 Mr. Chairman, Excellency Ministers and Heads of Derigation, IT Secretary-General and other elected officials, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of the run and delegation, I would like to thank the government of Argentina for a home reception and hospitality. Mr. Chairman, as we gather here in Buenos Aires, the global technology landscape is rapidly changing, bringing with it new challenges but also great opportunities. We are all here due to a shared commitment towards developing ICTs to help attain sustainable development goals and benefit all of humanity. Since the year 2000, the government of Rwanda has established institutions and mechanisms to create an enabling environment for ICT development. There is no single sector which has not been positively impacted by this effort. We have seen tremendous improvement in healthcare indicators, education outcomes, government service delivery, youth and women empowerment among others. Today, about 70,000 refugees who are living in Rwanda and receive food aid from World Food Program are receiving it electronically. Each household has a card to which World Food Program sends money for food. This for the World Food Program cuts out all the middlemen and administrative overheads of procuring and delivering food while the refugees are given choice and a sense of dignity. This shows that when the infrastructure exists and people have access, there is almost no limit to applications and services and there is no excuse to leave anyone behind. Rwanda as a country has benefited from the vision and leadership of its excellence of Paul Kagame, president of the Republic of Rwanda, who not only has driven digital transformation for our country, but together with other vision and heads of state and government across the continent, have put in place the Transform Africa Agenda since October 2013. This is being implemented through the SMART Africa Initiative under the able leadership of Dr. Hamadun Ture, who is actually here with us in Buenos Aires. The objective of SMART Africa is to build a single African digital market and to break barriers that exist today across the continent. Mr. Chairman, I would like to highlight an area which I believe is not receiving as much attention at the policy level as it should. The ICT industry continues to produce great innovations. We change the way we live, interact and transact. Development in big data, IOTs, artificial intelligence and machine learning and other areas are moving at a very fast pace. Alec Ross in his book The Industries of the Future says and I quote, who owns the data is as important a question as who owns the land during the agricultural age and who owns the factory during the industrial age. Data is the raw material of the information age. If we view data as a raw material for the information age, the question of data ownership, access and utilization becomes very important. Policies need to be developed to help democratize ownership and use of data. If we don't address these issues now, the future will bring a much bigger digital divide than we have experienced in the past when the digital divide was mostly about connectivity and access. The issues of data of course go beyond economics and there are also matters of privacy and security as well. There is therefore a need to address policy issues around data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, among others. Finally, Mr. Chairman, let me conclude by recognizing ITU leadership for the support to member states especially in the area of development through BDT. And I look forward to a productive conference here in Buenos Aires. I thank you and thank you very much for your attention.