ITU to Host Digital African Week in Nigeria
ITU to Host Digital African Week in Nigeria
The first ITU ‘Digital African Week’ will bring together policymakers and regulators, industry players and standardization experts to discuss Africa’s actions in the interests of environmental sustainability.
The series of events will be held in Abuja, Nigeria, 27-30 August 2019, hosted by the Nigerian Communications Commission.
The week will open with a training session on the drafting of international standards, equipping ICT experts with practical skills to maximize the value of their participation in the ITU standardization process.
A training session on ‘Smart Sustainable Cities, Products and Services’ will provide an introduction to ITU standards supporting the transition to smart cities, including Key Performance Indicators for African countries to measure the progress of their smart city initiatives.
Africa’s digital transformation will be in focus at a forum on ‘Smart Sustainable Africa’. The forum will share insight into how international standards could support African countries in capitalizing on frontier technologies in fields such as Artificial Intelligence, blockchain, IMT-2020/5G and the Internet of Things.
A forum on ‘human exposure to electromagnetic fields in Africa’ will offer a tutorial on ITU standards providing tools such as methodologies to assess electromagnetic fields stemming from ICT infrastructure, best-practice regulatory frameworks, and guidelines for governments to provide clear information to the public.
A training session on ‘e-waste management and circular economy’ will discuss how ITU standards can assist African countries in the environmentally sound treatment of e-waste, the recycling of rare-metal ICT components, and building supply chains in line with the concept of resource-efficient circular economy.
Meetings of the African Regional Groups within ITU-T Study Group 5 (Environment and circular economy) and ITU-T Study Group 20 (Internet of Things and smart cities) will discuss Africa’s priorities for the international standardization work of these study groups.
