The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Berlin, Germany, from 25 to 29 November 2019. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> Okay. Testing the mic. 1, 2, 3.
Okay. Can we have everyone come to the top table, please. We will be starting soon.
Okay. We will start in two minutes. We will start in two minutes.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to welcome you to the Workshop 293: Unlocking the Digital Potentials of Developing and Least Developed Countries.
My name is Jimson Olufuye. I will be your Moderator for this workshop. With regard to myself, I'm the CEO of Contemporary Consulting based in Nigeria. We work on data centers and mitigate cybersecurity challenges for customers, and we also build platforms. Also happen to be the former Chair of the Africa ICT Alliance founded in the year 2012, with membership from six African countries, but today we have 32 African countries as our members, so AFICTA is a Private Sector led organization that include ICT association, ICT companies, and professionals, as well.
So, all of you here and online, you're all most welcome. We will do some space that you're watching us, you're all most welcome to this special workshop.
It's going to be very, very interesting. I have a very formidable panel, and they will do justice to the topic.
We're looking at how do we unlock the digital potential of developing and least Developed Countries. The major issues in Internet Governance.
Internet Governance is a very serious issue in the world today and Developing Countries do not want to be left behind, so we are part of the first industrial revolution, and also bridge the digital divide.
Co‑moderating with me is Vivien, we have Vivien Assangbe Wotto from Brazil. Vivien is a Private Sector. Welcome Vivien. Thank you. She will also be doing the reporting for us.
And, the other organizers for this event, we have AFICTA, we also have ICANN supporting, the ICT Association of Namibia, they are also supporting, the institute of IT professionals of South Africa, supporting, that is the Egyptian IT Electronic and Software alliance also supporting, the Kenya computer society, also supporting this event.
It's going to be a town hall, so all of you out there online, please feel free to send in your input, send in your comments, and your questions as guests, maybe.
I will now go ahead to introduce the speakers. Well, immediately to my left is the current chairman of the Africa ICT alliance. He's also the CEO of EDRAK, based on in Cairo, Egypt. He has extensive experience; we can see former cabinet level Minister in Egypt. Please join me to welcome engineer Hossam Elgamal.
(Applause)
Next to him is a Director in the ICT Bureau in the Republic of Binet, and he's also the Director, Regional Director, we can say, for West Africa of the ICT Foundation. Please join me to welcome Mr. Kossi. Please, Mr. Kossi, you're most welcome. Please, put your hands together. Amessinou. He's representing Government.
(Applause)
And, to my right, you have another Private Sector representative. She is the group head of IBM Hyperprotect Accelerator focused on empowering early stage entrepreneurs. True technology and business acceleration. Technology credits, co‑marketing, go‑to market strategy and access to IBM partner ecosystem.
Please join me to welcome Melissa Sassi.
(Applause)
And, next to Melissa is another man wearing many caps. We can say former Minister level in African Government, and a regulator, Chairman of regulatory authority, and of course, civil service in the non‑not‑for‑profit organization advocacy.
So, please join me to welcome Professor Mohammed Azizi.
(Applause)
And, next to him we have Private Sector representative, familiar with the Internet Society, and she is the Senior Advisor to the CEO on infrastructure and connectivity.
Please join me to welcome Jane Coffin.
(Applause)
Also with us from the Private Sector is, representing Europe in this panel, is Associate Director EU affairs of AT&T. Please join me to welcome Goncalo Carrico.
(Applause)
All right. So, next to him also is a man with many hats, as well, is from academia. Of course, he has extensive experience in academia and Civil Society activity, but now is more into business, Private Sector. Representing South America is the CEO of Governance Primer, a business and technical consulting firm, Mark Datysgeld.
(Applause)
To my left again, let me also introduce to us last, but not least, is a lady well known, a current member of IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group, and she is representing the not‑for‑profit organization Civil Society.
Please join me to welcome Chenai Chair.
(Applause)
The details ‑‑ more details of our speakers online. Maybe it can also be projected as they intervene.
Well, this session is going to be in two parts. The first part will be the speakers to intervene on the policy questions. Two policy questions, for that matter, and after that, within maybe 15 minutes then we can have another session for the entire audience. So, as they speak, please prepare your questions, prepare your comments so that we can have an interactive engagement.
Now, our speakers will be responding to the policy questions regard to how do we mobilize policy makers? How do we mobilize them to take the issue of policy that directs digital economy even in the industrial revolution? So, the first policy question, how do we best mobilize and challenge policy makers and come together and take constructive steps towards addressing cross issues that's like impediments on locking the digital potentials of Developing Countries. We missed out in the first revolution, second, third, but the fourth, we are making all efforts so that we can catch up and we will realize, indeed, potentials.
The second policy question will be, what are those overarching things or measures that can guarantee digital inclusion. For example, you look at capital development, which is very essential. Labor market development capacity and capability development. What are those things we need to do to enhance the capacity of our youth, enhance the capacity of the labor force so that we don't lose out in the fourth industrial revolution?
Well, I'm going to turn to the Chair of AFICTA. As I mentioned, he succeeded me, he pushed me out of the chairmanship of AFICTA, and we are here. Going to talk to him, but for the benefit of our audience, the idea of Internet Governance forum evolves from Information Society 2005. He is one of the major outcomes of that summit, and is an opportunity for us to brainstorm and discuss.
So, the Chair is going to open it up with regard to policy. He has been a policy man, so how do we mobilize them, and what do we need to do?
Chair.
>> Hossam Elgamal: Thank you very much, Dr. Olufuye. Thank you for moderating the session, and all the efforts you have been doing advocating the Private Sector on international different forums, and trying to help shaping policy that would really be benefiting developing in these Developing Countries and Africa, especially, and, for initiating AFICTA and chairing it for the last few years.
Just to highlight, I have been lucky to have the experience of working as Private Sector, and also as Government part of my career. This give us more information and insight about what is happening, and also having the opportunity to be a board member of AFICTA since 2012, and then sharing it for almost two years now give me the opportunity to see across the board different challenges that we are facing related to policy, especially policy related to ICT.
Digital transformation is, as mentioned by Dr. Jimson, key to bring us in the same speed as Developed Countries, and it could happen. We can do it.
The only thing is that, first of all, we do lack enough information and knowledge about how we can do it, and second is that we need a lot of capacity building to do that properly. And, doing it each Country on its own is quite costly and is learning by trial and error, and maybe this is an opportunity if we think different and we can collaborate more. This is one of the reasons why AFICTA was initiated to make a collaborative effort for private business in Africa in shaping policies related to digital transformation in such contents.
So, I hope that during this session we will be able to answer how can we really make it faster and easier for Developing Countries to engage further in policy making activities, and which would lead to better implementation of digital transformation.
Thank you very much.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Thank you very much, Chair. Appreciate the compliments and grateful that you will continue to run with the baton.
Let me turn to Civil Society Chair, or lady. Chenai has been in wealth foundation as such manager for gender and digital rights. Chenai has extensive focus on understanding demand side issues with regard to digital policy from a gender youth perspective in our work.
Do you agree with what our Chair said in terms of we need to really look at it from the broad perspective?
>> CHENAI CHAIR: Thank you very much for having me.
I think I do agree that we need to look as it from a broad perspective, but at the same time I do believe that even in the engagements of policy makers, there is a need for evidence‑based policy and this is what icon constantly advocate for Governments to actually support research initiatives and invest in research in their own countries to understand the extent to which use people are using the Internet and accessing it. I do believe that it requires funding research will also help demystify the way in which Governments think that people are only using the Internet to go on WhatsApp and nothing productive comes out of it, in particular young people, I do believe in all of the work that I've done by actually focusing on the demand side aspect, I am now able to point out that even if connective tight is addressed to such an extent, there is the issue around meaningful connectivity, which the web foundation is currently working on now, and we currently have the gender digital divide, which is an indication that it is about stimulating AFICTA and social issues that impede from everyone coming online in order to engage in order for the digital economy to actually grow.
Thank you.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Excellent. Thank you very much. We need to look at evidence base policy making strategies. Okay.
I will turn to the technical person, Jane. Jane Coffin, what from your experience as a technical person, do you think this is the best approach in terms of how we engage policy makers?
>> JANE COFFIN: Thank you very much. I used to also be a regulator and a policy maker, so I can give you some ideas on what I used to do, but what I also ‑‑ what I used to look at different websites from some of the Technical Community companies for inspiration when I needed to learn something. And, I would also talk to them, because they know the infrastructure better O than a regulator or policy maker might. Maybe not you (Laughter), but you learn and you also teach yourself more technical skills as you go and you become more able to learn and create better regulations and policies, because if you're trying to regulate something you don't understand, you could do a very complicated job and you could kill growth and innovation.
I saw this happen in a Country I was working in with mobile networks. The regulator I was working with didn't understand that the base stations cost about $500,000 at that time. They wanted to deploy a regulation that required the second competitive mobile operator to deploy the network in six months. Well, that was impossible in the Country, although it was a small Country and pretty flat, it would have been possible in two years, but they weren't going to make their money back in certain areas to get the return to deploy. If we had gone ahead with this regulation, it would have made no sense. They wouldn't have met the obligations. Everyone would be unhappy (Laughter), and you wouldn't have connectivity out to the people that needed it. So, I think one thing I would suggest is the convening events and community building among the people in the Country that have to ‑‑ and experts that might come in, you have got to have a consistent meeting so that people get to know each other, and you can have those hard conversations about deployment, but you can also start to work with each other for creative solutions.
One thing that is also super helpful is that when companies or Civil Society or Technical Community have snapshots of data sets, information on their websites, I used to go take it and I would attribute it, of course, but it would help me explain this up the chain of command to the Minister, because sometimes Ministers need a lot of time to comprehend things or they can take it fast, but if you have layers of data that you can provide to that Minister or to the chief regulator, it helps.
So, for anyone out there in industry, your information is very important to the people making the decisions and putting the rules and regulations together. So, never underestimate how well people can take that information. And, make it easy to find. Little heading would be for Government officials, because some people make websites that are impenetrable and you cannot find anything, and we've had this problem at the Internet Society ourselves, so we're rebooting our website so people can find things. But it's really helpful if you make it really clear.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Absolutely. Absolutely. So, that means you agree with what Chenai just said of the evidence, some data, and let them see it, get to meet with them. Excellent.
I'm going to turn to another Government person. He's been in Government for all his life, and is proud to be, so we would like to hear also from you particularly now you are still in Government, so what is your take on this subject matter?
Kossi Amessinou.
>> KOSSI AMESSINOU: Thank you, chairman. I think we must be here. ICT development, digital technology is very important for a lot of area of development. Maybe in Africa, in anywhere in the world. From Chair never exist in North and South, they have never, limited space where you have same scientific database now currently, but we lack, and we lost level of mobilization and motivation of decision makers reduce digital au appropriation. We saw for ten years, past ten years' time, and for my understanding, nothing measure can ever be done in digital areas without constant support of public decision makers. If we don't have that person who are charged development strategy, you don't have them on the table, we don't have the solution to be in the part of our development strategy making.
And, thank actors are also collaborate less in the sense of the general interest. To unlock the digital potential for our countries in Africa globally, I think collaboration is one key where we must make all our efforts. We have ‑‑ I have one of my guy who talk about strategy with partnership where you have Government and before measure group of Private Sector or so in local area, we must work together to build strategy for development. Maybe it is for various self normally, because we have technology, we don't have it in reserve, we must work to make everything for our countries.
To have creation and privilege for our local people, we will need to go in technology space. It's important for us to see is it still available locally? If not, we bring the international group to the board and work with them. If we have the skill in the local space, it's important to let our local people prove we are capacity.
It's important, also, to let international level people to bring us strategy where we can relocate with excellence and for digital make anything our different areas.
That is my point.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Thank you very much. It's like as a Government person you are saying if Government doesn't move, nothing moves, and then Government need to be mobilized. To mobilize Government, who should mobilize Government? Government should be able to mobilize themselves. How do you get mobilized to do what you do, bring in the Private Sector?
>> KOSSI AMESSINOU: No, Government don't have funding every time. The measure group have many funds to bring on the table to let us make job together.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Thank you very much. I will turn to Private Sector again. Government is saying we need funding, they need international cooperation, okay. So, Goncalo, experience from AT&T as you worked with global South.
>> GONCALO CARRICO: Thank you very much, Chair, for having me here today.
I was thinking about the first question, and I actually listening to the other speakers, I found it very interesting, and I have a sort of an answer. The right answer for that is flexible regulatory frameworks, investments and innovations. I will bring some examples in what we are doing in other regions.
For instance, the mobile ecosystem in Latin America has been catching up with digital transformation trend with economic growth, innovation technologies, and consumer preferences all taking ‑‑ playing a part on this.
We see that increased connectivity there is opening new opportunities for economies to become more productive, expand opportunities for entrepreneurship, and drive inclusive economic growth. So, what you see there nowadays is that providers ramp up investments in distribution capabilities. On demand services, as well as on various content forums, including regional series in Maine languages, Spanish and Portuguese. Happen to have a Portuguese Brazilian here speaking.
So, the point then is that the industry needs room to develop and lecture through the support of flexible regulatory frameworks. We need especially holistic vision and approach to the digital transformation that creates the regulatory predictability needed to drive investment and innovation. That's really key.
I can bring some examples of our work in that region is that in one hand, for instance in several Latin American countries, the burden of complying with fragmented policy frameworks for multiple regulatory bodies when trying to provide an integrated set of services is substantial, and becomes a barrier for an innovation and to make business.
In some other countries, all of regulations, for instance, still impose gross ownership restrictions that impede investment in integrated services. On the other hand, we have another example, the mobile revolution that helped the United States become a global leader in tech innovation was the direct outcome of deliberate and wise Government policies established more than ten years ago.
Also in Mexico, working hard in the last few years to implement similar flexible policies, which has led to a transformative invest men by AT&T, for instance, and the creation of AT&T Mexico. So, you have here already a couple of ideas.
Some points to keep in mind when designing policy framework that encourage investment and technology and innovation. First, providing market access by reducing restrictions on foreign investments. Enabling cross‑border data flows. Preventing data localization. Protecting consumers. Cybersecurity very important. Ensuring due process in law making. Promoting technology innovation. And, licensing transparency. So, these are some key points that I will leave to consideration.
Thank you.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Thank you very much. I think that is quite interesting. Are you in a way saying that is of doing business, Governments need to enhance ease of doing business that surely the funding will come, right? So, the fundings will come, investments will come, but make sure, you know, it's friendly and we can easily have ownership. Excellent. Great. I think this is real interesting.
Well, the man with many hats I think is going to really tell us what are the other things, because Afghanistan is going through a lot. I know during that period you went through a lot of challenges, and today we can see improvement, we can see improvement, steady improvements in Afghanistan, Melissa was telling me about experience, very nice.
Mohamed Azizi, can you please chime in on this. Huge investments in Afghanistan.
>> MOHAMMED AZIZI: Good evening. Such a pleasure to be participating in this lively session.
See, Dr. Jimson, there are a couple of things that really made the ICT a successful story. The first thing was that the Government was pretty much clear in the early days that where they want to move in regards to the rule of ICT in the different sectors in terms of cross cutting phenomena for the economic development. And, that is why we establish the regulatory body and in the region we were amongst the first countries back in early 2000 where we opened the market for the private investment, and the good thing is that the rules of the game were made very clear that what is the role and responsibility of the Private Sector and where the Government will intervene, however, in between we lost that vision, and it got diluted. Yeah. You know after the fall of the Taliban Government, a new generation came that took over and there was less of experience, sometimes the projects were led by the international consultants, which was a good thing, but the knowledge transfer did not exist, that's why it got a bit confusing in the meta stages. However, again, in the last five years, things are back on track and one thing, from my experience as a reg regulator that I have learned and I will build upon what Jim said, is it is essential for the policy makers to understand that they can't do everything. Especially when it comes to the Governments, they believe that, okay, they are the Superman and they are having all the resources and they have having the law with them, the courts in their control and they can do everything. No. The reality is that we have to believe that if we want to unlock the potential of the ICT, we have to from the core of our hearts, we have to believe in multistakeholderism. We have to give everybody space and we have to respect the roles and responsibilities for everybody. And, that's where we are getting in particular four years back we introduced the open access policy in the past we used to have still some like fiberoptic used to be only the state investments, and that is something not very positive.
One more thing that I want to highlight, and it's not only about one but all the developing and least Developed Countries are facing the same problem, that we think the domestic ICT sector is the milking cow. Let's put access, and just our Minister of finance, with all due respect to all of them, they sleep at night and in the morning, they come up with an idea why not to issue this tax. Yeah, but you have got all those other sectors, aviation, mining, go and kill those sectors. A sector that is already generating hundreds of millions and billions of dollars for you, why are you trying to kill it?
Likewise, I would Al also like to add that there is a problem with, yeah, cities that majority of the users of the social media, active accounts are coming from these countries, however, when you go and see the statistics in regards to the share of the venue that these countries are getting, it's unbelievable. It's so low. I'm just giving one example from Facebook. 1.4 billion active users are coming from elder cities, which makes it around 70% of the active users of Facebook. And, let's go and see the statistics that they are sharing with these countries.
One of the suggestions that I would put to the elder cities is that we have to work electively and find a solution on how to get a freer share of the revenue that this multi nations are generating from our economy, but we are not receiving it back.
Last but not least, one of the problems when it comes to the connectivity is the unavailability of electricity. To me, living in my region as a whole, I can say that if there is no electricity, forget about connectivity. No connectivity without electricity. This should be our motto, and we have to really push the agenda that electricity should be on the top priority of our policy makers in order to make sure that we get the advantages and the benefits that is hidden in the use of ICT and connectivity.
Thank you.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Excellent. You are also speaking as the Chair of the Cabo School of Economics and Technology, so I think we should cut and paste all that you are saying so we can really unlock the potentials. Thank you so much for this position, and we'll move on to this man, Vasatar Academy, and business, he is a coder, a technology person. Mark Datysgeld, what is your perception about all of this, from your perspective, what are you going to say?
>> MARK DATYSGELD: Thank you very much, Jimson.
I'm a big believer in digital technology and Private Sector working as a force to move things forward, and in thinking about that, I have decided to bring an example from Brazil, and it ties directly with the bureaucracy question that we why just discussing.
So, the banking system in Brazil has, for decades, been known to be very, very bad, and I don't mean that only in the efficiency sense, it is downright predatory, so taxes were off the roof for anything a person wanted to do, and it just stifles and limits people and puts them in a permanent state of depth with the banks, and it's something that policy makers probably wanted to address, but really could never get at it and the banking system seemed to be doing just fine the way it was.
So, it took for a couple of fin tech companies to really start looking at this a few years ago and say, you know, mobile phones are very widespread in Brazil, very accessible, even lowest income people here have access to a cell phone, the Internet is okay. There is 3G in most of the countries, 4G in some parts, why don't we make online banks, no friction, no agencies, we just make a bank for people to have some where to have money and have some credit. And, this idea at first, of course, was met with a lot of problems by legislators, they were like whoa, what is this, this is not, but they just push through.
What is interesting is this proved to be a hit across all different sectors and all different social classes. All sorts of people were looking for a friction less way to be able to operate, have credit, and at the same time, don't be so treated in such a predatory manner. What happens is now, funny enough, with the success, legislators have to do what they do best, right. Look and see. Oh, this is a thing. Now we need to have a conversation. Now there is actually forms being made in the system as a whole, in the banking system as a whole to make it work better and to make transactions less more friction less. So, it forced the entire banking system to have a look at what they were doing, but that's my question: Had people not innovated and really used the most of technology to get banks and people’s hands and make it friction less, would that have been a thing? It wouldn't. It had never changed before, so it's directly tied. We can see this direct tie. So, how to ‑‑ it's important to engage with policy makers, but sometimes you have no choice but to force them to think about policies, and especially in an overly bureaucratic Country, I think that is something that needs to be looked into, how to just push them instead of asking from them.
Thank you very much.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Yeah. Thank you, Mark. That is quite some paradigm, you know. We get some investors or entrepreneur, the champions and come up with innovative idea, and that is in a way mobilizes the policy makers who do the right thing. Right.
Kossi, are you hearing that? Okay. That is nice.
So, we will hear from these can say global lady or champion. Maybe you help us package how can we now get the best of what is policy frameworks, so at a goal we can realize that this is what is most necessary for this way has this. This will be close to unlock the potential.
Melissa
>> MELISSA SASSI: So, I have been part of something that I'm guessing all of you in the room haven't heard about. How many of you have heard of broadbandpolicy.org? Oh, have you? Awesome. Yay. Good. Yeah.
Probably from yesterday.
>> AUDIENCE: (Laughter)
>> MELISSA SASSI: I'll tell you a little bit about what this initiative is.
So, for the past year, I've been working with a couple of my colleagues and friends, so Mike Tokich, who is over there, hi, Mike, Lydia Caroon, who left today, both of them are from Microsoft, and we have been volunteering with a creative agency by the name of Hadid and partners as well as a law firm called Orich. What we have been doing is we started thinking about this concept of how do you solve the SDGs if we don't have a single place where broadband policies exist, or education policies?
So, we decided to collect as many as we could, because we saw a broadband commission report that said there were 157 policies or 160 some odd policies, so we said all right, ITU, do you have the policies? And we realized there were a lot of links and a lot of press releases, but a lot of those policies were not online. So, if we couldn't find them, how can regulators know what is a best practice, and where is the single place for them to go? So, if we talk about open data, where do they go to find out what is the greatest thing? You know, is it getting everybody in a room and talking, or what if we collected all of them, what if we put them online, what if we localized them into English, and I'm not saying that English is the only language, it was just our competencies within our team, and what if we put them through a natural language processing algorithm, identified key words and groupings of stuff that we considered best practices, like the inclusion of women and girls, digital skills, public access? We picked a whole bunch of different key words, and we created a digital visualization dashboard, ended up collecting about 125, 130, we will show you in a second, policies across 82 countries. We're about 50% done. We're not there yet, but we put it all online.
I'm hoping, Mike, if this works okay, are we able to pull up the website?
So, I think as Mike is working on this, this is broadbandpolicy.org. Do a quick spin through it. Again, policies, natural languaging processing algorithm using key words and we use power BI to showcase what is in these policies. And, the whole idea is, let's provide access to information. What we haven't done yet is added all of the policies into the site. What this is enabling you to do is instead of going through and reading 82 policies, you can click on different bits and pieces within the tool and look at who is included gender, for example.
And why does this matter? If you don't have a goal for gender inclusion, how are you going to achieve the goal of gender inclusion when it comes to ICTs or Internet access, for example? If you have included nothing about digital skills, for example, in your broadband policy or in your, you know, Ministry of Education policies, how are you going to empower the next generation of people to move from consumers of technology into creators, makers and doers empowered by technology.
Mike, I would love for you to talk us through maybe an example.
>> Mike: Yeah. Sure. Thanks, Melissa.
So, let's take a look at, this is power VI that allows anyone to really play around with the data. Policy makers or anyone in the public. If we wanted to look at certain key words around accessibilities, we have a keyword group that you can click on, and we can see here out of the 82 countries that we analyze and the 136 policies that we ran through our natural languaging processing technology, around 30 of them actually had key words around accessibility. So, key words like special needs, disabilities, impairment, and we can even filter by region. If you wanted to see, okay, who in Africa in the continent talks about accessibility key words. And, we can see about seven countries mentioned accessibilities as a keyword grouping, and we can even see how many times these key words were used. For example, in Tanzania, accessibility is mentioned six times in their policy, and this power BI has a lot of different tabs that you can go through with various data sources outside of these policy documents around Internet penetration, Internet inclusiveness, Internet freedom scores, but if you wanted to dive one click deeper into the policies themselves, we can go in and see okay, what is the context around these keyword usages. So, if we wanted to see for accessibility in Africa, we can actually see the Country of Gambia actually mentioned the keyword disabilities 38 times. And, we went in and pulled out each sentence that the word disabilities were used in Gambia, and it is a lot of text here, but it was mentioned 38 times. We can see, are they addressing accessibility challenges in that policy or are they just mentioning it? It allows you to go one click deeper and really see across various regions or countries, how are these key words and challenges around digital inclusion being used.
>> MELISSA SASSI: So, you know, the idea here is let's say for example you're a regulator and you want to take your ‑‑ or a policy maker and take your broad band policy or your digital inclusion policy or whatever it is to the next level, this enables you to know who has got what covered. So, you don't have to go out and sit in a room and be here at IGF, which I obviously encourage everyone to attend, and I attend every year as much as I can, but you know, how do you empower people's knowledge?
We've still got some work to do, and we've still got some places, I think, that we could go to the in terms of innovation within the site. We would like to take this and think about is there a scorecard we can put together. Is there some example language that we could highlight? So, I see this as kind of, you know, version 1, even though we've been working on this for about a year, we can look at any keyword groupings. We also have in this site the ability for anyone anywhere to upload a policy, so if anyone is listening or watches this later, or is in the room and says wait, hold on a second, where is my policy, I've got one, you have an opportunity to upload it here, and they go to mic over there. So, he's the one who would collect it and he's really the brains behind putting this together.
I'm going to switch over, and I know I'm going on a bit, but I want to make a couple more comments. I think policy making is one thing, but we have to make sure we're not just defining policies, not just putting policies in place. We are implements go those policies. This is one way to come up with an objective and data driven approach for policy creation, but it's really about how do we mobilize a multistakeholder group and think beyond connectivity and think about skills so that people are able to make meaningful use of the Internet in front of them, and again, move from being consumers of technology into creators, makers, and doors empowered by technology.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Excellent. Thank you very much. This is online right now, www.broadbandpolicy.org.
>> MELISSA SASSI: Yes, anybody can go there.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: .Org
>> MELISSA SASSI: If you were to get out your phone or laptop, you can go to this site, and I look forward to the next innovation that will be coming out, which will be us housing all the policies, the physical policies, and us doing some kind of maybe some sentiment or maybe some score cards and potentially looking at what innovations could come from language.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Excellent. Thank you very much.
Can we give a big round of applause for this round? You have really done a good job.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Do we have any questions from remote? Anyone from the floor? Yes, two minutes, please.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much. First off, I would like to congratulate Melissa for the wonderful job. Indeed, it's something that could help me back when I'm in Afghanistan, and where I'm about to start reassessing our broadband policy based on the new development, and this is a tool that could be helpful. So, thank you for that.
(Applause)
>> AUDIENCE: And my next question is in regard to digitalization. In countries like Afghanistan where the primary utilities like connectivity and electricity is questionable and they are not being provided to the people, how do we digitalize and what do we digitalize?
And, the other is how do we increase the demand for digitalization by the public, which is a tricky part in countries where you are talking about digital literacy at its minimum level and what sort of policies would encourage citizens to adopt digitalization and use and challenge the way of currently they have been living for the past, let's say, 30 to 40 years, and then step into something new.
So, these are the areas that needs further information from the panel or that they can provide the information that will be helpful.
Thank you.
>> MELISSA SASSI: Do I mind if I jump in on that one?
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: As your response, because there are some areas, too, that are available that will help citizens to, you know, get digital for digital inclusivity.
Thank you.
>> MELISSA SASSI: So, I, first off, I will see you in Afghanistan in 2020. Second off, I think it's really important for us to have a standard for what it means to be digitally literate.
I spent two years doing a literature review of all the different frameworks and definitions of what it means to be digitally literate, and I found that if you ask a thousand people you get a thousand different answers. There is no global standard of what it means to be digitally intelligent, so in this two years that I spent doing this literature review I identified three that looked very interesting, and one of them that I identified is personally my favorite. It's from the DQ institute, which is a Singapore based non‑profit. I am working right now with IEEE to standardize this framework, so I think it's really important as we're thinking about how do we get people skilled up that we have a standard of what that means.
I look at it across not a spectrum of nine different things, and I'm happy to share this with you. Identity, so how do you manage your personal identity online, how do you have balanced usage, so how do you think about time management and screen time, how do you protect yourself online in terms of safety, security, but it's also about emotional intelligence. How do we empower people with all of these different skills, including communication, media literacy rights? So, what are your rights in terms of privacy and life skills.
Unless we have a standard curriculum that we roll out and unless the ICT ministry is working together with the Ministry of Education, but not forgetting informal education, it's really impossible, I think, to create that demand, because you're not training people to become creators and makers. Your training them to be consumers.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Excellent. Wow. The chair.
>> HOSSAM ELGAMAL: I want to applaud what Melissa, the project that they have done, and also answer the question you have raised.
In the same spirit it seems that we are thinking alike. I think it started a few months back to have a project for the African continents where we have same map but for Africa only where we are trying to share all ICT digital transformation related information for each Country. We don't dig deep, we are not doing analytics, but this is what we found that we are lacking. We don't know what is there at our need. We don't know what policies there are. We don't know the structure of the organization there. We don't know the Private Sector there. We don't know the successful project implemented, and the failures. So, we learn from them. So, I invite everyone to have a look on this ‑‑ I think the website. It is also work in progress, so finish almost something like 50% of it, but it has some information very interesting, because at least people can talk to each other and learn from the lessons instead of try all over again to do the same thing.
The other points maybe that I want to share is that while we are doing so ‑‑ we also are not doing enough in collaborating together on major transformation. So, capacity building, if we are doing it in each Country alone, again we are doing the trial and error, and also it might be quite expensive for us. We need to train the trainers that will be doing the exact require meant, but an important thing is it is not only about raising capability of the youth, but it is also about raising the maturity of the elder. That the elders are taking the decision. People that are heading the project and heading the Government authorities, they need to have different mind, and to understand the benefit of the digital transformation and the industry. And, they will not learn by themself. They need ways of creating the awareness and teaches them or explaining to them successful projects that took place in other Government. And, not from Private Sector. Sometimes from another Government that has been doing it previously.
The one thing that we think is important and I put this as a question, what we have in all our countries currently is TRA. Right. TRA. It is no longer valid. What we need is digital society regulatory authority. It is a different level where we are going to be able to enable more customers to utilize digital transformation for the Ben it's. Telecom authority is good to enable telecommunication and infrastructure. We need to move to the next step, and we need to see example of this how it happened in other countries, so we can move faster on that track.
Keep it to this for now. Thank you.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Yeah. I like that, you know, that treat you are bringing in, the twist you are bringing in of transforming the regulatory authority.
Kossi, you agree with that? Yes or no?
>> KOSSI AMESSINOU: Yes, but it depends of our curriculum. A cool now must be changed broadly. Because you have some training, we ask ourself, is it normal to train people in this age like that again? We must take in consideration the revolution of technology when we make training for people today. That is very important.
We still, again in Africa, making digital literacy, technology adaptation, it's not the way where we are in France, Germany. The best space the funders. We are here in looking at technology like turn to where we come to make, what is my name, what is my family, it is not normal. We must change all of our process in Africa.
>> HOSSAM ELGAMAL: The question that asking, should we move from a telecommunication authority to a digital society to regard to authority?
>> KOSSI AMESSINOU: Yes but take at parliamentary level.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:You need to build a critical mass of literate citizens, as well literate decision makers, for there to be proper understanding of the necessity of this transformation.
Chenai.
>> CHENAI CHAIR: Speaking from Civil Society, perspective, and of course give it up to mark, Melissa, I think that was very useful and I have seen how other people have worked on it and built on it, but my question is how well received is it and how well engaged is it with Government, and what drives, if you've thought about it, have you done to ensure that other people know that this tool exists beyond the IGF space, and I'm thinking capacity building training such as the African governance or even the Africa IGF Internet Governance forum itself. I know this is a global tool, but this is something to think about in terms of how well has it been received and is there a strategy around engagements with this tool.
Then, the second response is, I think while speaking about policy and who should have the role, in reality we're coming from context where we have international happening. We do not have enabling environments, if we are making sure that youth are part of the digital economy, I have done research on how young people should participate in the digital economy and how they participate in the digital economy. What you do find is the lack of community support. The lack of actual investment from Governments and policy makers to actually say that, okay, fine, you've come up with this idea, I will fund it, and this is how it will work. So, at the end of the day, while also speaking about this beautiful policies and the beautiful level of which we can all engage with it, the reality on the ground is that we still have very problematic levels of social inclusion and the societies that we come in. I love that we talked about electricity, but we also need to talk about actually unpacked demystifying the way in which technology is seen within family structures and within schools themselves, and we also need to think about actually understanding, I'll come back again to the research base, actually understanding the way in which people are innovating and tough environments, because that is the reality for which most of us come from where most people are still actually making use of the Internet, which is very expensive with mobile devices with privacy issues, but they're the only ones that they can take because they're probably cheaper. So, I do think this is something that in all of this that we're talking about, we need to take into account the reality on the ground.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Melissa, you are going to respond, but let's take more feedback.
I noted from here just right now that there is, you know, total need to have everything, okay. So, we train critical mass. There is some low hanging fruit. It needs to be funded. So, there are some low hanging fruit, the online tools, the online material that can help, you know, to broaden the skills level.
So, please, you are going to respond.
Mark, can you say something?
>> MARK DATYSGELD: Thank you, Jimson.
I have done a lot of work with young people, and what I've learned is that sometimes you just have to show them that things are possible. So, for a long time I believe that maybe you need a structure approach to this kind of thing. I believed in, like, assembling courses, and then I started trying something different. I would just take a simple coding language, like hml and show them here, I will type this out and you see that it will do this thing, and that worked. They're like really, so if I did this, this happens? Yes, that's what is coding. Because when you hear coding, everybody who is not a coder and hears about coding thinks it's this impossible thing that involves ‑‑ it's not. There is levels of coding and levels of things.
So, my approach has been, when I'm called to try to work in education programs and things like that, I've stopped going so much for this holistic approach and coming down to this, we need to make this young people interested in things. And, there won't be interested in course, they're interested in seeing things, they're interesting, cool, so why don't we make them? Why don't we teach them how to code games? It's still coding. They will still learn the skills. They will still become very competence IT people, so the approach sometimes is a bit wrong. We think of this major policy when the times all you need to do is get them interested. Sure, some care, a few won't have the right skills for that, but a lot will. The more we manage to actually get things to them and show that it's interesting, that's a net gain. That is how I've come to think of it.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: This is Jimson speaking. Let's take the question and then Melissa.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, Chair.
Firstly, I think we need to understand the magnitude of what we need to do. You know, when we talk about Unlocking the Digital Potential of the least Developed Countries, and let me focus on Africa, because that's where I'm from. We have got one of the fastest growth youth populations where I think we're going have the largest youth population in the world, soon, if not already.
We have some of the highest unemployment rates. We have some of the highest inequalities between the rich and the poor. We've got so many issues to deal with, and this is not going to be a grass bottom up thing, not going to be a top down thing. We do need good policy. We have good policy. We don't tend to input policy wealth. We need to create an induce I have environment where we work together, where businesses work together, where there is funding to grow the tech companies.
You know, I see my Government spending money on overseas technology, I see the same technology available on the continent, and we don't buy that technology, we don't because the person in the Country that has the contract wants a cut, and it is business practices and then very to be 50% ma anybody bee au owned or locally owned, so we create barriers for the continents to thrive, and when we talk about the jobs of the future, the fourth industrial revolution, you know, we've got to be realistic. We will be competing on a global stage for these jobs. So, we've got to deal with big issues, and it's not about getting a few people from the village to understand coding. It's not about the tech companies investing in some nice little projects that don't explode. We need a revolution of change, and revolution on the way we think and do business. And, we're getting there. It's not all bad, you know. Africa is putting itself together. It needs to do it faster.
We have good tech companies on the continent, but we don't have an environment that allows them to grow out of being SMEs. You know, you look at Silicon Valley. I was in California the other day, and you know, there is a reason why so many tech companies have come from there. It's a conducive environment that has enabled it to grow with money and with the skills.
You know, we have a lot of that, but we need to package it and we've got to do it quick, because those jobs are the future now, and our kids are sitting in schools that are disconnected. Where I come from, 30% of our schools have Internet connectivity, which means 70% of schools don't. So, how do we make them digitally literate? We have got people teaching computers in schools without computers. It's mad. So, we've got to solve these problems and we've got to solve them today.
Thank you.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Yeah. Paul, quite striking that we kind of what to do little, little things. We have to really do it big. Wow.
Melissa, back to you.
>> MELISSA SASSI: All right. So, big stuff.
So, I heard a few different things, and keep me honest to make sure I respond to everything, but I think one of the questions was around we want to get skilled up, where do we go? You talked about this framework and you talked about these things, how do I go and find this content?
I think the biggest challenge when it comes to content and curriculum is local content. Local language content. Right. I can point you to some stuff that I've created. Some things that I think are interesting, but if you think about all of the different languages that people are speaking around the world, you know, is that contents available in that local dialect and are those examples appropriate in that community? Not necessarily.
I will point to you a blog that I wrote back in October, and this is something that I put together. I work at IBM, as well, and one of my roles at IBM is developer advocacy and digital skill building. I also wear a lot of hats. I have my own non‑profit where I've taught tens of thousands of kids to code in 12 countries. I don't believe that everyone should be an engineer. Maybe 10, 20% of the digital literacy classes I run, people are actually interested in it.
So, the blog post, you can find it at ibm.biz/digitalintelligence. And, it's not just about when I wrote this blog post, it's not just about all right, let me just shove some IBM stuff at you, it's an industry review of what do I think are some interesting tools. And, I think ‑‑ and I forgot your name from Brazil, my friend from Brazil. You mentioned something about, you know, running cool coding camps or doing cool things that will get people interested.
One of my favorite things to use to introduce young people to the introductory building blocks of learning to code is either through code.org or hour of code or scratch. I've done that a ton of times, even with four-year-olds, and it demystifies Computer Science in a way that is fun and engaging. It gamifies Computer Science. You're not just coming in and talking about algorithms.
Even the word algorithm sounds scary. I think that's, you know, a couple of things, but I think the other piece, too, is we've got to have locally created and grown solutions. And, you're not going to have locally grown and created solutions in local language contents unless people have skills. The skills to make an application or a website or to make that content. So, it's kind of a chicken and egg scenario.
Did I answer everything, or did I forget something?
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Yeah. No. No. That is cool.
>> MELISSA SASSI: Okay.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Do you want to chime in.
>> Let me add‑on this one. I think I will look into this issue from two different perspective by saying that, one size does not fit all. I agree with Melissa that we really do not need the whole Country to know blockchain. We don't need them to be coding. Like, what would we do with the coding at the end of the day.
I think we have to really categorize the skills and the requirements of the skills. Okay. What sort of people going for the high skill or advanced digital skills and we should go with the basics? Also, for me, I do not want to learn online marketing and social media management and all of these things. I'm sure that there is age wise, as well as there should be categories. That's what I'm trying to say here. We could not really ask everybody to do everything we want them to do. That's one thing.
The second thing, again, Melissa touched upon it, is local content ‑‑ context is very important. In the last few days I have been talking with different friends, because I'm also running a non‑profit and working on digital skills. At least do we have some guidelines that we should follow. I don't want the specific content to talk ‑‑
>> MELISSA SASSI: Go to my blog post. You'll find them. (Laughter)
>> Thank you (Laughter)
Yeah, again, this is a message. We have to promote, and we have to make it more common thing and people coming from these poor countries from the Developing Countries, they do not feel shy that, okay, we don't have those many coders to come and train all our kids. I don't want my daughter really to be a coder if she doesn't want that. So, with this, I will stop it here.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Okay. So, we need to be diversified and enhance whatever diversities that we have.
Yeah, Goncalo.
>> GONCALO CARRICO: Jumps on these skills, going on just a personal note, I'm graduating in Computer Science, and the purpose of learning to code is not to be engineer. The purpose of learning to code is to solve problems. That's what the next revolution is asking us, and we will demand from everybody. I have a 14‑year‑old daughter. I'm teaching her code. But not to be an engineer. She wants to be an architect or something like that. No. It is to solve problems. And, most importantly, aligned to that, is creativity.
So, we are assisting the fourth industrial revolution is an exposure of machines. Machines will take over many of ‑‑ many jobs that we currently do today, so what humans are best is solving problems with creativity.
So, and I end up even asking about we have to be creative in teaching coding. With friends, with childs of my friends, I teach them coding, we took glasses of yogurt or two glasses of water and a bowl, we don't ‑‑ well, it's important to have in schools technology, access to technology, but most important is it's not technology itself. It's what we take out of it. So, technology in schools shouldn't be a goal in itself, and that's really important.
Now in a more professional tone is educating students and rescaling workforce, it's an imperative not only responsibility of schools, college, universities or even Governments, it's a community effort. An industry, like us, must play a substantial role on improving education and developing the workforce.
So, let me give some examples. With a program we have, it's called AT&T Aspire and Esquela plus and we connected teachers and students with education null content. Actually, we committed 500 million dollars to this project since 2008. In 2018, 900 and 300 plus schools in nine Latin American countries were impacted by this program, Esquela, in Spanish, Esquela Mas.
Another example, for instance, in Malaysia, AT&T, Malaysia communications hosted ‑‑ has been hosting for the last six years the developers day, and here while it's an event that is designed to encourage aspiring developers, but here it has a purpose, for developers for those who wants to be developers. And, entrepreneurs to create something around the Internet of Things. That is one element of the four-industrial revolution, just one.
Last year, the emphasis was on apps that use artificial intelligence and Big Data analytics to solve real needs. So, you see, you have to use technology for the good, not just for the sake of using technology. We have to give them a purpose to solve problems, and the winning app was an artificial intelligence enabled solution that let's trash bins automatically identify materials for recycling. Here also a contribution to a global issue, climate change.
So, this is kind of the examples which is a community effort, from Governments, schools, and also from companies on which we are deeply engaged to, and also putting in some money.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Yes. Very good. Really solving problem. That is the main message. Whatever we do is to solve problems locally. But we need to do it big. We need to expand horizon of the youth to acquire the skills so it can solve the problem.
Okay. Do we have anybody on remote? Okay. Okay. Just quickly. Want to ask a question?
>> AUDIENCE: Yes. I have a question.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Go ahead.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Laporlle. Lecture at the University of Paton.
Now, Developing Countries meets the vast under the W2O system, that is why a lot of page work had to be done afterwards to address the needs of the least Developing Countries and Developing Countries. So, I think it is a good thing that we are addressing these questions at the time when we are moving towards formulating international standards.
Now, my question is, in this area, in this subject, do Developed Countries have any responsibilities in assisting the least Developed Countries and Developing Countries to unlock the digital revolution in their countries? And, if are responsibilities, what specifically can Developed Countries do?
The second part of the question is, are there any ‑‑ do we need to be cautious in inviting Developed Countries to assist?
Thank you.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Okay. So, Melissa and Jane and then Hossam will take the last one.
>> MELISSA SASSI: I wanted to comment that my friend from AT&T mentioned. When I run my coding cams, which is mainly in Tunisia right now, I've done it 12 different countries, but Tunisia is where I'm most active.
When we run our camps, it's not just about learning to code. It's about defining a problem that they want to solve and they start there, and it is something that is aligned to SDGs. And, then they look at the data. What data is supporting this problem and they learn about media literacy so that they understand what is valid data that they can use to prove whatever it is ‑‑ whatever the problem is. And, then help look and do industry research and they look at what other things have been implemented to solve this problem, and what is it that makes yours different. They look at who is the audience. They look at timeline. And, they look at business models.
And the reason why I think this is important, is it goes back to what you said around it's not just about building technology for the sake of technology but building something that is solving a problem and creating a need. And, I think there is another reason why this is important. Many, I think, universities and schools from around the world, young people come out of universities or come out of high school knowing how to take tests, knowing how to memorize stuff, but they don't necessarily know the practical side of the real world. That's one thing I just want to comment.
One more thing regarding what role does developed ‑‑ do developed countries in in terms of implementing or bringing digital skills or bringing digital inclusion.
My non‑profit that is headquartered in Tunisia, we receive funding from the U.S. Department of State, and we operate because of that funding, and over the course of five years we've received hundreds of thousands, maybe 300,000, something like that in total, so we're not talking about huge money, but it makes a difference, and my team is able to do really interesting work, and without that funding they wouldn't be doing the work that they're doing. So, I think had are funding sources available, and that's just an example of something that I personally have taken advantage of.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Thank you.
Jane.
>> JANE COFFIN: I would just say to your question is that before someone had mentioned the importance of local training. We often will come in at the request of a team to provide more technical training so that the local people are trained to train local people. This is the only way that we have seen sustainability happen, whether it's for putting in an Internet exchange point or a community network or for people to learn more skills to deploy IPV6 or BGP at the IX. So, there are some other tools or ways that organizations like the Internet Society and others come together. We take people from policy makers, regulators, the European Commission, parliamentarians and bring them to the Internet engineering task force, the IETF. The IETF is a standards body that created the Internet standards, so we bring policy makers to a special program at our experience, very neutral, where you learn from the people who deploy the standards and who created them about routing, how the Internet works, different aspects of encryption, routing security, time security, and you sit and listen and get as much out of that as you want in a group that is only policy makers and regulators so that you can go see what the standards bodies like, participates, but then come back and hear more and it's free training. That type of thing integrates people into the standards body, but also you understand that there are different standards body that have important relationships to what you're doing as a regulator policy maker.
The last thing I would say is Wi‑Fi changed things dramatically. If we hadn't allowed unlicensed spectrum and the Wi‑Fi standard to exist, we might not be where we are today with some new deployments of technology. So, we've really got to stop and think about accepting new things that might come along and different ways of working.
With Internet exchange points and community networks, we often bring teams to a place, train local people, but it is usually the human engineering that is the hardest part, so we will spend time with regulators and policy makers, rely on people like you to bring the right people to the table.
So, we'll do best practices training and technical training, but again, it has to be locally owned and locally sustained, because if it's not a local solution, we don't know your countries and we don't live there, and we're not going to presume that we do know the right solution. You help us find that solution so that it's sustainable, whether it's a Government regulatory policy solution or a technical solution.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Excellent.
So, we have a remote intervention. What is that? Can we do that in the next one minute?
>> AUDIENCE: Yes. Thank you for the floor. My name is Joseph from Capella.
A lot has been discussed and I really appreciate what has been discussed. I will take you back to the point where it was one of people who had the floor said that these need to get a few people to train, to help trainers as trainee to go train in different capacities and different communities.
For that, my perspective I would say it would be much better if the people training, if it is the space to train the trainers to go and train, I would suggest that it would be much better to directly go and train. To cut costs and cut time of operational to have larger impact, because we can't be certain, or possibly won't be certain to delegate so much effort or such entitlement or power or task to someone who has been trained in a short period of time or longer period of time regardless of the time of training. If I know I have the potential to do it myself, less I could suggest that let's use available resources to actually have impact.
Secondly, regarding the Global South and all this impacts with technology that that is been said, I would say that one of the aspects that I've not had been discussed is the brain drain. Yes, the trainings are happening, the programming and coding, this stuff is happening, but even some of the people that would have stayed to have increased impact in Africa are actually leading Africa to countries in (?) So, I suggest that it as a society, as a community, because I believe that if we start as a community we have a wider point of view and stronger efforts and stronger sound or sterner voice, so I suggest that as the space will not be for good and better operation in Africa, the people that have the knowledge to operate on impact in Africa remain in Africa.
Thank you.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Thank you, Joseph.
The Chair of Africa, Hossam, can you respond to that, and also you have the last word
>> HOSSAM ELGAMAL: Thank you very much, Char and thank you very much remote participants.
It is just a way of using the same fund to implement much faster and to implements much more trainees in all the countries, especially that we don't have enough fund to have face‑to‑face training everywhere. In fact, we need to encourage more. Train the trainers, remote training, and online training so we can have more bridging more digital divide that we have.
Now, if you allow me, I will put the recommendation from, I think the perspective, at least. In addition to the good efforts taking place, we need more bridging faster the gaps South to South discussion, and African Country stakeholder sharing of policies and projects, knowledge, capabilities, strategies for digital transformation and related transformation capacity building.
Without sharing the knowledge, we keep on expanding much more and getting less ROI. We need also to engage the users as mentioned by our colleagues, in fact we need people coming from the health sector, industrial sector, those are the users that are going to benefit from the digital transformation and from the policies that would will enable them, and the more they are believing in the value of the digital transformation, the faster we will be able to achieve the results required.
So, creating awareness about this added value of digital transformation in industry to citizen but mainly super users is extremely important.
We need to engage further the parliamentarians, we saw much more coming, which is important, because they are the ones that are generating the policies, and the more they understand the value of the digital transformation, the more they would be engaging and really moving forward to finalize the policies required.
I think we need to engage together in complementing strategic projects whether back bones, certainly contents, instead of each Country doing its own, if we share the same language in some of the countries, we should share contents development together. We should share strategic projects related to education, health, agriculture. And, administrative reform.
We need stronger collaboration for Africa, we need stronger collaboration between smart Africa, AFICTA, Civil Society and other stakeholders. We need to work much more on the ground together.
We need to think really, and this is a big question for all Government, we need to move from the telecommunication regulatory authority to the digital society authority. This is not about regulation only. It is about enable meant. It is about standards. It is about strategic vision. If we don't have a body that can put this, we are not heading anywhere.
And, finally, I invite Melissa to support AFICTA hub and integrate it with the broadband for all initiative.
Thank you very much.
>> MELISSA SASSI: Done.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE:Okay. Great. We have a quick agreement on this panel. That's wonderful.
Thank you, Chair. Thank you on unlocking the digital potentials and least Developed Countries is something that can happen. It is going to happen very soon, and we want to encourage policy makers to embrace all the talking points, many have been made today, embrace them, let us put resources into all these points for solution, let us be user centric, be people focus in our policy design, let us collaborate as the Chair emphasized, let us look at all the tools available so that we can be able to solve the problem locally. Tools for coding, yes, is good, it will help with the solving of problem locally. And, as you saw problem locally, then we are removing the digital divide. And, as we remove the digital divide, then we play it in the fourth industrial revolution. It is something that is agreeable, and the panel is have said yes, we can do it. And, you are there, you can say yes, we can do it.
On this note, I want to say thank you very much. We are already short of time. Thank you so, so much.
Thank you all. Thank you, panelists.
(Applause)
Give them a big hand.
(Applause)
And all of you, thank you for coming. End of workshop.
>> HOSSAM ELGAMAL: Thank you, Paul, for arranging for this event, my friend.
(Concluded)