Regional Preparatory Meeting
05-07 July 2005 (Abuja, Nigeria)

Letter of invitation to ITU Member States, ITU-D Sector Members, Regional and subregional telecommunication organizations

Ref: DM 215

Contact: A. Boussaid, Conferences Unit, BDT
Tel: +41 22 730 5900
Fax: +41 22 730 5484
E-Mail: A. Boussaid

Subject: Africa Regional preparatory meeting for the World Telecommunication development Conference (WTDC-06), Abuja (Nigeria), 5-7 July 2005

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have pleasure in inviting you to participate in the regional telecommunication development preparatory meeting to be held in Abuja, at the Congress Hall of the Nicon Hilton Hotel Abuja, from 5 to 7 July 2005 at the kind invitation of the Ministry of Communications of Nigeria. The opening ceremony will take place on 4 July 2005 at 1800 hours.

As you know, at its 2004 session the ITU Council decided that the next world telecommunication development conference (WTDC) will be held in Doha (Qatar) from 7 to 15 March 2006. The Council further decided the draft agenda and proposed structure of WTDC 06 (see Annexes 4 and 5). Council's decision has been confirmed in a consultation of the Member States which the Secretary-General of the Union carried out in accordance with No. 213 of the ITU Convention.

In its Resolution 31, the World Telecommunication Development Conference (Istanbul, 2002) (WTDC 02) considered that the success of future conferences will depend on greater efficiency of regional coordination. It took account of the benefits that a WTDC could gain in efficiency from an increased amount and level of preparation of the Member States prior to the conference. For the above-mentioned reasons, WTDC 02 decided to organize regional telecommunication development preparatory meetings as close as possible to the next WTDC.

The objective of these meetings is to adopt appropriate development strategies at regional and subregional level. These will be based on initiatives and projects on one hand, and on questions and topics related to them on the other. This last point is essential to ensuring the success of the WTDC. It will facilitate conversion of the action plan adopted at the conference into a rolling operational plan covering an entire four-year development cycle. In this regard, Member States will be able to make any relevant proposals on the contribution expected from the ITU Regional Office in implementing the projects and initiatives.

The draft agenda of the meeting, contained in Annex 1, is deliberately limited so as to focus debate on the requirements and priorities of the Member States of the region.

Constraints deriving from the schedule of BDT activities impose a deadline for the submission of proposals and contributions on the various items on the draft agenda so as to ensure efficient and equitable processing. The deadline is set at 3 June 2005 at the latest.

Proposals, preferably in electronic form, should be sent to the following address:

Rpm_afr@itu.int The meeting will be held in English and French. Practical information and working documents will be posted on the ITU D website as they become available. The URL is:

http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ Annex 2 to this letter contains a registration form which you are kindly requested to complete and return to us before 20 June 2005.

Practical information relating to the meeting’s organization may be found in Annex 6.

Subject to the available financial resources and in order to encourage the participation of the least developed countries (LDCs), a fellowship will be granted to each of the administrations of those countries. To this end, I should be grateful if you would complete the fellowship request form in Annex 3 and return it to the ITU Fellowship Service not later than 15 May 2005.

With your cooperation and active involvement, our ambition is to produce a realistic action plan at the next world telecommunication development conference which embraces the needs of the Member States and their will to contribute towards building a global information society that is open to everyone.

Yours faithfully,

Hamadoun I. Touré
Director