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Fireside Chat: Gearing Up for a Manufacturing Renaissance
DAY ONE: Fireside Chat
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H.E. HOULIN ZHAO Secretary General, ITU
H.E. LI YONG Director General, UNIDO
GEARING UP FOR A MANUFACTURING RENAISSANCE
Lack of investment and the rise of protectionism threaten the world’s ability to spread internet connectivity to the half of the global population currently living without it. That was the warning from LI Yong, Director General, UNIDO, and Houlin Zhao, Secretary General, ITU, during a discussion on the impact of COVID-19 on Foreign Direct Investments (FDI).
Zhao said that by some estimates investment of around $100 billion could be needed to achieve universal, affordable and good quality internet access just in Africa by 2030. “We would like to see everybody connected affordably by 2030, so this is a real challenge,” he said. “Those that are not connected yet live mainly in poor or remote areas, and you cannot just use the same strategy to bring these people online. This will require investment and the only way is through publicprivate partnerships. And in the ICT field, we know that the majority of investments come from private sector.”
Asked how countries would work together to find the investment needed to achieve universal connectivity when some countries have been withdrawing into intellectual protectionism, Yong said: “Protectionism is really an obstacle to multilateralism, to technology advancement. And also, it will hurt the private sector’s ability to innovate. And this is something that will stop things moving forward. We should stand together to fight against protectionism.”
The UNIDO Director General also emphasised strong policymaking and partnerships for global digitalisation, saying: “Without good policies from governments to start a good programme for the digitalisation process… the countries will not move because the digitalisation infrastructure must have strong support from the governments. And the second thing is the private sector should be actively encouraged to be involved in digital technology development. This is a very important process and the international community also needs to work together, particularly in addressing the big gap between advanced countries and developing countries.”
Yong also stressed a number of UNIDO interventions to help MSMEs adjust to the pandemic, such as publishing a guidebook to business recovery, as well as repurposing of manufacturing towards production of PPE and training and upskilling initiatives. He also underlined the necessity of industrial strategy, citing the cooperation with the Government of Egypt on their national industrial development policy.
