The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) will be held in Sharm El-Sheikh in the last quarter of the year, the Communication and Information Technology Ministry announced on Sunday.
The summit, which is organised by the Information Telecommunication Union (ITU), will be attended by experts from the Information Technology industry and a number of local and international technology companies.
The WSIS is a UN-sponsored conference that aims to narrow the digital gap between rich and poor countries by spreading access to the internet in developing countries.
The first WSIS conference was held in Geneva, Switzerland in 2003, where 175 countries gathered to discuss a road map for achieving “an information society accessible to all”. The attendees agreed to set the target of having 50% of world’s population online by 2015.
A second conference was held in Tunisia in 2005, resulting in the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society.
According to the ITU, the summit will review the implementation of the WSIS’ roadmap and the achievements of the past ten years.
The ministry is currently preparing for the summit in order to guarantee substantial results. The concerned parties agreed to move the event out of Cairo to ensure its success, according to a statement from the ministry.
In cooperation with the ITU, Egypt earlier hosted global events that included the International Economic Forum in 2008 and the 15th Non-Aligned Movement summit in 2009.
