 Good day everybody and thank you so much for joining us for our special online event today, upskilling us all, Digital Skills for a Digital World which is part of the ITU Digital World 2021 ongoing session which has been running since since September on a weekly basis. My name is Paul Keneally and I'll be your moderator for the day. It now gives me great pleasure to introduce our fantastic panel which brings together political policy, private sector and entrepreneurial leadership and talent from around the globe. Today we're honoured to be joined by her Excellency Ms Ursula Akufu Uwusu, the Minister of ICT from Ghana. Minister Akufu is a lawyer by training serving as Ghana's Minister for Communications and Digitalization. She has an incredible background in championing the most marginalised society and she's also a serving member of the ITU Broadband Commission. Dorothy Gordon joins us as the Chair for Information for All Programme with UNESCO. Dorothy will also provide the opening keynote remarks and she is a well known global leader in the field of technology and development with a special focus on digital transformation in emerging economies. We're delighted also to be joined by Naria Ke Santa Lucia who's the General Manager for Digital Inclusion and Community Engagement with Microsoft Philanthropies where her goal is increasing digital computing and AI skills for traditionally underrepresented and under resourced communities. Alfie Hallad joins us from South Africa where he is the Head of Corporate Affairs and Global Partnerships for Cisco. Alfie trains the teacher and remains dedicated to empowering communities in their pursuit of and access to knowledge and through his skills for all work at Cisco and his central role in promoting the impact of the digital transformation centres. Christopher Patno is Head of Accessibility and Disability Inclusion for Google in the EMEA region and he leads Google's efforts around the accessibility of product, people and partnerships. Valerie Waspat is the founder of She Goes Digital. She joins us from Kenya where she's also the Regional Digital Youth Envoy at Generation Connect. Valerie is a lawyer by training and deeply involved with several civil society organisations and movements that seek to empower young women and girls. And last but not least from beautiful San Lucia, we have Shergon Rosary, the founder of Orbitronics and also a member of Generation Connect in the Americas Youth Group. Shergon takes a vested interest in empowering youth in digital skills and has his own tech start-up which focus on developing San Lucia's economy through STEM-based programmes and initiatives. A wonderful, wonderful panel that we have convened here today and just before we start with Dorothy's keynote, just a little bit about the session to put it into context. Since launching in September 2021, ITU Digital World has been running weekly virtual events focusing on three important aspects of digital transformation, infrastructure, policy and accelerators. And it is this latter aspect of accelerators specifically upskilling us all with the necessary digital skills to survive and thrive in a digital world that we are discussing here today with our excellent panel. We'll be exploring critical questions about how can we ensure that everybody everywhere is being equipped with digital skills? Who should be responsible for delivering and funding digital skills training? What underlying issues may need to be resolved from infrastructure to content? Or what solutions, partnerships or programmes already exist that can inform and guide our roadmap to the digital future? It is a big, important, strategic and critical and timely issue that we're discussing here today. So without further ado, to get us started, it is my pleasure to now hand the virtual floor to Dorothy Gordon, Chair of UNESCO's Information for All programme for our opening keynote remarks. Dorothy, over to you. Thank you Paul and good afternoon, good morning, good day to everyone who is listening to us around the globe and special greetings to my Honourable Minister in Ghana. Rapid digitalisation resulting from the Covid pandemic means that we're actually at an inflection point today when it comes to digital skills training. The digital skills gap is widening and it's clear that if we were doing it right, that shouldn't be the case. I was just looking at a Salesforce statistic which was looking at cumulative impact on GDP growth in 14 of the G20 countries and they estimated it at about 11.5 trillion. So the question for all of us is how do we turn things around? Whether it's for the next billion who have to come online and who are already being forced to use e-government services that have been rolled out quickly as a result of the pandemic or whether it's the university students that are being trained on obsolete technology or corporate employees in enterprises where training is the responsibility of line managers with no competencies or guidelines to assess training vendors. I think when I talk about digital skills training, it's fair to say that all of us have experienced it. We are all in a way, I don't want to say victims, but we've all experienced poorly designed digital skills training, content that has not been relevant for us, we found boring and easy to forget because we had no direct use for it and no one was actually tracking the impacts of that training. So there is a lot of waste when it comes to digital skills training and because I don't have much time, let me focus on what we could do to improve the situation. First of all, we need to create networks and working methodologies, feedback loops that allow potential employers to communicate the skillsets they need and how well the people they employ that have come through training fit those needs. In some countries, it's going to be very difficult to establish those public-private sector relationships. It's not that easy for them to get established. We need strong links with business and the public sector so that we understand and establish current and future needs. There is one thing that some countries have adopted and that is national competency frameworks so that one can actually track skills with clear goals in mind and that could help with the coordination and establish clear evaluation metrics as well. Those kind of frameworks actually include specially designed training that establishes non-traditional pathways into the tech industry. Universities need to be brought on board. I've been shocked in discussing with university professors. I know my honorable minister is a lawyer and discussing with the law school as to what kind of upgrades to their content they've taken into account to satisfy the needs of digital transformation. In geography, for example, geology, geography, land use management, we see that undergraduates have no exposure to geographical information systems and the argument was we can't afford the software for those numbers and so we don't give it to anyone and there are open source solutions that could allow these universities to roll out to the huge number of students that they have and make sure they're familiar with the software before they go into the workplace. We need to register training providers and focus on training of training programs that focus on quality content delivery and design so that a network of people exists who know how to you know who actually know how to train and we can look at all the visual content and micro learning in local languages but one of the most important things I believe is to make sure that the return on investment for trainers is very clear. Let me rush a bit because I see my time is ending but one of the things that I think can help us is if we look at a different approach, a more rapid response and there's one approach that's been adopted that is rights rapid iterative testing and evaluation so we need to develop that feedback that set of feedback groups that will allow us to understand whether the training that we are delivering is actually having the intended impact and figure out how we can quickly change things if it's not so it has to be iterative we have a tendency to develop training content and it becomes static that can't work. Let me just end by giving you a quick example a few years ago I was very happy to be a judge on a panel and we awarded a technology company or a technology civil society actor a not-for-profit in Chile laboratoria an award and why has laboratoria been so successful first of all they focus on women and I know my minister will support me she's a wonderful champion for women and they have developed their content specifically for the needs of the companies that will employ the products of the training they do a six-month bootcamp and at the end of it 83 percent of the people who were trained are actually employed and after some years the evaluation is more than 90 percent of them have stayed within the sector we have many great shining examples like these but the fact is that these are very complex problems and if we're going to have the scale and impact that we we are looking for we really need to bring together people to think systematically about this and take it from being on the margins of our development agenda to being central to our development agenda and I'm sure that the rest of panel will show us the way forward thank you thank you very much Dorothy for that inspiring opening keynote which really framed the conversation perfectly for us and you mentioned there also the impact of digital skills and I'd like to come back to that question with you during the panel discussion which I'm going to open now and it gives me great pleasure to welcome again her Excellency Miss Ursula Ikufo Uwusu the Minister of ICT from Ghana and thank you so much for taking the time out of your schedule to join us here today Minister and I'd like to start by asking we know that in Ghana you have led the launch of a new initiative called the Ghana Digital Economy Policy and it would be really interesting for us to hear some more about this and particularly how it's going to benefit ordinary Ghanaians thank you very much and it's a pleasure to be with you in this series of of interactions again you need policy direction for all the digital efforts that you are doing and since 2017 we've rolled out significant initiatives to improve government citizen interaction and citizen engagement increased transparency make government services more effective and efficient and reduce the avenues for corruption however we've been working with our ICT for accelerated development policy which was passed in 2003 and that was long before many of the innovative solutions that we're currently working with were developed and so we felt the need to update that policy to be in tune with current developments and to provide the proper policy framework for all the efforts that were were undertaken and so we've started implementing we've started drafting and in the process of developing our digital economy policy mindful of the fact that we can grow our economy through technology we can formalize our economy through digital technology and that is the way of the future if we are to become remain relevant in the fourth industrial revolution which is currently unfolding and so there is no disconnect between digitalization and economic development and you were using digital tools to develop our economy and so it is important that we look at the space and develop our digital economy policy and so that's the reason why we're working actively at this looking at the regulatory and and legal framework the technologies the digital skills that are required the actors in the sector the infrastructure that is needed and and affordability of that infrastructure improving of improvement of government efficiency through various e-governance tools looking at how we can stay scale up our data acquisition governance management analytics and utilize that data more effectively to feed into policy formulation and initiation and implementation so it's a comprehensive effort that we're undertaking currently working with the private sector actors as well and we're currently at the stage where we're going about to start stakeholder consultations on it to get more feedback from those who are going to be using that policy government is an enabler and a driver of the development of our digital economy but we understand that we cannot go it alone and we need our private sector partners and for me just to add a little bit to what Dorothy just said providing our young people with the necessary digital skills that they need is not just fashionable but it is a developmental and the security imperative because if we provide the young peoples of the African continent with the digital skills that they need today to enable them to thrive tomorrow because of Africa's demographic dividend they stand the chance of being the human resource pool for running and mining the digital installations around the globe in view of the aging populations in Asia Europe and America and if we don't want them to end up on the shores as illegal immigrants it's imperative that we work to give them the tools that will enable them to thrive so a key part of our digital economy policy is provision of digital skills for our young people to enable them to get retain and attract the digital jobs that are being created daily and that for me in a nutshell is why we're doing what we're doing and we've just recently returned from one of our girls in ICT initiatives in the western part of the country and one of the young girls had never seen a computer so that a mouse was actually eroded and she was throwing up when she was asked to use it to navigate the screen but after a week of instruction in basic computer literacy coding she was building her own website and actually presented for the group that was trained and so if after just one week of instruction she can create her own website and develop simple games what can they not do our young people not do if they're giving in-depth instruction in the digital skills that they require to live life then the life that is unfolding so that is the task that is remains for us as policymakers working with the private sector to ensure that we deliver those tools to our young people thank you thank you so much minister that was really fantastic overview and it sounds like such an incredibly robust and flagship program that you have up and running and I really you know particularly like the the statement and the emphasis that there is no disconnect between digitalization and economic development that digital skills are are not a fashion but a development and security imperative and you also emphasize a lot the need to collaborate and partner with the private sector and in our panel today we we have fantastic representatives from different parts of the private sector we have from from machine manufacturing from the technology and software and from the internet side and I'd like to go now to um to southern Africa to Alfie Hammett who is head of global partnerships with Cisco and Alfie you're a teacher by calling if I may put it like that you're a lifelong dedication to education and building of knowledge and I'd love to know more about the work you're doing um with through the digital transformation centers in particular and why these are important and what we what we really need to learn from them and how we can can support them more thanks for that so firstly greetings to here excellency minister Ursula and the high authority and the rest of the panel yes the digital transformation centers so let's look at this right we all know that knowledge is power knowledge is power is if you have that knowledge and what together with knowledge comes literacy so we're not only talking about literacy for books we're talking about digital literacy it's a whole new form of literacy all together if we can bring the two together the child is going to be somewhat completely different from the old child in the classroom was only looking at a book because if you look at a book your knowledge is only limited by what appears in that book this is what we are trying to do we're trying to achieve what many people have failed to do let's just put it this way the rest of the globe has failed to do for example how many corporates think of going to south south tomah in principle it's a small country but not many corporates would think of going there and empowering them with digital skills this is what the digital transformation center is about it's about going to those sectors of the community who are the ordinary no one would even think that they would need to have digital skills we the digital transformation center targets the that farmer who not even in his wildest dream would say you know what I need to know what is the internet I need to know what is social media I need to know how to send an email or that housekeeper who says doesn't even think that they need those skills but the world is changing if we look at what research has shown by McKinsey for example I said that the first second and the third industrial revolution has very much impacted on human labor on physical labor but this fourth industrial revolution is going to impact on both cognitive labor as well as physical labor so if we want to make sure the people are employed that they livelihood is not negatively impacted we've got to make sure that we take these digital skills to everyone across the world in addition to that we look at at any given time or every day every day over 240,000 passwords are stolen that's that's amazing right that this that number why because our people don't know how to be safe online and this is what the digital transformations centers are going to do Cisco and the ITU we partner together we're to say that there is this sector of the globe this population of the globe millions of them who have been left behind by others how can we as Cisco and ITU get together to make sure we take them as well into this fourth industrial revolution so this is what the program is all about it's about not leaving anyone behind and taking the entire world into the fourth industrial revolution and Alfie you mentioned particularly underrepresented sectors of the community so like from what you're learning and from your experience what are the digital skills that are most needed are that you would recommend everyone takes you know you talked about farmers for instance people that wouldn't normally have these opportunities love to hear what are the sort of really the essential skills we should be you know catalyzing and speeding up think the most critical skill now like looking at what's happening globally is basic cybersecurity skills I mean to me to me or you to lose five dollars maybe nothing but to that farmer for that farmer to lose five dollars that's been sent to them via mobile banking means a lot so we need to focus on basic cybersecurity skills for everyone the next would be being able to filter news right the challenge that we have at the moment is this whole where you get these false news that's going around right I think that's as important for people to be taught how to verify the the source of information that's coming to them so I think those two to me would be the ones that we need to be focusing on in addition to obviously basic digital skills yes these are these are really real world needs that are that are coming in into the realm particularly in terms of you know managing all of the information that's out there being able to decipher what's what's true and useful and what maybe misinformation for instance I'd like to return to Ms Dorothy Gordon who kicked off our keynote and you emphasise a lot are the obviously around the importance of digital skills and tracking them and we heard from Alfie there about all the work that's happening in digital transformation centres so I'd like to ask you you know in your in your long experience and in your role as in UNESCO right now how do we realistically assess the impact of digital skills training on people's life opportunities and I mean added to that if I may how do we make sure that the content of digital skills is relevant to local people's needs I think that's really a crucial issue that we need to get more in depth on well the way first of all let me say how much I agree with what the Honourable Minister has said as well as Alfie and what Alfie was focusing on is one of the areas that's very important for UNESCO as well as the information for all program which I currently chair which is an intergovernmental council and that is media and information literacy training and the way we've gone about it is to first of all build work on building strong partnerships between the private sector government civil society with clear goals as I was saying in my introductory remark so that we can track what is happening and then illustrating the best practice so that there's true knowledge sharing and people get on board but let me say that there's a long way to go really training and metrics for assessing training have not been as well developed as they should and this is something that we have to continue working on we have to continue working on those evaluation frameworks and the feedback loops between the different partners so that we actually know that good things are happening and I want each of us to think about the digital skills training that we've experienced and think about how that could have been improved if we had better metrics and feedback loops thanks now indeed and I think that could be a good call to action coming out of today's panel discussion to develop really accurate ways and more sophisticated ways of tracking the impact of digital skills training and indeed in preparation for this session today it struck me how little data there is out there on the impact of digital skills training if I may ask in the follow-up question Dorothy it seems to me in terms of the proportionality of investment in your experience is it that some countries seem to receive more attention than others when it comes to donor funded digital skills training projects and is that an issue we need to discuss more and be more aware of first of all let me say that I don't think that any country should be depending on donors when it comes to digital skills training the impact of donor funding can never be to the level that we need in order to make a difference so donors are important they can help us to share best practice and knowledge but every country has to actually put this at the center of their development agenda that being said I was very amused when one of my ITU friends mentioned donor darlings what and my older brother who is a zoologist he calls it the safari effect you'll see that certain countries where it's nice to visit during certain seasons of the year etc. tend to receive more attention than other countries and as Alfie said rightly small countries vulnerable countries for example we see that many of the Sahelian countries don't get enough attention because the situation there in terms of security may be difficult but if you're going to overcome those security problems you must give the youth hope there must be some way of assuring that they will get jobs so that they don't get lured into some of these let's say dangerous activities that result in that so I would urge I think that we should actually develop a map because it's always good to work with data let's get a map and let's see where donor activity is around this area let's also use the data to track the percentage of women that benefit from this donor activity because I'm always shocked to find that some people are still not tracking this very important metric and then we need to look at other vulnerable groups like people who are living with disability because there's so much that can be done with digital training so I do hope we get a more even involvement and that we shouldn't only go to those countries where it's easy to work you know like my own country Ghana is a donor darling because it's very easy to get things to happen in Ghana but in a spirit of pan Africanism let me urge that some of the countries where no one wants to seem to go must actually get more attention focused on them. Thank you very very valid point I'd like to turn now to Nerea Santalusia from Microsoft, Microsoft Philanthropies. Nerea we've heard a lot about the role of the private sector and it seems a very positive collaboration spirit around digital skills already exists but in your view and in your experience from the private sector perspective what if any responsibility does the private sector have to digitally skill workers and future employees around the world because I think we've seen particularly over the shared experience over the last two years the absolute critical importance that digital connectivity and digital skills have in terms of employment and collaboration and innovation so it'd be really interesting to hear what you're learning from Microsoft Philanthropies point of view and where your roadmap is heading in this respect. Wonderful thank you so much for the question and I just want to say I've been sitting here just you know nodding vigorously to everything that's been said because this is just a master class from Dorothy and from her excellency and from Alfie and all the amazing work that everyone's driving so first thanks I'm just honored to be in this company and congrats on the digital transformation centers I think this just wonderful and I just applaud how you go to the places that are furthest from opportunity for digital from Cisco so congratulations on that. I think you know if I could just answer the question and by talking a little bit first about why upskilling and digital skilling does matter to Microsoft and if you think about where kind of our mission of course where we start all of our work is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more and in order to really get to that mission we need to think about every single individual and how we can continue to provide them with the digital skills skills and ability to continue to move forward in an equitable way. A couple of things as Dorothy you were speaking about kind of the last two years and what has happened since then right at the beginning of COVID our CEO Satya Nyadala had said that there was two years of digital transformation that happened in just two months and I think it has even accelerated from there and at the early days we did a calculation to say if there was maximum digital transformation across industry sectors what would happen and you know would there be a growth in roles and we actually calculated that there would be about 150 million new jobs of course based in like the cyber security to alpha your point huge growth sector IT software developer but more than that I think now we've kind of marked the change in this different point of maximum digital transformation where we will say now every job in some way is a tech-enabled job every learning moment is a tech-enabled learning moment and so it is so critical we have to get this right as a whole community because the gap will just increase and not only increase but like transformation accelerate and so we need to really be very careful about that and as the honorable minister said I just love that story that you told about the young woman with the mouse and then was creating games at the end of the week you know we truly do believe like talent is everywhere and opportunity is not and how can we Microsoft help to get that opportunity as to as many places as possible so to that point you know I think also with companies very much thinking about ESG in a different way it's not just you know what we are required to do it's what we are there is a moral imperative to do and really a business need to do and so the private sector has a huge role to play but it's only in partnership I think the theme of that's I've been hearing all all day here and during the session is it needs to be with the public sector it needs to be with government needs to be with NGOs and IGOs and agencies all together you know private sector we can innovate we can fail quickly we can think of you know kind of ideas and then we need the government to scale and we also need NGOs that are trusted in communities to really go deep and in depth and I just I'm taking these notes about especially the feedback loop that Dorothy you mentioned is so important I I want to plus 1000 on the sharing of data in the US we just kicked off a new thing with a non-profit partner a digital equity scorecard and that looks at six different indicators to ask you know is there a framework in place for a state is there are there dollars public dollars flowing to digital skilling you know what is the state of the digital literacy of adults in that community and it's interesting to see where the different states are landing is there a way we can all share data to do that on it on a global scale that I think could be really powerful and interesting if we can do that I mean I think we have the resources you know right now to to do it so you know maybe that is another call to action for all of us together and then the last thing I think the public private sector can really focus on here you know something that we ourselves are grappling with and trying to push ourselves to do more is go beyond just the skilling the skilling is the low-hanging fruit yes many people still need to skill but we need to connect people to the job and the opportunities and we can't stop until we get to that last mile that's incumbent on the private sector to think about hiring and to think about skills-based hiring and other ways to bring in talent but it also is you know how can we create more solutions to create connect people around the world to those roles and to those jobs so you know there's just so much that we should be doing in the private sector I think that we're we are starting to do and we just urge all of our colleagues to do more but then of course do it in that mode of partnership great stuff and I really like as well that the phrase talent is everywhere but opportunity is not and can I ask before I go on to Chris from Google can I ask you are there some good innovative approaches that Microsoft is leveraging to provide people with digital skills that you'd like to tell us about absolutely so in the in the start of the COVID pandemic we did launch an initiative to try to our goal was to help 25 million people with skills for the COVID economy and that was at that moment where everybody was going digital so what we tried to do is really take a holistic approach and to leverage our data from LinkedIn to think about what are the top growth areas and segments in that during that period what are the skills that somebody needs in order to really gain one of those roles and opportunities are there certifications or certificates or signals that you need to signal the acquisition of the learning and then finally can we connect them back on LinkedIn to a job opportunity and we we put that out there as free learning content we've reached 48 million people but from there we are again learning we need to keep going and go deeper and so we just did a new initiative on cybersecurity to your point again Alfie that that is such a growth sector and we really need to do some targeted skilling of individuals for targeted roles and really start to bridge the gap there and then of course I think you may be going to Chris next but we we are very you know I think grow with Google and all the different opportunities that Google has in the marketplace are also so important you know for me I'm like the more content we can all put out there together the more that we can act together the more of a chance that we have to not only innovate but then really take some of those innovative ideas and really scale them through through our government partners and and through our different NGO and IGO partners as well. Fantastic thanks for sharing that Nariah and Chris obviously we're talking here about upscaling you know which is very much in the area of of education and learning and traditional educational systems which are already in place globally aren't necessarily um taking on board the the the message or the urgency that we've heard in in in a lot of the speakers presentations today and discussion today so how do you think that traditional education systems can best incorporate digital skills and indeed is there a role for for digital tech such as Google within the basic education or to support educational systems in this. Thank you for the question and again like Nariah thank you for having given me the opportunity to come and present with you and speak with you and learn from all of you this has been such an educational opportunity for me my first time presenting here with the ITU so thank you for the invitation um I think there's two parts of education that have value I think there is the traditional education which is in schools but I also think there is the non-traditional education it's it's it's the hustle it's it's the finding the desire to do something I I myself and my failed musician I studied opera in university and didn't have the talent to make it but I found myself doing technology and I've changed my career several times mid cycle and I did all of this on the job because I had a passion for something I fell in love with something I I discovered accessibility because my own product wasn't accessible and I wanted to to make up for the rest of my career where I haven't made things that were accessible so I don't want to undervalue the hustle that people have when they want to when they want to make something of themselves I've been doing more and more work in on the continent and I've learned about the hustlepreneur which you have this passion to drive and create something and and do what it takes and I think that's a key factor to the education is you you have an opportunity you have a desire and you and it's up to the Microsofts and the Googles and the governments of the world to provide the platform an opportunity for them to take this passion and drive and turn it into something new coming back to the the traditional educational system I think one of the most important things we need to do and again I always take an accessibility disability lens is to ask the questions of the people who are trying to serve what's working and more importantly what's not working so we can fix those things we can make sure those things are are are are addressed are we teaching them in the right language literally or figuratively are we speaking in a way that's resonant to them so they actually hear the message that we're trying to teach when it comes from a disability perspective do we actually have materials that allow them to to take the information we're trying to give is is it accessible if if you give me a powerpoint the powerpoint has many wonderful tools to make it make them accessible do you have the alt text so the the charts can be seen are they color contrast aware do your videos have captions or audio description the so many small things that we we need to do with intent to educate with an intent to inspire that's how you teach people is you get them excited and then get them the materials that allow them to learn what they want and how they want I remember looking at when my son was 12 he told me that youtube is where he learned how to play video games and that I learned from there the magic of video to teach people and now my daughter is now 13 many years later she's learning how to cook because of tiktok so I think we need to reinvent education in a way that is resonant to the people we're trying to teach it makes data gathering hard Dorothy is why I apologize for that part of these things but I think it's more important that we teach them in the language that they that they speak again both literally and figuratively so we can't expect traditional systems to meet the needs so we need to adopt the systems that they're using and we need to do it in a broad perspective where we understand the needs and the abilities and use digital technology to sort of fix that gap is it is it something they need braille displays how do we create braille displays that are affordable on the continent and in this in the smaller countries this is a technology that needs to be invented and it probably needs to be invented in the country because without that context without that hustle you're never going to create something that is is resonant so given the nature of the change of work and school these digital skills are more important I mean an area has the work that they've done in microsoft is truly powerful at google we have our growth google classes and it support and data analytics design and program management this is a great once you get into the industry and then because traditional educational systems like like like in universities don't always give you what you want you need these other opportunities to to get skills improve that you have them but I think the most important thing looking back on my experience is schools should be able to teach people how to use the tools of today they need to teach them how to learn because the job you're going to have in 20 years from now doesn't exist today and you need to have people understand how to learn the new way and that's how you get them educated and employed and in the jobs of tomorrow very very good I think it's it's definitely like the message there of being really relevant to the user and to the community being guided also by the community particularly looking at how young people like to learn you know more self-paced self-directed at a time and a place and through a device of your choosing which is not necessarily synced up with how traditional education is working today and as a parent myself you know it does concern me a little bit how little time and and priority is placed on digital skills and things like what Alfie alluded to earlier particularly around security and privacy and misinformation I think there's a lot of work to be done there and Chris I know I mean in your area of accessibility and inclusion I think it's important also to look at underlying issues that might need to be resolved you know whether that's infrastructure or equipment content which has come up several times today already and of course you know even things like literacy or electricity supply what are you coming across there in your role at Google that could be of value to share with us here today I've one of the reasons I I've come out here I just moved here about three months ago is here's the UK is that right I'm sorry here is the UK yes yeah I spent many many years in the in the San Francisco Bay Area and about three months ago I moved here to London and the one of the key purposes I have is to try to understand the needs of people with disabilities across across the continent and in the Middle East because you can't take technology invented by people who look like me in Mountain View in California and expect it to work properly in Ghana you can't expect it to work well in in South Africa because we were not designing it with people with the constraints the physical constraints electricity Wi-Fi the power of devices what technology companies need to do is working hand in hand with the communities the universities the startups the researchers the governments to understand what's working and what's not working when I first started I my statement a moment ago I talked about you need to ask the questions of the people who you're trying to support who are we trying to serve only then can we understand what's broken and then when we understand what's broken then we have a chance to fix it so from a Google perspective how do we need to shrink our machine learning models so they'll work on on the the Android phones on the continent where they don't have ready access to Wi-Fi and we make it power sensitive so they could use it all day but until we understand those constraints we don't know what problems we need to solve and then we bring it on to the continent test with people and we'll fix it because you never get it right the first time take it back fix it again and eventually we'll get the right answer but it is really a matter of collaborating with the governments with the universities and people on the ground the people we're trying to serve get them to tell us what's broken and how we can fix it excellent and empowering of course and tapping into local innovation and entrepreneurial or what was it you said hustle pernorial hustle pernury yeah I really like that so I'm going to move now to Valerie and Shergone who are of course part of Generation Connect Shergone coming from San Lucia and Valerie from Kenya before I do that I see a lot of balls going on in the chat which is fantastic don't forget to drop a question into the Q&A tab if you have any questions you'd like to put to the panel when we come to the end of this particular part of the session the round table of panelists so Shergone if I may start with you in San Lucia and you're one of these hustle pernurs I think that Chris has have been talking about in terms of you have created your own startup which is all about promoting and building capacity around STEM skills to drive the economy in San Lucia so I'd really like to know why you're focusing on that and what brought you to focus on that and why is youth capacity development vital to the development of economies such as San Lucia okay I'm first I'd like to follow by just saying I'm truly honored to be part of this wonderful panel and I'm a lot of the things that persons have been saying have really resonated with me because they have really sparked my interests within this area and really what catalyzed electronics for me so starting off by saying why does upskilling the youth matter it is important for young people to be productive while they are energetic while they are imaginative and healthy rather than for them to feel alienated and left without opportunities for personal success from my perspective um digital skills really allowed me to catalyze my both my educational and professional career and I realized that that was something that was really lacking in in San Lucia and I I took that you know that that perspective and I I decided that it was important to to bring those opportunities to other youth just like myself and for the programs that I have been able to conduct for my company business electronics we have seen those that kind of growth in other young people as well as many people have said but I'm like Dorothy has said it's very important to make sure that there's a feedback loop between those those programs that are conducted and you know actually making sure that the participants of those programs benefit from what they are taught and that's really one of the key aspects of our electronics programs we make sure that we collect enough information from those programs so that when when we iterate and we organize for the educational programs that we really target the areas that young people young people need and are interested in one of the things that we have also seen after hosting those programs is that it's really important the mode of delivery of those programs because as as Christopher said as well um it is what is important to teach young people in a way that they are receptive of the the information that you are trying to bring across which I feel like in the the area of you know education there hasn't been much innovation in the way that curriculum has been brought across while yes people are changing the content that is being you know that is being taught to students the the mode of implementation has not really changed and I think there should be more innovation in that aspect because it's really in that area where you you are able to get students to to you are able to teach them how to learn as Christopher said not just teach them teach them the content you teach them how to how to think how to become critical thinkers and like like I said earlier being able to you know become become a critical thinker is imperative for solving new and innovative problems um just to go on further and speak about why it's important as specifically for young people is because by first training our young people those positive effects will propagate throughout the society I mean this will this will maintain low levels of crime and deviance increase government tax revenue and also reduce expenses on both the judicial panel and social welfare systems um so overall that's that's my my view on that now yeah thank you and I really like the the focus as well on the importance of critical thinking and that's absolutely the case it was a study done here recently in Ireland where I'm talking to you from which was identified exactly the same soft or human skill that's that's most needed was critical thinking and communication um can I ask you as well Sheridan like like you've been doing this for a while now and like what are the key constraints preventing greater adoption of technology based learning within educational institutions you know towards younger people and towards towards the betterment of younger people okay so there are some key key capacity constraints especially in developing countries that prevent that adoption in many cases they are not well established technology based curriculum which makes it difficult for teachers to provide those contents and teachers often themselves like the technical capacity that is needed to deliver those that content in an effective classroom manner which supplements the learning process uh football country football institutions um are often lacking the necessary infrastructure in the form of computer labs and fabrication labs as well to facilitate a lot of those those new and innovative training which which means that students don't have the facilities to partake in those trainings in addition they because of the lack of demand in a lot of these the smaller less developed countries in in terms of the lack of demand in the workforce those institutions are less inclined to offer those technology based training programs because there isn't much demand from it from the the the students right and and just before I go on to Valerie just just quickly I mean I think it'd be interesting like again in your experience working with young people do they feel they have an influence on how programs of learning can can be developed in terms of digital skills do they do they feel that they have the ability to tap into partnerships that they have a voice and if not what can we what can we do to sort of support that I honestly think that oftentimes young people do not feel that they have a voice and that they are not being good I think there is a lack of youthful representation on a administrative level and on a national level and I think that's something that that should be focused on the inclusivity of more youth leaders and youth champions in the conversation but collaboration is very important in especially in the technology industry and I mean it it drives a lot of the the work that is being done to the what I would say to youth just like myself is that you must they must take the opportunity to tap into open source resources that will allow them to you know gain access to valuable information and they need to build a key network of mentors and experts which will in whatever field that they're going to which will open those those doors and opportunities for trainings workshops and academic opportunities um but ultimately I think that youth must see technology for what what it is it's a tool at the end of the day and what really matters is their creativity and innovation to create a difference and to feel to feel that they can make a difference as well I guess which is really really important thanks William Sheridan and and really hats off to the amazing work you're doing there in San Lucia um if I may go now to Valerie Wasla in Kenya Valerie has started up a number of not-for-profit initiatives grassroots initiatives particularly aimed at empowering young women to be exposed to and trained in digital skills like really some really fantastic works I'm looking forward very much to hearing from Valerie Valerie if you're there with us um I think maybe going back to to you know for the minister and also what Dorothy and what Alfie were saying at the beginning how can we have more underrepresented groups such as the women and girls that you're supporting how can we have them more considered in efforts to upskill in digital skills thank you Paul for the opportunity and greetings all greetings from Kenya so how we can ensure that you have more women in digital literacy or in the digital economy is by factoring in the unique challenges that these women face so for example the rural women that we work with in our community most of them are five years younger than me so that means they're 15 or 16 or 17 years but they have two or three children and they have nowhere to leave their kids with and so we have to allow them to come to the digital hub to access the training with these children which is something that you get that formal education institutions may not allow so factoring in a kind of training system that can embody the unique challenges that some of these women face and this may actually help these women to gain more digital literacy skills another challenge is we face is that while training them in each week in each day we have to have at least two or three girls who do not are not able to attain come for the training because of extreme period pain and so this is a real challenge that most of us do not actually think about when we are coming up with such training and so what we do is that for these days because at the end of the month at the end of the week there are so many things that they have left out on we always try to come up and with them and recover whatever they had lost during the three or four or five days that they were at home during the extreme period pain so that is one of the ways that we can ensure that these women can access the skills another way is actually positive discrimination or something I call affirmative action so for example our nonprofit organization focuses entirely on women and this is because this is the only way we can ensure that these opportunities reach as more women as possible as much as its discrimination we are creating opportunities for more and more girls in the rural sectors to be able to access this digital literacy skill excellent in your program Valerie it would be great to hear a little bit about the inspiration behind that and what are the sort of impacts or stories that you're seeing now success stories coming out of these great initiatives that you're doing to empower and upskill young women in rural Kenya thank you Paul so but basically this is a project that was inspired by my own personal journey and I remember back when I was in campus I come from a struggling family I would say and so I had to be innovative on what more can I do to get an extra income at least to pay for my own pocket money and to be able to pay for my own rent which my parents are not able to do and so that is when I go to learn on more digital skills such as transcription and through transcription I actually got to earn an income online I would work with companies from the US through the app work platform I think most of you know app work and fiber and through that I was able to take myself through university and so I thought about so many women out there who are not able to access uh I mean period products they're not able to even sustain their young families and it gave me a burden to actually start start this initiative under VP called she goes digital that can enable girls to earn an income through this digital skills because I was exposed to a lot of opportunities that so many of these women actually don't know because you get that they don't even know how to put on a computer they do not know how to even type they don't even know English so we even have to teach them in Swahili um thank god for google translator and so um that is what actually inspired the story behind this program and when you talk about the success stories is that um we get a lot of messages from this girl saying how these skills actually transformed their lives uh some of them you get their small business owners maybe they sell cereals or they sell uh shoes and kids clothing they were able to market their products online and they're able to get a more customer base so we have been getting a lot of positive feedback from them saying how even their sales have gone up saying how some of them have been able to get jobs in cyber cafes to help some of them have been able to start actually cyber cafes in their communities and so many more uh uh success stories that we've had because of the training that you're able to give to them all you are mute all you're muted thank you pardon uh I was just saying that's so inspiring Valerie really really great stories I can really visualize you know a young woman setting up a cyber cafe in her village must be it must be an incredible feeling for you as well and these are stories I think that really need to be shared more widely um that's that's the the like we've heard from all of the different panelists now and we've a couple of questions that have come in and I'm just going to throw them out to the panel to the panel the first question I have here um these these questions of course are coming from the from those that are attending live today what role do the speakers feel mobile phones or mobile technology can play in facilitating digital skills training any relevant initiatives they'd like to highlight um maybe if I can put that to to yourself Valerie and maybe Dorothy as well or any of the other panelists who would like to to contribute briefly just on terms of how mobile phones or mobile technology can facilitate digital skills training and how important it is and Alfie has his hand up there as well please feel free to jump in Alfie sure so you know what I think that any training that we have always put together has to be mobile first so any format that is made for your online training you got to make sure it's mobile first and I think those people who provide online training need to think about Netflix right where yes I know that some some uh you know your international set organizations say no the training has to be online you've got to take this do the course we're online in that way you can get the international set etc but but maybe what we need to do is think about how Netflix does it that you allow the individual to download the content to the phone go through it and yes you want to take the certification you can go online and do the certification again so we need to look at how we can adapt our training to be suitable for mobile devices as well as we're talking about mobile mean mobility of training and that they can take that content wherever they want to go and learn thank you Alfie I just wanted to say Paul that that fits perfectly with an open education resources approach where uh your content is licensed in such a way that people can share the content and yes you may be worried that people are sharing content and then there there'll be much rooming of unsupervised training institutions but if you have your certification sorted out the way Alfie described I don't think this will impact negatively and this will allow us to go to scale fast I totally agree that we have to explore the way mobile phones can support us but I don't believe that every training is suitable for delivery on the mobile phone I love this micro pulse approach where you put training content in video in one minute intervals and then people can check and answer questions on the phone but let's not kid ourselves that training somebody on how to program for supercomputing is going to be effective on the mobile phone soon so let's blend these approaches taking into account that this is lifelong learning it's a hybrid thing not just one platform many platforms I think that's that's important the blended approach and the fact that it is lifelong and particularly in today's world lifelong learning is absolutely uh it's a given um compared to what would have been a generation or so ago Valerie did you want to add there about the importance of mobile phones for training in your experience yes absolutely so I would like to say how uh she goes digital started we actually used to offer the digital skills training over the phone because you get that it's easier for a girl to afford a smartphone as opposed to a computer or a laptop and so we used to do the training through the phone and so basically we used to train them and on skills that are based on the phone so let's say how to use WhatsApp how to use social media on their phones because that is the device that they interact with in their day-to-day lives as opposed to a computer which most of them have never actually owned one so that is the bit that I wanted to weigh in on thank you very much Valerie second and it'll be the final question due to the time limits but as I said there's a great conversation going on in the chat I'm looking forward to going over that later um could the panel provide any examples of data visualization projects that's data visualization projects are existing frameworks frameworks related to digital skills that are available um and they give the example of digital equity scorecards so I'm thinking Norea you may have have inspired that question but also Dorothy you talked about uh how the world needs a map so if there's any panelists would like to share any examples of data visualization projects um related to digital skills that are available for the participants to check I did drop in the ILO framework um for 21st century skills um but but the visualization piece I think would be really fascinating um I have not seen one that is would would be on a kind of global scale um but again I think this is that one call to action I think for the private sector and the public together maybe we can figure out how to harness that energy and and create that visualization of digital um and and then I also just um wanted to make a point about the mobile if I could Paul um which is that Dorothy you're absolutely on point when we definitely found with the skills initiative training with all the different people who went online to learn um that was all well and good but it wasn't until we actually partnered a learner with an NGO that you could see actual high rates of completion of courses and so I think that's another thing that we need to really be mindful of when we do this digital skilling is that you need to have a pathway set out for you and a guide or a sponsor or somebody that can keep people going um because it's often um you know very easy to stop digital skilling when you don't have an accountability or anybody um really pushing you forward and helping you believe that you can you can achieve achieve the path. Thank you very much Narya I'm very conscious of the time we're hurtling towards the the end of the the panel the allocator time for the panel but don't forget we have a informal networking session afterwards which everybody is invited to um some really good questions coming in about universal access and all of that but unfortunately we won't have time to take it but I would like to do is is to wrap up to start to wrap up the panel by inviting all of the panelists starting with the her excellency the minister just with a key recommendation or a key takeaway you'd like our audience today to go away with just a very brief sound bite in terms of upskilling for all and how we can achieve this and what is the most critical area we need to focus on. Minister if I may start with you for a final word. Thank you we're in this together but working together we really can't make a difference in giving all of us the skills that we need to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution it's doable we just need to focus on it, pool our resources together, government, private sector, IGUs working together and we can get it done. Excellent Dorothy may I go to you next? Yes I think that the for me I like that question about visualization let's try and clarify some paths to the actual learning goals we want to achieve and let's put that within a framework so that we can track our progress to those goals and we can evaluate whether the approaches we're using actually work. Excellent thank you very much. Maria may I go to you next? Final takeaway. I think it's all been said already so I'll just say the time to act is now and the moment is now and you know otherwise there will just be rapid acceleration not just of digitalization but of inequity. Let's close that gap between talent being everywhere and opportunity being not everywhere I think that's that's something I'll take away today definitely in terms of the digital skills gap that Dorothy alluded to in her opening keynote remarks. Chris Padno final word to you in terms of the key recommendation or the key takeaway you'd like the audience to leave with today. The jobs of the future and not necessarily the jobs of today so how you learn today matters more than what you learn in the lower run. Thank you very much. Sherga your final word and recommendation for the panel today or for the audience today. With this fourth industrial revolution young places now more than ever require greater skills to process and evaluate more information so digital literacy now plays a critical role in the performance or in the workplace as well as in the with the quality of life that those people will experience. Would you go as far as to say it's a life skill it's a critical life skill we need to look at it as a critical life skill for the future. Paramount Paramount in the coming future. Thank you very much and Valerie what would be your key recommendation or the takeaway you'd like everybody to go with today. Yes so what I would say is that digital skills is a concept that does not exist in a vacuum. So once this under represented groups like women have these skills they need platforms such as digital hubs and training centers and these devices that they can use to continually put these skills into practice. Thank you. Thank you so much and if I may just attempt to give a very brief summary of everything we've heard today. It genuinely has been a really rich conversation. I'm looking forward to going through the transcript of this and I think it's been a lot of gems in there and also concrete recommendations which is so important but as I said it was a it was a wide ranging conversation very rich so this is not an exhaustive summary by any means but I think some of the things that jumped out here were the importance of tracking impact. You know if you can't measure it how can you really address it you know with real conviction and with real success and I think particularly the proposal from Dorothy to to visualize this tracking you know through a global map or or something and something that resonated a lot with both the panelists and the audience. I think that as I mentioned earlier that recognizing the fact that talent is everywhere but opportunity is not and we need we need to address that we need to close that if we're to be really a truly inclusive world and have a really truly dynamic and representative and participative global digital economy that has to become really a paramount prerequisite. The importance of youth in all of this goes without saying but do they have a voice what can we do as policymakers as leaders as politicians to really ensure that the voice of youth is there and that the the skilling and the learning and the educational systems are fit for purpose for the for the youth or the leaders and industrialists and entrepreneurs etc of tomorrow. The issue of open education I think that's that's something that could require an entire session on its own but I think the point was made several times that it's so important that these resources are being shared that they've been localized that content is relevant and also to emphasize what Dorothy mentioned there that learning is a lifelong issue and it's a lifelong challenge it's a lifelong life skill that we all have to get to grips with and the blended approach is definitely the way to go and finally one thing that sort of hit home with me particularly when I was listening to Valerie is on the issue of innovation you know often we talk about innovation and we think technological innovation but the critical thinking also that Shergon alluded to but the innovative ways that Valerie is is is creating in order to enable people who would normally have no access to digital skills training the innovative ways that she's coming up with to ensure that they have access so that their children can still be looked after so that they can see the possibility of economic improvement is really inspiring and I think some fantastic stories there to be shared for sure in the future so without further ado we're more or less on time I'm really really thankful for everybody for joining us today the incredible panel and very honored to be joined by her excellency the minister from from Ghana to give up your time today and to share the incredible work that you're leading in Ghana as well as all of our other illustrious panelists thank you so much