4th Arab Digital Content Forum concluded in Doha

The events of the 4th Arab Digital Content Forum concluded in Doha today. The forum is organized by the Ministry of Transport and Communications during the period from 5th-7th of October.

Under the auspices of the League of Arab States in collaboration with Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) of Qatar, the Arab Information and Communication Technologies Organization (AICTO), the UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA) and the ITU, Participants in the forum issued a set of recommendations to enhance the presence of the Arabic language on the Internet, which included a number of important points concerned with improving the quality of digital content, among them is the importance of developing and publishing domain names in Arabic to facilitate access to content for non-Arabic in foreign languages, and the importance of having a greater Arab representation in international groups and organizations concerned with this field.

The recommendations also included the necessity of uniting Arab efforts to publish content, sponsoring and supporting various projects concerned with encouraging innovation in developing and increasing Arab digital content, implementing laws that protect intellectual property to encourage investment in professional content, providing institutional and financial support for content developers, and developing high-quality digital Arabic content to help Arabic speakers have access to this content and allow them to express themselves and spread their cultural work in their mother tongue.

Speakers at the forum stressed the need to make huge investments in the field of information and communication technology infrastructure, in addition to the current health and economic priorities of governments, especially in light of the growing risk of widening the digital divide between and within countries, and the sharing of data with emerging companies, as most of the data is held by official institutions and large companies, noting that sharing data - taking into account the controls - opens a door for creativity and innovation.

During the forum, in which more than 400 people participated online, the speakers emphasized that the Arabic language still suffers from a lack of representation on the Internet and its digital presence is insignificant, and its digital presence is minimal and does not match its importance, the number of its users and its prevalence. As the Arabic language is the fifth most common language used in the world, and its linguistic dictionary contains about 13 million words, and is spoken by 422 million people around the world.

The speakers also emphasized that the Arabic language is one of the official languages of the UN, and the number of Arab Internet users is nearly 100 million people. However, global reports dealing with digital content indicate that Arabic digital content represents only 3 percent of the total global content on the Internet. They explained that the role of language goes beyond being a means of communication to that it represents the main component of the identity.

The participants pointed out that supporting digital Arabic content during crises is a necessity dictated by the nature of the challenges we live in today, It is a task entrusted to all, institutions and individuals, in order to preserve the Arab heritage and identity, and to deliver the correct information in a language that everyone can understand.

The forum, over its three days, included five main topics on the reality of Arabic digital content, the importance of Arabic digital content during crises, the future prospects of e-learning in the Arab region, the role of Arabic digital content within a smart nation, the Arabic digital content and entrepreneurship amongst youth and the advancement of the Arabic digital content.