 Welcome to the future of digital tech in Africa. This web chat focuses on how entrepreneurs and civil society can become more engaged in the growing digital economy. I send a special greeting to the young people joining us from American spaces across the region. This web chat occurs on the eve of the high-level dialogue between the United States and the African Union Commission. Tomorrow, the African Union Commission and the United States will discuss peace and security, creating a level playing field to fuel trade and investment, promoting democracy, human rights, and good governance, and ensuring Africa's youth benefit from increased economic growth and development. Our purpose is to identify concrete ways we can work together as partners to further these goals. For example, the United States and African Union Commission are deepening collaboration to support Africa's growing digital economy while reducing cyber threats. Africa's youth are front and center in our work. With more than one third of the population between the ages of 15 and 34, we must include you in the conversation about where to go next. Africa's young people are as wired and connected as their counterparts in Europe, Asia, or North America. They share aspirations for a better life for themselves and their families. Africa outpaces all other regions globally in growth of mobile subscriptions. In just six years, the number of mobile accounts on the continent will reach 625 million. There is no doubt that the African continent is becoming more interconnected thanks to new technologies and services. This presents enormous opportunity for businesses, communities, and governments. We intend to start a conversation today with Africa's youth about fostering inclusive economic growth, promoting investment that creates good jobs for Africa's young people, and utilizing the African continental free trade area to increase intra-African trade and promote prosperity. You represent Africa's future. I encourage you to ask questions, keep the conversation about the future of digital tech in Africa going long after today's program ends. Hello, and thank you for joining this web chat today. I'm Sadie Tucker, a Foreign Service Officer here at the U.S. Department of State here in Washington, D.C. During this discussion, we'll talk about how the technology landscape is changing rapidly in Africa. And with that change comes new opportunities for entrepreneurs in the fast-evolving digital economy. As Assistant Secretary Naj noted, Sub-Saharan Africa is the fastest-growing region in the world for mobile subscriptions. And by 2025, there will be an estimated 625 mobile accounts. Every year, the continent is becoming more interconnected with new technologies, services, and infrastructure. There are substantial economic benefits tied to growth of the digital economy across Africa, including opportunities for innovative businesses, investment, and a variety of jobs in different sectors. We'll also explore cybersecurity best practices, which is of critical importance as more and more businesses in Africa shift their operations, transactions, and intellectual property onto the web. This web chat occurs just a day before the high-level dialogue between the United States and the African Union Commission. Tomorrow, leaders from the African Union Commission and the United States government will meet here in Washington to discuss how we can deepen our partnership to ensure Africa's youth benefits from increased economic growth and development. This web chat serves as an opportunity to hear from you, Africa's youth. We wanna know your thoughts about how we can be more responsive to emerging opportunities and cyber threats across the region. We have an esteemed panel with us today, featuring experts with a diverse array of backgrounds who will be sharing their insights with you. I'm happy to say that we also have lots of geographic diversity on the panel with speakers from Nigeria, Mauritania, Zimbabwe, and the United States. Joining us in the studio is Muktari Adali, the head of the Information Society Division at the African Union Commission. Muktari is a telecom satellite and computer engineer with more than 20 years of international experience in the field of communication and networks management, resource evaluation, and policy preparation. Also with us is Olatunji David, head of startup success and services for Google's Launchpad Africa. At Launchpad, FOLA supports early and seed stage startups with technology, networks, and mentorship. He has worked in technology-based roles, creating channels for tech to interface with businesses in more than 10 countries. He now focuses on building an African ecosystem that supports innovators and entrepreneurs. Our third panelist is Elizabeth Fish. Policy Advisor in the Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues at the U.S. Department of State. Elizabeth is responsible for cyber policy engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa and for policy on capacity building engagement globally. Her team brings together the many elements of the State Department working on cyber issues. And joining us from Cambridge, Massachusetts is Taurai Chinyama Kuvu, Managing Director of FlowCash and Chief Operations Officer at LoopChat. FlowCash is a pan-African payment gateway integrated with Africa's mobile operators to enable online payments for the continent's largest airlines and e-commerce businesses. Taurai was an inaugural 2014 Mandela Washington Fellow. He is interested in contemporary tech-driven business models as well as technology transfer, innovation, and innovation in Africa. I'd like to start off by having each of you speak briefly about your view on the growing tech and digital economy landscape in Africa and how that intersects with the work you do. Fola, let's start with you. Good morning, if you're joining in the morning. Good afternoon, if you're joining in the afternoon. Obviously, good evening to some parts of the continent. Very excited to be here and very excited about the growth of the startup ecosystem on the continent. A lot is being said right now as to the opportunities that exist. What we've seen is the continent is, is the youngest continent, if you look at the average age and with youth comes a lot of energy. And what has been done is this vibrant and smart young people are finding that technology enables them to build solutions that first can solve their local problems but can then be exported to solve problems across the world. So in the work I do on my day-to-day job at Google, we constantly find this type of people who are building solutions for, first for their local ecosystem, then for the continent. We run an accelerator that primarily identifies 12 startups on the continent. We've done this for startups from about 10 countries right now. And we work with them in a three-month program to figure out how best can we connect them to technology, but also business and leadership life skills. We know the role of technology, we also know that technology alone does not make a great company. There are a lot of complementary skills, but we're trying to plug that gap and we're trying to build communities based off of this founders. We've had some learnings doing this over two years on the continent and I'm happy to share that as the chat goes on. Thank you. Thank you. Taorai, as an entrepreneur and investor in an African tech company, what can you share from your experience that would be helpful for an early-stage entrepreneur looking to leverage new technologies and services to grow their business? Thank you, Zed, for having me on the show. And let me say good afternoon or good morning, whatever your time is, wherever you're listening to use across the continent, while involved in the technology space and trying to make a difference in different areas of the economic space across Africa, so be it in the transports, a logistics space, the finance, FinTech, banking space, the agricultural space, and many other areas that you start getting involved in, applying technology to make life very different and a little more advanced for different Africans in different countries. I've been in the space for a while and especially in the banking, technology and services space, including software as well. And it's a very interesting space, especially if you're operating from Africa, but also very difficult and complicated. And if an early-stage player, you need to have a lot of energy, you need to have a supporting ecosystem, you need to have drive, and you also need finance and venture capital to drive you along because it's very, very difficult to build a startup from scratch. So in the supporting ecosystem is very critical to the success of any tech entrepreneurs. Let me shout out to those that are involved in this space across the continent who are making a difference. Let me also acknowledge my colleagues in FloorCache in different parts of Africa, from Ethiopia to Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Kenya and so forth. And also a lot of other players that are involved in the VC space, Savannah Farn, and many other players in different countries across Africa. It's a very big content. A lot of youths that are out there trying to make a difference in many ways. It's very important that we acknowledge the hardware that they put in to transform our continent. And thanks to the U.S. State Department for having this conversation so that we can discuss matters that have a huge bearing on what will become of our youths over the next 20 to 50 years. Thank you, it's our great pleasure. Mukhtar, let me turn to you. You bring a lot of experience to this discussion with more than 20 years working in the communications and networking industries. From your perspective at the African Union, how can next generation technologies and infrastructure, such as 4G and 5G, how are they gonna bring new opportunities for innovation? And how should entrepreneurs position themselves to take advantage of this? Thank you, Sally, for having me. And I'm here in Washington, DC. And as you said at the beginning, I'm here to attend the high-level dialogue that will be starting tomorrow. I actually would like to say thank you to everybody who has spoken before. The speakers before us have highlighted the issue of youth, the technology, how the accelerators can help everybody. But I'll just let you emphasize on one thing very important is technology and ICT represent the greatest opportunity for African continent. It is the opportunity for Africans to leapfrog into the 21st century using ICT in each and every sector. And education, health, transportation, new concept of energy producing and distribution and so on. So from the African Union point of view, I have noted that it is the opportunity for the African continent. We have decided to build a strategy on, to draft a strategy on the transformation, digital transformation of the continent. The strategy has been developed with the multi-stakeholder approach of the participation of everybody from United Nations institutions, the African governments and everybody. And it has been adopted by the Ministry of ICT and soon by the head of state in January. How now these technologies and specifically the 4G, 5G can help really to transform the African continent and provide more of the opportunities. It is actually very critical to underline something that at this point of time, unfortunately, we still don't have a full coverage of the continent on the 4G technology. We will be starting with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa next year to do some testing on 5G. But according to so far what we can anticipate, the 5G would be really providing the building infrastructure in each and every country for each and every sector to really give the opportunity, the platforms for everybody to develop new applications, to develop new businesses. And hopefully if we can miss these steps of 4G and leapfrog into jumping through the 5G, we'll be able really to create for entrepreneurs, for young people, for the policymakers, for actually each sector an opportunity to really use the new technology to transform our education systems, our transportation system, our health system and so on. Thank you. Elizabeth, we've talked about some of the key benefits entrepreneurs will see as more advanced and widespread technology becomes the norm in Africa's digital economy. But with these opportunities come risks. Can you speak briefly about why cybersecurity is critically important for these entrepreneurs and how they should make this a top priority at the earliest stages of the launching of their businesses? Absolutely, thank you so much, Sadie. And good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everybody. So yeah, I think Sadie, you're right that our colleagues have sort of highlighted the benefits and the critical elements that digital technologies can bring to the world and to Africa and to individual entrepreneurs, governments and militaries in the private sector and citizens all rely on secure data to do their work and all of this growth is only possible if we can trust and rely on the systems that we are using to be innovative that they are reliable, secure, open and interoperable. And so one things that we would highlight is that those with poor cybersecurity pose a risk to everyone else online, a weak link in a global cyberspace. Accordingly, it's critical that governments and private sector entities ensure that their networks and information infrastructure are secure, reliable and resilient. So I'm gonna highlight a little bit by the US policy under executive order 13, 800 of May, 2017 and the US national cyber strategy in September, 2018. The US outlines how we rely on a globally secure and resilient cyberspace. And then how we work with international partners to promote cybersecurity due diligence and improve the security of global networks. The United States seeks to achieve these goals through enhanced cooperation on network defense, incident management capabilities and recovery, supporting the development of those capabilities where needed and raising awareness of the importance and value of cybersecurity due diligence throughout society. For many nations, the term cybersecurity includes efforts to combat cyber crime, to manage spam and to protect children online. While the US recognizes that cyber crime is part of the broadest sense of cybersecurity, we kind of address it separately in part because the two areas drawn different kinds of expertise and also sort of raise different, there are different solutions to a cyber crime problem versus a cybersecurity problem. We use this term cybersecurity due diligence to talk about cyber security best practices, how you respond to incidents, how you set up your networks in a way that they're gonna be secure. And that's kind of a little bit different than sort of alternation state security, state on state security. So I would say the US engages a lot with partner governments in Africa. I've traveled out quite often from, I'm based in the US, but I travel out. I was just with Mochar actually at the Global Forum for Cyber Expertise and ATIS, which Mochar and the African Union Commission hosted, sort of this global annual meeting focused on capacity building and cyber issues. So in addition to attending events, we've sponsored multiple cybersecurity and cyber crime capacity building workshops throughout Africa, primarily focused on a government audience, mostly because the government's the entity that sort of sets the norms and standards. And also it's that entity that can sort of make a big difference by engaging citizens using the government's ability to reach the whole country. So that's how we started our focus. We also, cybersecurity is increasingly a program focus for international organizations. The US has been working with Mochar and his team for, I think it's been what, Mochar, nine years now, eight years since my team was formed. And before that, we were working with the AU, just not in the current, not with my current team. And also remember the Organization of American States, which is highly prioritizing cybersecurity, best practices as well. So taking it back to our audience, right? Yes. You know, I've talked a little bit about government to government work, but focusing on our audience, what can you do to keep yourself cyber safe? I would say the biggest thing is to educate yourself. We have a great public awareness campaign in the US. It's called Stop, Think, Connect. And you can find it, they're gonna, I think they're gonna link the website, but if you literally stop.think.connect, you look that up, that website should pop up. There's tons of cybersecurity tips on there. Basic things like make sure your software is current, make sure that you're downloading updates, make sure it's a licensed registered version of the software, so that you know that when a security hole is recognized, that your device gets patched. Those are like really basic important things to do. Thank you, Elizabeth. Those are very useful resources. And so in the interest of moving the program along because we have lots of questions that are already coming in, I'd like to move on. So since we've designed this program with the youth in Africa in mind, our next question is what are the most in-demand skills needed to boost and protect Africa's growing digital economy? What steps should our viewing audience take after this program to develop skills or acquired knowledge that will position them as tech leaders of the future? Fola, would you like to start? Yes, so I think the first skill is absolutely the ability to learn. So it's perhaps one of the most undervalued skill, but being able to research or being able to learn online is one skill I think our viewers need to hone. You can do this. I often joke that just being able to go on Google or any search platform and say how to do X or how to learn XYZ skill, I think that's where it all starts from. But when you think about technology skills, oftentimes people just think in terms of software development. And their rights to some extent because software development is a long process and there's big value chain for software development right from the very beginning when you're thinking about design and user experience and user interactions all the way down to actual writing code or building user interfaces. But even beyond that, so quality assurance testing and then when you think about digital skills which is where I encourage people to start from, there's a whole slew of things you can do from there. So from digital marketing, people think of just social media, but it goes beyond that. So social media is great because it essentially allows you to reach millions of people from the tip of your mobile phone or your mobile device or your laptop. But you can take it a step back. You can ask yourself, how do I take traditional businesses that exist today? How do I take them online? And we have some tools that are available online at the g.co.digitalskills. And we essentially take users through that journey of learning how to take your business online, how to create an online presence and even the ability to learn that I spoke about earlier, research skills, how to start from there. So technology is a lifelong journey. There's almost nobody who can tell you that they know everything as to technology. But the starting skill that everybody needs to hone is how to learn. And then from there you can, the world is your oyster, literally. Excellent, become a lifelong learner. Okay, Taorai, do you have some ideas? Yes, thank you. It's very important that Fola touched on the issue of lifelong learning. You could look at the issue from two perspective, two perspectives. The first one being broadly speaking, I would say that all skills are very important. Let's not lose sight of the fact that the purpose of technology is simply to make efficient things that we try to do every day. You could be moving from point A to B or you could be running a business or you could be doing social things. And all technology does is to make sure that we do that efficiently. And when you move whatever we do into digital space, technology makes us do it in a better way. So broadly speaking, the most important skill in my opinion over in the bath, the effect that you should be able to learn is problem solving skills. I could put that across as critical thinking skills. Once you understand how to solve problems, technology can then help you to bring it in the digital space and solve those problems. So critical thinking skills, problems, solving skills are very important. That's broadly speaking. But when we come to how do we get our businesses, our youth, our systems, our economies into the digital space, it's important to have the right engineering skills that help digitize whatever solutions, whatever ways in which we're trying to solve those problems. To bring that into the digital space, we need the right engineering skills. And it's a very tricky problem to solve and it takes a very broad perspective to trying to solve it. So we have to have the right policies in place. That is from a policy making perspective. We have to have the right education in place. Our skills must be tooled, our schools must be tooled and configured well enough to be able to deliver the right digital skills that are appropriate for a digital economy. And then over and above that, we must have the supporting infrastructure to help deliver those skills that we require. The other side of the equation, which is a more narrow one is within our businesses or within our ecosystems where we build problem-solving entrepreneurial solutions, it's important for people to be able to build partnerships and collaborate in a manner that helps to build the digital ecosystem and let it evolve in a manner that helps to plug or the different kind of loopholes that we face in the transition from an analog economy to a digital economy. So we have to look at it from a broad perspective and then a narrow perspective and then try to bridge the gap between those two perspectives. Talwari, thank you so much. You've shared so much and we're already, we have so many questions. Unfortunately, we can't have all of the panelists answer this question. However, we're gonna get into some of those other issues, policy issues and other things later on in the program. But let's turn now and take some questions from our online viewers. The first of which is coming from the American space in Kano, Nigeria. The question is how can technology help entrepreneurs in Africa penetrate the markets outside of the continent? And we can, would any of you like to take that question? I could, I could do so. Yes, please. Yeah. One of the things, first of all, just before moving to the question, skills, building skills in the continent is one of the pillars of our digital transformation strategy that we are building. I'd like to address the first question. Now, mind you that in the digital space, there is no really such thing as a boundary. The space is open, it's an open space. And most of the time what you need really is to be able to penetrate the market. That is to create what we call the enabling environment in the continent specifically. We do now have the CFTA. Okay. The CFTA actually has been adopted by the member states and most of the country have actually ratifying it, which facilitates the penetrations of each and every country with regard to the market itself. But in the same time, with this digital transformation strategy and with the African Union policy with regard to the mobility and the integration of the continent, that would be really facilitating the and create a bedrock for the innovation and the penetration of the markets in each and every country. Excellent. Thank you. So let's move on to another question that we have from the American Center in Vindhuk, Namibia. The question is, what technologies can have the most impact in connecting entrepreneurs with services and clients in Africa? And I'm going to have Fola. Fola, would you mind answering that question? Sure, absolutely. So I think the first technology and something that really transformed the world has been the internet. The power that the internet provides is the ability to sit in Namibia and to speak directly to somebody halfway across the world or all the way across the world. But the next power is mobile technology. So the mobile phone has such deep penetrative reaches right now that some places where you do not have access to water or even electricity, have mobile phones where people charge with solar. So I think when you harness both, so both the internet on one hand to learn and to put yourselves out there, and then you harness the power of mobile, the fact that my grandmother is on WhatsApp and everybody can connect and communicate. I think there's a lot of magic that can happen. So I think for me, it'll be think about how your solution can be mobile first and then think about how you can use the internet to learn, to earn. So even there's a lot of movement on the continent around FinTech right now. So, and the real reason why this is happening is people need a way to earn money. So as you've pushed your solution, just push on the internet and think mobile first. Thank you, Fola. This question is coming from a gentleman by the name of Mike and I'm gonna have Elizabeth answer this one. It says, advances in sophistication of cyber attacks has shaped the industry. So much so, the conventional solutions are inadequate. Looking at the technology landscape of Africa, do you think we're anywhere close to embracing innovative tech as IE, machine learning, et cetera? And I open that to Elizabeth as well as anyone else on the panel. Mukhtari is shaking his head that would like to chime in, but we'll start with Elizabeth. Elizabeth, are you on mute? She's on mute. Good catch. All right, thanks, sorry. So I would say, I think conventional solutions still have a lot to offer. And what I would say is our recommendation is that African governments and American governments and American companies and African companies all make sure that we start by doing the basic cybersecurity practices. There are still hundreds of thousands of devices out there that don't get regular software updates. And that's, I'm a little bit sometimes guilty of that, right? I will see the little reminder, please update where your software and I'll take a few days before I download that update. And those kinds of basic things are actually the foundation of being able to access digital technology safely. So I would encourage African participants, everybody who uses technology to really make sure that you are thinking about the best practices. And then I would encourage you to also reach out and work with your customers, work with your family members, work with people in your neighborhood and also work with your government to make sure that solutions are being implemented broadly. Thank you, Elizabeth. And I hate to cut you off, but I definitely want to make sure that Mukta has a chance to answer this question. Well, I just want to quickly say that first of all, Africa is ready to use those kind of technological as artificial intelligence and so on. And the proof of that, that the ministers two weeks ago have requested us to create an African group on artificial intelligence and we are actually doing that one. We already created an expert group on cybersecurity, advisory group on cybersecurity. It's composed of experts from all over the continent actually to advise the African Union on the policy and how to put really to start addressing these new challenges with regard to the sophisticated attack and so on. So basically we are ready. However, as Elizabeth mentioned, it's also required a lot of contribution from the ground, meaning that each and everybody has to feel responsible for actually really addressing the matter of cybersecurity. Cybersecurity starts from us first before going really into the community. Thank you. Thank you. So now we're going to take another question. This one is from the American space in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The question is, how do you support young tech innovators at an early stage of their businesses when they have no funds? And I think we talked a little bit. I think Taora, you spoke a little bit about this earlier. Would you like to answer, give a response to this question? Yeah, let me chime in on that. It's a very interesting question and it's interesting that it's coming from Tanzania because I've been at a number of accelerators in Tanzania talking about different technologies, including blockchain. Funding is a very critical resource for any entrepreneur who is trying to get into the digital space. There are established ways in which this issue has been addressed in different parts of the world. So for example, in the US, you have a very good combination in the venture capital space also in the startup space where you have VC combined very well with the academic ecosystem as well as legal infrastructure that helps startups that are actually starting. But this is not well-evolved on the African continent. And it's very important now for us to think about, think carefully about how to help people who are in the early stage of evolving their businesses and how they can be supported. There are many ways through which this can be done. One of the ways I have done that myself is through angel funding. So I kind of look for early stage ventures that require financial support. And then we go in there and see how we can refine the business model and give them a bit of funding and support and build their capacity along the way. But there's also a very evolving, there's also an evolving mechanism for finance, especially as early stage where we're finding a lot of VC's looking at Africa as an area where there is a very good crop of early stage ventures that can be supported. So I've seen a lot of people going into that space in Nigeria, in Kenya, there are venture capital companies like Savannah Fund, friends, we have just left, say, have a business school and they're going to Africa from other continents actually to start to VC ventures. So we have to think about angel funding. Those people who have capacity and have funds, how can we facilitate and get them to go in and help early stage ventures? Then the big funds that are out there that might be willing to take some risk at a small scale, how can they work collaboratively with VC funds that are on the African continent and are helping early stage ventures? But more importantly, there's needs to come in too and set up funds from their national budgets where they can support early stage ventures. Excellent, excellent. Yes, thank you so much for that. We're going to move to the next question which comes to us from the American Center in Lusaka, Zambia. The question is, what is the African Union? So this question is for you, Maktar. What's the African Union doing to build capacity among women entrepreneurs, the majority of whom cannot effectively utilize the Internet to sell their goods online? That's an excellent question and I must say that something is not really... nothing has been really done specifically to assist those women who are not able to access the Internet. In fact, the African Union is at the higher level by creating the enabling environment by particularly the cybersecurity convention, the EU Convention on Cybersecurity and Personal Data Protection, developing this strategy and specifically promoting what we call the crowdfunding in order to make sure that every youth and woman is accessing to that. The issue we have been facing all the time is the access. People, women and people who are not really educated or do not have the skills, how we can promote those people to give them opportunity first of all to access. Because once you access the issue, it becomes very easy. Now, the issue of access is now one of the biggest challenges we are facing. We are developing at this point of time what we call the approach for infrastructure corridors to make sure that rural and remote areas are kind of the servant with opportunity to access to energy, to access to roads, to access to Internet. And we are using the postal sector as part of the financial inclusion also to make sure that the postal offices are actually the center for everything in terms of developing digital economy. And when I say digital economy, it's a broader sense, meaning streamlining ICT in each and every sector. Those are the things that we are taking in consideration but definitely the issue of women is in the heart of our concern and we hope by addressing the surrounding issues we may be able to reach that point at a certain point of time. Just one follow-on. So I'm understanding you to mean that the postal, like the post office would serve as maybe an Internet cafe of sorts? No, it's not only an Internet cafe. It will be the center to help people to access e-commerce, to do electronic transactions, center for e-learning, center specifically for e-government services, meaning birth certificate, declaration, even from the health services is monitoring all those epidemics that can happen such as Ebola and so on to make sure. That is our strategy for the postal sector. The postal sector is transforming itself from just pushing letters and parcel to something really become a government center in specific remote and rural areas. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. And so now we're going to move to this question from the American Center in Bujumbura, Burundi. The question is, how can technology contribute to improving educational systems in Africa where Internet access is very low in many countries? And I think I recall earlier that there was mention of this, education, policy, et cetera. Would anyone like to answer this one? I can check. Yeah. So when we talk about technological innovation and seemingly complex things like cybersecurity and so forth, we think about very advanced forms of technology like machine learning, artificial intelligence and so forth. But we could use technology to actually solve common sense issues, very simple issues by leveraging technology to automate a lot of things that we do. For example, they already established models on how to deal with that. We have education that's being delivered through the Internet. Solutions such as the Khan Academy, we have models such as MOOCs that are delivered over the Internet. And I have in the past few years had a professor who teaches at a very high end school but delivers one of the largest attended digital online courses, attended by about 8 million people each time he's delivering that course. And this course is available to anybody all over the world as long as they can access the Internet. Now, Elia Fola mentioned the issue that Africa needs to focus on mobile first. How can we leverage the high utilization of mobile technology to bring education to the remote test of places? Everybody seems to have a mobile phone of one type or another. And if we are able to deliver or build platforms where people can access with support from governments, can access knowledge even if it doesn't have to be in a formal school, then we're most likely to be able to deliver education to the most difficult parts across the continent. So let's not look at technology as those complex elements of it, but let's look at technology as the common sense solutions around how we solve the most simple problems. So forget about cybersecurity as a complex issue. Forget about machine learning. Forget about artificial intelligence. How can we just use technology to make delivery for education efficient? And I would like to cite a specific example in Zimbabwe where one of the mobile operators there runs an online learning platform called Rosimo. And that's a common sense way of using mobile technology to solve a problem. And this is found in many parts across the continent. But we need to demystify technology and say how does it solve everyday problems in a common sense way. And that's the best way to think about how we can use tech to innovate around education across Africa. Thank you, Tolri. Would any of the other panelists like to respond or add to what we've heard? Mukhtar? I think I just concur that this has been said previously. I support that. All right, well, let's move on to the next question which comes from the American Center in Lusaka, Zambia. It says, looking at the issue of unemployment in Africa, what guarantee is there that young people in Africa will still have jobs if the majority of jobs are moved online? Mukhtar, would you like to take that slide? Yes, I would just say that I don't think that there will be any concern or worry about the computer taking over the jobs. We don't have to be really scared of that. Actually, it will be great opportunities. What's going to happen is the transformation of our jobs. If the computer tomorrow will be the one taking care of the cleaning, for instance, of the solar panels somewhere to make their efficiency better, the person who will be really maintaining the robot itself or the computer itself is the one actually who will be really transforming his job. People will be moving from cleaning positions or positions that will be filled by human beings replaced by computers and robots, but the human beings will be doing another job. And you remember in the 70s, we were saying that computer will be taking over the job but nothing happened because we still control everything. Bottom line is if we develop our skills, if our approach at the national continental level is an approach where we develop skills really to transform our jobs and ourselves into something else, we don't have to worry about job creation. Actually, we'll be having great opportunities. What do we have now? Okay, greater opportunities. Fola, I think I heard you. Were you the one who wanted to respond to this question as well? Yes, I wanted to, but I think Mukhtar has stated it brilliantly. Essentially, jobs will evolve. And when you think about some of the top jobs that exist today, especially in tech, they did not exist 30, 40 years ago. And so as we look at the future, we have to adapt to the future and evolve with the future. I don't think it's a concern, but it's something that can be solved by learning because beyond that, when you adapt, there's higher opportunity to earn more and to live a better life. One thing I might just jump in and say is that cybersecurity skills are extremely affordable and they also don't necessarily require you to be physically present where you're doing the work. So Africans who can get training through things like MOOCs or online courses in cybersecurity actually have vast employment potential. And so I would encourage people who are young and who are looking for a career that would allow them to earn money on a global scale in terms of salaries that are globally scaled to think about cybersecurity training. And that might lead to a job where you might be working from your home village and working for a major multinational corporation that needs people who are talented and can be online. Excellent. Thank you, Elizabeth. And that's a nice segue into our next question, which comes from a viewer who's asking about global companies like Google and Facebook and Amazon outsourcing more software development to Africa. What sort of potential does that offer? Okay, I can jump in. Sure. I think one theory that has been tested in the past few years is that talent is spread across the world. It's the opportunity that isn't spread as much. And what's starting to happen is these global companies realize that they're brilliant people on the continent and who can build quality software and not just software development, other skills. And what you're going to continue to see is that some of these companies will open up offices on the continent to work. But for me, as an African primarily, I'm more interested in what can we also build and export to the continent, to the world, first to the continent and to the world because it will continue to happen if you look at the way industrialization has happened and globalization happens. When people build, they start to think about what else can we explore? And as Africans, I ask, what can you build and export? We've seen this happen in our music. We've seen this happen in sports. So how do we apply this to technology? So we're seeing increased activity on the continent, but it's just a testament to the fact that we have the talent. And if I'm encouraging people that wherever, whatever corner of the continent you're building from, there's an opportunity to show the world that you have it. Thank you. And this question here from the American Corner in Windhoek, Namibia, it's going back to the 4G, 5G question. What can we expect regarding 4G, 5G digital upgrades for Africa in 2020? Mukhtar, would you like to answer that? At the beginning, we will start the first testing in 10 countries by 2020. That will be led mainly by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa with the cooperation with the African Union Commission and other institutions. What will be really expected is really how fast can we start deploying really the technology but consequently applications that are really relevant to African continent for the job creation, for businesses and so on. So that the fundamental question can we really pass from 2, 3G as we do it now to really 5G and probably even start thinking about 6G if necessary. This is the fundamental question that we are now and that addresses the issue of investment, infrastructure, standards and specifically the issue of security. Okay, and there's actually a follow on to this which is how can governments and service providers use trusted partners in the process of developing 5G networks? The issue is stress is very important and we cannot use just any technology in any conditions. That's why the one exhibit was mentioning the issue of cybersecurity, it is very important. Before start really jumping into those new apps and new technology, new infrastructure, whatever it is, it is relevant and important to make sure that we have built our skills and we have created the condition for really to create the trust in the cyber space. Cyber security is the key and then from there we see what kind of applications we can actually adopt. Thank you. This question here from US Embassy Dakar in Senegal. Is the African Union ready to shape and harmonize digital regulation across Africa if we know that African countries have different rules and regulations? Indeed. And we have started actually to build that. We know how now we are running a program for what we call the policy and regulation initiative for digital Africa, PRIDA. We have started the harmonization process by having in each other country a focal point from the policy maker area and from the regulatory and we are associating the association of regulators. We are building a digital platform actually it's in the very advanced design whereby we will be using AI and machine learning to make sure that all policies currently existing are being kind of harmonized, at least grouping into two or three area that will allow us really to harmonize and have a reference framework for harmonization of our policy and regulation. But at the same time for the new challenges, the new policy, we are really creating the framework for everybody to be converging to that one and to harmonize our policy and regulation. Yes, we are ready and we have started and hopefully by 2022 we will be able really to set up at least 60, 70% of our policy will be harmonized and from policy and regulation will be harmonized. Harmonization by 2022. Okay, alright. And so this question from Susan at American Center Kigali in Rwanda. She asks, how do you make sure the best talent, especially from interior regions of Africa, are included in this digital ecosystem? Fola, would you like to kick us off with a response to that one? Yes. So it's interesting that the question is coming from Kigali. We were actually in Kigali about three weeks ago and saw amazing talent from that part and it's the same story that we've seen everywhere we've gone on the continent. People are working and people are learning. One key tenet of the work that we do and the work that I continue to advocate for is community and that's why this opportunity to be part of this talk is very, very important. Communities allow us to leverage our strengths and to cover our weaknesses and that's what I encourage people that when you have your talent, you have the opportunity to help people in your community so that as opportunities come up, you hear about them. So the benefit of technology is it allows you to work and to build your community even beyond your local environment, so even beyond the physical place that you might live. So we have Google developer groups where people who are passionate about Google technology and other technology meet up and as opportunities bubble up, the members of this community learn and so it's the same way you have groups online so maybe Facebook groups, maybe you have Google groups, I would encourage people that find like-minded people and as opportunities bubble up, you would learn together. What also tends to happen is when you're in a community the average intelligence of that group is increased because there's knowledge sharing, there's an opportunity to learn from your pair so pair mentorship happens. So that's what I would say for people who are looking at opportunity, it doesn't matter what part of the continent or what part of the earth you're on. Personally, I learned the most software engineering that I learned in the remote part of Jigar State. Jigar State is in northern Nigeria and I was there for a few months and that's where I learned the most because I had a community so I would encourage people to find their community and work together with that community. Excellent and interesting you mentioned Nigeria. We actually have a question from the U.S. Embassy. It's a two-part question from two different missions. U.S. Embassy Harari in Zimbabwe and the American Center in Abuja, Nigeria ask these questions. How can we use technology to shape the African market in order to promote sales of agricultural products in Africa and around the world? And the second question is, can you share some methods and or tools used in enhancing productivity in agriculture? I'd like to chime in on that. It's a very interesting question, something that I'm writing a paper on because of the complexity of doing trade across the African continent. But a lot of fundamental issues are beginning to change that provide a very good opportunity towards solving that problem. One of those is how do we enhance in-trap continental trade as in trade amongst African countries? And a lot of that has been addressed through the issue of the AFCTA, which has just come to life following the ratification of the continental free trade agreement. A fundamental problem around that being the fact that there's so little trade happening amongst African countries. Yet African countries struggle a lot to trade with countries outside the continent. So a way of solving that is to leverage technology to enable trade amongst African countries. So how does a farmer in Zambia trade with people or markets in Angola? And people in Angola, how do they trade with people in South, in Namibia, and so forth? How can we encourage that? So we have the fundamental infrastructure still problematic but evolving and getting solved through policy solutions such as the AFCTA. But entrepreneurs themselves need to have drive and focus on how to explore and look for those markets and how to collaborate with different national boundaries to then figure out ways through which their products can be shipped across national boundaries. But it's not a complicated problem to solve. If we can export across our approaches to Europe, it must not be so complicated for a Zambian to trade with someone in the Congo or from a Kenyan trading with someone in Uganda. It should not be rocket science. So technology needs to come in to solve or bridge that gap, which is why I'm saying we shouldn't look at tech as the complexity that comes with fourth industrial revolution or complex terms like cybersecurity or machine learning and so forth. How do we just break down those barriers? So across the border, you can actually do trade. Right, right, exactly. And use the ubiquitous force as an enabler across multiple sectors. Mukta or Fuladu, either of you like to weigh in on this one? Yes, I would just want to say something that the safety, as it mentioned, is addressing the issue of intra-African trade. Second, there is now currently many initiatives specifically coming from the Universal Postal Union where we are creating now what we call the E-Africa platform for e-commerce. And it has been really supported by many countries and the objective is to make sure that we create the digital platform for African entrepreneurs, sellers, buyers, and to really do intra-Africa e-commerce. And hopefully by next year the project will be actually launched and we will make sure that we have created the platform for Africans to really do intra-African trade. Fuladu, did you want to add anything before we move on to the next question? No, I'm good. All right. So we'll move to the next question. Viewer asks, and this I think is for you, Elizabeth, we look at cybersecurity as a threat of individual criminal actors. What about large-scale power, such as a hostile state acting to push their agenda? Should we prepare for large-scale attacks? Yeah, thank you. That's a fascinating question. So the short version is that there have been a number of state-sponsored malicious cyber acts. We tend to be careful about the word attack. So we tend to talk about malicious cyber activity. But in 2018, the U.S. attributed a number of malicious cyber acts to foreign governments, specifically, WannaCry and NotPetya. So there have been examples of malicious state-sponsored activity. And those have been led to widespread destruction. I think hundreds of millions of dollars in the case of NotPetya. We're at the United Nations working very carefully to encourage a three-fold framework for responsible state behavior in cyber space. And this has been agreed to in a number of U.N. processes, including the U.N. group of governmental experts in 2015. That sort of outlined a three-part framework for what is a responsible state activity and how governments should be conducting themselves in cyberspace. The first is the affirmation that international law applies in cyberspace. The second is a set of commonly agreed norms for what states should and should not do in cyberspace. An example of a norm is states should not sponsor cyber attacks against critical infrastructure in peacetime. These are voluntary non-binding norms that responsible states should follow. And then the third is the value of practical confidence building measures in assuring that stability happens in cyberspace. These are things like exchanging points of contact. So if one government sees something happening in their networks that they're concerned about, they can reach out to a point of contact in another government, perhaps where the territory of origin is, those attacks and tell them we're seeing this, we see it as problematic. Can you please work with us to address it? So that's the international framework for cyber stability. We do think that there are governments that haven't thought to sort of follow that framework, and so we would encourage all governments to think about what we should do in response to that. And we've done a number of sort of collective responses where we've said this activity was not acceptable and we as a group of governments are standing against it and saying that it's not the kind of actions that a state should do. Thank you, Elizabeth. Now this question from the American space in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The question is how can technology help people with disabilities in Africa? It's really a very good question and actually it's one of the things that we are also trying to address along with the issue related to women and to children also at the same time. We believe that those people who are facing challenges in terms of daily conducting lives, etc. need really to be provided with opportunities with technology and that is developing our local applications African applications with specific contents to help those sisters and brothers to be able to really to access and contribute to the digital economy in general. So for that the framework has been developed within the African Union Commission and it is waiting for a way to implement it from rest of the point of view and from really adherence of the national government to make that applications or those programs effective in the countries. Great. I think I wanted to Yes, Fola. Yes, I just wanted to chime in that when you think about disability and you think about accessibility of the solutions that people build, one thing that is key is the empathy that is required to build. So disability comes in different formats. It's not just physical disability. Sometimes it's in learning disability. Sometimes it's in just geographical disability where they live and whatnot. So one core thing that I encourage people is when they're in a solution, so people who are privileged to learn how to build always try to build from the perspective of somebody who's living with disability. I encourage diversity and we bake this into some of our actions. So how do you make sure that you're bringing diverse viewpoints? Obviously there's things like text to speech for people who have visual impairment. There's things like ability to dictate for people who cannot read and write. But other than that, how do you build languages? So for example there are people who build apps in just English where English is not predominantly spoken in parts of the continent. So when we think about disability a lot of empathy is required and so technology while being a tool should be used with a lot of empathy. So that's what I wanted to add. Thank you very much. This question comes from a viewer by the name of Salonin. The viewer asks, what measures can be put in place to manage intellectual property issues in the digital space? IPR. That's a very complex topic. Mokhtari, you're shaking your head. Would you like to take this one? Actually, this is one of the biggest issues that we do have in Africa and specifically most of the time people think that we are a net consumer of softwares and contents that are coming but in fact most of our initiatives and creativity has been taken away and simply because there is no specific rule in the digital world first of all in general agreed to protect that but at the same time within the African context it has not been properly addressed. The African Union actually has developed within the framework of science and technology and research framework for actually intellectual property. It has also been addressed however we need to make sure that also at the national level issue has been taken care of the right roles have been put in place. We haven't put a mechanism through which the African can really collectively address in case there is misuse of any creativity coming from the African continent to really address it at the international level. However, the mechanism actually is being discussed among the different actors and stakeholders to make sure that we are protecting the African heritage creativity and talent in general. But it's an ongoing process if I may say. Any other panelists interesting? I wanted to come in on that. It's a very complex topic especially given that for many of us in Africa we are driven a lot by this period of Ubuntu which means that we like to share a lot and we are not that much predisposed to protecting intellectual property rights but it's also important to note that if we observe what's happening across the globe we see a lot of fights over intellectual property rights. We don't see a lot of that happening in the African digital space precisely because our entrepreneurs have not been aggressive in protecting their innovations protecting their intellectual property. That said I think the points that Mukta has made are very important in the sense that the policy and also the legal infrastructure environment needs to be supportive of the protection of intellectual property innovations and rights. I'm aware that we have some organizations such as the African regional intellectual property organizations. We also need to dig deep and find out if they are actually attuned to dealing with intellectual property rights that are necessary in the digital ecosystem. Just registering trade rights is not enough. How do we deal with registering in protecting digital innovations, designs and things that relate to technological and digital ecosystem. It's very important that we approach the issue from cultural perspective ecosystem and policy perspective as well as the behavior of innovators that are in digital space. Once we are able to protect our intellectual property rights it is then possible to commercialize it and generate economic benefits out of living with it. Great. You are saying this and it's making me think that you should have a catchy phrase for this in the same way that FOLA shared the idea of the importance of learning. It's also important to fight for your intellectual rights. With that we'll move to a question that's coming from Elie Bizimana at the American Center in Kigali. This person asks usually most technology comes from the same country which normally is developed, not a developing country. So how do you think that African countries could have the capacity of creating new technology to be used all over the world? We already started that and PESA for instance is an African really initiative that is now being replicated not only in Africa but also outside. The mobile payment started in Africa really and most of the issues people don't know of be tangible or not tangible initiatives are really started from Africa. The whole issue of the for instance the World Information Society which led to the issue of internet governance and cyber governance and everything is an African initiative. We have the tendency not really to promote what we do but Africans have done a lot have contributed and they are able to contribute. Most of our youth have developed applications tablets there is an African tablet that has been created a lot of things but again the only issue is African capability of promoting itself, promoting what they have done and protecting it that's the challenge we are having but I can provide a list of things that really have been created in Africa and sold for outside of the continent but again it has been sold really by the individuals or the group that have created them and haven't given the whole recognition from the entire continent that is the issue we have to really to address but not really the capability of Africans to create something to make it international that is there to promote, market it that is the question. Taloudai I am familiar with some interesting developments in Zimbabwe along these lines did you want to add anything in response to this question? Yeah absolutely wow the one interesting way to look at it is to say that we have a lot of challenges in Africa there are a billion people on the continent but every day they have to deal with a lot of challenges so one way to look at innovations that come from outside the continent is to look at them as solutions to problems that people outside the continent are trying to solve now if we come back to the continent and say we have a billion people 54-55 countries and they have challenges to solve how can we solve those challenges leveraging technology we will find that we will come up with unique solutions that address our problems so that could be in the space of fintech power generation logistics and transport space food production health education and so forth there are problems that are unique to the continent and they require unique continental problems so a solution that Google deploys in the United States may not be very appropriate for a problem that is unique to Rwanda Uganda and Tanzania so what is critical is for us to say what problem are we facing and how do we leverage existing know-how to build a solution that solves that specific problem if we do that then we build an evolving but also relevant innovative space that solves unique African problems so there's a lot of tech in different spaces that we that's already built and the best way to look at it is it's a utility so semiconductors for example we don't need to be saying to rebuild a semiconductor industry in Africa because it's a problem that's solved but how do we deal with the problems everyday problems that we face fintech problems how do we create solutions that take away all the friction in payments you don't need to be in the US or you don't need to be in Europe or in Japan or in China to do that we already have problems and I'm glad that Mukta raised the issue of mobile payments because we're trying to address an existing problem so if we focus on that issue of what is the problem we're trying to solve and how do we leverage the technology elsewhere bring it on and then develop solutions that make our own systems efficient then we are right on the money if we do that thank you this question from Thadi from or Thadi perhaps I apologize if the pronunciation is off from the American Center in Kigali, Rwanda this person asks can you share information about the Niali network and what they are doing with young entrepreneurs and so I can speak a little bit about that what I can say is that we have a Niali network that our viewing audience can join by visiting our website yali.state.gov the Niali network provides members with invaluable opportunities to connect with other leaders in their community and to learn from experts in their field currently the hashtag Yali Entrepreneurs Campaign is helping members take the business ventures from an idea to a reality which is part of the which excuse me this next question is which parts of the digital landscape are the policy makers overlooking we've talked a little bit about policy impediments and opportunities for modification of policies and so I threw that question out to I believe it was Fola touched upon this, Mukhtar of course touched upon this as well as Zaurai so I'll leave it to Mukhtar start with that one and we can one of the things I believe and again my experience on this is actually kind of how can I say I'm Purik but to me one of the thing that is really missing or overlooking in most of the country the fact that the digital economy can bring something can make a difference when the most of our country they are trying to apply analog policies if I may say to the digital world analog rules to the digital rules which is actually one of the things that I think it is not helping really to look at the whole policy related to the development of digital economy we don't think that yet we need to transform our education system by using ICTs the MOOC system for instance is not really considered as something that has to be addressed by the government as a policy at all but it's addressed individually here and there the digital health same thing the digital agriculture same thing so there is different areas in which really the policy maker are not applying the real how can I say energy to develop the digital economy so it's an overall situation but not really a specific kind of things Taorai Hi Yes it's a it's an issue that's a little bit complicated to just hammer in on what Mukta said the policy side of things has been very slow to evolve and that's natural because in most cases innovations kind of out space the regulatory environment is what the policy environment so innovators, researchers academic institutions sort of come up with innovations and then the policy makers and the regulators follow and build a supportive environment for innovators to operate having said that African governments, policy makers regulators need to not be in my opinion over regulating the space they need to observe and see how they can nature the environment and support the transition from analog spaces into digital spaces I have experience of that myself in the different operations that I've run where we've actually been to regulators and they've said okay we're going to give you the space to build whatever solutions you're working on and work with us and see how we can support you so that sort of environment is a dream environment for tech entrepreneurs for technological entrepreneurs and once you have that space the regulators or the policy makers need to then follow the entrepreneurs and see how can we have correct behavior that manages or regulates the operators in that space so we don't have bad actors but across the continent because the complexity is when you talk of Africa we're talking of 55, 54, 55 countries which also implies 55, 54 jurisdictions which also implies different policy environments but so they're not moving at the same pace and that's why the African Union is very relevant in that conversation but that transition needs to happen faster than it has happened before and we've seen a lot of that happening as we try to connect the continent together. There are companies that are doing great work companies like Liquid that have been wiring the continent over the last several years and connecting different countries so as we transition into digital space it's very important for policy makers to be moving fast and aligning their policies and regulations and incentives with the evolution that's happening within the entrepreneurial digital space thank you and since we are running very short on time I'm going to let you answer this final question the question is is there potential for digital tech to address corruption and I'll let you answer that one Tal Rai since we have very little time left absolutely corruption exists well as inefficiencies so long as you have inefficiencies you're going to get corruption because if on one side people are looking for a service and they're looking to get themselves efficient and quickly and then on the other side you have all these inefficiencies barriers and restrictions in place and that creates a space for corruption so once we bring innovation and technology in to take away the inefficiencies that's an opportunity for innovators to actually break the bind that is corruption so let's use technology to bring efficiency across all our systems across all our processes in the delivery of public services in the delivery of government services and also in the delivery of utility services if we do that whether you're going to go out there looking for a passport or a travel document as long as you can do it in an efficient way you don't have to be bribing a government official or if you want to register a company as long as we can deploy technology to electronically do that and remove all the inefficiencies you don't have to be paying target fees as we call them in some African countries to access a service so technology actually helps in a big way to take away corrupt tendencies across all systems more importantly technology enables all the trails so you know who is doing what who is a bump along the service delivery process and once you do that you're able to eliminate you won't completely take it out but we'll be able to take away a lot of the corrupt practices in our systems excellent, just simply saying just simply saying if you put the e-procurement e-government services you eliminate a lot of third parties and then the technology will be helping to address a lot of issues of corruption so the technology will bring monitoring and evaluation e-procurement monitoring and evaluation et cetera ok well it looks like we're almost out of time so thank you all so much for your fantastic questions we really covered a lot of ground today and watching will continue engaging on these important issues Fola do you have any final thoughts to share well the only thing I'd like to say is just almost a recap of everything I've said around learning and being constant learners and perhaps more importantly is building our community and working with our community I have also learned just listening to the panel today but I encourage people that look there's things that you know and there are things that you don't know they call them knowns and unknowns and there's also unknown unknowns which is where blissful ignorance occurs so you could be in your corner of the continent and not know that there's a whole new wide world out there but I encourage you to take up that ability to learn and to just take up that willingness to learn and there's so much we can do for ourselves on the continent I wanted to chime in on the question about building Africa first solutions there's no need to reinvent the wheel sometimes sometimes just figure out what works out there and find how you can find that version for yourself but it comes from being able to learn so thank you thank you Fola and now over to Taorai do you have any final thoughts for us yeah absolutely final thoughts just two the first one being the big African question right is Africa or our continent are we able to leapfrog to make the great leapfrog that other countries like India in China are in the process of making or we are going to permanently remain in a space where we are behind when everybody else is moving ahead that's a big question that we need to think about as we think of transition into digital space the second point is another question to do with the issue of data and that sort of feeds into the cyber security issue that is raised before right in the agricultural age labor was a very important issue and in the iron age iron was very important and now we are getting into cyberspace the information age where data is very important how are we thinking about data because data is as critical as a resource the same way iron was a critical resource in the industrial age and the same way land was very important or is still very important in the agricultural age what are we doing and how are we thinking about a critical resource that is data across Africa because I made two critical cutting shots thank you very much and you Mokhtar any closing thoughts for us just point by point and quickly first of all the new technologies and ICTs represent for Africa the greatest opportunity that we shouldn't miss we have missed the industrial revolution we will end up dominated we will basically force industrial revolution or the digital revolution alone we will end up dominated forever we should not miss that the greatest opportunity for us to catch up with the rest of the world and ready to leap from the 21st century second in order for us to use the technology we need to make sure that we have creating the trust cyber trust environment for use of the technology we do not have to be really scared about the technology itself it is the opportunity that we should not really miss to improve our education system our health systems our business systems and we have to just to make sure that we are getting out of the way the classical way of thinking and think digital if I may say that to think that we can use the technology really to integrate and develop the continent think digital okay and lastly Elizabeth yeah thank you first of all I want to thank everybody these are fantastic panelists and I'm honored to be part of it I would say two things one when you're connecting do connect but connect smart so get smart about the things you can do to protect your mobile device the things you can do to protect your data things you can do to protect yourself a lot of those are really low tech things thinking critically about if a business opportunity looks too good to be true maybe you should think twice and do some research and then the other thing I would say is that I think that there is tremendous innovation potential on the continent and what I'm looking forward to is solutions developed in Africa that fix problems in the United States because that's really going to happen and so just get out there and we're excited to see what comes of all of your work wonderful in closing I'd like to thank our panelists for their great insights today hopefully this discussion can serve as a launching point for continued conversations on technology and innovative entrepreneurship in Africa and how they can be the catalysts for a dynamic and evolving digital economy a big shout out goes out as well to all the excellent questions that came from our online viewers and the live viewing groups at American Corner Kampala Uganda, Embassy Dakar, Senegal, the American Corner excuse me American Center in Lomae, Togo, American Center Abidjan Cote d'Ivoire the American Cultural Center in Vintock, Namibia American Corner in Walvis Bay, Namibia the Martin Luther King American Corner in Ongwediva, Namibia the Embassy in Burundi, American Space in Burundi, American Center Kigali, Rwanda the American Corner in Jima, Ethiopia, the American Corner in Bahair Dar, Ethiopia the Embassy in Harare Zimbabwe Embassy Abuja in Nigeria Consulate Lagos also in Nigeria American Spaces Balchi, Kalabar Jass, Kono, and Sokoto all in Nigeria Thank you for tuning in Nigeria Embassy Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Embassy Lusaka in Zambia Thank you again for taking time to be part of today's discussion It's been my great honor to facilitate Have a great day!