Digital Cooperation Organization holds 1st council meeting

RIYADH, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The Digital Cooperation Organization (DCO), based in Saudi capital Riyadh, held its first council meeting on Monday and announced Nigeria and Oman as founding members.

Also including Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, the seven countries are an economic bloc of 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars in GDP. The population of the seven nations is close to 480 million, 80 percent of whom are under 35 years old, a DOC statement said on Monday.

DCO's first ministerial meeting, chaired by Saudi Arabia's Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Al-Swaha, witnessed the signing of an agreement to launch several initiatives, aiming at establishing a center to highlight the importance of cooperation on flow of data across borders, empowerment of women in the digital labor market, in addition to serving entrepreneurship and small and medium-sized enterprises.

It was also agreed on Saudi Arabia's presidency of the organization until the end of current term, in addition to the appointment of Deemah Al-Yahya from Saudi Arabia as secretary general of the organization.

The meeting discussed ways to promote cooperation in all areas driven by innovation and acceleration of growth of digital economy. They also discussed the organization's governance, organizational structure and future plans.

The DCO, established in November 2020, aims at realizing a digital future for all.