 Welcome everyone. My name is David Kirkpatrick and this is the second event of the Road to Addis series which is organized by the ITU to build momentum towards the World Telecommunications Development Conference which takes place in November in Otis Ababa, Ethiopia. I am a journalist based in New York where it's very snowy and quite early right now. I was the founder of a company called Techonomy which is all about technology's role in progress and we are very deep believers in the importance of the ITU, the importance of connectivity and I'm extremely pleased to be part this event. This session which as I said is the second in a series is specifically focusing on partnerships and partnerships for achieving more connectivity and inclusion. So how can partnerships be made more effective for advancing connectivity and achieving the SDGs? And how can partnerships in particular help us to support those who are further behind and to safeguard the investments we've already made to move toward our goals and particularly our goals for the Sustainable Development Goals of 2030. So this session in addition to being here on Zoom is live-streamed and will be archived and made available on the website. I would also I would right now like to invite all the speakers to turn on their video so I can introduce them to you. They are okay. I see at least Doreen is on screen and Wendy. Doreen Bogdan Martin who you'll hear from in just a moment and is very involved in having made this all possible is the director of the ITU Telecommunications Development Bureau. Borge Brenda I believe is here. He was having a little connectivity difficulty but if he is here I can't see him but he's president of the World Economic Forum. We're extremely pleased to have Borge with us. And similarly Amadou Duffey who's CEO and co-founder of Gabaya. We'll be hearing from all these people in some at length in just a minute. Wendy Mars who is president for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia at Cisco. And finally Sanda Ojiombo who's executive director and CEO of the UN Global Compact. So those are our speakers. I would like to ask them now to turn off their cameras and turn them back on with your mic when it is your time to speak. And we will also bring all the speakers on again. There's Borge. Hello Borge. Sorry for being late. No it's no problem. I introduced you without your video but we're glad to have you. But now it's time to turn your camera off because I was just going to say all the speakers should turn off their cameras and at the end we will hear, see everybody in addition to the times when they speak individually. I have the speakers would all turn off their cameras now. We'll get them when they are time and then also at the end we'll each hear what there's a sort of summary word that they're all going to give us. So this session is only going to be in English and throughout the session we will have some short videos to talk about some of the great partnerships that are already underway that ITU is involved with and well we'll also have a poll. And in addition to all those great elements in this very dynamic program, Danola Oladapo who I'd like to introduce you to now is going to be coming and joining us periodically with her own community. So Danola tell us about that and what you're going to be doing. Thank you so much David. I want to encourage everyone to get involved in the conversation by tweeting live. If you have any questions for any of the speakers we've also invited some young people to live tweet as well so we'll be reading some of those the hashtags to use our road to Addis and ITU WTDC. Over to you David. Okay well thank you. Yes Danola will have her community and be monitoring it and bringing excerpts from it to us throughout the next hour. And so now I'd like to turn the floor over to Doreen the director of the ITU telecommunication development bureau who will welcome us further. Terrific thank you. Thank you David and good morning. Good afternoon and good evening everyone. ITU friends and family our distinguished panelists. David if I may add I think we also have Brilodba who's the the CEO of Orange Mali who's also joined us and will be intervening. So great to have you with us as well. We have our young leaders and of course everyone joining from around the world online. It's really a great pleasure to welcome you all as David said to our second stop on our road to Addis and the theme for our forthcoming World Telecommunications Development Conference is connecting the unconnected to achieve sustainable developments. The COVID pandemic has shown us all how vitally important connectivity is to supporting social and economic resilience but connecting the 3.7 billion people still lacking from any form of online access and putting in place more accessible affordable and meaningful connectivity for the hundreds of millions more is not something that any of us can do alone. ITU estimates that 428 billion will be required to connect remaining 3.7 billion to the internet by 2030. The enormity of the investment needed and the huge regulatory and logistical efforts required and we saw this yesterday in our joint session with the World Bank on digital regulation to extend networks out to where they're most needed is going to demand a colossal effort involving all stakeholders across the entire digital ecosystem and beyond. Cooperation, collaboration and partnership must be at the very core of our efforts to boost global connectivity. We need to get creative creative about new models about new financing strategies about new ways of working constructively together within and across our sectors. The good news and yes there is some good news is that the global community is coming on board and I was very heartened to see this message come through loud and clear last week at the WEF tech for good segment of the Davos agenda sessions where leaders from the tech industry from governments and from the financial sector all echo the vital importance of cross sector collaboration. The new partnership track at the WTDC is designed not just to engage ITU's traditional development constituencies but to expand our reach bringing a host of new players and providing all stakeholders with the place to forge the alliances and make the deals that will make concrete our shared commitment to bridge the digital divide and that's why as we prepare for the WTDC I want us to use this session to really rethink rethink our approaches to partnerships as well as their role in accelerating connectivity for sustainable development. We have an amazing group of expert panelists joining us as well as our energized community of young leaders so I anticipate some very innovative ideas emerging from this session. Our spirit of partnership is part of our DNA at the ITU and we've worked collaboratively with the private sector for over 150 years and last year alone our development sector forged 42 new partnerships that represent yearly commitments of almost 15 million dollars. This is a big achievement. It spans core development issues ranging from digital inclusion, innovation, youth empowerment, gender equality, digital skills and the digital transformation of government services. Key new partnerships include partnership dialogue for connectivity, our connect to recover effort, the ITU-GIGA school connectivity effort that we're running with UNICEF, the broadband commission's working group on 21st century financing and the WEF Edison platform as well as the UN secretary general's roadmap for digital cooperation. These represent a great start but we need to go further and find ways to engage new players and new communities to really create a more connected resilient prosperous inclusive and sustainable world for all. So with that David let's get started over to you. Thank you Doreen. Great great beginning. So now we're going to have quick polls to find out what you all are thinking about partnerships and particularly partnerships that help us move the world towards greater connectivity which as we all know and as Doreen just emphasized is such an urgent challenge for the world. So the question for the poll is what is the most important ingredient for a successful partnership? You should all see the poll now okay there it is and the choices are shared values and objectives, trust, a clear plan or agreed performance metrics. Please pick one of those and quickly we'll just see which of these four all very important points is the most important in your opinion you people from all over the world who are gathered here right now. So we'll give you just a minute to answer those that question it shouldn't take you long. Please do do that and then if the if the if someone will please put the results up as soon as we have them. And while we're waiting for that I will mention we are really glad as Doreen mentioned to have Mr. Berlotte Baugh who's the CEO of Orange Mali who will be joining us a little later in the program and my apologies that he was not on my initial list. Very happy that he's joined us last minute we will be very eager to hear from him. Okay are the results of the poll available? There they are okay well that's pretty clear a lot of all these things are important but shared values and objectives are the is the one thing that you all agree or the majority of you believe is the most important so keeping that in mind we'll we'll move forward that's a really valuable insight. Okay I'd like to bring now on Sanda Ojiambo please turn on your video as I mentioned before Sanda is the executive director and CEO of the UN Global Compact boy though there's an organization that really symbolizes the importance of partnerships one of the most important partnerships there is in my opinion. So Sanda in that important role you experience every day firsthand how important partnerships are. So let's just reverse that for a second and if we didn't have strong partnerships how bad a problem would that be and in particular what would it mean for our ability to achieve the sustainable development goals by 2030. Thank you David and greetings you know good morning good afternoon good evening to all of you who are gathered here today. You know David the question is one that begs a lot of reflection I think that partnerships or the absence thereof will certainly be a very big risk particularly given the way that the SDGs were designed developed and articulated you know I see partnerships you know SDG 17 as almost the connective tissue that links the agenda for the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and we're firmly convinced that without global partnerships including partnerships that bring into the poor the private sector our sustainable and connected vision of the world would be truly unattainable and if I look specifically at connectivity I think we would definitely fall short on the delivery of the SDGs and the gaps would widen not just the digital divide gaps but all sorts of divides would widen as for sure. You know I reflect on the last year and one of the greatest lessons I think the pandemic has taught us is how being connected to the internet and to connectivity can really be the difference as to whether an individual has access to employment, to education, to health, to information and the possibility connecting with loved ones and it was also amazing to watch how quickly families, institutions, sectors of business and even governments adopted two digital ways of working or virtual ways of working or expanded the ways in which they worked virtually and the truth is I think powered by connectivity partnerships both usual and unusual you know for financing for access have truly been the bedrock of this platform that has expanded health, education, financial inclusion, supply chain management, e-commerce and very many other development areas so you know to answer your question in short you know the absence of partnerships would truly impact you know the attainment of the sustainable development goals. I think the challenge ahead really lies for us to to ensure that as the poll demonstrated certainly that partnerships have shared goals and objectives but I think we also need to look at the right kinds of partnerships so that in the context of connectivity, last mile connectivity, access, affordability, content, you know what will really make the difference to individuals, to families and to organizations and I just want to cite one example where we can see the adverse outcomes of this and I just want to pick education because I think it's one that impacts all of us. In the last year the ILO has estimated that you know about 463 million children you know experienced no education, lack of remote learning and 24 million of those are likely to fall into child labor at this point in time and this is simply due to the fact that they didn't have access to connectivity, didn't the right partnerships are necessary in place yet? The challenge before us all is immense and we all need to step to the table and deliver this partnership model that I think you know Doreen spoke about that is innovative, that is fast-moving and cuts across many sectors so we do need to bear in mind that partnerships are critical, I think the challenges of our time and indeed the time for going forward is really how we can look at partnerships unusual and look at ways in which partnerships can unleash you know benefits across sectors, across industries, across geographies and certainly demographics very important for the sustainable development goals. Thank you. Thank you so much Sanda and it is really important to be reminded that the 17th goal is partnerships for the goals that is really what we're here talking about so thank you for underscoring that. Now we're going to see our first video in just a second and the video is about Giga, a high-impact partnership spearheaded by the ITU and UNICEF which aims to connect all the schools of the world to the internet by 2030 so let's see that video now. How many schools are there in the world? Where are they located? How many are connected to the internet? Well the truth is we don't know it yet. Giga the innovative partnership between ITU and UNICEF is set to answer these questions Launched in 2019, Giga has so far mapped 800,000 schools in 30 countries and is now actively working with 14 governments to ensure that every child is equipped with the digital public goods they need and empowered to shape the future they want. Giga helps countries map schools and their connectivity, create investment opportunities, identify the most appropriate technologies and high quality vetted and safe content. Giga is bringing innovation to education and has been highlighted as one of the key recommendations towards digital transformation in the UN Secretary-General's roadmap for digital cooperation. Connecting all schools of the world to the internet is an ambitious but necessary undertaking. The time to act is now. Partner with Giga and help us provide every young person with access to information, opportunity and choice. Wow that was a powerful short video. We think oh well of course we'll connect the schools of the world. Well first we have to figure out where they all are and what they all are that just goes to show the scale of the challenges we face but we are here to help really build momentum to solving them. Now I'd like to bring in our next speaker, Mr. Amadou Daffay who's the CEO and co-founder of Gabaya which is a company that builds the tech talent pool in Africa and Amadou through your company you're working on building a globally competitive African tech talent pool and obviously connectivity is critical to make that work and you're going to be deeply reliant and your community will be deeply reliant on a strong internet so what kind of partnerships would you like to see happen in order to and be established to to guarantee steady and affordable internet connectivity for freelancers in Africa and the community that you work with? Thanks for being here. All right good morning and from Addis Ababao good afternoon. Yeah so it's just a matter of time that the continent would be filled with gig platforms right this thing about gig economy is going to go in my opinion very very sort of exponentially in terms of growth in the next few years in Africa just because the constant of gig is already existing very existing in Africa in most cities see a lot of young people hustling to sell in the streets and you know pretty much trying to make a living but now if you add digital to it you have more opportunities right in some of the African countries you see a lot of the logistic companies allowing people to get into you know car delivery services or motorbike delivery services but they all use something in common which is a mobile app that allows them to connect with customers knowing where they're going having some GPS location and so in and so forth and further out if you look at it in a high level which is more where we play with the freelance marketplace where it's more of selling your tech skills to clients who are across the globe so there's no doubt that if we what really want to see this freelance and gig economy sort of you know really grow exponentially in Africa we need to look at connectivity you know some of the few partnerships of course that we rely on the first thing is NNS service providers these can be anywhere from telco companies to small people who piggyback on telcos so having an ecosystem of partnership between telcos and any service provider in company like ours or even freelancers themselves allow them allow them to have you know packages of internet that's affordable that works well you know beyond the one make that they get all of that stuff would contribute very quickly to the development of this particular industry that just taken the whole world by storm right when COVID came everybody worked remotely right so this is a new habits that's just going to continue to happen without connectivity affordable and steady connectivity in Africa is practically impossible so I implore also the telecommunication company to look at how can we sort of empower this industry by allowing these you know free gig workers and freelancers to all sort of have the right tools and the tool here is the internet at the center well thank you so much Amadou great to see you many of us on in this group look forward to coming to your wonderful country later this year so let's check in with Danola see what she's getting from her community and whether there might be any questions for the speakers or other interactions that they've that they've come up with so hi Danola I'm going to turn off my video thank you so much David yes the tweets are coming in please keep them coming there's a tweet that says with everything going on in the world right now partnerships have never been more crucial in achieving the sustainable development goals hashtag ITWTDC and road to Addis and we also have a question I believe this is one of the young people from the Generation Connect community she's asking Doreen actually the VTT director what kind of partnerships do you want to see coming out of WTDC 21 hashtag writer Addis hashtag ITWTDC thank you thank you Danola well maybe just to pick up on what Sandra was saying you know SDG 17 and partnerships being the connective tissue I mean I would say I guess first of all what what I would like to see is action oriented partnerships I think we have to be looking to translate good intentions into concrete actions I want to see resilient and adaptive partnerships I think with COVID we've seen how we need to be actively adapting and evolving our strategies to deliver on their promises and of course thirdly and when we've heard this already on this session inclusive partnerships so this means that partnerships need to actively address the connectivity needs of those on the ground including minorities persons of disabilities maybe refugees displaced persons women indigenous marginalized I think it's only when we tap into that inclusive piece only then will we really be able to speak of universal connectivity thank you thank you so much for answering that question please keep the questions coming in using the hashtags writer Addis and ITWTDC great thank you Danola and thank you Doreen and now I'd like to invite Borge to come join us Borge as I mentioned before is President of the World Economic Forum he's been very busy the last few weeks and probably all the last year he's always busy but I wanted to congratulate you Borge for a very successful Davos agenda session last week very different from Davos years in the past but one that had a lot of impact with a bunch of fantastic ideas and emergent programs and plans and partnerships and all kinds of things I wanted to particularly note what Secretary General Guterres said at your sessions he urged a reinvigorated and inclusive and networked multilateralism and he said that we need a new social contract where quality education and digital technology act as the two great enablers and equalizers couldn't agree with him more on that great to hear the UN Secretary General saying things like that so Borge you've spent so many years working in public and international organizations and you're president of the forum so which is obviously one of the most if not the most successful organization building a multi-stakeholder partnerships to tackle the world's biggest problems so from your standpoint and your experience what are some examples of innovative approaches to partnerships that you've seen for digital transformation well thank you David also thank you for your very kind and inspiring words we did run our Davos meeting last week for the first time in 51 years digitally and it's also surprisingly was able to create some of the same Davos feeling as up in the mountains but for those that think that there is less work with the digital meeting I think ITU and you David know that it takes a lot to bring people together also digitally and thank you to ITU for your leadership and also to bringing all us together today on the importance of partnerships and partnerships that have been a consequential let me put it into context the world garments have launched no stimulus package of 12 trillion US dollars never have we stimulated economies like this after the second world war this is to build a bridge between a situation where there is almost nothing happening in the economies and to a post COVID world where we hopefully will be back but when we have used 12 trillion US dollars there is not that many fiscal muscles back with the governments after post COVID of course there are muscles but we need to also then mobilize private sector we cannot reach the sustainable development goals or or break the digital divide that we see today the impulse we are facing without mobilizing the private sector that is the business models but also additional resources and so much is at stake the digital divide today 3.6 billion people as previously mentioned not being connected to the internet gives them zero opportunities to leapfrog what we need now is a lot of leapfrogging and the internet access to the web gives also access to great teachers to great knowledge and if we are going to succeed we need to break this very this impulse extremely fast so we have taken at the world economic forum some initiatives but we also get a lot of credit to other organizations with ITU we have developed and World Bank and private sector we developed an action plan that Columbia for example the country of Columbia have now implemented almost all together on making sure that we address and introduce the right policies also to end the digital divide we're also as mentioned during Davos agenda week we launched the Edison alliance an alliance of companies governments civil society to make sure that we all mobilize together with the UN together with all the other organization a real real rolling up the sleeves not moving around deck chairs on titanic initiative on making sure that all children in the world should be connected to the web and this we can only do if we do it with the multi-stake call thank you thank you Borge thank you for the urgency that you're expressing and obviously your point about the children of the world is so central so thank you for making that as well so next before we hear from Wendy Mars of Cisco we're going to show a short video about the digital transformation centers initiative which is a high impact partnership between the ITU and Cisco to equip people with the skills needed to effectively participate in today's digital society and economy so let's see that video is it possible to go from never having touched a computer to successfully running a digital business within a year well the answer is yes the digital transformation centers initiative is helping citizens in underserved communities achieve this goal ITU in partnership with Cisco supports countries in strengthening the digital skills of their citizens especially those who are traditionally excluded from the digital economy launched in 2019 the initiative in its pilot phase is working with nine countries in Africa the Americas and Asia Pacific the first phase will run until the end of september 2021 and then an open call will be made for more potential digital transformation centers or DTCs to join the network the training has helped me to get more customers for me the internet aspect was beneficial building digital skills as well as guaranteeing digital inclusion and the scaling up of DTCs can only be reached through value-added multi stakeholder partnerships partner with us join the DTC initiative help us empower the unconnected help us provide them with a path out of poverty and help us build a more inclusive digital society well that's a great introduction to our conversation with Wendy Mars who as I mentioned before is president of Europe Middle East Africa and Russia at Cisco Cisco is one not only one of the largest and most successful tech companies in the world but also one which has inclusion entrenched in the core of its DNA probably partly because it's a much more mature tech company than some of the other ones we could discuss uh Cisco understands from long experience how important inclusion is uh last year Cisco was working under the tagline powering an inclusive future for all and Cisco's many times appealed to the tech and other leaders of the world to direct our energy towards creating solutions that move the world toward global inclusion and in fact the next stop on this road to Addis series will focus on inclusion so Wendy how do you think we should be thinking about partnerships in regard to inclusion and how they should be developed and implemented with inclusiveness as a central goal thank you David and it's wonderful to be here with all of you today you know if I just take a step back for a moment the world economic forum global risk report last week actually highlighted digital inequality as a critical threat to the world over the next two years and this pandemic has shown us really that what can be digital truly must be digital we've seen it in our daily lives in doing things online right now that we never used to before be that having a doctor's appointment over video shopping online meeting friends and family over video environments we have a critical dependency on connectivity but actually between a half sorry between a third and a half of the world's population does not have internet access today and some countries are better served than others we know that rural connectivity still is a challenge and also some generations are more challenged than others with connectivity and the use of technology the world economic forum is right digital inequality truly is a critical threat to the world now people need access to technology but they also need the skills in order to be able to use it and the network academy program that we've worked on within Cisco leveraging very strong partnerships helps with this we focused on this program for many years and this actually is something we do in partnership with educational establishments in order to get the courses to provide to train people within digital skills and capabilities and since we started this program we've actually trained 12 million students across the world and those are from both emerging and developing economies are within the world and people from many many different backgrounds which is fantastic to see now in 2020 alone we've actually trained 2.3 million students and we've had to of course switch that training and education from in room to remote pretty much overnight with the pandemic so retraining 11,000 teachers being able to deliver content virtually and leveraging video platforms webex in this situation and of course once the pandemic is over I expect this will continue in a hybrid form so leveraging both video and also in person but women continue to be underrepresented if you look at these environments so right now today only a quarter of the attendees and of the students that've trained have been women and in particular there was a challenge within the age range of 16 to 25 where there's a particular problem there so in the coming months we will continue to be working on this and you'll see some focused initiatives that will be launching together with partners in order to try and improve this situation so you really see partnership is critical to success here now you just saw the video before in regard to one of the projects that we've been working on with the ITU and that's in partnership with national and partnership with national governments so in November and Doreen who's on the panel today with us Doreen was there as well we launched the Ghana Center in Acre where students can actually learn digital skills which will be so important in these coming years and that's a partnership between Ozotsisco the ITU the government of Ghana and the Norwegian international aid ministry and we now have seven of these digital transformation centers up and running around the world and another two that are going to be coming online soon so that's fantastic progress but you know it's not just individuals that we can help through partnerships it's actually countries too and through our country digital acceleration program we can also help at the national level businesses also suffer if they don't have good connectivity so as an example Cisco has deployed edge centers in Kenya and also in South Africa which really help small to medium enterprises and also micro businesses providing them with connectivity access to video conferencing demo space and access to digital skills such as those network academy students so for me digital inclusion is a vital issue a one which we can only solve through creative and imaginative partnerships with organizations of all type and this way truly we can strive towards an inclusive future for all back to you David thanks so much Wendy and it is really true Cisco has been doing really important work on bringing a larger community into the digital world for many decades so thank you to Cisco for that and thank you to Wendy for being here okay we're going to see another video now this video is going to talk about the broadband commission which is a high impact multi stakeholder partnership that promotes the power of ICTs and broadband technologies for achieving the sustainable development goals so let's look at the video time is running out with just 10 years to achieve the UN sustainable development goals the broadband commission is embarking on a last urgent push to leverage the power of digital to meet the 2030 agenda and connect the other half of the world's population through broadband founded in 2010 by ITU UNESCO president Paul Higami and Carlos Slim the broadband commission is a public private partnership of over 50 world leaders from the ICT sector focused on universal connectivity it seeks to boost broadband in the international policy agenda and expand access across the world by engaging in partnerships between international organizations the private sector governments and civil society commissioners tackle a wide range of pressing issues from digital health and education to child online safety digital entrepreneurship the digital gender divide the special needs of vulnerable countries and more the advocacy work of the commissioners has enabled to increase the number of countries with access to broadband plans by over 60 worldwide in the last decade a decade of action has begun a decade where ICTs will continue to make the world safer stronger and more connected today we invited a build back better with broadband and join us in our cause of accelerating the development of a digital society and to ensure that we leave no one offline right uh another important piece of building building our momentum toward understanding the many sides of this issue that that commission is so important uh now I'd like to introduce uh Mr. Brilott Bah who is CEO of Orange Mali uh we're very happy that he has been able to join us uh the last minute and we're really eager to hear what he has to say so so so Mr. Bah um when you look at your own experience in the telecom sector what do you think the right kind of partnerships are that are needed for for the financing and creative new kinds of financing to get us to more affordable and universal connectivity and thank you again for being here um hi David um thank you for your question I think that um building partnership is just crucial especially when it comes to delivering affordable solutions uh because in our digital and connectivity industry um lowering cost means economy of scales large volumes and the good news is that um we have these volumes as mentioned before 3.7 billion are not connected to the internet and in Africa according to the last GSMA report 800 millions um Africans don't have access to internet even though 500 millions are covered by group and network so it means that this does not matter of connectivity that the potential for inclusion um including um people are there and also according to the same report the average usage per GSMA will move from 1.7 gigabyte per month to 7 gigabyte per month by 2025 and every year 40 million are joining the internet community for the first time so the volumes are there and the partnerships should address these volumes try to make sure that we can come with solutions that can um um allow the big numbers to be connected and buy that lowering costs and having more affordable solutions and I will um just mention three a category of this uh the first is um better working working together as mentioned by Darin in the countries um uh it's very raw that you will see in the beginning of the year the government regulator operators sitting around the table and then sharing their uh priorities in terms of deployment be for infrastructure like fiber optic or um access uh and discussing how their infrastructure should be better mutualized um although not everyone to do the same and this is really crucial because it means having efficiency in terms of deployment this is an area where new mindset should really be at stake the second area is um um universal access because it's also very rare to see in a country um the regulator their the government and operators having kind of reverse actions to award the non-profitable areas to operators that are existing and that have the lower cost most of the time we will see a newcomer with fixed costs extra and this is really uh a way where we can um innovate and make sure that all the deployments will be thus effective and the third is uh area where new partnership with these existing actors can really bring something new is the frequency the older studies and the last report also jsm a showed that we have a multiplying factor of 10 between um providing data in for example 2g networks and 40 networks so a new approach including operators and governments in terms of neutral frequencies uh neutral technical frequencies can be developed to make sure that all the operators will um always choose the best technology to maximize their the output of frequencies and when I say coming from 1 uh to 10 between 2g and 40 it means reducing the cost from a factor of 10 so all these actors can really have a different approach the second um partnership that I would like to mention is um when african or um you can also be worldwide to come with low-cost smartphones uh it means having a 4g device for instance less than 20 us dollars we you can have initiatives in this or that country but nothing addressing the potential of millions and millions of um africans that are not connected i'm talking about 50 million 100 millions and this partnership can be african and aiming at having in one location big facilities that will allow to have these volumes and the last partnership that I would like to to to mention here either another one that should be global um covid 19 has shown that it is really pointless to build a school if people cannot access to remote education it's also um pointless to have big agencies in energy agencies where when people cannot uh access to them and are obliged to pay remotely so here the idea is a global partnership between all the um technical and financial actors involved in the 17 sustainable development growth to make sure that in every project when we invested 100 at least five or 10 or 15 are really dedicated to digital and when I come back to the example of the school it means that I will build buildings facilities but at the same time the five or 10 percent of the budget will be allowed to digital to make sure that we have digital content the remote access to this content and this will allow to have in each category kind of usage in education's health and this usage increasing will really allow us to grab the volumes and then reduce cost so these are the three types of partnership that can really be developed to make sure that these millions of and connected can access through different sources thank you well thank you that your point that we really can't have an economy if there isn't a digital part of it and as you said in the schools in Africa and everywhere it is just not feasible anymore to not be connected so thank you for underscoring that point um you know for the first time in history WTDC21 in Addis Ababa will be preceded by a youth summit and Africa the world's youngest continent which is something that Mr. Ba was just talking about uh it has almost 60 percent of its population under the age of 25 it use facts and figures report of for 2020 tells us that in the areas of Africa where there is connectivity 40 percent of young people are using the internet that is extremely encouraging um especially if we think about how fast growing is the youth demographic and how critical connectivity is going to be to achieving the sustainable development goals so as we've heard earlier online with us right now is a large group of young leaders who are ready to walk the path to road to Addis with us uh Danola Oledapo our youth leader uh is here with us again to tell us what that group is is saying and and what Danola let me ask you what what does the group think are the ingredients for creating partnerships that attract and engage youth especially around digital transformation we can get in really interest in tweets um hopefully i'll be able to kind of go through them later but from my perspective um i think it's really about just building trust in a really authentic way especially around common goals that young people across the world are so passionate about you know issues such as climate change inclusion equality and global health i think it's about creating real opportunities and platforms for youth to use their voices take action and really have a real impact on the world thanks Danola so i'd like to ask Doreen for her response to that um what do you think how do we get the young people involved more yeah thanks thanks david i mean i think the pressures on us right future generations will judge us and so really as leaders of the organizations working on the issues you care deeply about we need not only to give you a platform and opportunities to engage but we also need to actively listen to your ideas to be open-minded and to embrace your eagerness i think we need to be providing concrete pathways so that you can actually be part of our action plan and i guess i'd like to say that for all the young people that are that are following today this session uh if it's inspired you and you want to be part of a global movement to connect the unconnected reach out to us on facebook twitter instagram or our generation connect website thank you thank you doreen um okay now we're going to do something fun i want all the speakers to turn on their video just for a second here and uh we i want to ask you all in one word what would you like to see coming out of wtdc so i'm going to ask you one by one to just tell us your word and we're going to illustrate this again in a little in a minute but let me start with you uh mr ba uh what what one thing would you like to see come out of wtdc in one word um commitment commitment that's a nice one okay i would choose at this point if you made it disruption disruption okay disruption is good too disruptive commitment how about that but disruption is good wendy education beautiful sonda action thank you borge impact beautiful tenola i want to say transformation but before this we reached out to about 50 young people and the most popular word that came out was innovation that's a good one and doreen all the ones i was going to say were taken so i'm going to say sustainability okay beautiful so um hold on a second so doreen i'm going to let's let's ask the speakers all to turn off their videos now except for doreen um and and doreen just tell us what we've heard today give us a summary of of what we've done and where we're headed from here yeah thank you thank you david and it's really been a great discussion we've heard um lots of important contributions on on if there's an absence of partnerships how that would impact achieving the stg's how the gig economy will quickly take over the continent of africa and so we need that right ecosystem in place we need that that talent development as well that the digital divide can only be closed by mobilizing the private sector we need a lot of leapfrogging now to be able to close that digital divide the importance of not just access here it's not just a connectivity issue but also skills that's absolutely critical it's been amazing david and i really want to thank our incredible speakers borge amadou berlotte wendy sanda uh thank you so much for your engagement your commitment to the vision of universal affordable connectivity and digitally led progress towards the stg's of course i want to thank through you danola our inspiring young leaders i think your engagement is also a big part of our efforts to solve the global connectivity challenge and i'm glad that that through these sessions we're able to give you at least a small space to share your your reflections and your ideas because without your involvement we won't succeed in in implementing the change we we we need to see i would also like us to take inspiration from the un sg's address at the davos agenda last week and david you referred to this when he confirmed his belief that digital technologies are the core enabler of a new social contract universal access to icts can help us to rapidly recoup much of the ground that we've lost as a result of the pandemic and it can also help to set us up on a path a path towards a brighter more resilient future i would say and of course our partner to connect track at the wtbc is really looking to escalate and to expand our ambition to bring everyone everywhere into the digital world and we saw a posting by arthur and i think that was your point it's not about individual goals it's about this shared common goal and and vision i think the challenge may be immense but the opportunity is even greater and we need to think innovatively we need to be willing to experiment and open to learn and we really need that that clear strong vision like our panelists have that that they shared with us today that translates into lasting and scalable change and most importantly we all need to work together with just nine months to go to the wtbc i call on the global community step up to the plate step up to the plate and start working now on concrete and collaborative commitments that we can bring to that landmark conference iq stands ready to help you in any way that we can by connecting you with the players working in this space sharing regulatory and policy guidance showcasing your projects and initiatives on the stage at wtbc because david from crisis comes change we can all be part of that change but we need to act fast and the concrete pledges and commitments we make an artist can really help to usher a brave new world of opportunity and prosperity so let me echo the words of jessie and gray who was our youth secretary general last year or the year before at it's first global young leaders summit she said do you dare to do you have the vision the energy and the drive to be an agent of change and work with us to connect the world i know many of you do and i really look forward immensely to working with all of you to be the change that we all want to see thank you david thanks so much doreen and with my apologies for succumbing to some of the inevitable hiccups of the zoom conference era i'd like to bring amadou on for his word and i apologize for not seeing him on the screen before so amadou welcome back what's your word exponentiality oh well good work all right i love it thank you so much okay thank you amadou now i would like now to bring on jim rogers who we met at the beginning jim is has been throughout this entire session drawing a image illustrating the entire conversation so jim can you join us and show us what you've been coming up with ah yes i'd just like to share now i'll be a second i'll just share my screen okay uh this is my illustration wow it's amazing how fast you can do that beautiful that now that will be shared online everyone will have access to that afterwards help us remember what we've heard what would you say is the thing that jumps out at you most in in producing this jim i think well there's a lot of key themes i think connecting the unconnected is a big one and making sure everyone can go digital i thought a really important thing that wendy said was what can be digital must be digital so i think there's a lot of good themes here and it's uh it's good to see it's moving forward well thanks and thanks for being part of it um and in your your images of the people are amazingly good so thank you thank you well now let's let's see the word cloud that was created as a result of all the words we heard from the the speakers can we get the word cloud up another illustration of what we've done today in a way jim just gave us one form of word cloud a bigger word cloud but we've we've been building this word cloud uh beginning with the first session and and we'll add to it today and continue building it until we finish the road to add a series okay so here are words disruption innovation exponentiality impact impact is a big word sustainability transformation connectivity commitment uh wow all those things are necessary so good to see it all together and as i said we will continue building a master word cloud for the entire road to add a series that we'll share later in the year after we've had the entire series of meetings um so uh this wraps our meeting today uh i want to thank everyone and particularly doreen and the itu for all the amazing work they did to make it happen um we will have another road to add a session on the on the 16th of march on with the focus on digital inclusion so we really look forward to seeing you there and thank you very much for being with us thank you very thank you very thank you