Former secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Hamadoun Touré, has been appointed as a nonexecutive director of Telkom with immediate effect.

Telkom made the announcement in a statement issued via the JSE’s stock exchange news service after markets closed on Thursday.

Touré was secretary general of the ITU, the specialised agency of the United Nations dedicated to ICT, from 2007 to 2014. He was re-elected for a second four-year term in 2010.

He has been a director of the ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau and was also on the International Multilateral Partnership against Cyber Threats (Impact) International Advisory Board.

“Since 2007, he has worked to fulfil the ITU’s mandate to ‘connect the world’ and help achieve the Millennium Development Goals,” Telkom said in the statement.

Touré has also served as co-vice chairman of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, which was launched in May 2010 by ITU and Unesco.

Prior to joining ITU he had a distinguished career in the satellite industry, Telkom said.