STI Forum Side Event - Tackling the Digital Divide: Partnering for Access, Skills and Empowering Girls

Artificial Intelligence Digital Transformation Illustration with woman face in the middle of data and digital elements
Location

Online

Take part in this side event, organised together with ILO and Microsoft, on 6 May 2022 – 12:00 EDT / 18:00 CET.

The digital skills gap is growing worldwide. While in many parts of the world there are rising opportunities for people to train in the new technologies and take advantage of the new jobs being created, in Least Developed Countries, too many young people and women lack access to the internet, to training programmes to develop digital skills, and the means to take advantage of the digital revolution. The private sector is joining together with training institutes to tackle these challenges and offer digital skills training to ensure a fully inclusive digital transformation.

In the framework of the UN Multi-stakeholder Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation (STI Forum), IOE is organising a keynote event with leaders from the business community in LDCs, international corporations and organisations together with experts from widely respected think tanks to discuss how to close the digital skills gap in LDCs. Focus will be put on best practice examples of private and public initiatives to train people in LDCs in new digital tools, blockages exacerbating the digital divide in LDCs, and how to mobilise more businesses to support digital training in LDCs.

IOE Permanent Representative to the UN, Shea Gopaul, will moderate the following exchanges:

  • Sustainable change through public-private partnerships: Fireside chat with Roberto Suárez Santos, Secretary-General of the International Organisation of Employers, and Nicolas Goldstein, Co-Founder of Talenteum Africa.
  • Engaging more women in STEM education and ITC jobs: Srinivas B. Reddy, Chief, Skills and Employability Branch, ILO Geneva; Jennifer Brooks, Director of Global Partnerships, Microsoft, and Hasna Barkat, Legal Adviser, National Confederation of Djiboutian Employers (CNED).

A short film will be shown of employer organisations’ representatives discussing key future skills, the importance of effective public-private partnerships on skills anticipation and development policies, and the role of employer organisations in helping reach the skills gap to match demand with supply.

All STI Forum side events will be fully virtual and only available on the WHOVA platform in English.

Register now on WHOVA and get your free tickets to attend our side event!

IOE address

71 Avenue Louis-Casaï
1216 Cointrin
Geneva, Switzerland

T: +41 22 929 00 00
F: +41 22 929 00 01

ioe(at)ioe-emp.com