 Secretary-General, Honorable Ministers and Heads of Delegations, Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Kingdom of Lusutu would like to join other member states to congratulate you, Chairperson, on your appointment to guide this August conference. In the same token, I would like to applaud our host and the people of the United Arab Emirates for their warm hospitality and generous welcome. I also commend the ITU and our host for the very considerable logistical achievement of bringing the world together for this plenipotentiary conference, and the splendid organization of this landmark conference. We thank the ITU Secretary-General, Mr. Holenshow, and his able team for the outstanding work during the past four years. The International Telecommunications Union has been a dependable partner of Lusutu. Over the years through this partnership, Lusutu has ripped a lot of benefits from its membership of the Union. My country has benefited immensely in the areas of policy and legal development, capacity building, cybersecurity and secure networks, digital economy and eHealth, as well as regulatory best practices and general development of the communication sector. The Government of Lusutu recognized that ICT plays a critical role in the economic development and has identified them as one of the four pillars that will drive Lusutu economic growth under its new National Strategic Development Plan for the next five years. It is my country's desire to build upon the success of the past years, which include extensive mobile network coverage, which is now at 96 percent of inhabited areas, phone ownership over 79 percent of the population, tell a density of close to 90 percent and broadband penetration of 56 percent. In line with the Connect 2020 agenda, Lusutu has embarked on an eGovernment project, which is deploying modern and secure eGovernment broadband infrastructure. The project is already providing access to some eServices provided by the government departments. We hope aggressively roll out the eEducation programs, especially targeting the primary and secondary schools. On his visit to Lusutu, the Secretary-General of ITU promised to assist primary schools in Lusutu with at least 300 desktop computers. We are grateful indeed. This will go a long way in accelerating our efforts of bringing digital divide in Lusutu. My country has also embarked on programs on eHealth, eCommerce, as well as e-agriculture. Our successful Universal Service Fund continue to address access gap in un-served and under-served areas of our country. And we are on course to reach the Connect 2020 targets, or access to broadband, affordability in bringing the digital divide between urban and rural areas. The above initiatives clearly demonstrate that Lusutu recognized that digitalization is increasingly and furthermentally changing societies and economies and will affect many economic sectors in the youth of industrial revolution. We are accelerating our efforts in ensuring that our digitization programs cover every aspect of our economy. In this manner, we are confident that we meet our SDGs' target, in particular SDG9 and related SDGs. Chair, though Lusutu is a developing country, it is a classic example of success in the communication sector in a liberalized market. Through private sector investment, government support, and independent regulation, the people of Lusutu are now enjoying the advanced communication services. To demonstrate this, in a few months ago, one of our operators launched the first commercial 5G services in Africa in Lusutu. These achievements are however not without challenges. Two months ago, the ITU Secretary General, Mr. Shaw, witnessed firsthand the difficult conditions under which we develop communication infrastructure. The landscape of my country is dominated by difficult mountain terrain, underdeveloped road and electricity networks as parsley, populated rural areas which make investment in communication service an expensive undertaking. Being landlocked, Lusutu has to rely on backhaul facilities from its only neighbour, South Africa, for international bandwidth, and prices of these services are sometimes high. Finally, we reaffirm the commitment and availability of government of Lusutu to continue participating actively in ITU activities and contributing to the achievement of objectives of the Union. Ladies and gentlemen, delegates, as the Kingdom of Lusutu, we are not contesting any of the ITU positions now. However, we will fully participate in the elections with the hope that all member states that will vote for our candidates in the next ITU elections 2022. I thank you for your attention.