Good morning everyone it's really good morning early session keep us in the right place for the for the for the meetings during the day So we are here today to to talk about Digital transformation and bridging the digital divide We have a large set of interviews interveners But I will start to give the floor to to the deputy director of the BDT To address the opening remarks. Thank you very much Thank you very much. It's a practice to start a little early And the finish 12 o'clock. It's a practice of IT and thank you. Thank you very much for coming Excellencies and Distinguished guests this thing a panelist ladies and gentlemen. I'm very it's my great pleasure to join you this Breakfast meeting or early morning meeting digital economy Accelerating digital transformation through innovation ITU in particular telecommunication development bureau has working closely with partners here and member states to bring together technology and innovation To create synergies which will take us further and faster towards achieving sustainable developing goals Especially SDG 9 Build resilient infrastructure promote inclusive and sustainable Industrialization and a four-star innovation. That is one of the key SDG innovation play major role in global development agenda by enabling digital transformation and creating new and improving services for citizens Bringing multiple stakeholders and sectors together to strengthen innovation ecosystem is essential to unlock opportunities and ensuring sustainability We believe that shaping and developing national ICT centric Innovation ecosystem is critical in accelerating development and fostering digital economies Additionally fostering and connecting Innovation ecosystem is essential to accelerate the development of ICT enabled industries and sustainable digital employment ITU has worked together with other international organizations including WHO UNESCO FAO and others Global experts and key stakeholders to shape its innovation agenda with aim to accelerate digital transformation ITU innovation research has shown that there is a growing digital innovation divide Our ultimate goal is that BDT to help close this innovation divide as you may know Europe is a front runner among us as regional initiative on innovation, which was adopted at previous world telecommunication developing conference 2014 as part of this regional initiative we concluded many initiatives activities in Europe including first country review on innovation ecosystem In Albania in addition BDT has been actively implementing activities all over the world including Argentina Kenya Moldova Rwanda and Thailand and we have recently Finished the country case study on Rwanda Moldova and others ITU's innovation services and toolkit provides roadmaps frameworks and flagship project for countries journey towards digital economy It engages key stakeholders and a four-stars innovation systems at country level to ensure that analysis and policy guidance reflect the realities of countries and fit their needs and That flagship project are sustainable and holistic in addressing their challenges I am pleased to inform you that we have recently learned toolkit for strengthening ICT centric ecosystem Which will be empowering country to accelerate their digital transformation through innovation ITU innovation research has also shown that resources urgently needed to help foster and catalyze Dynamic ICT Ecosystems that can ensure sustainable development of digital economies without targeted resources to build innovation capacities Countries are unable to develop an enabling environment that allows Accelerated public service transformation Entrepreneurs cannot address social needs with innovation solutions And SMEs are unable to grow and create sustainable employment for their communities Additionally without unified common agenda in the national and international community Existing resources already invested are seen ineffective and deepening sustainable issues I would like to invite you today Actively participate in this unique event and share knowledge on innovation a topic that is critical to the development we hope that This event will inspire you and empower you to get more involved in the digital transformation journey in your own country and Contribute to the ITU the mission to foster ICT for development. Thank you very much Thank you very much. Mr. Yushi. So we know further delays. We have a large number of Panelists, I'll briefly introduce all of them. We have mr. Alberto Patron from Cessia, Argentina. We have Miss Nibal Edelebi From UNESCO we have Dr. Ismail Shah from PTA Pakistan Mr. Ricardo Perez from the Minister of Modernization. We also have Sergei from the From the Moldavan Republic. We have Mr. Ba, our innovative guru from the BDT and Myself of the Partition for Martel will be the moderator for today. So we know further delay This is a very important panel because we've been discussing this along the way also on the sidelines of the WTDC because innovation is really the key the key factor to modernization and also to To bridge the digital innovation divide that is is growing faster and faster every day And it's it's very important that the ITU and all the people involved in this in this work Take a good care of this issue in order to to anticipate future problems that Afterwards will be hard to tackle. So for today's Objectives of this panel. I hope we can we can managed we'd like to to understand innovation The innovation ecosystems and the digital innovation divide We also try to to build an understanding of the challenges and opportunities To accelerate digital transformation and achievements. We also will try to Understand the digital innovation frameworks that I needed to accelerate the digital transformation and last but not least We'll try to discuss on the resources for accelerating the digital the bridging the digital divide in Digital innovation divide. That's one of the key factors that we are here today to to address So I'll start with miss Nibal from UNESCO. I'll address you a question There is a lack of common language about innovation and innovation ecosystems in fostering sustainable development What is innovation and how can innovation accelerate and foster sustainable development with innovation? Good morning everybody and thank you for including Esquia in this panel In fact innovation it is very busy word and it is used in different terms And it is used in different contexts and it in each context We can see that it has different meaning however the most common definition let us say of Innovation it is the the one that was defined in 2005 by OECD and it is included in the Oslo manual and which say that innovation is it's a the implementation of a new or Significantly improved the product or services And also it could be the new methodology of work a new method for marketing a new method for the Organizational process within an organization or even a new process for interacting with other with external relations And this is the maybe the most comprehensive definition of the of the implementation is the new and or Significantly improved product or services then this is maybe the most significant But also I mean I would like to say that there is a very good linkage in general between Innovation and research and development from one side and there is also linkage between Innovation and the technology from the other side if we took at the Take a look on the technology we can see that innovation in fact it has improved dramatically the the technological scope and it enhanced technology in a very rapid way Worldwide and it enables the production of a new new new new medium Devices and services, but in the same time innovation Today technology enables innovation and it is the driver of innovation if we look at least at the mobile Mobile devices and we can see the smartphone how much it enables the the advancement of innovation There is it is really a platform for innovation Then this is this is a very important linkage and also the linkage with research in and development because in general innovation It is especially for in developed world. I mean we can say that the innovation result from Extensive research and development in either in the firms or in the academia or a joint effort between academia and firms Then these are the linkage and this is the context in which we are thinking about innovation However today we can think also about innovation from the grassroots. I mean innovation from Individual which are not necessarily resulted from R&D and this is very important for developing countries. I would say Just to finish with this I mean sometimes a new when we speak about a new it is new in the context It is not necessarily new in the absolute terms in the up in the world We're at global level, but it could be new in the context in the local market in at national level Then it's a new in terms of to the new market This is what is also important very much for the developing country that it is It they can contribute to innovation even if they are not really very extend They don't have a lot of efforts in the R&D Thank you very much very clear another issue is Regarding the ecosystems are several ecosystems around this innovation bus That's going around in our world today and one for sure the most important one Should be the entrepreneurial ecosystem I would like to hear from Mr. Ricardo Perez from the Minister of Modernization what what what are your country's strategy in terms of of Empowering this entrepreneurial ecosystem and then followed by Mr. Alberto Patron So we'll have the two views from the public and from the private sector. Please Mr. Ricardo Thank you. Good morning everyone Before to start I would like to say I'm sorry because I don't have a good English So I will try to speak better at that. I am I would like to talk about what are we working from the ICT secretariat to improve the Development of an entrepreneur ecosystem We consider that the ICTs are absolutely necessary for development goals Innovation and data are important themes in the entire agenda as a vehicle to achieve all the sustainable development goals The same is how new data and real-time information system can improve decision-making process For the digital transformation of a country the role of the ecosystem entrepreneur is fundamental from the ICT secretariat an Internet work study group was created the last year to work on the most relevant internet points that have an impact on the economy the topics we are currently working on our OTT big data and IOT and these topics are very important for the entrepreneur ecosystem In this framework Argentina, there is a huge ecosystem of developer hardware and software developer Regarding IOT we are working in two main points We are doing research on different topics We made an international benchmarking about IOT situation and the principal issues like roaming cyber security regular authority policies We do a public consultation to understand what are the major markets needs and when I'm talking about markets here, it's very important the developers the entrepreneur and the small and medium enterprises and the second We are working have a facilitator of promoter where we create a working group working beyond the whole ecosystem and Generate synergy among all the actors where the entrepreneurs and developers can have their proposal With the small and medium enterprises large enterprises and telecommunications chambers here we that is a very important action that we are doing Because we can do a link between the small with the developers with the large enterprises Well, this is our current strategy where we we analyze the result This year to define a future strategy. Thank you. Thank you very much. I wish my Spanish was as good as your English So I think we're good Okay Okay Well, thanks a lot for inviting me and well for for the entrepreneurial Ecosystem to floris and traditionally you hear that the country needs to allow you to to to have an easy way to do business and Unfortunately, I think that historically in you know the World Bank Doing business rank that that measures how easy is to do business in each country. We didn't rank very well But in spite of that I think that has been a good thing for us because we have learned to do things in spite of all these Problems that maybe our countries have in spite of maybe not having such a great infrastructure or having a tax Program that it's not so easy for for new startups to grow in spite of that. I think Argentina has managed to create four of the five of the six Unicorns that appeared in Latin America So most of the unicorns the companies that are valued in more than one billion Dollars came from from Argentina So I think that's that's a great thing And that we have the training to to do things in spite of the problems that might might happen And at the same time I must recognize that in the last years we have made a lot of advances and we have a very important entrepreneurial Community that there's an association of entrepreneurs that has pushed a lot for an entrepreneurial law That has been passed in in the last month and that is a very important step For for this entrepreneurial ecosystem because it has changed a lot of fundamental things One thing that was a problem here was that to start to create a new company The bureaucratic thing lasted maybe a couple of months now with this new law You can create a company in one day So that's a really big step forward. The other thing also is the this law creates a lot of Seeds funds and and Generates a public mix it public and private sector funds to To be able to put money in these new startups and it even grants a zero interest rate Fans for for small startups. So those those kind of things. I think they're quite quite interesting From the chamber of software the sassy that I'm representing here We are also working a lot towards fostering these entrepreneurial efforts and of course we have some Different initiatives we have initiative for for the local market And we are also trying to to make our companies grew bigger and stronger and we are trying to make them Internationalized we have created a network Argentina network in a broad that has Created offices in different countries in initially in America. We have an office in the US in Mexico in Colombia and Chile that Works as a first Step towards internationalization where we have a lot of studies to help companies that want to go abroad understand that the tax regime in in this Destination to understand which is that the market and then to help make this big step of internationalization So those kind of things are interesting another interesting thing that I think we have here in in Argentina is that there is a law that generates a lot of incentives for the software industry and But it's not Free it really thinks about how to make this industry bigger So it asks you as a company to really show that you are investing in R&D and that you have a quality Certification so those are things that ensure that in the long term the industry is going to grow We have this this long place. We hope this this law will will be continuing it ends in two or three years But I think that's been a very good step to make this Ecosystem of software industry grow Thank you very much very inspiring and see how can public and private sector collaborate and always impressed by the numbers that you just gave us Maybe it should be an inspiration for other people to come to Argentina start their business as well But how we can do it elsewhere? I think it's safe to say that The innovation divide is growing and it's growing faster I choose as shown as that say in the previous studies that they have delivered But I also that miss nibble can also had something regarding this this increased need of resources in order to reduce this gap and As well to empower the the ecosystem of innovation in several branches. Miss you can you had something please? Yes, in fact, unfortunately the gap between the developed and developing country is a huge in innovation and we can see it very clearly in some statistics And sometimes I mean at Esquah. We made some study a study in fact about Land escape of innovation in the Arab region One of example and I can distribute some copy of the flyer Which shows in fact that when we compare the innovation Indexes as take it and take into consideration the GDP that the figure changed completely and in the Arab country For example, we saw that some middle countries like Morocco Middle countries in terms of income like Morocco Lebanon or Jordan. They are doing even better than rich country like you a E KSA or Kuwait or something like that or the other Gulf countries then it is really important to look at the Indexes and to evaluate how we are standing. I mean globally and taking into account the resources that we have Because we don't have the same resources in all countries and for that reason, I mean to seek other resources I believe today with the SDG. There are many way where we can have fun There is fun to from international organization from Advanced country from developed country, but I would like to mention that sometimes the top in the funds It's targeting specific For example climate change, then we have to address Carefully the fund that are available and where and what which theme they are targeting In fact, is it from climate change or is it a job creation or is it for example? Water resources and so on and we know that with the SDG today. There are a lot of Theme which are and there are a lot of a global issue That has Importance at the global level then here. There is this fund from this one. There is the funding from Developed country there is from I would like to mention for job creation nowadays There is fun from crowdfunding a crowdfunding is booming in a way in many countries And then you have a lot of potential especially for young innovator and then here for great idea you can Find some fun even using crowdfunding We have a platform in the Arab region. It's called zoom al and it's really booming In fact, and we are astonished by the result. There is fun sometimes the banks of course, I mean the banks and with the Capital venture capital are very important and in some countries where we don't have venture capital We have realized that there is lack of innovation the venture capital existence I mean it increased I mean it has a lot of effects on the innovation and in the creation of startup This is some idea that I share but I believe other panelists have other ideas Thank you very much Mr.. Bah, would you like to add something regarding the perspective? Thank you, Philippe. Thank you to our panelists for enlightening us ITU has been really running some innovation research in several countries and what we find is that there is a Growing digital innovation device not about a digital divide The digital divide is actually growing if you look at all indicators the statistic on ICT If you look at the statistic from WIPO on the global innovation index you will see that developing countries are actually struggling more and more and this is despite all of the Awareness we had around the technology and the user technology I think we believe what's happening is that people are substituting technology for change and technology is not Basically a root cause of chance technology is not a chance technology is an enabler So when we look at Argentina Argentina has three five me how many unicorns? Four unicorns while every country I think today aspired to be like Silicon Valley But what you realize is when you start looking at the ecosystem of Silicon Valley, by the way Silicon Valley is not a country It's actually you know, you know, I'm saying it's a town. It's actually several towns coupled together, right? So it's not even about countries ecosystem anymore it's about ecosystem around cities around the different areas and When we talk about sustainability If we want to close the digital divide We have to look at the innovation divide and the innovation divide will only happen if we look at the stakeholders in an ecosystem And we understand what their requirements are so what we have done over the past two years is we have looked at five to six countries and we have helped them develop very specific Digital strategies which will help them. I don't have any presentation for you, but I'll distribute it This is the example of Rwanda and they can tell us a little more about what we did with them with the country But what you're looking at is some of the things that Mr. Patron was mentioning and also Nibel in terms of what is important in a country you have infrastructure You have access to resources so they're key ingredients But that's not the only thing despite being able to solve the problem in an environment You need to understand what the stakeholders in that environment are doing and when you start looking at this This is what the country will be looking like it's when you call or call the country So this is the example of Rwanda and to tell you anything that is red is not good anything that yellow is not good So you have 35 ingredients here If any of this is not really good then you are not going to be able to have a really good digital Ecosystem and in the case of Rwanda remember when I went with the honorable minister He says more I want to have a five billion dollar economy Well, never mind the economy of Rwanda today is five billion dollar in ICT meaning ICT enabled economy and say well How do we do this? How do we strengthen our ICT private sector? How do we make sure that the whole country gets to do this and my answer was well you can do this But you need to understand that there is a lot of things that needs to happen It's not just about access to venture capital fund. It's not just about Crowdfunding right we know that there new mechanism to provide all these ingredients today We have crowdfunding we have crowd equity in fact crowd equity has to part venture capital fund So we have all the time new mechanism new ways where we're getting countries to actually innovate on the ways they access resource So but what we know is important is that we need to look at the ecosystem holistically we need to look at the actions of all stakeholders in that ecosystem and We have seen in the example of Argentina where we have the private sector who is doing a lot on market access Who is doing a lot on talent development who is doing a lot on on developing the innovation spaces So at the end of the day, I think it's very important that we do not get too attached to technology Let's just try to understand what problem we want to solve in a country and those are very simple We want to make sure people have jobs and to do this people need to create product and services as Miss Nibali explained This is what innovation is and to do this ICT help you create all kind of different type of product and services Not only that but to actually place them anywhere in the world. Thank you Thank you, but This has just led me to my next question because we're talking about challenges and there's a lot of different perspectives in order to tackle the different challenges and and the challenge that Majorly the challenge that the public sector has to overcome and this Direct me to dr. Shah In in Pakistan What are the challenges that you've been facing and what are the stakeholders doing about those challenges? Some of them have been already mentioned by by the previous speakers, but can you share with us your your experience? Thank you Sure. Thank you very much Firstly, let me just make a general comment if you look at the overall innovation that has happened in the first decade of this century You would see that it happened mainly because there were no regulations Their technology was available. You had good academic institutions who are promoting entrepreneurship And even the society in general had a mindset where failure would was tolerated anyway even had high school dropouts who Who came up with ideas who were successful businessmen and they established? World-class companies so this was a general society that was actually Society as well as availability of the technology academic institutions and they and the involvement of the government which was actually reduced involvement of the government in in those cases But this is not the case and that's why you see the difference in between developed and developing countries The challenges that we face now coming to your question One of the major challenges that in general governments are just for conformity You have rules you have regulation. You just need to follow that Even as a regulator whenever I talk about innovations, they say why do we have to innovate your job is just to regulate and that's it but But slowly and gradually This thing is being realized That we need to be more innovative And we have taken some steps the government as a whole has actually taken some steps And that's actually the most important part that the government as a whole at the top level must realize the importance of Innovation importance of ICTs and they need to take steps so that all the other fall in line So for for example innovation digital in citizen services One of the thing that has happened is that the government has created certain Boards software export board IT board who are coming up with solutions for citizens For example, there is a solution for making sure that immunization actually happens The health worker actually go to each and every village and they do the immunization And that is done through an app with that is geo tax So the person has to go there and click from there That actually and take the picture of the child also that he or she has actually immunized that child similarly improving the attendance in school Similarly helping the farmers. So these are the IT boards in different provinces who are actually now working on citizen services So that's one part of it and then you have the entrepreneurial Culture innovation culture for that I believe And this has but my experience in the government is like around five and a half years is that government in general It's a little difficult for the government to exit to execute things So that's why for general innovation for helping the entrepreneurs The government has gone for public private partnerships And they award the project to the private sector and then the private sector actually executes that and One of the example of that that has been very successful and actually I was involved in that Because I sit on the board of that company government plus private sector owned company Which was the establishment of the National Incubation Center Which was actually inaugurated by the Secretary General ITU himself and that has been a very Good story as far and it was actually done through the private sector one of the biggest telecom operator is partnering with The government in executing that and so far the results have been very good There were five companies who went to four YFN in Barcelona four years from now They made it to the first ten Similarly recently we had a hackathon around SDGs and that the winner of that was then invited by ITU to Busan They won there also and then now they are moving into the next stage Of course, I have seen your the report and now they are in that Valley of death phase because it has only been one and a half two years And now what they need is that they need some funding for their ideas for that the government has some grants And now the private sector also has actually come in even the companies like pharmaceutical companies are also Coming and looking at different ideas that they are in Many of them are actually working on local problems. So that's another thing which is kind of a little different from you know General innovations like for example, when we talk about Facebook and Google, it's probably not they're not solving a local problem But these startups and companies are actually solving local problems and some of them for example are related to women empowerment Making health facilities available in the rural areas of Pakistan and one important area that we have worked I would not say a lot, but we have made significant progress is on The work in the purse for the person with disabilities finally my My suggestion to all of you and I think it's a suggestion suggestion from ITU also is That yes, of course we have to provide connectivity and by connectivity We should mean broadband not just basic voice connectivity. That is a priority, but that's not the whole thing We have to move to overall digitization and finally the innovation policy So that's actually what we need to move on towards and again, I would re-emphasize that this has to come from the top. Thank you Thank you very much very interesting Views there are retained two of them for me. It's they are crucial one. It's to Give the public the experience of using ICT which is very interesting because normally we tend to impose things as Better for for people and they don't understand it. They have to experience that and so making the public using Haps and using technology May empower more their will to to to invite as well and the other the other thing I retained was the to solve the local problems I mean we intend to bring the next big idea from the outside and sometimes we forget that Locally we have problems that we have to tackle we're doing that we in musa big for instance And I see here the director general of the regulator from musa big We're doing that kind of work in musa big trying to tackle the local problems because if people can can see that Technology can solve their problems locally it will probably empowers them more to to to focus on new ideas on new solutions So on on your approach, but I think you want to add something on on the policy side. Yeah Thank you. I just wanted to actually address your Your statement about policy moving beyond broadband policies and and I think this is exactly what we're trying to do today Because we know that the digital economy is It's actually about Unpowering ICT through all segments and sectors of the economy and to do this at ITU We have been pushing a lot of Broadband policy ICT policies whether you call it vision on 2010 2020 Now what we're starting to see more and more is the vision 20 30s and a beyond are looking more into Actually adopting innovation or updating that ICT policies with innovation and entrepreneurship policies and The reason why many countries are looking to do this is because they understand that we're actually not going to be able to Connect the next 1.5 billion which is one of the targets of the connector which is to connect the 1.5 billion People in the next I think is 2025 well It's not going to happen because the problem is services and services are lacking For people to have services they need to solve local problems and for them to solve local problems They need to have local innovation capacity So if we do not go and update all of the policies to make sure that they include Innovation and entrepreneurship policies or policy fostering digital innovation and digital entrepreneurship The last mile will never be closed and we see this in many many places We see regulators who are going in and putting in all kind of incentive to the market, but the market is not responding So from our point of view, this is why we're actually doing what we're doing We're really pushing for ICT policies to be updated in general with innovation and entrepreneurship policies So we can have this culture of entrepreneurship both in the private sector as well as the public sector And with their very good example of this in both cases in the public sector, for example For those anybody from Bangladesh here No, okay So in Bangladesh my friends from Bangladesh have Ninovates over a thousand people innovation team in the government and this was driven from an initiative from the Prime Minister Office where they're actually training civil servants to actually create new services is no longer just Digitalizing it's actually going beyond is teaching civil servants how to create new processes How to transform them and they're doing some of the same things that you're doing in Pakistan Which is providing funds working with public-private partnerships So they're really going beyond what the normal government should be doing But this also has to happen in the private sector. Thank you. Thank you Bob. I think it's Do you want to have something I mean there is an aspect I mean that we haven't tackled I believe it was it is very important for some country, especially developing countries Which is related to education education at early stage. In fact in some countries there is we have this style of memorization Style of education and this is really not very helping in fact We need to have more to open the Critical to make more critical thinking for young people our young people even at the early stage of education And also critical thinking I mean curiosity and so on and also the culture in it's maybe Muhammad mentioned the culture the culture of innovation. It is also very important in a society to have I mean young entrepreneur and the two to encourage them to go and go to the market This is important because sometimes in many countries It is more once you have a failure in your experience You are you are not very well seen in the in the society and this culture of failure that even even if we fail one time We can have success later on. This is the risk-taking aspect It is not very common in most developing country and this is something that we have to push in fact And I believe it is important to mention because we haven't mentioned it very much We have touched here some some practical cases. I'll move them to some real Cases we've been about we've been talking about some of theoretical approach, but now we have two two practical cases here from Rwanda and from Moldova I'll start maybe with with Rwanda because we have dressed that already and I'll go to you Sergio. Okay, please sir Thank you James musing with it. I'm from the regulator. I walk in the innovation department Yeah, so Some of the challenges have already been discussed and I think I don't have to go back to this but When you have challenges you could look at them as challenges or opportunities so In the discussions we're having For us we felt these are better handled when you collaborate You don't have to start Reinventing the wheel in ICT. So some of the big things we're doing in Rwanda is Collaborating at the African level in what we call smart Africa. Smart Africa basically brings Together countries who have the same agenda to exploit it in Speeding up our development process. So what smart what smart cities is doing is giving the heads of states The power they exposure to set targets which are going to Impact the city the the social society in One of our projects in Rwanda Where broadband is being exploited is where we're trying to extend government services online He talked about the issues we have with entrepreneurs we were trying to See how to empower the entrepreneurs To work with government because in government down there is the biggest employer. So if government doesn't ploy private sector would have a very good result so innovators government together trying to exploit IT to facilitate the civil society in Exploiting this is giving services to the citizen or one of the biggest challenges Governments today is how to extend their offices to the local sector Where is what we're trying to exploit innovation or maybe? the financial services But I would like more of also say something here Thank you very much. Good morning to all first of all, I would like to express our great idiot to the IT use willingness and to unleash its resources and intellectual capacity of the innovation service of the BDT to provide more over with the ICT centric innovation country review, which was conducted and Has to be published very soon. So these still Emphasizes the IT support towards my country's commitment to empower an innovation driven economy so it recognizes the importance of innovation in driving a strong and as strategic ICT sector and Inaccelerated economic development of my country Moldova identifies itself among the countries with a strong focus on enhancing and Growth of the IT industry as well as expanding its potential this vector is highlighted by successful implementation of Strategic documents such as national strategy for information society development Digital Moldova 2020 and by the strategy for IT industry competitiveness and grow So Moldova has almost fully leveraged at these potential of two strategies and these new insights from the ITU are really timely to Father provide our country with new opportunities to develop its ICT centric innovation ecosystem So this brings us the crucial importance of the new joint work just performed during the six months and meant to accelerate the transformation by capitalizing on the advantages that Ecosystem has and by creating a common vision on how reforms can meet the needs of various stakeholders In fact, the country review provides a snapshot of challenges and opportunities currently faced by stakeholders in my country And they are complemented by seven key recommendations based on the needs analysis and these Specific policies programs and flagship projects recommendations will serve as a reference tool for us To help guide and support innovation with the aim to make Moldova attractive as a potential hub for emerging technologies And by the way, these new approaches to policymaking became the basis for a new strategy for fostering the digital innovation ecosystem That is currently developed in my country. Thank you Thank you But what is this new approach that we're looking at? Well what Sergio was just talking about is some of the work and how we approach this in the Republic of Moldova And we have done this for Rwanda as well so you can get some snapshot of that the one for Rwanda for Moldova is not yet public But what the ITU has done lately is we have launched a toolkit on actually how countries can do this It's actually nice if ITU comes in and help you do this in countries But what we believe in is really empowering the countries to do this themselves So if you look at the example of Moldova, we went in there. They had his vision 2020 2020 which actually needs to be updated on new pillars based on entrepreneurship and innovation like our The chairman from PTA was just mentioning. So we help Moldova improve their strategies and adopt this or make specific recommendations towards adopting a new digital economy strategy and in that one of the approaches we use is a bottom-up where all the stakeholders are coming together and We want a little further because what we started doing is actually teaching people creativity methodologies and why Creativity methodologies in policy because we believe policy needs to to take a new approach Which is a policy experimentation approach. So all of the Methodologies you can find here is a toolkit that we call the bridging the digital innovation divide and You also have a couple of case studies that you will see in here And if anybody is interested I can discuss offline with this Think about so as you can see as we can see as well There is different perspectives and different different challenges frameworks. They've arrived from country to country So what comes up to my mind is is it possible to have just one view is it possible to have a unique approach that can help us to to to Foster good digital innovation frameworks. Is that possible and I would like to address this to to Mr Yushi and to any other of the other panelists that want to comment Can we have a common view to have a common framework? Thank you very much Well, I'd like to share some experience as one of my previous role was sort of facilitator development of technology developing fund facilitator something in National Institute of ICT and Based on my experience, I will wish to highlight three points. One is the of course the important role of government Government leadership Maybe in terms of vision of a specific action plan that is critical. Although the funding is seed money private sector and academia put together and implement those Project as a facilitator or leader on this aspect. So leadership of government is important Although the funding is very seed seed function and second thing as I mentioned many speaker mentions Public private and academia partnership that is very critical government itself cannot Develop any technology in the laboratory and academia or in industry that is the place we have a technology and innovation and thirdly, I Wish to highlight the international cooperation today's event is one of the Venue for sharing experience ITU has been leading this area today area representative. Yes, the condo is here. And of course my colleague Mohammed is leading this innovation area. We are trying to share the experience of countries among the Region that is regionally or inter regionally. I was I joined the event in Europe and the CIS Event and was a enthusiastic We try to expand this experience regionally and internally and depending on the needs of the we wish to respond to the needs and in terms of Implementation after vision, we need some clear action plan and regular monitoring mechanism with some clear indicators That that is based on my suggestion Pretty much any other for the comments now. So I'll jump just to the next question. Yes, please Yeah, in fact Just about common framework, I believe that Most important ingredients are known now. I mean like the ecosystem and legal and regulatory framework However, I mean sometimes we have according to the level of development of country or region We might suggest something else. I mean we might have a combination What are the priority for at a certain level according to the level of innovation in some countries? What is the priority for boosting innovation? For example in the in the Eskwa we proposed a kind of a framework for to promote innovation In the Arab countries and here we gave the priority up based on the level of Innovation in this country. We gave priority to some area. For example Education is very important. I just mentioned research and development. We realize that member countries in the Arab region They don't spend too much on research and development The percentage of R&D from the GDP it is less than one percent while globally it is three to five percent I mean on the on the research and development for that for that reason we push them in our in our policy framework To focus on R&D and to invest more in R&D Also legal and regulatory framework as well as supporting. I mean innovators Then I believe sometimes the generality exists, but we have to focus and give priority to To the according to the level of development Thank you very much. Do you want to add something? Yeah, just before that this was supposed to end at 9 o'clock, but can we be innovative and overcome the 9 o'clock? Is it possible? Yes. Okay, so let's innovate No, thank you for that inspiration Philippe. I just want to respond to these priority questions. I think Nevali is correct that the ingredients are known the ingredients are typical infrastructure We actually define them as six you have infrastructure whether it's broadband or is a soft infrastructure in knowledge centers Or some of those things we have talent and access to talent, which is 21st century talents What are people doing to get the next? Technological skills for their let's say for example in data analytics in schools or creativity methodologies We have resources with this general which is venture capital seed funds a lot of the times those Ingredients are meeting set especially at an early stage of entrepreneurship where people really Need something to make sure they develop their product and services We have access to market which is domestic market as well as international market. We heard from our Friend from Argentina what for example the chamber is doing to actually foster international market access It's super critical for an entrepreneur to have demand for its product and so his product or her product and services We have this this sort of cultural thing which has to do with the activities and building the culture of entrepreneurship And of course all that has to be guided by a big vision of a country in many countries We still see that people are talking about we want an e-government strategy e-government strategy is not an innovation Strategy and e-government strategy is just literally adopting digital tools in in to to improve digital services What but however we're now having the discussion where countries are thinking bigger I say well we want a digital economy strategy. Well, what does that mean? It's really there's only one thing a digital economy strategy is an innovation driven strategy Michael Porter has defined three sort of segments for every economy He called them the factor driven economy efficiency driven economy or innovation driven economy or knowledge driven Now every country has a piece of this But if you look at the indicators for example from wealth we can have many countries ranked as one of these economies So the idea is every country really needs to have one strategy Which is a strategy to migrate towards an innovation driven economy? But by doing so the stakeholders in that country have to make sure that they're not just focusing on the high end of the economy They're actually pulling they're solving the local problem So they're not just trying to create the next Google or the next unicorn, right? It's actually not even about a unicorn It's about what are these communities doing to solve their problems and what is government role in in fostering this? So when I talk to a couple of governments the priorities you have to remember governments are political So if I'm in one country One prime minister or one minister might say well my priority is to solve corruption Okay, that is a real priority and if we come up with any action That does not support that priority because the normal citizens do not understand what innovation is So we have to be able to sort of have all of these initiatives support one of the political priorities So that's just one example a corruption transparency Government transformation because everybody can sort of adopt and align to that Another one we see is jobs if our strategy is job creation So at the end of the day, I think we have to be careful not to talk about priorities that The common people do not understand because if we want the ecosystem to be vibrant We have to have the support of everybody. Thank you Thank you Bob. And so as you can see We're looking at this this problem in different perspectives different Initiatives different policies different programs projects, etc But as far as I understand there are two key elements here. It means and I mean resources and commitment, right? So to Dr. Shah and to Miss Nibal again What what are you doing or what you should you think you should be done to to secure resources and commitment to engage your ecosystems in terms of development initiatives When we talk about resources, I mean we only think sometimes that it's only the funding that is that is required Which in many case is is not the situation. It's not the funding It's the commitment of the government in general that they will have supporting Policies, I think the biggest thing that the government can probably do is to actually If I want to be too blood to get out of the way and and let the let the progress happen and Let the innovation happen So I think the first thing would be to look very very closely at what are the policies that are actually hindering all This innovation for example, what is the procedure of getting a company registered? What about the tax issues related there are there any would as soon as you register would the tax authorities be after you? What about if you fail and you want to close the company down? Would they let you close it down? The these these kind of policies and many others for that matter and then of course the issue of funding is important But as far as the government is concerned the most important part is the right policies And of course in our case for example, we are trying on that I would not say that we have been able to remove all the Impediments, but at least we are working towards that and recently actually The thing that has happened is that the Prime Minister himself has actually formed a committee and all the other Ministries are ministers are a member of that all those who actually Can have anything to do with ICT or commerce or trade and he himself is an engineer So he probably understand this also So so so these are the things that need to be done and then of course some funding and and encouragement There are many people who would work with the government and there are many Private companies who would be ready to to to bring in funding if they see the right policies So I would say policies have stopped there 100% policy is very important and I believe it is very important to have a vision at the country level I mean we have seen that in some country they do have one or two or three policies But I mean there is no common vision. Why we are going to a vision innovation I mean then I believe to have a vision that is shared by with different stakeholders Vision that mention why why you are doing this innovation policy in a way who will collaborate to implement it and What are the means that we are proposing the means legal legal as well as financial if there is any I mean then I think it is specifying the objective of the government and To to to make it How to say to make awareness about this vision and to provide the means necessarily for implementing it is very important then vision should answer why why what and With with which means this is very important I think at at national level and also I believe in many in many cases we Sometimes the government to put the policy without interacting with other stakeholders And I believe here the interaction with other stakeholders either academia or private sector private sector should be on board from the beginning I mean from the beginning of the of the Formulation of the policy or the strategy then I believe also to to get everybody involved from the beginning till the end I mean this is also very important And also maybe to here may be something which is also important is the linkage between private and academia Which is sometimes lacking in many countries, especially here I'm speaking about developing country the linkage or the interaction or the collaboration between private sector and and The and the university or academia or research centers. This is also very important and it is very important ingredient But I what I what else I would like to add is to follow up the implementation of the policy I mean because only having policy formulated it is not enough We have to have a mechanism for the follow-up for the implementation and to see how it is taking a place and evaluating Progressively how this strategy is implemented in a way, then we don't have to formulate and just Stop here, but we have to implement and to have even organization Maybe it's dedicated organization for follow-up or for a kind of committee for follow-up of the implementation of this strategy Then and this is maybe my two cents What is clear for me is there's no There's no unique approach, right? There's several problems. There's several challenges. There are several perspectives Although the two gentlemen from Argentina have been Really quiet and they have success in their country.  Can you enlighten us about the regarding Regarding your insights to achieve success in this innovative ecosystem well then The people here in the panel have been talking about all that has to do with Regulations and things that the government can do. I think that's the basic ground. It's a must I'm happy to see that for example here in Argentina. There's a lot of initiatives towards the government and public government and all those things that Digital transformation is not that digital transformation. It's more to rethink to use technology to rethink business and in that sense From the chamber of software what we are trying to do is to spread the gospel about This idea and to to try to involve all the society and all the economy Because I think it's everywhere is more or less the same but in Argentina small and medium business are 90% of the companies So the government and the big companies, of course They have internal departments that can think about the strategy and they can think about how to implement our idea All that but what about the the small and medium businesses? How can we help them to understand this idea of digital transformation and how to rethink their businesses? I'm I'm confident that this idea is is permitting And I think that not a week goes by without a hackathon being made here and not just a government sponsored Hackathons or or maybe from the big companies or the traditional Technological companies we had a hackathon from a beer company. So they are they also are Understanding that they need to innovate and and from the chamber what we are trying to do is to To bring the different actors together. So we have Specific events of digital transformation for the government digital transformation for the industry where you would try to put together That the technological companies the software companies that are providing these new solutions and also these these small and medium Business that would really make benefit of these these ideas and we try to to foster this kind of Relationship and conversations that that's a very big important thing that I think it's one of our main focus right now to Spread this idea of digital transformation to all the in the actors in the economy From the government I think that one interesting idea that they are doing right now It's they had this digital transformation for SMB's where they give these SMB's loans to to acquire software or hardware And they're making a marketplace for I don't know you're an agricultural company And well you have a menu of which are the available tools and and and solutions that you could incorporate into your own business So if I may say that I think that's the main idea to to allow all the actors of the economy to get involved in this Digital transformation idea not just the government or the the large corporations Thank you Alberto Ricardo John ahead something, please There is no one solution to define how how the way to Develop the innovation and the burner in a country every culture is very different in different way In Argentina the last year changed the government. So today we're changing the way We are making policies. So we are And studying where we we our path for Five and ten years That's the reason why today we are working in this way like I said before we are trying to Doing tables where? Every every actor from these seems express What they think what they need and we're For example, we are working with Cessi to and where the developers can talk with the big enterprises who have the resources to and With another minister not only with the money minister of modernization. We are working with for example a minister of transport health and other ones, but the wall We think that we are in this way and we are trying to define the best policies to To improve the innovation in Argentina Thank you very much. I think it's pretty much clear as well that Collaboration is one of the key words and everyone of you have addressed that already Mr. You she also mentioned that on this previous intervention regarding international collaboration and this this is a question for all of you But I I challenge me so you should to come first regarding International collaboration. Are there any good practice that we can? Take from from from your experiences and after me see usually I would like to also to Understand the mode over perspective and any other countries in the in the panel or from the others that would like to to come in and comment on this So international collaborations Thank you very much. Yes, as I mentioned ITU be ITU D has been working hard for sharing the knowledge and experience of many countries starting with this in particular topic Europe and Joined even in Europe and the CIS and I wish to highlight one more thing the leadership of the government In fact, I handed this Country case study to minister of Rwanda During the Middlest of our wishes forum that is the leadership of minister In fact, the minister was the chairman of our wishes forum and also to Mordova Mordova government is regularly hosting regional development forum that is a yearly event of ITU D in a CIS region and acting minister also, I handed this launch of a Country case study to acting minister Tarev and that is a leadership of a government So we should highlight that mixture of a regional and international Corporation based on ITU D region initiative and also this WTDC is Deciding the future of ITU ICT Future of ICT and definitely innovation is one of the key area that is a cross-cutting Issue it includes a various aspects 5G, IoT AI many technology could be Developed and neutered by funding or facilitation by government and partnership Public private academia partnership and also I wish to highlight the success in Argentina We shared the success yesterday in Argentina. Yes, we learned that the government is helping the participation of academia to ITU And that is a leadership of government. So I wish to highlight again. Thank you So do you want to get something please? Yes, so mr. Trugger already mentioned the ITU regional development forum I'm glad that this year we had we had it for two regions CIS and Europe and Behosted participants from 12 countries Such as Netherlands Georgia Portugal Romania Ukraine and other countries and Another event I would like to mention the Moldova ICT summit it's a the main ICT event be host every year and These this year it was focused on developing their competitiveness of the ICT ICT sector and Promoting IT entrepreneurship and proliferating innovation So this event gathered over 600 participants. We had speakers from 23 countries at the event. So Thank you search Any other comment from the panels regarding the the the international collaboration I Think I just mentioned very briefly But there is one project that I will believe we need lots of collaboration It is national as well as international and that is innovative solutions using ICTs for persons with disabilities And we have done some work. We can share that with with my share it with mr. Baugh But we need I think more collaboration on that because it's a worldwide problem and we need in fact we have One of our participants from Pakistan is a person with disability. He's he has visual impairment He cannot see anything, but he is here and he's contributed I would say that also and in project is very important and I know now there is a kind of Capacity building a project for innovation. I mean it is running nowadays under the umbrella of the UN agencies I mean and it is collaborative project where it is targeting capacity building in developing country especially in developing country on Innovation and the policy innovation and so on. This is very good aspect But I would like to mention another aspect where we have International collaboration are very important and which is open science I mean if there is a kind of collaboration between international community on open science open knowledge and Open innovation if this is where it will really be very helpful for all people I mean for all countries and for all for all Thank you, we are 15 minutes ahead from the time that was scheduled for us But before I'm going to ask all of you Free key takeaways from from this session, but before that I would like to open the floor To the audience and I see one hand already. Please sir. Can you identify yourself and put your question forward? Thank you, I will patient so we'll see for this occasion My name is engineer Charles cheeky Assad with Nigeria just moved from the ministry to the university And I mean the University Innovation Center One thing that struck me. I don't I'm just looking for clarification place. I'm not just adding Once thing that struck me when I came in that you said we are gone beyond broadband We have gone beyond broadband and I feel broadband is the basis Particularly to the BTT Do you have statistics of I'm talking now of Africa because most of you are very developed broadband is not your problem Apology to you Rwanda because I know Rwanda is ahead in Africa But many countries in Africa as accessibility is the problem I want to know what I be DT has a modality or a system or do they have a projection to know to analyze This broadband issues in developing countries some of the countries that have reached as well the countries that Have gone beyond that as well to go to who don't you will understand anything about broadband. Thank you very much Thank you very much. I quickly Highlight yes, we have a broad range of projects one project is a private sector funded broadband project is specific project in West Africa we have nine countries piloting Each country starting with a base station of a 4g network to pilot pilot Feasibility of broadband network another area we have a study group question on rural communication that will summarize and some report that is Suitable for broadband or some rural communication infrastructure. They summarize the report regularly I think the study group to submitted report to this WTTC. So these are the key area, of course We have a various project maybe Mohammed or some colleague may add but T to key issues pilot project and study group question Yeah, I just want to add to that I think we need to move away from the notion that We're going to push broadband everywhere because the problem is we cannot push broadband because the services are in there The business models are not even sustainable and the people do not even know what you're giving them so from that point of view is From my perspective as the head of innovation I would like to shift the discussion to more of an innovation capacity Now when we talk about infrastructure, there's two components There is a broadband component and the infrastructure hard infrastructure. This will be broadband. There is also the soft infrastructure This is the innovation capacity together They will allow Countries to actually have very specific program when we did a report for Rwanda and actually Kenya One of the key things is this is what you see last mile will not be closed If you don't start building this innovation capacity in the various areas Because this is what will help the demand and also the supply match, right? So from that point of view, I think we need to reframe the question from being purely broadband to more of an innovation Capacity that can help us close the gap and this is where we come in from with the new angle. Thank you Thank you very much and I just remember you that yesterday we talked about that also in the academia initiative where I presented the The idea that we're developing in the Portuguese speaking countries using deployment of Access to internet, but at the same time working together in order to To to not allow that this digital innovation divide grow because it's not only about the access It's about what you can do with the access and that's a very key important thing that Boas addressed everyone we know each other, but please get sure. Thank you miss German I'm an underage canal from Nepal. I Want to share two experiences from the developing world when you talk about innovation the people at the government think that it is innovation is all about technology But they never think of business process re-engineering that the government has to do Second point. We are talking about the involvement of academia. We are talking about the resource and development Which normally it is the part of the academia does There is a clear disconnect between the government industry and academia in our part of the world They don't talk to each other The industry and the academia doesn't know what is national policies. What is national strategy of for example? We are talking about SDGs and if you go to any university They don't know what is SDG and how their innovations how their research and development is going to Help achieve those SDG targets So I think ITU is quite involved with the academia and the industry and as well as the government So this disconnect has to breathe somewhere that innovation is not about technology alone It's about process. It's about service and if these three components Who innovate do research and development? It's for achieving the you know development goals If they are disconnected, how can you think that a country can prosper? I think this is one of the key problem of developing world. Thank you very much very interesting perspective Mr. By has already addressed that as well during the previous year. I think you want to to compliment Yeah, I can see offline that this always is a surprise for people this when you look at this because academia is one of the line Actually, the first thing you write people think that technology is the root cause of chance And I always say technology is not the root cause of chance It's an enabler to do something in this case government most jobs earlier We discussed about priorities you really have to follow the government priorities because that's the only thing people understand Now I stand about corruption. They understand about jobs. They understand about this So if you talk the language of innovation do not talk about those really know Talk about what it will do for people So when we do this that is the first time I did this in a country and I actually say and and the stakeholders So the role so you understand is every stakeholder academia is one like says he will be on the support side Government is one side then they look at this they say well This is 35 boxes and some of these are color red and who color that's red and I say well I did not color you red so basically what we do is we put all of these stakeholders You talk about in the room so the process we use there's always the surprise say wait wait Why did you color me red? No, I did not color you red this guy color you read and then they suddenly they realize that They need to talk to each other because they do not understand which language each you know each other basically saying about each other But it's really this is the new policy approach that we're pushing forward. It's a policy Experimentation on approach where people are basically doing bottom up policy making and we don't do these policies We just put them together. We give them the tools and say guys Let's talk about real stuff now and then at the end of the day Suddenly what happens is that the stakeholders themselves are creating the actions that they need to change their ecosystem Therefore to transform their digital economy. Thank you Let's start from the end come on Yes, what you mentioned about academia and the rest of the Sorry, can I can I just add something? In order to start to wrapping up I was gonna ask you all of you to give us at least three key key takeaways But I'll just ask for one one sentence one key take away after your intervention if you can close with one key take away I would appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks What you mentioned about academia being apart from the rest, I think it's quite true And I don't know if it's everywhere, but for example here in Argentina. I think that Academia was like pure science and if they went with the to to work with the private company it was like they were going to the dark side, you know and From the chamber of software what we are trying to do is to to talk a lot with them And to try to tell them what we are needing from from the From the private sector because if not they did have this master plans Educational plans that did not match our our needs and then we are working a lot towards making this new kind of plans and and it's particularly important in in in our Area and in our country because this year. I think that our sector software sector needed 15,000 new new people and But the academia that I mean the academia just put in place 9,000 so there's a big gap between our need and what they are providing But at the same time we have almost 10% of unemployment. So how how this can be it's kind of madness I think that the government is addressing that that has been our one of our major Complaints and what do we need they would ask we need more people and they had put in place the one one one plan they call it's a 111,000 people that they will want to train in in ICT So that we did the private sector has more more hands to innovate because we were talking about broken Okay, you need broken, but you also need people to help you innovate and I think This has not been talked about There's a real lack of people in this industry and and to try to teach and to foster this idea of Technical skills in young people. It's very important and we are doing that in All the stages of education What about the key element to take away the key? I think it's what what I mentioned for to really try to Understand that the innovation is not just for one actor of the of the society, but for all the actors but the shot I'll first Reinforce what Mr. Muhammad said regarding broadband by no means we have achieved connectivity They're still areas which we don't have broadband and the but from experience What we have learned is that even those areas where there is no broadband you provide broadband Initially, you get those users who are kind of tech savvy or they like it and then the rest don't go for it They need to be brought in through innovative application. Otherwise, they won't come So it's not that broadband is not important broadband is just one component of the whole innovation Process, so it's not to negate that we need to continue with that But consider it as a part not a goal in itself the second I'll just comment on My colleague from Nepal actually I have been in academia now. Let's say if I Give you the target. Let's say your main job that I will judge you on is that The time that you come in let's say at 8 a.m The time that you leave that you have to be at 8 and you have to leave at 4 That's the main criteria and you have to keep your weight below 70 kg. Let's see So what will you do the whole day? You will try to meet these targets So for academia a professor the target is publications research grants So that's why when we said we talked about that we need a policy from the top level that also needs Means an educational policy that you have professors who actually work on practical problems Not just our research publication that can contribute to the research body And maybe will be used after 20 years in some developing country But there are real problems at in your own. That's what need we need to change also. So there is a there has to be a change Everywhere now about the key points. I have written three. Maybe you'll just quickly mention them Innovation policy, of course, but beside that we need to have an action plan with clear demonstration clear Clarity on who is responsible for what and for finally collaboration and sharing and I believe your office can Take that lead all of us can provide you with information that the projects that we are doing You can put maybe a few lines and a link to that and finally Whatever happens is done by people So you need to develop your human resource who are trained in that as Doctor at Levy and talked about it should not they should not be afraid of failure People who would take risk who have this entrepreneurial, you know risk-taking capabilities It's just a comment. I agree was 100% for my colleague in Nepal I mean research and development in some cases in the Arab in the developing countries are not targeting local development And this is really a problem for innovation local innovation now We have a really a very good opportunity because we have the SDG the SDG now all countries normally are committed to SDG and There is commitment from high level. I mean in the in the country then therefore Maybe there is an occasion to push all academia also and the research center to work on the developmental issue Targeting SDG water energy with whatever we have a lot of issues in SDG and like that we have double We can gain double in SDG as well as in innovation My take away. I mean I will change a little bit from what has been said. I will speak about openness I believe openness is very important open data open innovation open research Open knowledge it is very crucial in fact for for innovation Maybe you haven't tackled this issue very much in the discussion But I believe it is very important to mention that openness Is really very a driver for innovation in many in many countries Well, I didn't say before but in our work we are working with the academia too because They have a lot of development and studies, but they are in connects. We are trying to to do well to do synergy between this work and with the private sector and I think that the key For this panel It's fundamental a cooperation between the public and private sector academic and social civil society too With a public strategy very clear and thinking in the way how the student Are a teacher today. I think that is fundamental change the point of view in this end Tell me Susie I wish to reiterate the importance of our international regional cooperation and I wish to highlight we have Regular meeting I wish to thank Argentina government for hosting huge WTDC in a beautiful city of Buenos Aires And also we are holding a regular regional development forum in each region and various Meeting and for we organize telecommunications advisory group TDAC every year Please come to us We have a remote connection. So that is the call for us. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Well, I I'm just gonna say I think it's important to have a common vision On the country and a clear vision. That's actually quite ambitious, right? you can't limit yourself to just e-government strategy and In doing so you need to have a clear way to deliver this So therefore you need a digital innovation framework where you can gauge the stakeholders all stakeholders in taking concrete actions and Making it happen That's it Thank you. I think my key takeaway would be support to For government and entrepreneurs to allow innovation to happen In specific areas of their developing country the private sector is very small. It's not so big So there is need for support of the private sector both in terms of policies as you clearly said Which should allow? Let's say peer-to-peer transfers which currently today are becoming bigger than the amount of money held in banks So that is something very important regarding broadband Yes, when we speak about broadband in this room, we're talking about 100 meg bits per second, but to the to the innovators They can use way less than what we are calling broadband. So yes, we have not yet got there, but what we have we can use it Yeah, thank you. So I would mention first Strengthening innovation capabilities in the ICT is centric ecosystem The second would be IT industry competitiveness growth and the third Finding resources for the projects. We already have in our case. It's about 40 million US dollars. Thank you very much We passed away our time off an hour almost 40 minutes, and I think we could We could go on because this is this is a very challenging topic is a very interesting topic as well and Innovation is all about this. It's about collaborations about talking to to to each other's every all stakeholders Around the same table. I'll just try to give some some keep takeaways from from my site as well I think we came to the conclusion that we can accelerate digital economies by shaping ICT centric innovation ecosystems also think that we need To have digital innovation frameworks to help shape and define stakeholders actions and make the transformation concrete There that there is a need to accelerate shaping innovation ecosystems as it was shown by ITU and UNESCO There's There are good experience already among ITU and then the projects they have supported I think we need to share that more frequently and we have to put that Out of the door of ITU and show the other countries what you've been doing Resources and leadership are critical as we saw and resources here is not only about money. It's open It's it's it's more than money And collaboration, of course, I think this was also the keyword Actually on the last GSR one of the key keywords was collaboration as well And I think we should never forget that and taking collaboration as well on board the the fact of open It's needed to improve my last comment Before I ask you if you have any other thing to have It's not it's not a comment. It's it's a proposal It's a challenge for the for the ITU. I think it's clear that this is a very important and key area to the future of of our world in fact, so and I think from the small Talk that we have here that we had here today. It's clear that we need to enlarge this this discussion So my challenge to at the ITU is to to to make it bigger Think how can we have a larger? event to talk about innovation and especially to tackle this problem of the digital Innovation divide which we cannot allow to happen because otherwise we'll be jeopardizing millions and millions of life and opportunities So if there are no more comments if there's no more Intervening I'll I'll just close and thank you all of you Participating thank you for all of you to being here so early and thank you to Moldavan Rwanda for sharing experience And of course, thank you to the ITU for having this side event, which I think is very important. Thank you all For those who wants a copy of the Rwanda report or the toolkit for breaching the digital innovation divide Please come forward and get one


Good afternoon everyone from Revva. You are watching us from here on Y254. It is the touchland. I am Robert Osoro. Big week on everything that has been happening. One of the biggest stories that is happening all over the world is that Manchester City has been banned for two years from playing in the UF5 Champions League. But today it is a special day here on the touchland because we are here to talk with someone who is very interested with the East African Cooperation and some of the people who are heading to the Olympics. Where are you watching us from here on Y254? It is the touchland. You can also get in touch with us on social media at Y254 channel hashtag touchland Y254. That's where you'll be getting everything when it comes to the world of sports. Joining me here today is we are doing the show in a different style because we have a guest here from the East African community. He is traveling after the show to Burundi but he made a courtesy call for us here to come and tell us about the East African community and the Tokyo Olympics 2020. We have also my co-host who was supposed to be actually at the cross country in Congress but he is here also Mark Selvastik. Are you doing my brand? I'm alright man. Why are you disclosing unnecessary details? Which one? What is unnecessary? Going to the rest coast? Anyway, I was supposed to be attending cross country championships happening right now then going to the rest coast. You know Kenya is seeking to select a team that will represent the country during African championships later for a few months from now as you speak. But of course we are getting represented by equally a neighbor team down there which will be keeping us posted with regards to what is happening. We are not taking part but probably going by our recent heroic exploits you will be given a wild card by Athletics Kenya so that she can represent the country. But equally of course good to have Ronex big man here the last time I met was a few years down the line it was in 2017 so we have been telling each other how we look different and unfamiliar.  You see Fredo Penda the problem with this man he keeps telling things that are not supposed to be told. Unnecessary. For the very first time on the touch line here we have got Kisembo Ronex Tendo all the way from the pearl of Uganda. You see there is no way you guys will exclude me from the conversation because I think Osoro can't go beyond two Ugandan faces. Ronex Tendo from the East African communities actually they see you group Africa Machariki Fest is here from Kampala Uganda. Ronex Tendo welcome to the touch line here on Y254. How is Kenya taking you so far since you arrived? First of all I want to thank you so much for having me. It's been a short notice but it's always a good experience wherever I'm in Kenya to have an opportunity to come to KBC. The big network and now that it's my first time to appear on Y254. Thank you so much for having me on the whole. I've been here for the past two days and I'm leaving this evening. I'm heading to Burundi but I thank God for everything that I've been able to work on from the time I arrived up to now. Though by the time I arrived here it was happening. The burial of Umzemoi and other things were happening in the country. So most of what I had come to do in a way got interrupted. The big question is that you are here working on a delegation that is supposed to head for the Tokyo Olympics 2020 in Japan. That has come actually August. What is that all about? Just give us a brief overview of what is that all about. Thank you so much. What happens when the time for Olympics, world championships and other international platforms where countries send their respective teams go to participate. For us as Africa Masharik Fest, we are a regional youth platform that believes in the integration of our region and we believe that sport is the language that can easily be understood as a platform through which we can pass our message to the public. So taking you a little bit back in 2016 we got an idea that Uganda is sending a team to the Rio Olympics. Kenya is sending a team. Every country sends a team to the Olympics but then where do we leave the region as East Africa? So I got an idea that I shared with the leadership across the community. They embraced the idea and they want to use this opportunity in a very special way to thank His Excellency President William Sevin who quickly understood the concept that I took before him that we needed to go to Brazil not carrying the Ugandan flag. The team Uganda had been handed the Ugandan flag. The team Kenya had the Kenyan flag. But we believe we need to go out there and showcase East Africa as a region. The answer for the community says we need to go out there. So when we go out there, we as Africa Masharik Fest, we carry the East African flag. We have people from Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Africa. So we select a number of people based on their logistical challenges certainly. But we reach out to the corporate entities, government ministries to be able to support us. I will give a quick example. When in Rio in 2016, when Eluid Kepchogi managed to take the gold in the marathon run, you realized that previously it was Stimin Kiprotich, a Ugandan who was the reigning Olympic champion. And when we went that morning, both were in the race. I had a chance to interact with them when the Olympic village encouraging them, sharing as friends because out there we go to compete as individual countries. But again the bigger image of East Africa, that spirit of being an East African comes into play. I stand here to bear witness that when Eluid Kepchogi imagined the winner, I joined him when he was addressing the press and then we had the East African flag. It was the East African community celebrating North Kenya, North Uganda, North Tanzania. It was East Africa celebrating. The primary celebration would go to Kipchoga as the champion. Kenya as the country where he comes from. But the ultimate goal here, the celebration should be embraced by the region and the continent at large. Because let's look at it from the tourism perspective. All people who come to Kenya, when Kipchoga went and ran a sub 2, people will ask, who is this guy, where does he come from, what happens there, what is the climate like, what do these people eat. So all this will force them to come to Kenya and that's now tourism. And when they land here, they get to here after seeing all the tourism potential in Kenya, then they get the opportunity to hear that there is river Nile in Uganda, we have Lake Victoria, we have Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, we have Renzori in Uganda, we have this. So they end up now visiting the entire region and with the existence of a single tourism visa, where Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda have already endorsed it. You see, you don't need to come and land in Nairobi, when you go to Uganda you must pay once. So you choose to go to Uganda, you have access. Each country electronically will get its portion of the money the tourist has paid. So we believe as Afrika Mashariki, as young people in the region, that we are better off as a family. So a win by Edna Kiplagat, a win by Wilson Kipsang, a win by Kamorol, all over we've been to Berlin, we've been to London, we've been to all these international platforms where they go to rest. We carry the flag of East Africa, so that we can encourage them. When Kipchoga is running, we are there to support. When Tanzanian is in the ring boxing, we are there to cheer them. What Ronex is trying to listen with is that, you know, when Bwana Samata, the Tanzanian hot shorts, signed for English Premier League site Aston Villa, we saw Kenyans trying to claim ownership of him saying that our very own 27-year-old has signed for Aston Villa. So I think it's about East African solidarity, cooperation, stability. But you know, for someone who is watching, you might get confused in between. You see, as you head to Tokyo for Olympics, which is later for July-August, what will you be pushing, what will you be advocating for? Is it showcasing because East Africa is known for, you know, a myriad of plenty of, you know, potentialities, economic stability, sports growth. So what will it that you will be trying to depict to the entire world what we are well known for? Our tourism potential has a region that is key. Yes, we are known as Kenyans powerhouse. Uganda. We are also coming up. Ethiopia here. These other countries are known for the Marathonas. Yes. But we look at now the tourism aspect. Sports and tourism. And in this, during the Tokyo Olympics, as far as our organization is concerned, we are focusing on looking at Miss Tourism Kenya. We want to be in a position to carry to everybody to Tokyo. We also have challenges when it comes to logistics. But at least we look forward to working with Miss Tourism Kenya, Miss Tourism Uganda, Miss Tanzania, Miss Rwanda, Miss Burunda and South Sudan. So this beauty, we've designed some tourism promotional materials that we are going to use these beauty queens to be giving them out to the team managers, to the players, to all the spectators who will show up in Tokyo for the Olympics. I'll give an example of this wristband. If this can be viewed here properly. This wristband is the cameraman can try to capture this. We haven't officially launched it, but it's a wristband which is 16GB. We've made this in China and we are going to have all the footage from the tourism ministry in Kenya, Tanzania, all the partner states. Give us their specific footage, save it here like for 6GB. Then we give them out. The user will have 10GB for himself to use. And you can imagine everybody having a wristband like this which talks of visit Kenya, visit Uganda, visit Tanzania. And then the other objective is to cheer our teams. We went for the Paralympics in Rio. Uganda had only one representative and I took it upon myself to request Team Kenya to help us. The president of the Paralympics in Kenya is a very good friend of mine. She helped me out to be able to bring one athlete that Uganda had as a Paralympian in the Paralympics. He came and joined. So we could work up in the morning, join some of the Team Kenya to go for training because this was not about Kenya competing against Uganda. It's an international platform but you have only one member from Uganda. Isolated in the Olympic Village. How do we help this guy join the others to gain morale, cheer him on? And he ended up getting a silver medal for the first time for Uganda to have a Paralympic silver medal in our history. So it's all about embracing the community. We have a spirit of regional integration. We belong to a greater community. What many people in this generation of ours, actually in this, let's say, channel of ours at Wai Tufefu, we are young, we are young, channel and everything is, they don't realize the impact of the East African community. Even the former president, the retired president, Daniel Tarotichalapmoy, who has been a chairman of the East African community, Benjamin Kapa, who was also the chairman, Melton Obote, some of the founders of the East African community, they don't realize how big the East African community is really. It's an unfortunate thing but again, we need to thank our leaders. They found in fathers, as you mentioned them, Mze Kenyatta, Dr Obote and Mwae Minyerene. Immediately after this, our region getting independent, when Kenya got independence, Uganda and Tanzania, these guys would have decided to remain isolated and feeling big in their own small countries. But they just saw the bigger image of uniting, performing a bloke and that is something we needed to really salute them for. Down 10 years down the road, something happened, of course, misunderstandings there and the community fell apart. But again, we thank the leadership of President Mseveni, Melton Obote and Mwae Minyerene together with Benjamin Kapa who saw that, wait a minute, the previous founding fathers had a reason, so we better revive the community. So when the East African community was revived, for us who have experienced the benefit, the benefit are enormous really. When you are in Kenya, you are home. I'm here now on this platform. If we had to remain as isolated small countries, we had to move. You know what is funny? I was in Uganda for six years, took my high school all the way in Uganda, senior one, senior six, I did it in Uganda. And I met actually Mseveni one of those times. I met him twice actually. It was very good to Kenyans and saying, I want to work in January. And the beauty is with integration now, we don't have students from Kenya paying in dollars. These things have been harmonized. If you are in Kenya, if you are in Tanzania, if you are in Uganda, if you are in Kenya, you can make a lot of money. Even no passport these days, just your ID and you pass all through the way. What people have studied here, you finish, we have challenges young people. Youth unemployment is a global phenomenon. But at least with open borders, if you have specific skills, for example, you guys are in the media, you can have the opportunity to go to Uganda, to go to Tanzania, to go to Burundi, apply for a job, work and settle there. Go ahead and marry, in case you so wish. My brother here said he was a valentine. Stop, stop, stop. Let's keep it sporty. I think what you are trying to say, is very true. It's a noble initiative you are pushing, very brilliant idea. But now, has it been embraced by the East African member countries, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania? I know in that initiative, such initiative arises, in as much as people might embrace it, but there are few challenges here and there. Has it been like since you pioneered the idea? Well, the journey hasn't been a smooth one, a number of challenges here and there, but officially we launched this platform on the 8th of October, 2014, and we were privileged to have Wilson Ikipsang, Edina Kuplagat, Ezekiel Kenboy, Kirui, they came all the way, and they came all the way to Uganda, we converged at Mandela National Stadium, that's Namboli, we officially launched this platform as a youth organization. We aren't into politics of any sort, but we believe the power of sport to unite us as East Africans. I've got this question burning in my head so far, is the headquarters of the East African community in Russia, Tanzania, have you approached them, have you talked to them, what have they told you, what is the process in getting them on board? Well, Africa Masharik first as the regional body, we are affiliated to the African community, we are working closely with the secretariat, the secretary general, the speaker of parliament, of the African parliament, but as you know, most of these organizations when it comes to the question of funding, because we operate on no budget, but again we believe and want to thank the corporate world in the region. When we were here in Kenya, corporate companies came up to understand us, we presented our concept to them and they came and embraced us when we had the first run in Mombasa in 2016. So we've largely been surviving on support from the corporate world but with endorsement from the East African community in Arusha. And as a pioneer last year in June on Heroes Day in Uganda I was I and the team who were officially recognized by his excellence of the president and on Heroes Day I personally received a state recognition where I got a medal for championing this initiative the same has happened in Burundi and we are working closely with Miss Tourism Kenya here she's our ambassador if you know Wendy Bella she was Miss Tourism Kenya 2016 2017 we've been working with her we've gone the region around and then she'll lead the team Kenya that will be going to Tokyo. Now, away from East Africa Mashareki first now let's talk about our arrival Kenya is really bad just before we get into our arrival just before we get into our arrival we know Kenya and Uganda are about to look once again as to each other football wise because think that's the recogonized sport in East Africa there is much anxiety people are very much excited looking forward to the big game but just before that I saw you have been following you on your social media handles and I saw you on Twitter in a battalion of armed officers and I think that tells your initiative has been sanctioned approved and endorsed by the authorities in Uganda now in terms of spreading your wings a little bit further East African community is a soba brilliant idea but I'm also looking forward to ensure that now the continent emulates on what you are doing so that we can have an initiative that is trying to involve the entire African countries to push for tourism, sports stability and so on and so forth to the outside world thank you I need to state right here that our organization has been lucky that we've got the endorsement from the leadership of the six partner states that is number one number two for region integration we need to be mindful that we can't unite at once so that's why we have regional blocks you see we have the East African community those are the six countries we recently got application as a community from DRC Congo Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia they want to join the Masyariki Fest and I also last year got the opportunity to fly to Mogadishu to go and meet the president his experience for Majo to find out why is Somalia interested in joining the community and what do they bring on board in terms of sports tourism and all that but East Africa as a region needs to first consolidate what we have then we look at Sadak those countries in the southern part of Africa they also bring their bit then we have Ekoas in North Africa sorry West Africa they also bring their own then it is easier to bring blocks together and let all the 55 countries wake up and say we are united we need to have a single currency as East Africa Sadak, they get their own currency as South Africa then later we can now at this level merge and then we can have a single currency I remember one of Africa's greatest leaders Muama Gaddafi who is envious of the African community also stated that at one point and it's really great that the young mind is also following in those footsteps time is not on our side but I'd like to give you an opportunity to tell the viewers how can they get in touch with you thank you so much we as Africa Machariki Fest focusing ourselves onto the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and we are interested in going there to showcase East Africa as a region as I earlier stated partner states of East Africa will send their respective teams granted but for us now who believe in our integration of East Africa we want to go there as a team nani partisan to showcase our region's tourism potential be able to cheer and support the various teams that will be playing during different days and for Kenya we will have three representatives partner states we've chosen three those three from Kenya we haven't decided on them with the exception of one when Bela Omolo Miss Tourism Kenya 2016 2017 with our tourism ambassador she gets an automatic ticket so the other two slots are up for grabs we can contest we are eligible we need young people what's the procedure like basically we will come back and have a press conference and let the people of Kenya know why we are here and what we intend to do and how we need to work closely with athletics Kenya and my friend Paul Terigato at NOC to see that when we go there these people need to be accredited first of all to be able to access the Olympic village and they have to get the blessings of the National Olympic Committee because it is the body that is overseeing all NOC bodies in the partner states we are in touch with them to see that these people who are going to join our team will be accredited for easy access the other side and then we want also to closely work with the tourism ministry here because all that we are going to showcase on the side of Kenya will be provided by the minister of tourism in Kenya then they can decide on what to give us and showcase the other side 3 goals to 1