Okay, welcome everybody to this panel discussion entitled Thinking Big on Digital Inclusion. If you're following us on social media and posting it's hashtag white 24. To begin, I want to ask a quick question. Just think of your household, so your children, your partner and how many connected devices you have amongst you and raise your hand if it's more than three. Yeah, and keep your hand up if it's more than four, more than five, more than six, more than seven, more than eight. Okay, I'm going to let you put your hands down now. No, I'm not embarrassed you any further. I think it's clear that a lot of us would struggle to live life quite frankly without them whether it's assessing our finances, healthcare, communicating, getting around, traveling, studying, working, digital access is integral to our lives. Yet 2.6 billion people, almost a third of the world's population still lack internet connectivity. Now we understand the power that the access to the internet unlocks. Yet 2 billion people have no access to healthcare. 1.4 billion remain unbanked. 244 million children have no access to education. Yet technology can change those numbers but getting it to people means connecting them at a price they can afford and that society can sustain. Worse still, this access, lack of it, is not down to availability. Would you believe today 95% of the world's population is covered in some way by broadband? 95%. But when data-only broadband access in a low-income nation costs the equivalent of 20 times that of a high-income nation, and I've run the numbers, we're talking around a fifth of average monthly income, it's easy to see why connectivity remains out of reach for so many. And that's assuming they can afford a connected device, a smartphone, for example. However, there's good news. There are movements that are working to tackle these fundamental issues and some of the people that are driving them are sitting right here with us. Three, actually, of our fantastic panellists are on the board of the Edison Alliance. It's a group that was formed in wealth in 2021 with the aim of accelerating access to digital solutions for one billion people in underserved communities by next year. Now, over the next 45 minutes, you'll hear more about that work, what we need to do to level the digital playing field, digital equity, let's call it that, and transform lives and societies in the process. Let me introduce our panel. The Honourable Paula Ngabiri, Minister of Information, Communication Technology and Innovation of Rwanda. Welcome. Robert Smith, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Vista Equity Partners. Nankulu Lekko, named Bisi, the Chairperson at Standard Bank Group, and Hans Vestberg, CEO of Verizon. Hans, I'm going to start with you. Thank you. There's clearly progress. Love that. Your enthusiasm is great. It's going to be a great 45 minutes. Enough of me. I think there's clearly progress. People are working hard, but the numbers speak for themselves. What do we need to be thinking about and keep it solution-based? So, first with good news, we were gathered here in 2020 roughly, and then half of the world's population were connected. So, but we all saw what happened in COVID. You needed digital education, healthcare and financial inclusion because there was a necessity. And when we started discussing setting up the Edison Alliance, we also decided those are the three areas we're going to focus on. Because as we all know, I mean, it's great to have broadband, but that's not enough. You need also to have applications that actually are meaningful for you to be a citizen of the world. That was the start of Edison Alliance. We took a year to discuss the target. We decided we're going to connect one billion people, but only if they're part of the education, healthcare or financial inclusion. And we had our board meeting yesterday and we met all our champions. We were going to talk about how it worked because it's a very different model we have. We have reached 784 million people in two years. It's 127 countries, 320 different commitments we have done to drive this. And it's basically in the model we have is roughly 167 champions. Half of them governments and NGOs, half of them are private sector. And that was a decision we made from the beginning. We need both because I build networks. I mean, I can do the broadband. That's sort of me. Then affordability, we need a combination of me doing it cheaper. We need also work with devices. Ultimately, we probably need subsidized broadband models in some countries. And then finally, governments definitely work with doing application for healthcare education. And that was the whole thinking we had from the beginning and I was fortunate enough to have both Paula and Robert on the board. And that movement is a very special movement. And I want to finalize by saying that I don't think that anyone, wherever you're born, wherever you come from, whoever you are, should not be excluded for our society because they're not having digital inclusion. And for me, the 21st century infrastructure is to have mobility and broadband and the services that are required. But it's very different challenges and I think some of us will talk about it because it's different challenges. This challenge is US. There are challenges in Rwanda, Togo. They're different in every country. And that's how you need to work in order to do that. And that's why we have a movement rather than a program or a project. There's so much in there. I'm going to talk about it all. Affordability. No, no, no, don't worry. Never apologize. Affordability, accessibility. But I think your point was vital that this is not just a low-income nation or community problem. No. This is everywhere and it needs to be tackled as such. Minister Inga Merea, actually, when I was prepping for Rwanda, I saw that the government plans to digitize all services by 2024. Imagine that in America. We're in the UK, my own country. I won't pick on America. Talk to me about the government's role in this in particular and what you see. Right. Thank you very much. And yes, correct. By mid this year, the plan is to digitize all government services. And I must say that we already have, at least five years ago, we had the most critical 100 services already online. And how we defined criticality was the most demanded for services by our citizens. We could look at the data and see where do we see lots of volumes of services that are being requested for. And so we had to prioritize those. And it's been, you know, largely a success and seeing citizens, you know, even give feedback on how we can improve on some of these services and how they're being delivered. And today, we have about, you know, more than 120 services online. By June, we hope to have all the 300 services online and we're on track to do exactly that. Why was this important for us? One, we had invested for the last, you know, couple of years in making sure, and we talk about access, usability and affordability. Access for us was a big priority from 2000. And what we were focused on was how do we ensure that we have a national fiber optic backbone that is covering all the 30 districts of the country and the border points. But very quickly, we realized that, you know, having access to connectivity, the way you define it is important. You did, you know, mention the statistic of 95% population coverage. We have 97% 4G population coverage. Does that mean that 97% of our population is directly benefiting and accessing? I think the answer is clear, it's no. How many are, by the way? Sorry? How many are connected? What percent? Today we have, so when we look at devices, so we track different metrics, we have about 78% of the population that has a device, but of those 78%, 23% have a smartphone. Okay. What does that truly mean? It means that yes, they can have a phone, they'll use the phone to maybe text and call, but these services that we're putting online, they may have to find other forms of accessing these services, whether it's through third parties and agents that we've been able to deploy across the country. Yet, our philosophy around service delivery is making sure that people can self-serve. You don't need to travel. We call it zero trip, zero paper. We don't want anyone to travel any distance to get a service from government. We don't want you to use any papers. So everything should be done seamlessly end to end online. You request for a service, you pay online, you get it delivered in an e-certificate form. And so because we had already deployed the infrastructure, we needed to then tackle the barriers and making sure that everyone can benefit from that. And that's why we had to digitize all our services and now have to address affordability. Bingo. We'll come back to that. But your biggest point, I think, there was that you have full access, basically. But you have less than a fifth of people. I was trying to do the math there. I think it's about 17% of people, actually, that are connected in the way that we see it today. Robert, talk about this, because you have vast experience in fighting for digital equity in communities in the United States. You've started initiatives, like one that sticks in my mind, the student freedom initiative. Just talk about your work and how you view this challenge. Sure. I think it's interesting and in Pollock, raises really the issue around utility, who uses it and why. We view things in the Edison Alliance from a few angles. One is, of course, access and in education, welfare, health, financial literacy, financial enablement. And in the United States, there are certain communities that don't actually have certain of those elements relative to the rest of a connected country. So it isn't the country. It's the communities that we focus on. One of the communities I care deeply about are the historically black colleges and universities, because they produce over 50% of the African-American engineers. They produce over 75% of our doctors that serve our community. They produce over 80% of the federal judges that look to dispense and deliver, call it equal justice throughout our country. And those institutions are critical. Well, 82% of those actually live in broadband deserts. And when I say deserts, it doesn't mean they don't have connectivity, but they don't have broadband connectivity. And if they don't have that, it is very difficult for them to use education applications or other applications in the community to enable their businesses to be successful. So we can talk about some of the initiatives. And I will in a second. I think one of the important elements was we recognize those issues. And it is partnerships. It is public, private philanthropic partnerships, which the Edison Alliance, the Stanford, how we bring things together to come up with solution-based systems that are sustainable and scalable, one of which actually formed here was with one of our good partners at Cisco. And my good friend Chuck, we were actually sitting just down the block three years ago. I said, Chuck, we've got a problem in some of the HBCUs. We've got to go solve that with broadband. And one of the issues came out of the Department of Education had come out with a program that said, listen, if you do not have the right sort of cybersecurity protection, you lose what's called Title IV funding. 80% of African-American students utilize that through these HBCUs. We are end of job now, where we have now actually put that infrastructure around, which basically saves $1.4 billion a year for these universities, which these students now go to. Next part of the job is, of course, enabling the broadband access. And we have bead funding, et cetera, which we are building that capacity across these organizations. So they may have the ability to actually get that broadband funding that hits the rural communities. Many of these colleges are in rural communities. And the underserved communities, the African-American communities. Beyond just the universities, there's the community of the businesses. So this is a utility. If you think about it, we own 80 or so software companies. And we measure, what is the return on investment from the utilization of application software by our customers, for our average customer, 640% ROI. For a small business, it's 900%. So if you have a small business and you start using applications for scheduling, for compliance, some of the government services, et cetera, when you start using it for things like managing payment processing, having broadband and utilizing these applications demonstrably increases their capacity, creates sustainable businesses. Employment in the US, small businesses are the largest group of businesses. And they employ the most people. And if you can grow those businesses and make them effective, the one area we talked about was financial infrastructure. One of the things we've done is we built with one of our partners, Microsoft, units where we can digitize, call it banking in a box, these community development financial institutions, which are small. That's what serves the African-American community. 70% of our communities don't have branch banks. The community I grew up in didn't have a branch bank when I grew up. There is one now. I've never seen it open. Just give you a sense. We digitized one of those CDFIs as a credit union in the Delta. Prior to that, they were doing 50 loans a year. They now have done over 2,900 loans on an average of $30,000. And the repayment rate is over 99%. The fault rate is less than the FDIC levels. That's the power of enabling communities with infrastructure, digital infrastructure, know-how, education, and ultimately capital. And as those communities then can hire more people in the companies, those small to medium businesses, it stabilizes the communities. It increases the value of the houses and starts to create what we call the sort of economy that America believes it to be and enables them to become that on their own. And actually, that can be replicated anywhere in the world. Absolutely. You know, that's not just a specific thing that you're doing. I love that. That's basically covered every aspect of the panel already. You know what I'm saying? Don't worry. I've got a plan. We'll dig deeper. Nankulileke, talk about from your perspective to set the scene for you. Thank you, Julia. But before I do that, I just want to give some numbers to just round off some of the stuff that Paula was talking about. After all, I represent a bank. According to our research, today, mobile penetration on the sub-Saharan African continent is 75%. That is anybody who's got any level of technology from 2G onwards. But if you take that number down in the way that she was describing and say, well, actually, if you have a 2G phone, there's not much you can do in today's world. You need 3G and above. When you start to do that arithmetic, well, the number then of Africans that actually can do that drops to just half of the 1.26 billion people that live in the African continent today. In fact, the correct number is 45%. So you could look at that as a huge, huge gap and deficit or a huge opportunity. And I like the way that you're looking at this, because it means where Verizon and the likes of Verizon actually have maxed out the opportunities elsewhere in the world, this is the one area, the one continent where there is still some massive, massive growth. I got it. Yeah. Yeah. I got it. They can even talk my hair or something. I'm going to exchange numbers. Just one other data point to bear in mind in all of this. So clearly, laying the fiber in the ground is critically important. Right this minute, there are seven new fiber optic cables being built somewhere around the African continent. Built with private sector money, no doubt, there could be more if African governments found it in their hearts and minds to put in place the right kind of regulatory infrastructure to incentivize data centers, to have the right sort of regulations around data governance, data sovereignty is raring its head and therefore stymie the efforts to actually do this. But we can do it. There is not actually in this area a shortage of money or appetite or interest. So when we meet at Davos again in three years time, I think these numbers are going to be very, very different because banks stand ready to support this kind of investment at scale and at speed. So those are the figures. So let's take the conversation down a little bit to... Can I just ask a quick question? Our government is asking for the money. Are they coming to you and saying, hey, we've got a big idea, we want to digitize? To your point, you said you stand ready to provide the financing. We finance mobile a lot. I mean, telcos are some of our biggest clients. But not telcos, I'm talking governments. Governments don't have to do much, actually. That's good. Well, look, I come from a South African perspective, where the sort of thing... I mean, we would like to borrow your Minister of Home Affairs just for a few months, just... LAUGHTER It can work a lot. And so governments actually, in my mind, don't have a very big role other than to give us the right policy framework. And the private sector will do the rest. This is the one area in Africa that did not get to be like this because of government action. Government was busy laying fixed-line infrastructure, badly, and this lip-frogged it completely and rendered it obsolete. So this has been a very, very much private sector-driven campaign and effort, and I think it will continue to be so. And in my mind, it needs to be so. Where government comes in right, as I said, is policy, the right regulatory environment, and then the applications on top to provide services. The kind of thing that she describes is exactly the sort of thing that we all dream about, and that, therefore, becomes government's sole real money spend. And no, they don't need banks for that. They've got enough money for that. So there's two things in this for me. There's the ability to get hold of a smartphone and finance that somehow. And then there's the speeds and at what cost you can get them. Hans, you can talk certainly about the latter. Do you want to make another point? I just want to talk about what a private sector company actually can do solo. Without going to collaboration with any other. And I just want to pick up the three areas that you spoke about, right? So, for example, Stana Bank has a mobile app. It interests us very much to not have to employ more people, to be at a branch, to give services, but for people to get services digitally at any time, at any place. So, but then data costs are an issue. So what we do, in fact, is we absorb the data costs of our app. We do not expect people to have data in order to bank with us. So we spend any amount of dollars with mobile network operators every year in order to deliver the service. So that's the first way that we can start to make the cost of data be reasonable to access our services. Secondly, in South Africa, certainly, we have the opportunity to get a mobile virtual network operator license where we work with an MNO but, essentially, we can then sell the data or make the data available to our client set at a very reasonable rate if you are accessing a Stana Bank service. So all of those will move around the African continent, don't want to pay for data, but want to bank. Please talk to me afterwards. We do also finance smartphones. Do so in South Africa much more readily because we have a rich credit data set on that population. We also finance in Nigeria where it has been a real, real struggle to get data. It's just the data, and we effectively have had to work with a fintech that goes out to source credit-worthy data for us to be able to land off. So now we are in 19 countries on the African continent. Are you going to do that country by country? So we need to think of a smarter way of doing that, but without doing something about the cost of the handset, we're not going to get very far, right, except to provide services to rich people which is not very interesting. The third element of it is the literacy and also the design of the actual digital interfaces. So you have to start with this design with the end user in mind. We design these things as if everybody who uses them is 17 years old. Well, some of them are 71. So we effectively have had to put up a brand new team to go through our entire suite of digital interfaces and with the lens that says how usable is this? Is it really accessible for a certain demographic? It's not just the font size. It's actually just how complex it is to navigate some of these things. I sometimes have to call and say, well, on Earth do I make an international payment on this app? And if that happens, it means it's not well designed. So banks are starting to look at these sorts of services with the eye of their own consumers in order to make it much, much more usable. And then because we spend so much money with the likes of Microsoft, we went to Microsoft and said we've got a problem of literacy. Admittedly for now, the pilot is in South Africa. And since 2021, we've asked them to advance digital literacy on our products. So again, there's another reason to bank with an app. And up to now, we've actually trained 33,000 people on the sort of things that Microsoft does and they're doing it for free. We can scale this up in all the markets in which we operate. So there's a whole lot going on because digital inclusion, I mean, financial inclusion can't really happen. Without digital inclusion, but to the extent that we can find a conducive environment, we can take it away and do things with it. And we don't need any government. Yeah, but you're also saying that financial inclusion doesn't happen if you don't have the data to back it up, to provide the credit that you're talking about as well. Okay, there's two really important things there. The digital education, the digital literacy, I think, which is vitally important because it's a barrier for people. If they're overwhelmed, even if they have the access and they have affordability. So if you solve that problem, it's a crucial part of it. Hans, but the other thing, and I think it goes back to the point that you said when you gave the offer to Hans to come and talk about sort of accessibility and the coverage that people can get there, it's that. It's the speeds and it's bringing costs down. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think on the accessibility part, I mean, I think you articulated perfect. It's basically private money in the word building networks because it makes sense. And also start with fiber because ultimately, even though you have a mobile phone, it's a lot of data that has to be transport. So fiber has to be in the ground or C cables to go where you need data. So that infrastructure is so important, but that's basically private money doing that all around the world. I think that second part when it comes to affordability, there are two pieces there. And it's very different in different countries. In your countries that you're talking about, basically zero rating when the user service, you are not charging for it. That doesn't really work in the US because everything is unlimited on data. So you don't need to do it. So there's different models in different markets when it comes to affordability. And then you add on that the device is many times actually the biggest blocker because sometimes you can have a mobile phone, of course, but if you're gonna do digital education, you need a wider screen or if you do a digital healthcare. So the device piece becomes important. And I think that we see many countries now starting to subsidize that piece for low income communities. And that could be any type of country in order to see them. But then you have the last piece that you talk so brilliantly about, you need application, you need the literacy that might be there need to be, and then you use it. So you scale it all the way, but if you look at from the challenge, the smallest challenge is actually networks. It's to get them to the people with the right type of affordability and the right type of application. And the whole Edison Alliance is just about that. Go to those communities, scale those solutions. We heard solutions here, scale in many markets. And the movement we have in Edison Alliance is to move that to different countries, different solutions. We need to be local in the solutions, but as a group, we can actually solve it together. Minister Ingeveri, your take. I wanted to reflect on a couple of things and I'll try to do it very quickly. We have a number of Lighthouse countries under the Edison Alliance and through the Lighthouse countries, we see examples of what different countries are doing. I'll take an example of a new country that is joining Edison Alliance, which is South Africa. I was speaking to the minister and he mentioned they have 70% smartphone penetration. Then you look at a case like Rwanda where we've digitized almost all government services. Then you have Nigeria that is very big on building digital literacy skills that are thriving a fentecocosystem. I think what is clear for all of us is that well in the three strands of things that we are discussing, access, usability and affordability, you may be doing well in one area. It's not enough to really achieve fully digital inclusion. So for one country, you could have solved the handset problem, but you still need to solve for the value. Why should a citizen, for example, buy a smartphone if they can afford to get a future phone and leave happily? You need to create a value proposition for this smartphone. Now, coming back to some of the things raised, I don't think governments can only do policies and regulations. When we box ourselves in policies and regulations alone, we thought the speed of progress. And in many ways, let's take services. You want to digitize government services. Do you need to go to the bank to borrow money? Maybe, maybe not. I think context really matters. For the case of Rwanda, we had to create a PPP model where we digitized all services and a certain percentage went to the person who built the platform. When it comes to digital literacy, do you leave it to the industry or is it an area where both the government and the private sector work together to build these digital literacy skills because whether it's the industry or the government, you're all providing services to the citizen and you want a digitally literate citizen that can consume these services. Infrastructure as well, I think, government has a role to play. The government of Rwanda had to borrow from the World Bank to build the fiber optic backbone as a catalytic investment to get the operators to build the last mile connectivity that was required. Today, we talk about the Universal Access Fund. It's never enough for the gaps that we have. And so we're getting to a point where we're saying, what contribution can government make into the Universal Access Fund? Because I don't want to spend the next 20 years trying to build towers to achieve 100% connectivity. Maybe if I put some skin in the game, we can do this in five years. And then you can then focus on the issues around access and digital literacy. The final one, back to what Hans is saying, it's really, when you talk about handset affordability, it's not just the handset itself. The handset alone doesn't have value. How do we create bundled services in communities or countries where there's no credit rating system? Because what happens, and we've experimented with a couple of models, and I'll end on this, is the reality that when you don't have this credit history for citizens, the device financing models that come into play will end up, the total cost of owning is between 160% to 180% from someone who was able to pay upfront the full value of the smartphone, for example. And so what we've experimented with is bundled services. How do I give you a device with the service? And recently, we're discussing what we've done in Rwanda. It's a deal that we've launched with Airtel where citizens can buy a smartphone for $16. $16. It's a one-off fee, but they pay $1 per month for one GB of 4G data per day, unlimited calls and unlimited SMS. And this has really changed the competition and brought down prices in terms of 50%, driving the affordability angle. Now, the reality is that even with such a scheme, we're not tackling everyone. There are people who live in households that don't have electricity. So the bundled package will have to include some solar home system that allows them to be able to have electricity to even charge that device that they have. Are you working on that? We're working on that. And these are things that you need to experiment with because you'll never find a one-size-fits-all solution to the challenge of digital inclusion. I think there are many nations around the world that could use a minister in Gubbari, quite frankly, just to make sure all of that. Robert, give me your perspective, because again, you've got a lot of experience whether it's helping states raise money and access federal money in order to be able to help with digital inclusion. Just give me your perspective. I think what you hear is it takes an ecosystem. And each ecosystem has certain advantages, disadvantages, opportunity sets. And it takes alliances and know-how and sharing of information, sharing of workflows in terms of how to make it happen, getting best practices. And I think that's one of the things I think we've formed quite effectively with the Edison Alliance. I always like to say selfishly, all the value ultimately ends up in the software. These services are all software-driven. And the derivative, of course, of that is data, right? And you don't thank you all for providing the infrastructure for us to get that value. But I say that in all seriousness, this next wave, this next generation of utilization of Gen AI on the data, the data sets, the software, should enhance the enablement of opportunity for private sector, for public, for philanthropic. Part of the ecosystem we work in the United States involves philanthropies like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, who's a partner with ours with the Southern Communities Initiative, where we're driving the digitization of the banking infrastructure, CDFIs and MDIs for these communities. We couldn't do that without that sort of partnership. They have decades of history and understanding who are the local partners who can implement these solutions, create the visibility, the transparency, the accountability that is so required for funders, for governments who actually say this makes sense and it enables those communities to become self-sustainable communities. That's the goal at the end of the day.  They really wanna create self-sustainable solution sets. In our last board meeting we talked about, and one of the ideas was let's make sure that as the application software is built, it's built locally through the local lives, through the local lenses of what is it that the people need for the farming, for the banking, for the community, for trading that works for them. And that's what digital literacy again is an important part of that ecosystem. So it is an ecosystem. The light bulb moment for me was what you said, didn't it? It was sort of coming to me as you were talking in that certain countries are doing certain things and they're going in depth in the literacy or in depth in the connectivity or affordability, whatever it is, but no one or very few are putting all three together. Is that part of the discussion that you have to sort of say to a country? Every lighthouse country that is sharing with others. Because this is so important. And the ICT ministers are sharing in between them as well. And then we have a database with more than 1,000 different actions you can take, which is called the digital inclusion navigator. So we have tools, we have countries, but we take the ones that are scaling. So of course Rwanda is the lighthouse country given what they're doing and many want to look at them. How can we do it? But remember, what everyone has said here is different challenges in every place, but we can take from each other, we can scale it. And that's the whole idea. Because I think if you're also learning from each other's mistakes, it's really great too. Because to your earlier point and to Robert's too, you don't want to be borrowing money for the sake of it. You want something that's sustainable. So if you can learn and not do things that have not worked for other nations and ones that very similarly mirror what you have in your nation and copy it's far more efficient. Two things have been mentioned and it would be remiss of me not to mention at Davos. So forgive me, AI and the impact of emerging technologies and the dangers I think as we, and perhaps it's a first class problem as you increase the size of networks and you get more and more people online and connected. The risks that come with that, data breaches, cyber attacks that the data's soaring particularly in the last year. How are you incorporating their thinking on this and the benefits of AI I think are very clear that the danger perhaps that at a time when we're talking about a digital divide, it exacerbates it, does good for the most connected and perhaps educated and for the lower income nations that don't have time to worry about it. How are you thinking about that as a community? Who'd like to tackle that first? Yeah, let me share with you what the banks are doing. So we clearly are a magnet for cyber security attacks. So information security has been the way that all banks or everywhere have had to grow up. And in the last five years, perhaps more but very much exasperated by COVID given how much digital infrastructure became the first port of call. The banks then built more and more firewalls and belts and braces and suits of armor around the system so that we could always catch or most of the time catch the threat at, in fact, you haven't heard very many banks being breached, you've had breaches that were public and the global, not many banks because banks have thrown money, huge tons of money at the problem. Unfortunately, when the bad actors couldn't access the bank system, they went for the bank customers. And so what we have seen is an explosion in phishing and vishing and all of these things that you know about. And it has been incredibly easy to actually come in that way. And they target the 60 year old plus by first intent. And so the question we are asking ourselves in our boardroom is, what is our responsibility here?  You can't actually leave it at that because we're either part of the problem here or part of the solution. So the thing to just stress, and I was at another panel where the JPMorgan women are saying the same thing, we spend so much money on technology, but that is to protect ours, not yours. So we back again to literacy, to detail literacy. The South African regulator simply has made it now, is making it a license requirement that every bank demonstrates that they spend X percentage of their revenue on literacy. It started off being just financial literacy. It has to expand to digital literacy because the government can be everywhere at the same time. And so to have the people who actually benefit from all of this also takes responsibility, I think is the right way to go. And if you are everywhere all the time as a government, you're accused of spying and encroaching upon people's privacy and their rights too. How about you quickly? Maybe what I can share on this is one, even the experience for Rwanda is that we were able to, you can imagine after digitizing all the services, we had a lot of data, right? And so one of the things that we had to put in place through a very heavily consultative process was data protection and privacy law. And what that also means is that government institutions that are collecting and processing data also have to be certified because they also need to go by the rules that are really set out in our data protection and privacy law. That's one. Now when it comes to risks, obviously talking about AI, I think one of the biggest risks is around privacy. And so you have such an instrument that is able to cater for who owns the data. And for us within our data protection and privacy law, we've given ownership of data to the citizen. And so what needs to be in place now is tools that allow the citizen to know when and how their data is being used and if they consented to their data being used. The second issue, a challenge, risk around AI is bias. And how do you deal with it in a world where a lot of the large language models, the way they are built, the data that is fed into them is data that maybe is far removed from the local context to which you want to apply them. And so some of the things that we're doing is creating large language models in the local language to start. And we've already mapped out use cases. Because we already have our national AI policy in place, we've also looked at different areas where we can apply AI, including early warning systems for farmers, building a large language model for community health workers who are the first line of support for healthcare services for our citizens. And so with that, we're using that to use in our local language, Kenya Rwanda, build the LLM around that. Today we've tested it to about 70% and continue to test it because it's important that it's in the local language and something that can resonate with the citizens. And lastly is education and awareness. If you don't educate citizens and give them comfort about what you're doing, build, strengthen the social contract that we already have with them, then trust in many ways will negate the efforts that you're putting in place to really be at the forefront of the AI revolution. Yeah, trust. And again, it comes back to digital literacy. I'm very conscious of the time. So Hans, you can give me your perspective on this or you can tell me why we have to be enthusiastic or both, actually, about bringing those 2.6 billion people online as soon as possible. I'm, of course, I'm a born optimist. I've seen the movements where I've done the last 24 months in this group, for example. I know that every one of the 167 champions that are part of this, which are the largest corporations in the world and countries from all around the world, all of them have the same view. It shouldn't matter where you're born, where you come from, in which community you are. You should be part of our digital inclusion. That gives me hope. And it gives me hope that of the 24 months where I've reached what we're reached right now, that doesn't mean we're done. I mean, as you said, 2.6 billion still are not connected, even though we have progressed 784 million in two years. So we will not rest. I think I've taken that partially as a life mission to move it forward. So I hope you are equally optimistic as me, but with partners like the people sitting on this stage and all around the world, I'm optimistic. There are many people wanting to do this, but we do it for business. We do it, we grow business, we sell more. This is our business. So sometimes people go, oh, is it philanthropy? No, this is business. This is what I do every day. So this is great for my stakeholders, but share all this for everyone. So, and that's when you get sustainable. And I think Robert is always coming back to that. There's going to be more software for me, but you do it for the right cause, it's going to be good business. No, but it's so important. There has to be return on investment, return on inclusion. It all has to be quantifiable and measurable and then it grows in scales. It is important, again, to think about the ecosystem we all live in and how do you make... Everyone look this way. Yeah, yeah, how do you make it? Hans is going to leave. How do you make that virtuous cycle work? Right. And the virtuous cycle requires understanding, digital inclusion to be... We're going to go from digital connectivity as a mission to digital enablement as the true mission. The enablement is going to come from digital literacy and understanding and part of the efforts we do in the US, for instance, is we understand that HBCUs have not had access to AI tool systems, solutions, et cetera. So we built the first AI software course that we've now delivered at Morehouse, right? And so now these students are using JNAI and AI for sports, part of one of our platforms from our companies, oversubscribed in terms of the number of students creating internships and actually inviting them to be part of our corporate hackathons where we have our best scientists from 87 companies, 400 of these scientists, fueled by Microsoft, AWS, Google, their AI scientists working together to think about and work on applications. Two of those students are actually part of the winning teams, right? Those are the ways that you create the enablement, the understanding of what is this tool? How do you ensure bias doesn't get written in as opposed to trying to write it out? You have to have diversity in the context of the writing and the way our society is structured. We have to create those opportunities. And guess what? The data has proven it's those diverse boards that have lower risk, diverse management companies that have higher returns. Those are the things that as a fiduciary we think about and as a fiduciary we wanna ensure that we're doing the best for our stakeholders by ensuring that we are doing our work to make an inclusive environment that creates higher returns, lower risk, lower losses. That's why we're doing it. Yeah, I think that works for all. And Morehouse is where you paid the student debt of the 2019 class. Those smiling faces I think I'll remember for the rest of my life. Your panel. Amazing, quite frankly. I learned lots today. I appreciate you. Thank you.


With most gyms still being closed, I figured I can show you guys the equipment I purchased from a used commercial gym retailer to do what I envision as a complete full gym workout on somewhat of a budget, you know, five six seven thousand dollars So, you know by all means if you are on a stricter budget, you can spend less money You know, you can make your own concrete weights. You could do this You can do that and only spend five six seven hundred dollars But to me, this was the solution Granted gyms are closing and some of you might be familiar We did the video a month and a half back on how I was very unhappy With the quality of equipment that I purchased from Fitness Equipment Empire Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any replacement gym equipment So I am still stuck with that and I don't really know if I'm just gonna get rid of this equipment and stop the body building stuff Or if I'm gonna be able to find replacement equipment anytime soon So I figured I might as well just show you guys what I have what I'm using it for so you guys have a brief Understanding of what my workouts are looking like right now at face value. It looks pretty minimal You know, there's basically three sections here. We have the power rack with the barbell The adjustable incline bench. We have the Olympic plates over here and some dumbbells Over there the dumbbell set is five to fifty pounds Some more of the dumbbell set over here lat pull-down machine with two grips. We have the straight bar and the Lateral grip bar and then we have the functional trainer with you know cables. We have the ropes We have this just a bunch of different attachments and this is literally all I have I mean this cost me about six thousand dollars and then another thousand to have it shipped You know, we can talk about that again another time and guys keep in mind I do not work out my upper legs. I do some glute stuff and quite a variety of Glute stuff, but if I was working out my quads and hamstrings I would definitely get like a quad extension machine perhaps a hamstring curl Maybe even like a reverse hyper extension just to get a bit more variety in here and there So this is pretty much complete But again, if you want to work out your upper legs doing more than squads I mean look you could do upper legs completely with this set of equipment It would be nicer to have some like specific machines though So I'm literally just gonna tell you guys every single exercise I do on each machine and the vast majority of my workout is done on the lat pull down and On the functional trainer because you know back and chest are the two biggest upper body muscles So I spend a lot of time focusing on rows for back And I spent a lot of time focusing on cable flies for chest. I'm dead serious You know, I spend two to three out of six exercises for back on the lap pull down And I spend two to three out of four exercises on the functional trainer for chest So, you know 70 80% of my chest workout and at least 50% of my back workout are done on these two machines The rest of my back workout will actually be done on the functional trainer So I'll do three exercises on the lap pull down Then I'll do one or two exercises on the functional trainer, you know with some single cable grips some rope grip, maybe Perhaps I'll do a dumbbell row for back But that's really it literally the majority of my chest and back workout on these two maybe once every few days I'll do, you know, some chest flies with dumbbells or some chest press with dumbbells But the chest and back that you guys have seen me develop has been on a lat pull down machine and a functional trainer That's my training style. That's what I like doing. I can't wait to show you guys it. This does have a pull-up bar and Maybe one or two days a week. I will incorporate some pull-ups into my back routine But you know by no means is it a huge part of my back routine So Frank you're telling me you bought an Olympic weight set this barbell all these dumbbells and you're not doing deadlifts flat bench press No, I have not I have not utilized These exercises or really this rack that much and I honestly should probably say I don't need it So after I bang out back and chest which probably takes 80% of the time of my workout I'll move on to shoulders and for shoulders. I'll either do a dumbbell seated press or a barbell seated press That's gonna be one exercise and then I'll just take some You know two and a half pound plates or some five pound dumbbells and I'll do a variety of raises I'll do ladder raises. I'll do rear raises I'll do some you know upright rows and that'll be a nice quick shoulder workout and after shoulders I'll move back to the functional trainer will do some tricep extensions for triceps and some lighter dumbbell curls for biceps And that's really it. You know quick easy I wouldn't say minimal equipment workout because you know these functional trainers are pretty expensive This lat pull down is pretty expensive But it's definitely an orthodox compared to what a lot of people do and could I get away with using less equipment? Yeah, I mean, I don't think I really need this rack. I don't think I need this bench I could definitely be utilizing some more weights of the dumbbells more. I haven't even touched those I've really just used you know 10 15 25 50 Yeah, and if you're really on a strict budget, hey, just get some 15 pound double some 30 pound dumbbells You can get a great workout. You don't need all the increments now Is this equipment as good as a gym? Am I getting as good of a workout as I would in a gym? I don't think I can safely say that I would say this is probably 90 to 95 percent of the way there obviously if I had hammer strength machines more space more variety of equipment I'd probably end up going a little bit heavier doing slightly more volume having different exercises thrown in here and there But just with this base of the functional trainer the lat pull down, you know the barbell some dumbbells I'm able to get in enough variety enough exercises to have a full consistent routine where I can get a high level of hypertrophy if You didn't have dumbbells or if you just had dumbbells if you didn't have the cable machines Or if you just had the cable machines You would have a much more difficult time because One day you'll go to do dumbbell flies, and they'll feel great.  Hey, you're not really feeling it at all Same with the cable stuff, you know one day a lap pull down might feel great And it's really tearing your back up, but the next day lap pull down doesn't feel as good So you have to have enough exercises that hit enough spots to add variety, you know the hammer strength machines like the the stationary stuff at the gym Like a rowing machine Sometimes that feels good, but most of the time it doesn't so, you know Why am I gonna spend a few thousand dollars on one machine that I might use once every two weeks or maybe two times every two weeks? Yes, every piece of equipment in the gym for the most part has its purpose Maybe once a month it'll feel really really good and take your muscle to failure And that's where it's nice to have the variety of equipment, but you know since we're at a home gym There's a lot of stuff we can do with just this equipment So hopefully this helps you guys out and I know it does sound kind of crazy that I do You know most of my back workout on a lap pull down and a functional trainer pretty much all of my chest workout on this You know, I literally will do Three different varieties of cable flies in different positions just for my chest workout you know for shoulders all you need is two and a half pound plates five pound demos if you really know what you're doing you can really take the muscle to failure and Same thing with arms just some tricep push-downs and Some dumbbell curls if you're consistent with enough weight enough volume and really Focusing on that mind-muscle connection You don't need a crazy amount of equipment to get a good workout in almost forgot to mention what I've been doing for glutes and calves So for glutes, I will do some like cable twists on the functional trainer. That's been a big part of the routine I'll sit down. I'll put some plates on my hips. I'll do some hip thrust Sometimes I'll just do some like standing like glute raises like just moving my leg up like that and I'll throw those glute exercises in between my back Exercises and then when I go to do chest, I'll just do standing calf raises You know, you can build really big muscular calves by just literally standing and doing calf raises if the volume is correct if the repetition tempo is correct if You're really working the muscle hard enough So by doing glutes between my back exercises and calves between my chest exercises I'm able to work out essentially everything besides quads and hamstrings, which I don't like the aesthetic of I don't really want them to be bigger So thank you guys for joining me today. Hopefully this helps you guys out I think price range a functional trainer anywhere between 1500 and 2500 used is going to be reasonable a lat pull down You want to look around $1,000 the Olympic squat rack is probably going to be around eight or nine hundred and Dumbbell set can vary greatly depending on the quality of the dumbbells You know, this was I think five or six hundred But there's some really nice dumbbell sets that can cost a few thousand dollars The adjustable bench might be upwards of four five six seven hundred So each one of these pieces of equipment individually is fairly expensive But it is commercial quality and you don't really have to buy a crazy amount of stuff Again, if I had more space, I would probably buy one or two more things that I would utilize frequently like a hyper extension machine and Maybe even like a seeded type of cable row machine, but thanks again for joining me today guys I'll see you for tomorrow. We're gonna do a fourth of July grilling live stream on the main channel here and Sunday will do something exciting as well You


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