Excellencies, Mr. Administrator, on Behalf of Italy, it is a true privilege and a profound honor to extend our sincere farewell as your remarkable tenure as UNDP Administrator comes to a close.
Throughout your mandate, our cooperation with UNDP has grown steadily and proved extraordinarily fruitful through innovative partnerships and ambitious joint initiatives, greatly enriched by your leadership and vision.
Under your guidance, we have built a partnership with great value, particularly to the extraordinary expertise of the UNDP Rome center during Italy G7 presidencies we have trust UNDP as knowledge partner to launch groundbreaking projects in non-traditional fields of cooperation, notably in infrastructure development, digital transformation and artificial intelligence.
Among these, the AI hub for sustainable development that you have mentioned this morning will be inaugurated in two weeks from now with an annual budget of 5 million euros. This has been developed through the participation of the African Union and the it will contribute to fostering local AI ecosystem, empowering young entrepreneurs and accelerating sustainable AI driven industrial growth in Africa.
In parallel, the UNDP Italy Digital Flagship with Africa Initiative will support digital transformation in and with Cote d’ Ivoire, Ghana, Mozambique and Senegal, thereby boosting sustainable economic growth.
I would also like to mention our cooperation within the UN SDG Action Campaign and our support to the Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF) to further highlight our shared commitment to financing sustainable development priorities and accelerating progress towards the SDGs.
Mr. Administrator, your tenure as UNDP has been marked by vision, dedication and tangible achievements. We would like to express our appreciation and extend our gratitude also to your staff with whom we have had an excellent collaboration. So please count on Italy for continued support in building upon your exceptional legacy.
Thank you.
