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Geneva, July 10, 2026 – At the WSIS 2026 Leaders TalkX 12 session, titled “Co-Creating Tomorrow: Digital and AI in Partnership,” SAMENA Telecommunications Council, represented by CEO Bocar Ba, called on governments, regulators and the private sector to reconcile the accelerating drive for digital sovereignty with the reality of digital interdependence. Addressing a panel of leaders from government, international organisations, academia and the technical community, Ba argued that the two are not competing choices but complementary foundations of a resilient digital future.
Ba observed that the defining move of the moment has shifted from the borderless interdependence of the past decade toward the assertion of digital sovereignty. Governments and regions, from Europe to the Gulf, are reducing their reliance on technologies they do not control, he noted, even as access to the most advanced AI is increasingly conditioned on strategic alignment. Against that backdrop, Ba cautioned against overstating interdependence, while insisting that sovereignty and interdependence are, in his words, “not opposites — they are two sides of one strategy.”
“No country, regardless of its size, wealth or technological advancement, can build its digital future alone,” Ba said. The critical distinction, he argued, lies in the nature of the dependence: “Dependence that is imposed and concentrated is not sovereignty; dependence that is chosen, diversified and trusted is sovereignty exercised wisely.” On that basis, he urged the WSIS process to devote its next chapter to “building trusted interdependence that strengthens sovereignty rather than eroding it.”
Ba set out what meaningful participation in the digital economy now requires: resilient and, where it matters most, sovereign digital infrastructure; trusted AI; cybersecurity; digital skills; sustainable investment; local innovation; and partnerships that turn global capability into national capacity rather than permanent dependence. He located a distinct responsibility with industry, whose role, he said, extends beyond deploying networks and investing in infrastructure to “building confidence” — that critical infrastructure will remain resilient and neutral, that AI will augment human potential rather than widen inequalities, and that no nation will be locked out of the digital future simply because it cannot yet build every layer of the technology stack itself.
Ba’s intervention resonated with the broader themes of the session. Fellow panelists highlighted the importance of protecting and financing a genuinely multi-stakeholder model of internet governance — one credited with keeping the internet open for decades and guarding against fragmentation — and of shifting the WSIS review culture from declarations to measurable outcomes. Speakers stressed the centrality of international cooperation and shared standards to placing AI at the service of the development agenda, the environmental and intergenerational sustainability of the data-centre build-out on which AI depends, and a pro-innovation approach to regulation that supports economic growth while managing risk. A shared insistence on inclusion ran throughout: that context matters, that more bridge-building is needed, and that without a deliberately inclusive approach the majority of the world’s people risk being left behind.
Framing cooperation as an enabler of national autonomy rather than a constraint on it, Ba told the session that “cooperation between nations that remain masters of their own digital destiny is not a constraint on sovereignty — it is what makes sovereignty affordable,” and called on participants to “move beyond sharing ideas, and begin sharing responsibility.”
In conclusion, Bocar Ba stated, “The next phase of the digital age will be defined by the dependencies we choose to build, and by the trust with which we govern them. Engaged with openness, responsibility and respect for one another’s sovereignty, digital technologies will strengthen our societies, expand opportunities for people, and carry us from intelligent societies to intelligent — and sovereign — nations.”
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SAMENA Telecommunications Council
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Source: Press Release
