 Welcome to WTIS 16 from Habaron in Botswana and I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Dr Wim Lambo who is deputy minister for information communication technology postal and courier services to Zimbabwe. Dr Lambo, thank you very much for being in the studio today. Thank you very much, Max and Gurav Sanno. It's a pleasure to see you. Now, I'd like to start off by talking about the measuring the information society report. We're just about to release it. I wanted to find out why is the MIS report important to Zimbabwe? It is extremely important because the country, just like many other countries, must be measured according to where we are with regards to being an information society. That can only be done by measuring tools, by conducting a study among the social groups in Zimbabwe and to see how they are adopting to ICTs. Yes, so it's extremely important. Statistics talk, so they say. It is only from statistics that you can see what is going on. Merely encouraging your citizenry to adopt ICTs is not enough. After you do so and after you see that they are indeed acquiescing to the use of ICTs, one has then to measure and benchmark the results according to international standards or standards given by ITU. We need to know how we compare with our countries in the region, our countries on the continent, and our countries internationally. What is the message that you'll be taking home from this year's WTIA symposium? I know we've only just started, but what do you hope will be the key takeaways here? Since we started this conference annually in 2005, we've regarded WTIAs as extremely important because, as I said earlier, it gives you a measure. So, by coming here and interrogating different measuring tools in each country, because they are very different, each country because of differences in the socioeconomic levels, then it means the results you get when you adopt ICTs are also different. Therefore, by coming together and sharing what is happening in each other country, we then have a correct measure of what is going on. To the solution providers as well, those who design technology, it is useful because they know that in country A, we need to provide this solution. In country B, we need this solution. And also the International Telecommunications Union that assists the union in terms of assisting these countries that are being left out. In what ways do you think the ICTs assisting Zimbabwe in the drive towards the attainable of the UN Sustainable Development Goals? In many ways. Just earlier when I was talking about what we call community information centers, these are one-stop shops in the rural areas especially, where we are saying the citizens of those countries can come and get services. It might be money transfers, e-banking, e-health, agriculture, and so forth. So they are assisting. Talking about e-health, because of massive exodus of health professionals from the country, we are now feeling that gap by the adoption of handphones, smartphones, where we load medical data. And then this can be interrogated in the rural areas, replacing almost completely doctors and nurses. I'm just giving an example of e-health, but there are the schools as well in learning and so forth that assist as well. We have 9,000 schools which we want to connect in a very short time to assist our students, so that we take advantage of the learning curve where children can imbibe knowledge fairly quickly. At that stage, give them the ICT tools so that they quickly learn. Give them access to the internet through the internet and so forth. And finally, you just participated in a ministerial roundtable which was talking about the fact that basically no one should be left behind. I wanted to find out what steps is Zimbabwe taking, putting in place, to ensure that no one is left behind in the digital economy? First, after we have dissected our society into different social groups and their age groups, we then get a pattern of their reaction to the adoption of ICTs. After that, then we cave out solutions. Some of the ways, as I said earlier on, CIC, that is communication information centers, other solutions to come up with appropriate policies, targeting these social groups. What do they need, including the people with disabilities? What do they need? They need special braille software, for example. It is after we have conducted this study and come up with results that we cover solutions. The other way is to try and speed up connectivity to the rural areas. Burying fiber is extremely expensive and time consuming, so we are trying hanging fiber through overhead to get to the rural areas. In some places, it is working well, but in others, these are kicked down by elephants in no time because we have an abundance of these animals. So, we are then forced to resort to satellites using V-SAT communicators and very small urban determinants to the rural areas. Fortunately, we hear of the advent of Ka-Bend, which will be as good as fiber. So, we are going to jump on board the Ka-Bend to reach the rural areas so that they get connected fairly quickly and close the digital gap between the urban and rural areas. Well, we wish you the very best of the future. Thanks very much for joining us in the studio today and we look forward to catching up with you again soon. Max, thank you very much. Thanks a lot.