In Hong Kong President Paul Kagame today chaired the Broadband Commission Meeting in Hong Kong, hosted by Huawei Technologies.

Themed ‘Broadband for Sustainable Development’, the meeting discussed possible intermediate 2020 targets for the broadband commission as 2030 was considered a long way into the future, considering the pace of technological change.

In his opening remarks, President Kagame thanked members of the commission and support teams that he said had been working on different tasks in working groups, motivated by wanting to have the global community connected, especially the billions of unconnected people.

“We will always succeed especially when we work together: government, industry and civil society leaders. Suffice to say also, that it is going to be helpful to take a moment, at the right time, to measure the practical progress we have made. ICT and broadband have come to, amongst other things, link people for the better of economies and societies,” President Kagame said.

During the meeting, open discussions were held on key priorities for the commission’s work going forward and the objectives to be achieved by 2020.

Following the meeting, the Head of State received Sun Yafang, Chairperson of Huawei Technologies, with whom he discussed partnership between the Government of Rwanda and Huawei Technologies. An MoU was signed articulating areas of collaboration, which included extension of the national broadband network, through fiber on the grid; Regional Data Centre, Smart Education and Huawei Research Lab among others.

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