New York City – Digital transformation will be key in the Arab region’s recovery from the COVID-19 crisis and its pursuit of building forward toward sustainable and inclusive development goals—this was the conclusion of the virtual senior policy roundtable on Digital Transformation in the context of COVID-19 recovery and sustainable development that the League of Arab States (LAS), the Government of Japan (GOJ) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) hosted today, with the participation of representatives from the three partners alongside other UN agencies, think tanks and other organizations active in the region.

“The COVID-19 crisis underscored the urgency of embarking on a comprehensive digital transformation across the Arab region,” stressed Ms Khalida Bouzar, Assistant Secretary-General and Regional Director for Arab States, UNDP. “The League of Arab States has set a great example of leadership in this domain, moving forward with the digitization of all its work and operations, with support from the Government of Japan. UNDP is happy to have had the chance to facilitate this transformation.”

The roundtable inaugurated the new digital network and equipment at the LAS Secretariat in Cairo. Demonstrating the commitment of the regional organization to walk to the talk on digital transformation, the digital upgrading initiative included a complete overhaul of the information technology infrastructure in the secretariat and the training of LAS diplomats on the effective use of information and communication technologies in the workplace.

“Digital transformation has proven to be increasingly indispensable, especially during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The League of Arab States is currently working with its partners (ESCWA, ITU, AICTO) to update and implement the Arab Strategy for Telecommunications and Information Technology for 2022-2026. LAS also cooperates with the Arab Union for Digital Economy to implement the ‘Arab Strategy for Digital Economy’, and with ESCWA on the Arab Digital Agenda for 2030 framework” said Ambassador Hossam Zaki, Assistant Secretary General of the League of Arab States. He added that “LAS was also proceeding with developing and upgrading the efficiency of the Secretariat’s IT infrastructure so it can keep abreast of the world-wide digital transformation, whereby LAS recently completed the UNDP–Japan supported implementation of the IT infrastructure renovations which will allow the Secretariat to work more efficiently”.

With the importance of digital tools heightened drastically due to the pandemic, today’s virtual roundtable showcased the region’s strong interest and sense of urgency toward digitization, addressing potential opportunities and challenges on the way forward. The roundtable particularly discussed the challenges of growing digital divides, the risks of cybersecurity, and how regional and international support and coordination are crucial to address these challenges.

“Digital transformation could increase additional values to services in many areas including health, welfare and education, especially in the post COVID-19 era, and Japan has been trying to utilize digital tools to maximize the effectiveness of its assistance projects in the Arab region. On the other hand, we should be aware of the risks of the digital technologies, namely cyber-attacks, exploiting vulnerabilities in cybersecurity”, says Ambassador Masaki Noke, Ambassador of Japan to Egypt – and explained three pillars of Japan’s cyber security strategy: "the promotion of the rule of law", "the promotion of confidence-building measures", and "cooperation on capacity building".

Today’s virtual roundtable was the fourth in the high-level dialogue series co-hosted by the tri-partite partnership since 2019, which follows the successful conclusion of the first Arab-Japan Political

Dialogue held in September 2017. The series of roundtables aims to enhance cooperation between Japan and the Arab states and to establish a policy dialogue platform encompassing common development priorities and concerns for the region.