meeting in Geneva and I quote “creating an environment at the national and international levels, conducive to generating full and productive employment and decent work for all, and its impact on sustainable development” unquote.

Back to our continent, less than two weeks ago, the Finance ministers of Africa again brought back employment on the table when they acknowledged “the central role of employment in the fight against poverty and the attainment of MDGs”. They also pledged “to integrate employment creating policies and programs in our national programs and to increase investments to employment creation”. Moreover they also endorsed the call for the “ECA, AU, ILO, UNDP and AfDB to operationalize the proposed regional Employment Forum”. As secretariat of the said forum, the ILO is committed to making this a reality and support Member States to mainstream employment creation into national development plans and poverty reduction strategies.

How does this relate to the panel on “Employment and the Knowledge Economy”? Whether we discuss ICT, or any other sectoral issues, it would be imperative to ensure that we address the central concerns of promoting employment and decent work in an era of ICT-enhanced intense globalization.

The 2001 World Employment Report, produced by the ILO, focused exclusively on “Life at Work in the Information Economy”. The Report clearly recognized the extreme importance and urgency of developing the ICT by all countries, lest they risk marginalization. ICT is fast becoming an all-pervasive “meta technology”, and, in its absence, a country would face binding constraints to undertaking international transactions, be they trade, investments, capital flows, labour mobility, and so on. Elsewhere, ICTs are facilitating increases in productivity, economic growth, patterns and organization of production and exchanges. African economies, which are posting respectable growth in the recent years, need to keep up the growth momentum and “embed” ICTs in the process, as well as work owards reducing the digital divide, between and within countries.

The above said, one must also note that, as with every new technology introduced by humankind, there are certain downsides that would require careful mitigation policies and mechanisms. The knowledge economy, as it is currently developing, tends to generate income inequalities and unbalanced access to opportunities. Moreover ICTs are still skills-biased and gender-biased. However we do recognize that, if well harnessed, ICTs have immense job-generation potential, and could also lead to job losses in certain specific occupations and therefore need for retraining.

In order to develop the knowledge economy and integrate ICTs in the overall development framework, countries will need to design responsive policies, and chart intervention programs in order to ensure the appropriate pace and sequencing of ICT enhancement. The development of the ICT infrastructure, physical and social, as well as the relevant institutions is crucial.

Before I conclude, let me relate this to our just concluded 11th ILO African Regional Meeting, held here last week on the theme “The Decent Work Agenda in Africa, 2007-2015”. The Meeting adopted an African decent work portfolio, which among other things, recognized that the shortage of skills is holding back development. The conclusions noted that “this is particularly the case in the new information and communications technologies where a major drive to bridge the digital divide within countries and between Africa and other countries is essential”. I would like to call upon all of us here to help make the decent work agenda in Africa a reality.

Finally, let me once again express how grateful the ILO is to the UNECA and the ITU for giving us the opportunity to be part of this landmark set of meetings. We very much value the partnership and look forward to further collaboration in assisting Member States and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) to harness the ICT sector to realise its full potential for employment generation.

I thank you.