Geneva: The United Nations said Monday it had secured $4.8 billion in new commitments to help shut down the global economy digital dividebringing the total commitments to more than $50 billion.
About 2.6 billion people, or a third of the world's population, remained offline in 2023, according to data from International Telecommunications Union, the UN telecoms agency.
“Closing the digital divide requires a team effort, and today we have achieved a huge victory in global connectivity,” THAT chef Doreen Bogdan-Martin said in a statement.
The ITU has led efforts to rectify a situation where a third of the world's population has never connected to the internet, and is being left out of the benefits that digitalization can bring.
In 2021, the Geneva-based UN agency launched the Partner2Connect Digital Coalition, aiming to use public-private partnerships to help increase digitalization in the world's hardest-to-connect communities.
It has set a target of raising $100 billion by 2026, and the ITU cheered on Monday that it is now more than halfway to that goal, with a total of $50.96 billion in commitments to date.
The new commitments were announced on the first day of this year's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), hosted by the ITU in Geneva this week.
One of the new commitments was a $3 billion commitment from American telecom giant AT&T.
The company, which previously committed $2 billion to the project, pledged to help 25 million people in the hardest-to-reach areas of the United States get and stay connected by 2030.
The Canadian government, meanwhile, has committed $1.46 billion to investments in computing infrastructure to support artificial intelligence (AI) companies and researchers in the country.
Canada has also committed to spending an additional $292 million to, among other things, facilitate the adoption of AI across the country's economy, and to establish a new Canadian AI Safe Institute to address the risks of investigate and protect against advanced AI systems.
And Elle International made three commitments totaling $106 million to help improve the quality of life for 20 million women and girls in South Africa through the provision of digital platforms, smart solutions, data and AI models.
“Because of the leadership, vision and ambition of P2C entrepreneurs, millions of people will have the opportunity to access more accessible, affordable digital technologies for socio-economic growth, improved health and everything that makes connectivity meaningful,” said Bogdan- Martin.
