Maldivians need to take more active steps towards utilizing digital technologies, says President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih.

Speaking at an event by local telecom provider Dhiraagu, President Solih said that Maldivians ‘must think more’ about utilizing technology as a resource for development and entrepreneurship.

At the event, President Solih lauded Dhiraagu as being a company with a ‘promising future’, which has the capital to further develop digital services available in the Maldives.

Further, the president said that bridging the divide in access to these services, between the capital city and the rest of the nation, is ‘one of the biggest challenges we face today’.

In his address, President Solih also highlighted his administration’s commitment to ensuring ‘all Maldivian citizens have equal access to not only basic needs but also to high-quality infrastructure and resources intended to better their quality of life’.

Sunday’s event was held to commemorate the launching of a fiber broadband project that will allow connectivity, through Dhiraagu, from the ‘southern and northern-most points’ in the Maldives.

Research published in March of this year says that ‘significant disparities in penetration of digital technologies’ exist, although the divide between access for the capital and the rest of the nation will narrow in the future.

Ooredoo Maldives, Dhiraagu’s only competition, which launched a USD 25 million project to lay a fiber-optic cable submarine cable that stretches across 1,200 km, has also expressed commitment to bringing to reality hopes of nation-wide high-speed connectivity, which Ooredoo calls ‘Digital Maldives’.