The importance of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to the development of countries was underlined yesterday by Foreign Affairs Minister Michael Frendo during the opening session of a two-day Commonwealth Connects seminar.

Commonwealth Connects is a programme that helps bridge the deepening digital divide within the Commonwealth. It was set up following the Malta Declaration on Networking the Commonwealth for Development during the 2005 CHOGM held in Malta.

Minister Frendo, who currently chairs the programme’s steering committee, illustrated the challenges Commonwealth Connects is facing and outlined how it is programming its future work. Stressing the tremendous impact of ICT on the development of countries and the way it fosters trade and business, he spoke about the role that the Common-wealth can assume in order to help bring less advanced countries closer to technology.

He said that the Commonwealth’s own composition of countries with common values and different levels of ICT allows for sharing technologies, values and practices. This is the Commonwealth Value-Added, said Dr Frendo.

The programme, he said, adopts a three-pronged approach during its projects. It works on a global/regional sphere, specific country approach and seeks the help of civil society in order to achieve its goals.

The global aspect of the project will be discussed during an International e-Partnership Summit in New Delhi, India, in March.

At national level, the programme brings together developed and developing countries in order to match needs with expertise and resources. Dr Frendo said that at civil society level, the programme has had an overwhelming amount of response and has had two calls for project proposals.

The Malta meeting is identifying projects that can be carried in lesser developed countries prior to the next CHOGM, which will be held in Uganda next November.

The programmes web portal can be found on www.commonwealthconnects.com.