By Emeka Aginam, in New York

Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems as the theme of the 2011 edition of Imagine Cup  holding for the first time in the United States of America, the special advisor to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals,  (MDGs) Dr. Jeffrey Sachs has told the participating college students that they have a home work to do in the Millennium Development Goals using Information technology as a tool.

Sachs who spoke at the opening ceremony of 2011 edition of premier student technology completion  without mincing words said that there are challenges ahead on how to  solve many problems facing the world especially, hunger, disease among others as outlined by the United Nation in the MDGs

What is amazing, according to him,  is how many solutions can be made by innovation and by the empowerment of technology and by the wonders of what  the students were  doing in bringing information and communications technologies to bear on the truly life and death challenges of the planet.

“So, we’re giving you a homework assignment. It’s not for the semester; it’s for your lifetime. But a homework assignment really that is nothing less than saving the planet and making sure that we have the future of the prosperity and hope that future generations yearn for and that we, as fragile as we are, as stewards of the planet are desperately seeking.

“The Millennium Development Goals, which I’ve advised Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon, the two great recent secretaries general, are our first way station in this effort. They go to the core of whether we have the decency and the smarts on the planet to ensure that everybody can survive on the planet because it’s nothing less than that.

“And I can tell you, Steve, everything you said I feel when you see it in the villages, what it has meant for computers and for mobile phones to come to places that were completely isolated, and that were suffering, dying and hungry, and now are empowered with every form of information, and have access, and with the tools that this group has been innovating and will further innovate in the future, you know that these are problems that this generation, as hard as it is, you the new leaders of the world are going to be able to bring to success.

“You already are on a path of global change though ICT. Now, the truth is this is an incredibly weird time in the world that we’re living in. I feel more disoriented now; I have to say, than at any moment of my adult life and my time in thinking about global problems.

“The international economy is in deep dislocation. I was just on the phone talking about the Greek economic crisis, which is something that is very dangerous and could spiral to a Europe-wide crisis, dealing with one of the worst droughts in history in the Horn of Africa, and a myriad of problems, and yet at the same time, more power in our hands, more tools, more innovation, more hope that you not only symbolize, that you are it. By virtue of your being here, you are the problem-solvers that are going to solve these problems.

“Now, I have been a professor for 31 years now, and I’m pretty tough on the exams that I give, and I have to say that my generation is giving you guys a pretty tough exam. Because while Steve and Bill Gates and a whole remarkable   generation of leaders that pioneered these great breakthroughs that you are now taking on and taking farther, it’s also true that our generation, I think we have to acknowledge it, is leaving you with a mountain of problems, the likes of which the world has never quite seen’ he said.

According to the UN scribe, “We really have a race that on the one side the tools are more remarkable, more mind-blowing than ever before, and you just saw some of them and you’ve made many of them.

“And yet at the same time, the problems are absolutely harrowing. We will reach 7 billion people on the planet in three months. We are more crowded in the world and pressing against limits of ecosystems, limits of food supply, resource limits, barriers and threats of contagion, of diseases that spread more rapidly than ever before, of rising numbers of extreme poor, at the same moment that we have all this power, the technology, the potential to address these problems” he added.

According to him, 8 million children die every year before their fifth birthday for completely stupid reasons, for diseases that don’t even exist in rich countries and for conditions that by being smart, by having systems, by having information, and by mobilizing best technologies, deaths that can be ended.

“We have a billion people living in chronic hunger right now, and the numbers have risen because we’ve had climate shocks, we have the growing food demand coming from the vast growth of the emerging economies, impinging on the demand side while the supply side has been dislocated by climate change.

“We’ve had a tripling of staple food prices on two occasions now in the last three years, went up, came down, now it’s gone back up again, 2008 and 2011.

“We face a profound energy crisis. Not only are energy prices back at extraordinarily high levels, the way we deploy energy, as all of you know, will wreck the planet if we simply continue in this direction.

“But for you of all people this is not a litany of woe, this is not meant to be a breast-beating testimony of all that is wrong, and it is not meant for one moment to be a measure of pessimism. But it is I think for all of us a wake-up call to the reality of the planet and to the fact that while we feel very comfortable and very lucky and fortunate to be here and to be living in the circumstances that most of us are fortunate to find ourselves, you know that that is but a part of the planet, and you have been the ones to pioneer how to address the challenge that those less fortunate continue to face by the hundreds of millions, and that the planet as a whole will suffer unless we move forward” he said.

In every area disease control, educational access, information systems, the fight against hunger, the fight for a sustainable climate, for a new and secure energy system, information technology will be at the very center of the solutions, the UN scribe explained.