Press Release, 17 May 2007                                                                       UNIC/PR/10/07

UN information centres in sub-Saharan Africa launch 16 websites

Pretoria, South Africa – Sixteen UN information centres (UNICs) in sub-Saharan Africa, marking World Information Society Day, today launched new websites in an effort to bring the work of the United Nations closer to its local constituencies around the continent.

The information centres in sub-Saharan Africa provide communications services to a total of 34 countries and are part of a network of UN information offices in over 60 capitals around the world. They are crucial players in promoting UN priority issues at the national level.

The websites were designed as a collaborative project by the information technology teams of the Information Centres Service of the Department of Public Information at UN Headquarters and the UN Regional Information Centre in Brussels, Belgium. UNIC Pretoria will be responsible for the ongoing maintenance and updating of the sites, in partnership with the individual UNICs.

In addition to news generated by UN Headquarters, the UN Country Teams and the UNICs themselves, the websites in Africa also host translations into more than 20 national languages of key UN documents, as well as a variety of links to UN system websites, programs and key events.

The new websites are part of the expansion of web-based information on the United Nations to as wide an audience as possible, particularly in developing countries. The entire UN system, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated in his message marking World Information Society Day, is committed to supporting the linkage between information and communications technologies (ICT) and development.

Encouraging all stakeholders “to do their part to connect young people and to create a truly open, inclusive and development-oriented information society,” the Secretary-General called for the production of suitable technologies, applications and services to facilitate wide access to ICT.

To view the new UNIC websites, please visit:

Accra                           http://accra.unic.org

Antananarivo                http://antananarivo.unic.org

Asmara                        http://asmara.unic.org

Brazzaville                    http://brazzaville.unic.org

Bujumbura                    http://bujumbura.unic.org

Dakar                           http://dakar.unic.org

Dar es Salaam              http://daressalaam.unic.org

Harare                          http://harare.unic.org

Lagos                           http://lagos.unic.org

Lome                            http://lome.unic.org

Lusaka                         http://lusaka.unic.org

Maseru                         http://maseru.unic.org

Ouagadougou                http://ouagadougou.unic.org

Pretoria                        http://pretoria.unic.org

Windhoek                     http://windhoek.unic.org

Yaounde                       http://yaounde.unic.org

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