 Welcome to PP18, the Plenty Potentiary Conference of ITU in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Lili Akol who is Deputy Minister for the Ministry of Information Technology, Communications and Postal Services for South Sudan. Deputy Minister, welcome to the studio. Thank you for having me. Now I'd like to start off by asking you a little bit about the fact that there's considerable attention being placed at the moment on harnessing the power of information communication technologies, ICTs as an enabler for good, for development, for the benefit of people, families, communities and nations. And I wanted to ask you what's your personal perspective on this? First of all I'm a user of ICT and I know how ICT is now very important in every aspects of our lives. So as a user myself, as a consumer, I want things easy. I want that facilitation. And so it's very important that technology is not only part of our lives but that we enable it to be part of our everyday, day-to-day activities, what we want to do. Today the world is connected. We are talking about being a small village, you know, and thanks to technology. So there's no way that in this era and time we can talk about lack of technology or a group of people, or a group of countries that are left behind without being connected. So it makes it more important for me being in this docket that I want to see with that what I see as comfort that everybody has the same access to. Now in terms of access, about half the world's people are connected to the internet. The other half isn't. What is your country doing to get everyone connected? My country is doing a lot. Most importantly we are establishing the infrastructure. As you know the history of South Sudan we are the newest nation in the world. And we have a lot that we are doing. There are a lot of competing priorities. And the same is also true in the technology and communications sector. So now as a country we want to establish the fiber optics connections. And we are looking into the best way and the quickest way to do that. And the best way to do that is to take fiber optics from our neighboring countries. Now we would start a project in a month or two where we will extend the fiber optics with our sisterly country of Uganda from the borders. I just finished a very good meeting with the Minister of Telecommunications of Sudan also another neighboring country and we would also be able to extend fiber optics from there. So there are a lot of projects that are in the pipeline but most importantly what fiber optics will bring it will make the price of communication go down. And I think this will be a very good beginning for us as a country today. Talking about affordability, accessibility, this planning potential conference is the first since the world agreed on the sustainable development goals. I'd like to ask you perhaps we could provide some examples of how ICTs are helping to drive the sustainable development in your country. You know what is good about South Sudan is that as I said we are in your country. So we are starting afresh in all the other sectors not telecommunications. So we have the opportunity to make telecommunications and technology part a very integral part of all the developmental projects that we are undertaking in the country. When we developed our vision and when we developed our plan, our development plan agenda ICT was the importance of ICT was seen and captured and ICT became cross cutting across all the borders. So hopefully now when we are establishing education systems in South Sudan ICT is going to be part of that. When we are talking about health ICT will be part of that. When I talk about food security, agriculture, ICT is going to be part of that. So I think we are in a better position to start right and to also start implementing the SDGs in a very sustainable and productive way to our people. That's wonderful and very encouraging. Finally is there a message that you'd like to convey to participants here at ITU PP18 and also to our wider audience? The message is always as the newest country and the newest member state to the ITU. We have a lot to do because as a country we need to sprint to be where the other countries are now and we need a lot of help in this area. And I know ITU has always been helpful because we also fall into the category of the least developed countries. So we would hope to see this help in terms of opportunities, in terms of services, in terms of training. We want to see it doubled or increased so that we are able to be where the world is because it is now a collective responsibility we are saying. Some parts cannot be connected and others are left out. So we want all the countries also that are members of the ITU that are able to give us that opportunity to be where they are today. And we are ready to learn from them. Well, you talked about a global village. Let's hope that that sprint is just around the corner. Thank you very much indeed for joining us. Thank you for the opportunity. It was a real pleasure. Thank you. And we look forward to catching it with you again in the future. Hopefully so. Thank you.