“The sectarian violence is behind us now,” I was somewhat surprised to be told by a senior official from the Iraqi government. I’m writing this in Beirut where I am a guest speaker at the Arab ICT trade association IJMAA’s first conference for the Middle East and North Africa region.

My Iraqi acquaintance was part of a delegation of 15, including the ICT minister Abdu Kahman, here for the conference and for a meeting of Iraqi government chief information officers. Those I spoke to talked about a more positive sentiment in the country and I can only hope they are right.

The topics on the conference agenda would be familiar to attendees at ICT policy conferences anywhere in the world: how to boost the sector; its role in education, development and the alleviation of poverty; liberalising telecoms; protection of intellectual property rights; access to finance for growing companies. My own role was to provide a European and UK perspective on the topics.

IJMAA has been in existence for about four years and came about as an indirect result of a programme, partly funded by the United States Agency for International Development, to help develop IT trade associations in Africa. As well as helping to support an industry in the early stages of its growth, this very successful programme introduced ideas of, for example, good practice in public sector procurement.

Much of IJMAA’s work has been focused on programmes that use ICT for development. I talked to one IJMAA staff member who provides IT training to mostly young people in Baghdad, Kabul and even Helmand Province.

He said he often had to go to work in a British Army Chinook helicopter ­ somewhat different to the Northern Line.

This year IJMAA decided to hold its first conference to coincide with Termium, its high-tech trade show. The trade show hasn’t been running for the past three years due to the uncertain political and security situation, but perhaps from a sense that things are improving or, possibly more likely, simply a belief that life and business must go on, it started again this year. It was interesting to note that security checks at the show and conference weren’t as tight as you would now get at any UK public event.

The opening conference session, at which a number of ministers from the region were in the audience or with me on the panel, focused on the ICT sector in the Arab world.

To my mind there were three interesting debates: Should the region worry about ICT when in some areas there isn’t enough food, let alone broadband connectivity? What is government’s role? And is competition the best driver for communications?

I have learned that sometimes when I am sitting on these panels I need to be a bit controversial to get the discussion going, but not with this audience. The debate raged ­ in rapid Arabic. The Jordanian minister leaned over to me to enquire if they were managing to translate for me. They were doing an admirable job. The conclusions?

ICT has a big role in this region ­ bringing jobs, allowing people to communicate and contribute to open debate, improving education and more.

The communications question is more complex. Not everyone is starting from the same place and some of the best success stories seem to be a combination of public and private sector initiatives. What the region needs is its own Broadband Stakeholders’ Group, as well as strong trade associations. And that’s just what is being planned.

To help promote ICT in the Middle East, Intellect is undertaking a project to bring the Palestinian and Israeli ICT industries closer together.

John Higgins is director general of Intellect, the trade association for the UK’s IT industry. Read the Intellect blog at http://intellect.computing.co.uk