Mr. Bocar Ba

Chief Executive Officer, Samena Telecommunications Council

Bocar Ba is an advocacy specialist, focused on the promotion of sustainable digital development, ICT infrastructure expansion and investment through collaboration and multi-stakeholder partnerships in the Middle East and Africa regions. Ba is the CEO and a board member of SAMENA Telecommunications Council, which serves as a sector-development partner to governments and the telecommunications industry toward jointly creating a sustainable ICT environment as the enabler of sustainable digital economy.

In his capacity as CEO of SAMENA Council, Ba helps bring together and builds alliances between digital ecosystem stakeholders, including regulators and other government bodies, to address critical technocentric, policy, and regulatory issues. His efforts have directly helped drive key regional initiatives, summit and roundtables in areas including affordable infrastructure, advanced digital services, data and privacy regulation, spectrum management, and industry fees and taxation. Ba is a strong advocate of advancing socio-economic progress and contributing to the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through ecosystem-wide collaboration on proliferating ICTs, and setting incentives for investment in digitization and advanced communications infrastructure.

Ba is the chair of ITU’s Chief Regulatory Officers Meeting (“CRO”), and is currently shaping the scope and work of the newly created Industry Advisory Group for Development Issues (“IAGDI”). He also serves on the m-Powering Development Initiative’s Advisory Board, and is the chairman of the m-Powering Development Initiative’s Working Group on Partnerships. He is director and on the board of several companies, active in the areas of investment, technology, management, and consultancy services. He is actively involved in the privatization processes in the MEA region and drives various investment initiatives, with the aim to linking new development opportunities in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Ba has 29 years professional experience in the Telecom industry and graduated from French ESDE (Ecole Superieure des Dirigeants d’Entreprise).

Our collective empowerment and expedited policy and investment decisions hold the greatest promise to connect the still-unconnected 3 billion citizens of the world. We must catalyze major transformation in the way the Private Sector and Governments build cooperation, in order to achieve new milestones in ensuring digital connectedness for all. Good intents, collective intuition, strong investments, and unrelenting innovation should become the hallmark of our efforts toward fulfilling the SDGs.

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