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Representatives of the Basque Government meet with the Shangai authorities to invite Asia´s largest city to the Bilbao Summit
From 21 to 25 February Shanghai will host a working congress to prepare for the World Summit on the Information Society to be held in Bilbao in November.
Iñaki Agirre, Secretary General of the Basque Government's Department of Foreign Affairs, and Marcel Boisard, Assistant Secretary General of the UN, met this week with the Shanghai authorities to formally invite them to attend the 2nd World Summit of Cities and Local Authorities on the Information Society, taking place in Bilbao in November.
The summit in the capital of Bizkaia province will bring together 2,000 representatives of cities and regions from four continents. Their goal is to find ways of preventing a digital divide from opening up, and to ensure that all the planet’s inhabitants each enjoy the same opportunities to have access to new information technologies. As the sponsors of the Bilbao Summit, the UN and the Basque Government believe that local bodies are ideally suited to developing this form of electronic solidarity.
One of the most dynamic cities in the world, Shanghai will undoubtedly be one of the focal points at the November summit. With no fewer than 17 million inhabitants, economic analysts have described it as the New York of the 21st century. Whereas Beijing is China’s administrative and political centre, Shanghai is the country’s most populous city and its economic, financial and industrial powerhouse.
In its desire to bridge the digital divide, the Basque Government has played its part in helping to found the Digital Solidarity Fund, an initiative conceived by Senegal in order to finance projects linked to new information technologies in the most deprived areas of the world. The Basque Country has also given its support to the IT4ALL network, which brings 2,000 cities and regions on four continents into contact with each other on the information highway, allowing them to exchange knowledge. The CIFAL Bilbao centre has also been set up in the Basque Country and specialises in preparing institutions for the new world of the Information Society.
The UN and the Basque Government are of the opinion that local and regional authorities have a closer view of the actual situation on the ground than central government, and can inform their citizens of the opportunities presented by information technologies. Next November’s Bilbao Summit will provide an all-too-rare opportunity for local bodies to take centre stage in a truly global project. Cities and regions will be able to operate on the same level as states, who will be meeting at another world summit in Tunis just days after the Bilbao event to analyse the conclusions reached at the first of these two events.