 Education. It's the shared answer to so many of society's most urgent questions. How do we expand the horizons of our children? Multiply their dreams. Enlarge the scope of their opportunities in a way that builds a brighter future. How do we help them meet the broad range of global challenges they'll face in the decades ahead? Equip them with 21st century skills needed to succeed in today's competitive digital economy. Education is the answer to so many questions, but providing it raises so many others. Like how do we best harness the power of technology to improve the reach and effectiveness of education efforts worldwide? How do we orchestrate the professional development of tens of millions of educators around the planet? How can students, teachers, governments and industry all work together to develop truly sustainable change in our global education models? How can we create vibrant, productive learning environments that will enrich the lives of every student on Earth? We know education is the answer, which means there's really only one question that matters. How do we make it happen? How do we make it happen? Excellencies, distinguished panelists, ladies and gentlemen, so welcome to the education transformation track. Today we are here for the financing and learning programs. I'm Carlos Martinez, I'm Global Director of Intel Waterhead Program. My role is working with Minister of ICTs, with regulatory bodies, with telecommunication companies, with private companies, with the ecosystem to accelerate the adoption of ICT in developing economies and also in education. During today's education track, we have been listening from this morning at 9 a.m. from ministers, from regulatory officials, from private companies, also from civil society representatives. The importance of embracing change and embracing change in education. And at the same time, what are the key barriers in order to make that happen? So one of the key barriers that have been mentioned several times this morning is, okay, all of us get it, but who is going to finance those programs? And who are the ones that are going to finance the programs in a sustainable way? Okay, so during this panel, this afternoon, we will try to go to answer and to provide some key examples from the panelists here today about how they have tracked those programs in order to finance their projects in their countries in a very successful and innovative way. So to debate about this topic, I am honored to introduce you His Excellency Mohammed Saril Tarmisi, Chairman of the Communication and Multimedia Communications Commission in Malaysia. Thank you. His Excellency Mr. Abu Bakri Nian is Director General of High Education, Administrator of Education in Senegal. Mr. Eric Love is Vice President, International External Affairs from AT&T. And His Excellency Bruno Coney is Minister of ICT and Communications in Kodiwak. So with this interaction, we will go with listening from our panelists about their experiences. And after that, I will open to the floor for questions, questions that could come from topics that have been raised from the panelists or other topics that you would like to bring to this panel to have some answers or some insights. Okay, so once I lay out that, let me, that was a real, so I know that the Communication and Multimedia Commission has been very active leading actions to reduce the digital divide in Malaysia and to increase significantly the broadband penetration and ICT literacy. ICT literacy has been one of the key problems also raised this morning, digital literacy. So let me ask the question, I know that you have been the leader behind a program providing 1.5 million computers and internet connectivity to low income families in Malaysia. So let me ask if you can share your thoughts about this program, how you overcome the difficulties. I know we're multiple of them. So can you share your insights with our audience, please? Thank you. Thank you, Carlos. Salamualaikum. Good afternoon, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Sharil. I'm from Malaysia. I happen to have the regulatory body in Malaysia. We cover telecoms, broadcasting, postal, courier services. So any communications from snail mail to email, we look at that. We're also an industry development agency. A lot of people don't realize that. And I think what Carlos was alluding to was something that I'd like to just share briefly with all of you. We have a philosophy in Malaysia where we talk about providing access to broadband, access to ICT, access to communications. Underlying that idea of access is to ensure that the access is meaningful. The access is not only meaningful but fit for the purpose that it's put out there for. Because very often what happens if you look at access from an engineering standpoint, it's all about just digging up the roads, laying down the fiber, putting up the base station and there you have it communications. However, that may not necessarily be meaningful to the people who've never had those facilities. So we started looking at it from the end point where one of the things that we realized had been a relatively young country with a relatively young population was we needed to get our youths and our children quickly connected online so that they can enjoy the benefits that ICT brings with it without having to worry whether they are in the cities or in the rural areas. And we have taken the concept of education in that sense from a formal and informal standpoint. In the sense that we, for example, how we did it was we used the Universal Service Fund that we take from the telecoms companies and put that back into the industry by building cellular base stations, Wi-Fi, 4G access infrastructure. And then we realized it's great that we're providing all this access but how are people going to access it? So we believe very much that the young people in the country will be the catalyst for change. You've heard people refer to the term digital natives. These children and young people are very quick to adapt to technology. Many of us who are slightly perhaps more advanced in years find that challenging. And we've had a lot of help from the private sector, from multiple stakeholders which I call our partners in the industry. For example, we worked with Intel on the Intel Easy Steps program where basic skills, some of those you may assume or take for granted, how to work with a mouse, how to type a document on a word processing application, how to use a PowerPoint. Those of us who have been using this for a few years may have forgotten what it's like to not know how to do this. So with the Intel Easy Steps program, it was easy for us to do that. And we've had various other support from our local companies. Our satellite company, Astro, helps provide formal education and learning through satellite television. Our partners like Telecom Malaysia or Telcos also provide free broadband access to some educational content. So there's a lot of that. I can speak more about that later. But the point of it is the approach that we took was number one, as governments, as regulators, we may not know best. So the best was to get together a group of experts from the industry, from the community, pool together the resources and then try and achieve a common objective that we have. And maybe if I have the opportunity, I'll come back to some of the other informal learning that we also did with AT&T, which Eric pointed out. Absolutely. We will come back to listen from you and from Eric about that experience. Let me ask right now, Eric, AT&T is one of the leading telecommunications in the world. So high-level technology and skills are associated with AT&T. So let me ask maybe a very obvious question. You are representing here the private sector. So why is important education for AT&T and what AT&T is doing in education? Can you share that with us, please? Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Carlos. So I'll start with a couple of maybe broad systemic ideas for our industry and our customers. Not just AT&T's, but I expect for anyone that's in this business and then get towards education and the financing question, because I think that it explains why it's such an important topic for AT&T. When you look across the company now and the services that we provide, they require very high skill to be able to, whether you're working the front line in the store or you're doing an installation or you're doing the design, you're doing the management of services, it's a very high skill sector. And that's the same across our entire sector with the sophistication of technology. So there is an aspect with the importance of education that it's one of the basic platforms of being able to sustain this industry is to have a well-qualified, highly skilled workforce. And it's something that perhaps in times could have been taken for granted, but then there are a lot of countries and the U.S. is included in that where some of the educational systems are failing in places. And so some years back at the executive level of our company, we took a look at the state of secondary education and the dropout rates and saw that as a long-term risk to us as a company. We have about 260,000 employees. Every year we're hiring over 25,000 individuals. And over the course of time, particularly after we get beyond in the U.S. the baby boom retirement, we have huge hiring needs. So you match that vector, that trend line against the trend line of a lot of failing educational systems. And that's a long-term risk. So I start with it in that place because the plea I suppose I make is that of course from the private sector there is an important aspect of this that's philanthropy, but I'd argue that more important than that to really motivate private sector involvement and the ICT sector involvement, it's not just philanthropy, it's sustaining your business. It's sustaining the ability over time to be able to hire the individuals you'll need to hire and create more opportunity there. So we begin there and I think it's an important perspective. From that the company decided to make a very big commitment in this area. I mean that was the driving strategic realization of all the things that we support education as a real platform. And a few years ago we started a program that's called the Aspire program and the initial funding was $100 million. And then last year we renewed that with another $250 million. And importantly it's not just taking money and just putting it into a failing school system and hoping for the best. It's taking a whole department. We have a lot of different people in our company that try to actually work on going to others in the education field in the industry. People are thinking about new solutions for education, ways to bring technology in new ways to classrooms, new models of learning so that we're seeking to bring a technology revolution into education at the same time that we're also propping up the fundamentals of a lot of the schools. So that's just an initial preview of how we're working on this. We're involved in many different aspects of it. But it's an area that will continue to be critical and be involved in for I would say a very long time. Excellent. Eric, so thank you very much for sharing that experience from the private sector. Why is important education and how an example of a private company jumping, trying to help addressing the failure of the education system in this case in U.S.? So we have been hearing also about the importance from the Minister of Communications of influencing the Minister of Education changing the way we are teaching and the curriculum that we are teaching in order to address the skills that the private companies and the market needs to fill. So thank you, Eric. So let me, right now, honorable Nien. So college students are the first to get into the marketplace. So once finalized their students. So the importance of having as qualified as possible students to feed the needs that the market has and the example from AT&T is very real. So I know that in Senegal, your department, your ministry has been leading a program that has been possible to provide computers and internet in a very affordable way for Senegal. So I would like to ask if you can share details of that program to the audience. Mr. Nien. Thank you, Mr. President. I would like to thank the organizers of this forum for having wanted to share our experience. Thank you very much to this co-chair and I would also like to thank all the organizers of this forum so that we can share our experience. Very quickly, the context of this experience is born of the evaluation that we have made of the system of higher education in Senegal. This experience started when we actually assessed the higher education in Senegal. In 2011, Senegal, after analyzing the context of its higher education, defined a strategic plan in 2011-2016. And after we finished this assessment, we started, which was in 2011, we started to define a strategic plan over five years from 2011 until 2016. And within this strategic plan, the government of Senegal signed the performance contracts with public universities. And within this strategic plan, the government of Senegal signed a performance agreement with private companies. At the level of the government, we signed five specific goals at each university. And each university had five targeted goals. Among these goals, there is the improvement of TIC. One of them, the first one, is to improve the use of ICTs. Among these goals, there is the improvement of TIC. And we have a massive financing process for the infrastructure in universities. And what we did, we started a huge financing of the infrastructures in the universities. Some examples are, for example, some server rooms, fiber optic networks in the campuses, an interconnection between the different public universities. We also set up a new learning network. This whole financing is of $75 million. This was thanks to the help of the World Bank through a loan, but also through the budget of the country of Senegal. The aim of the development of this investment are actually around four pillars of access. Improvement of the technological platform of the higher education. Improvement of the management of software. Development of e-training. And strengthening the access to electronic documentation, resources. After these investments that were intended to enhance the technological platform of the universities, the government of Senegal made the decision to modernize the learning environment of the students. And to better prepare them for the future. Once the technological platform was improved, once all the contents were digitalized, we needed students to have the tool so that the students may be able to access the whole technological platform. And this is within this framework that the program One Student, One Computer was born. The program is designed so that students can have affordable computers. The components of the programs are the following quickly said. To facilitate the purchase and the controlling of the purchase of a laptop for a student. Connectivity inside and outside the campus. Exemptions of taxes so that they are affordable computers. Subsidies coming from universities themselves. Students were also able to access to a credit so that they can finance their purchase. And then a lot of training so that they know how to use ITCs. E-learning training for basic knowledge. And also a customer service and also to support the purchase. So what are the program bases or the pillars of the program? Two pillars. There is a partnership between the public, the private and the donor. And it is based on this partnership that we set up the financing. The first support came from the World Bank which supported the performance agreement with universities. Universities used part of these subsidies to support the students when they were purchasing a computer. The second partner is the government to encourage and supervise the process of the convention. In order to frame and oversee the process of the agreement. What is new is actually the position of the government. Because they are managing the process without being an obstacle to this process. The third pillars are the universities. In order to define what are our priorities and which students should be the one that can purchase these computers. And also identify who should benefit from them. We also have Intel who has been one of our partners. In the support and design of the project. Because the Senegalese government had the resources. Universities had identified who would be the target. But we needed something lacking to establish a consistent and start implementing the project. And this is where Intel came into play. We also have the support from the Senegalese Bank. Because it pays the students' grants. And students can also benefit from a credit to finance. We have also a manufacturer of computers. Which, without any bid, has wanted to position this organization in the market. If I may, the name of this maker is Samsung. I'm sorry if it sounds like advertising. And finally, a national company who is in charge of distributing the computer. This is how the program was organized. The pros of this program is the financial model. And what we need to know is how to finance a program. So that the students can also actually chip in. And we have found the answer on four levels. The first level is that there was exemption of customs taxes. The second level is the subsidies that were granted to students by universities. This subsidy represents 50% of the cost of the computer. The exemption from the government represents 26% of the cost of the computer. The third level was the engagement of the students themselves. And this contribution was of 24%. So you have 50% coming from the university. 26% coming from exemptions of taxes from the state. Thereby, the computer costs 24% of its overall cost for the students. The other pillar was the commercial bank in Senegal. This bank gives a grant to the students because the bank is the one which is managing the grant. It can have a 10 or 12-month credit line. So something around 5,000 something euros. If the student is not someone who is benefiting from a grant, he can himself pay the equivalent of what the bank would have actually loaned to him. For the first computer, the standard computer, the range of computers, the price would have cost about 100 euros for a student. So through this model, the EcoBank which was the partner bank in Senegal loaned approximately $170,000 to students. The university subsidized students and this cost the university $780,000. The subsidies from the state through exemptions of taxes and customs for $400,000. So the outcomes are 20,000 students actually enrolled the program. It was a late start. But at the end of the day, 6,000 computers were distributed to students. So what I would like to do is to share with you the factors that help for the success of this program. If you can go briefly through the results in just one minute because we are running, we still need His Excellency, the Minister Bruno Connaix and also her from the audience. So if you can just go to your point in just one minute and we will go through another question. We will have more time to come back to a great example of the student program in Senegal. Very good. Thank you. So successes are three. The individual will of the students to buy or not to buy a computer. The second point is the state which enables this by tax exemptions. And the third point is that the student could use a bank to finance this purchase. Later on we will talk about the sustainability and perspectives of the program. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So very good example. So we have heard about tax exemption. We have heard about credit loan from international banks and Senegalese banks. We have heard about subsidies from universities. So very innovative way to get the solution affordable for students in Senegal. So let me right now go to His Excellency, Minister Bruno Connaix. I know you have been leading a key program also in Côte d'Ivoire. You recently announced a program to provide 500,000 to 500,000 families, computers and internet. So I would like you share with us and with the audience the details of that program and the financing way of that program also. Please. Thank you Carlos. I would like to start by saying that the illiteracy and alphabetism are real challenges in which our countries are confronted. Because it is obvious that people who are not at school, who do not know how to read, who do not know how to write can be a little bit excluded from the production system. Or even when they are in the production system, they contribute less than you and me, for example. So it is important that the whole population, in one way or another, is trained and access to literature, to reading, etc. One foot. Thank you Carlos. Thank you Carlos. First of all I would like to say that illiteracy is a major challenge for our countries. Somebody who has not been to school, somebody who cannot read or write is really excluded from the system of production. Or even if they can read might to a certain extent they are less productive. So it is very important to ensure that access is provided to the population to training and education. For a country like Côte d'Ivoire, unfortunately it is still 40% of the alphabet. 40% of people who do not know how to read or write. And in some African countries, you have rates that reach 80%. So you see the flow that this can represent. In the Côte d'Ivoire and the Ivory Coast, the level of illiteracy is 40%. 40% of the population can't read or write. And in other African countries, this figure is as high as 80%. So you can see what a serious problem it is. And fortunately we have the TIC who are today a real opportunity to fix this problem, to find a solution to this difficulty. But to fix the problem of illiteracy is not only to give computers or not only to provide the didactic content. It is at least a point of view to create a global ecosystem in which there is a cohesion. ICTs are really an opportunity to address this problem, this difficulty that our societies face. And I think that combating illiteracy is not only a question of providing PCs and educational content, but it's also important to create a whole ecosystem and to ensure consistency right across that ecosystem. Because the one who will have the PC will need a regulatory environment to secure it. He will need connectivity. Because obviously if there is no beginning, it's a difficulty. We are mainly talking about accessibility, which is actually a constraint, but it's not the only one. After, there is the content. Once we have created, we also need content to interest the students in question. And then we also think that in this global strategy, at least one or the other, we also need human resources to, at each step, bring the help that we need. We need resources to install the equipment, we need resources to do maintenance, we need resources to do training, etc. So all of this needs a global plan. And that's why, as you can see, we have chosen to put together a strategy in which each team is involved. So when you provide the PCs, you also have to ensure a regulatory environment. You have to ensure security, connectivity, the appropriate bit rate, accessibility. But then after you have dealt with all of these issues of putting in place the infrastructure, you have to deal with the content. So it's very important to have an overall strategy to provide the human resources to provide the equipment, to ensure maintenance, to ensure the training necessary so that people have the right skills. So this is what we've done in the Côte d'Ivoire. We have established an overall strategic plan to implement this development of our ICT sector. So to answer your question about the 500,000 computers, this is dealing with the section of our plan under the heading of accessibility. So we have two tracks in this strategy. The first is the have two tracks in this strategy to provide accessibility, one to individuals, but also to provide collective access via the creation of multimedia centers in rural areas. We're planning to set up 5,000 of these across the country, and there will be five, 10, 20 places according to the size of the village, but this will enable people to have access to internet and to these new technologies. We're going to do a study on an computer, then we're going to do a doctor, an computer, an employee, an computer. So the idea is to extend the accessibility to the individual as much as possible on bases that are very close to those described by Mr. Guillain by essentially basing us on the de-fiscalization of the material, by example, on the subvention, which in some cases can be linked to the material, because we estimate that for a university teacher, for example, to give him a computer is to multiply the possibility of touching other people behind, especially the students of this teacher, and so there is a public interest that can justify the subvention of the material. So as regards the first of the two tracks, individual access, we have a strategy that's rather similar to that described by Mr. Guillain from Senegal, but we're targeting a more specific approach to the development of the digital technology and we're targeting a broader segment of the population, just university students, the slogan is one citizen, one computer. We started out with teachers, one teacher, one computer, then the idea is to extend it to students, one student, one computer, one doctor, one computer, one official, one computer, and then we also similarly to Senegal, we have a system of tax exemption and subsidies. For example, for universities, this is a means of spreading the access to this connectivity. Universities can reach out to a larger segment of the population, so there's a public interest that justifies the granting of these subsidies. And then we the other aspect to promote the spread of these computers is to provide appropriate financing. The banks can provide the money and the banks benefit from a guarantee from the state. Okay, I'm going to stop there and continue this at a later stage. Thank you very much. I was just going to say, as a segue to His Excellency Minister's comments just now, I was talking about the supply side, but there's also the demand side that we have not touched on. For example, I think you may have heard my minister mention this morning that one of the key things that we started out with law time ago was getting our industry, the Telcos, involved in pushing ICT access for education. We started with actually providing broadband access to 10,000 schools in 2003, 10 years ago. I can share with you some of our failures, so maybe you don't repeat them. I'm going to start with you. I can share with you some of our failures, so maybe you don't repeat them. Some of the learnings. I think it's important to learn how to learn from the failures so that from there we can avoid some of the things. For example, in 2003, all the wisest men in Malaysia thought the broadband required for schools one megabit to the school should be enough. Because in 2003, there was very little material that was online and a lot of the communications between the schools was just purely for communication. How wrong we were. Now schools, if they have anything less than 10 megabits, at least in Malaysia they say they don't have enough. And when we introduce the laptops into the schools to help bolster the informal part of the education together with the formal part of education, even 10 megabits now becomes not enough. So if you ask me what is the next number, I honestly do not know. But I would agree with the two other panelists. Earlier one of the things that we also did in Malaysia was we removed all taxes on computers, all taxes on ICT devices, including tablets. Because we've also learned that laptops and computers will be one form of access to ICT, but increasingly, especially in the last three years, tablets or phablets or smartphones have become the norm. And we're seeing, again, another transformation going through about how all these devices are being used in education. I think in the earlier session this morning when the Ministry of Foreign there was also that question about teachers being ready or not ready to teach. We have found that to also be quite true. Whereas the children will adapt and adopt technology very quickly as part of their lives, we've had to spend a lot of time and money and effort together with the Education Ministry to transform the way in which teachers approach this. And as I mentioned, we use multiple technology platforms being broadband, satellite, normal terrestrial TV program to provide a wholesome educational ecosystem because for us it's not just about broadband as I mentioned. It's about meaningful access to broadband. And education happens to be, to us, a very, very important priority. Thank you. So just a reminder. So we have had two sessions this morning. This is why I'm asking this question about financing. It's specifically about financing, but it's really good sharing the BKMs and sharing also the failures. Sometimes we learn more from the failures than from the taxes. So thank you, Sanil. So let me summarize till now. So we have heard the use of universal service funds from Dato Sarin. We have heard also from Eric how the private sector has been really involved and is involved trying to have the skills that are needed to continue running the business. So we have heard for his excellency a very integrated program in Senegal that goes from setting the laying out the plan and also the content, the universities and at the end, securing that the students can have access to the technology in a very affordable way. And from his excellency, the minister, we have heard also a very integral plan on how to address one of the key programs that is digital literacy and also involving officials, also involving health, education. So also using all the kind of tools that a government has, that is taxes, that is subsidies, subsidies that make the economy grow and have a sense for the society. So let me open right now the panel to the floor. So I would like to have two, three questions. Please be brief in your questions. And then we will come back to the panelist. So anyone has any questions for the panelist that would like to raise? Can someone provide a microphone for her? Please identify yourself and try to be brief. Yes. My name is Diarye Tujeng. I'm from Orange, which is a tail co-operator in Senegal. I would like to ask from you, from AT&T, what have you done related to connectivity and also in Malaysia related to connectivity? What have you done specifically for school? Is it special fare? Is it free for school? What have you done? Okay. So before to answer any additional question, so there is a direct question for Eric and direct question for Sharil. Okay. So a microphone for him, please. Thank you. My name is Orlando Damata from Angola. I would like to know how many students you have in the high school, high level. Thank you. To who is this? Senegal. Okay. Okay. Okay. So please, Eric. Well, I can, to answer the question, actually quite a number of countries, because we operate, we have licenses in about 60 countries, and I can't remember off the top of my hand how many, but quite a number of the countries where we have services, where there is a government program in place, to ensure that anchor institutions, libraries, schools, et cetera, have a broadband connection, and it can be through some form of either it's a universal service program or some other form of E-education program. So that's certainly one way in which we have been involved in that aspect of transforming education. And perhaps later after we come back to things, I'll talk a little bit more about how we are using some of the more advanced connectivity and cloud technologies to change the way of delivering education curricula. I'll come back to that after Shreel. Thank you. Yeah, short answer to your question, actually. It was a combination of things. We started off by using some of the universal service fund to subsidize access to broadband access to the schools, in some schools, but what we've discovered as we went along our journey, we realized that, and the telcos realized that this was an opportunity for a new market for them. What happened was when the kids were connected in school and then they started having to do assignments and research online, they then had the desire to have the broadband. And when the teachers wanted to communicate with the parents, that also created a desire to have the broadband. So the telcos then realized that this was a new market that didn't have to spend so much money doing advertising and promotion. It was a captive market. So what they then did was they introduced special fares, special tariffs for the school kids and the family. They have a family package where it was a certain amount of money, a fairly affordable package. The family plus people in the family could have access to the internet on broadband and also access to school. So the creation of the environment led to an economic opportunity for the service provider and that led to the development of the ecosystem. Because if you think about it today, even here in Thailand, I think if you drive around, you will see some of the biggest advertisers at telcos, billboards all over having so many bars for so many minutes and so on. Same thing in Malaysia. If you look at the advertising promotion budget that a telco spends in a year, they are in the hundreds of millions. Now, instead of spending that money, one of the conversations we had with the telcos was instead of spending that kind of money, if you were willing to come in and join us together with the Education Ministry to see how we can help provide access to schools, then the same amount you spend on advertising promotion, this one almost guarantees you a subscription, whereas the other one potentially would just introduce you as a brand and then you find your competitor comes in and charges a lower price and you lose the potential customer. Very good example of private and public partnership and at the end, the benefit is for the society and for the country. So let's go to the second question for His Excellency Nhani about Senegal, how many high students? Thank you for the answer to the question from Abidangola. There are about 120,000 students in 5 public universities, about 30,000 students in 20 private establishments and this year, Senegal created a virtual university that will welcome 6,000 students. We have about 120,000 students in the 5 universities that were targeted, public universities. Then 30,000 students in the private and this year we're going to have a virtual university. Okay, very good question. So let me, please. Just would like to thank Dr. Sanil for his observation and his help to learn from the failures and errors. But I think clearly that this error happened because they didn't have the holistic view I'm talking about. You need to have a complete view, a strategy taking into account each aspect of an ICT development. So regulatory environment, infrastructure, connectivity, accessibility, content and human resources. If one lacks, you go straight in a mistake. It's very true. Just to give you a... 10 years later we'll learn about it. Now I can say, yeah. For the benefit of Dr. Sanil, we say it was 2003, so 10 years ago. Nobody was even thinking of it in 2003. Thinking was different. But this is the result of the BKM sharing. So an improving program every year and learning from the failures. You have mentioned in several times, Mr. about content. So we have, after this session, a panel specifically on content. We now is really key and local content. So for those of you that will be interested on now more about content and educational content and how we overcome that barrier. So please stay in the room and in the next panel we will go through that in a big way. So let me ask also again to the panelists one question to share with the audience. So every of you have implemented very innovative programs and found ways to finance those programs in a very innovative and creative way. So I would like to ask what has been for you and for the audience here in order to learn. Imagine that you are talking with your colleagues and you are making sharing what is the key difficulty that you find to make happen. Remember how we may happen. So what is the key difficulty that you have overcome to make happen your program and how you resolve it. So and I will ask also if you can be brief in your reply. So we have more time for the audience also for again have the floor in questions. So please first. Thank you. Key difficulty if I can look back at history is changing the mindset. And Ben mind when I say changing the mindset I am talking about an environment 10 years ago in 2003 when nobody was talking about broadband everyone was still talking about Internet. People thought broadband was in the area and the domain of Google. Even Facebook wasn't really up. Twitter was not even anywhere. So that was the time we were doing some of these things. But the biggest challenge we had then and even to some extent today is changing the mindset. People would say you know I have $10 to live on today. Why do I need to take $1 to pay for broadband for one day? So the challenge was showing the utility value of broadband and how broadband can help transform their lives. Can be meaningful to them so that they will see the benefit that it brings. That was the biggest challenge. It remains a challenge in some of the further outlying communities. And you know we continue to struggle which is why here at ITU Telecom World we decided to showcase some of the transformational powers of broadband to show people that it's not about the broadband. It's about how they can improve their lives with a little assistance from broadband. I think that helped to break through some of that. Responding to the question why do I need broadband? I've lived 50 years of my life with no need for broadband. Why do I need to have one now? Thank you. Eric, if you want to share one of the programs that I know AT&T has been a step forward trying to help together with universities and the gap that AT&T has identified so please share with us. So you know a little bit earlier Sheryl was talking about the need to transform programs and particularly so to address the affordability and access issues of education. We talk about affordability and access of connectivity but affordability and access of education particularly at the higher education level is a really significant issue and when you look at all the different sectors where there's been a huge productivity gains from technology education hasn't necessarily been one of them in terms of the business, the model of education particularly higher education which is an instructor, students in the classroom. That's the traditional model. The whole productivity benefit of technology kind of had lagged in the education area and so that's another area where we were again looking at this issue, this skills gap coming down the line and seeing if there could be something more effective to reach more people more affordably, more broadly using the strengths of connectivity using the strengths of cloud-based technology and so we recently worked together with Georgia Tech in the U.S. to create a Masters of Computer Science entire course as a MOOC, as a massive online course an entire, absolutely full-blown Masters of Computer Science curricula as a MOOC and the registration opened up for this just, it's about two months ago that the registration for the next curriculum cycle opened up and some of the feedback came back after just a month and a half of registration they had multiples more registration than they had had over the course of an entire year coming up and this is only about two months there's already participants from 80 countries registered all 50 states in the U.S. the entire Masters of Computer Science degree is, I'm forgetting the exact amount, around $7,000 but in the U.S. at least a fraction of traditional cost and the benefit here again is you're going to have you're going to spread the training of a very much needed high-skills area where there's a shortage of supply and it's trying to just approach the challenge from a different way and trying to bring some of these productivity differences to this field so that's actually, it's a very new development which we're excited to see how it works out great collaboration with the university and we'll see where it goes but we're excited for it Excellent program, an excellent example so it's an excellency in the end so can you share what is the key difficulty that you would like to share with the audience and also if you can share with the audience what is the monthly fee that a student needs to pay for getting the computer and the internet in the student program I think it will be awesome for the audience please and I try to be concise so we'll have more time for questions but please go ahead Thank you Mr. President So for the major difficulties I can name one not only one but three sorry The first thing is to convince the government that it's a serious program you have to renounce to 26% of the tax The first thing was to convince the government that this is a really good program and that they had to renounce to 26% of taxes The second difficulty was for people who never work together the bank, the students and the manufacturer of the machines to work together and the third problem was to actually raise the financing up to the level of the program How much is the connection? Well at the moment we are discussing with the Telcoms company in Senegal and we think that per month for a student he will pay between 2 to 3 euros per month to access internet especially when he's not in the campus because inside the campus they can benefit from Wi-Fi everywhere So thank you very much So three key barriers for your colleagues on how to overcome the problems to make it happen, the program So let's go to His Excellency, Minister Can you share the key difficulties from your program? Okay I'm trying to help you save some translation time but the consequence is my very poor English I'm sorry for that I think the first difficulty we had in Côte d'Ivoire is a paradox because it is the delays coming from the state itself We had to go through tenders for example to close the supplier and only on that point we've lost one year That's why I'm very surprised in Senegal they have to just to close the supplier maybe Mr. Nian will tell me how they did but we've lost one year only on that point choosing the supplier The second point I think is that I'm still struggling with my colleagues in charge of finance to have a tax exemption This is a real difficulty but I'm still thinking that we'll succeed And the third point in the case of Côte d'Ivoire that we are still struggling to have the price we think affordable for students for example They had in Senegal 50% I've noted 50% coming from universities Maybe they have special resources for that but we don't have in our plan in Côte d'Ivoire we don't have these 50% So we can have tax exemption maybe the same amount, the same percentage 26% We can have some subsidy from the universal service maybe 10% or 20% but all the difference will be paid by the students So 50% to 60% That's still for the level of grant the students have in Côte d'Ivoire that's still a high amount So I think these are the three difficulties we're facing in Côte d'Ivoire Excellent, so we have heard this morning also that mindset need to change and also that it's not only externally but it's internally it's ourselves and we have heard right now from both from Senegal and from Côte d'Ivoire that one of the key challenges has been convincing on government, on the taxes, on all the paper Can you both of you share you have convinced it because you have deployed the program What is a what you would like to recommend your colleagues that are right now here listening to you because you already overcome that barrier they maybe not yet So what is the recommendation or how you convince it your prime minister or how you convince it your minister of economy for that tax exemption and I know this is a very challenging question and I know that Daniel will be interested also to I was just going to say the ones in the room don't need the convincing they're here, they know I'm here the people not in this room But I think it's good to listen from this excellency and minister Cône if you would like to share briefly what do you think that make them got it Maybe I will stop The first is a point that is regularly reasoned by ITU saying that in a country like Côte d'Ivoire with an economy like Côte d'Ivoire 10% of penetration of broadband generate one point of GDP growth each year Every minister of finance can measure what that represents and that can be a big amount So 10% generate one point of GDP growth This I think it is the main argument we have The second argument I think is not in figure but that ICTs improve all the economy When you invest in ICT you invest indirectly in each sector of the economy When we invest in ICT in Côte d'Ivoire we are sure that we are impacting agriculture we are impacting exportation of cocoa, of banana, of coffee we are impacting education, we are impacting health every sector and that can be also measured And these arguments for me are maybe the first to give to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance If I can summarize I will say that is talking his language When you talk his language he really got it he really understand His excellency Nhani So you can share how you convince your Prime Minister or how you convince your Ministry of Economy to have this tax exemption and support in the program Thank you Mr. President Just two things First we said to the government that there are 26% of students who abandon because they don't have room in the amphitheater If these students are now desordinators of online courses it allows them to stay in the system So it is an investment from that point of view already So last year Senegal had 33,000 students obtaining the baccalaureate and the public universities could only receive 26,000 So that leaves 6,000 And the government paid the private universities to take on these 6,000 students So if you buy 6,000 computers for the 6,000 students and they go to a virtual university where they can follow online classes this is actually a saving, this would be a saving for the government and it's also important from the point of view of social policy because it avoids social tensions and crisis and so this was the argument that convinced the government Excellent So if I can summarize, I think every country is different but it's a similar approach that the minister shared with us and at the end he's talking his language So it's a benefit from the minister of economy because they don't need to pay in another way and it's a social benefit that at the end will come back to the government and to the society So very good two examples, thank you for sharing So we have still time for one, two more questions from the audience Please, a microphone, identify yourself and try to be brief and concede your question, please Thank you very much My name is Saya Vinumou, I come from France for eHealth Company Just, we see that ministers are doing a lot of effort Can the service provider like Orange also be involved? I mean, for example, when it's remaining 26% for the student if they can give just a computer connected with their network for one year so maybe they can give the computer to the student and say, you stay with us one or two years, is this possible or not? So the question is for the panel or is for Orange So can you be precise on what the question is for the panelist? So I'm sure the Orange person will be happy to talk with you after all but if you have a question from the audience, from the panelist So can you repeat your question for the panelist? My question, in fact, is for the panelist, is for the ministers if they can deal with telecom companies because the telecom company is a private company they need to know what they will earn, what will be their benefit if they do it, they have a lot of money, they can put a lot of money inside and now we are looking for money that the student will pay and he doesn't have it so the telecom company can give it to the student but not in cash but as a computer for example in Europe we never buy our mobile phones the telecom company they give it to us every time but we stay with them for one year so the government can use the kind of system so that the student doesn't have anything to pay So I think the question is direct for His Excellency Ok, I'll try to answer In a previous slide I could have answered on behalf of Orange but today I could not As a minister today, what I can say is that in Cote d'Ivoire we appreciate the collaboration with private sector In Cote d'Ivoire the private companies especially mobile companies have contributed a huge amount thousands of computers and laptops have been given to the education system the public education system so that helps us equip today I think more than 200 secondary schools in Cote d'Ivoire so I can say that is appreciable The second thing is that the private sector contributes and directly because the persons who pay for the universal service fund today it is 3% of the turnover each year In Cote d'Ivoire it's close to 30 million US dollars each year so it's quite appreciable and we can use this money to invest to give subsidies to make things so I think we should not neglect the contribution of the private sector Excellent, excellent Any more questions from the floor for the panelists? Please, a microphone here in the first line Please identify yourself Yes, good afternoon My name is George Hain and I'm from the Asian Development Bank I have a question for AT&T actually I was very interested to hear about your program for training and for financing this training I was wondering is this part of your corporate social responsibility program within AT&T or is this part of your regular business because I'm wondering if this could be replicated I mean you said that you were active in several countries throughout the world Is this part of your CSR program or is this part of your regular business? Yes, so a little bit of both The money made available in the ASPIRE program is from our foundation and so that's there but we've also done a lot of things to pair the priorities that we've set through that program so that as well, for example things that employees are doing in the community or working with universities or schools near the places where we have locations of business not just in the US but outside the US has also been a very aligned part of what we're doing so this emphasis on education has kind of filtered throughout definitely a funding element but also an element, for example one of the locations where we have a good sized technical workforce in the eastern part of Slovakia, Klosice the office there has done a lot of close work with the university and our office in London has partnered with a secondary school to do mentoring and to bring job shadowing and to bring kids in so that they can see and experience some of the workforce experiences so it's a variety of factors but what I think has helped set a tone is that it has been a tone set from the top that the alignment here, it is philanthropy but it is also very much about the long term health of our community and our company and they all fit together so that's made it a very natural fit Okay, thank you very much so we have still five, six minutes more so I would like to ask each of the panelists to share in one, two minutes one minute if it's possible a final recommendation for the audience so you have go through very tough moments implementing your projects and convincing your bosses so what you would like to share as a final recommendation to your peers, colleagues in the floor that just to be consistent one minute and then we will wrap up, please Okay, so we will start with Minister His Excellency Minister Connais I will come back to French just to say that there is a rich man and that the interest of our states is to invest as much as we can in human resources all the money that is invested in education is a completely profitable money it's a money that the return on investment is assured so you have to have no hesitation to invest in this material and the chance that we have today is to have a tool, the TIC wealth is mankind itself investment in human resources is something that is by definition by its very nature profitable with a guaranteed return on investment so I would say you should never hesitate to invest and now we have the good fortune of having ICTs as a vehicle through which we can invest in human resources and especially for our African states our African states that are still in development or that are relatively poor the opportunities that represent the TIC must be completely exploited these are real wealth real solutions for our states that allow both efficiency but also an important reduction earlier Mr. Nian made an allusion for example to the difficulty that had to find the amphitheater and that was resolved by the TIC as you can see we have the difficulty of having qualified teachers in all universities and since we have universities on all areas of the territory today with the TIC from one point it is possible for all the others so it is a real opportunity for states like ours that don't have a lot of money a real advantage to take I have concluded on that Thank you they can reduce costs Mr. Nian talked just now about the difficulty of having adequate capacity in amphitheaters and how it was possible to solve that problem via the use of ICTs now in Ivory Coast we have a large number of qualified university teachers and we can use their skills spreading them through ICTs throughout the whole country so these ICTs represent the opportunity that we should seize Excellent Is that good Mr. Nian? Thank you Mr. President Regarding this I can conclude on two things that seem important to me The first is the the Senegal that was 33,000 new students in 2011 41,000 students in 2013 and we are expecting 50,000 next year so to relax the students to have the originators in the system is necessary Well I'd like to make two points first of all I said that we had 33,000 high school students getting their baccalaureate in 2010 41,000 in 2012 and it's been 50,000 next year so it's important to have access to computers The second thing is financing in a country in the Middle East financing is important and durable The second point is the challenge of financing we are a middle income country and it's important to have a sustainable system to fund this project the resources the development partners but also the telecommunications and the regulation of telecommunications in Senegal and we think that with this economic model our project can continue to be pyramid So the state will provide financing but also the private sector regulatory bodies and with the structure that I've described to you I think that we now have a sustainable footing Thank you Eric, please Well just a simple point as we've been talking about many of the examples today there is just a tremendous opportunity for collaboration between private sector and the public sector the interests of a well educated community are aligned the best I can say is just for finding the many opportunities to cooperate and AT&T and Shreel and the MC have had some interesting opportunities and there are a lot of other things out there so I think that's an exciting potential for all of us Excellent Sarin, please Yes, thank you Eric We suddenly you know I don't know how many of you are students of English literature there's a quote that I'd like to share this is 17th century poet a little learning is a dangerous thing drink deep or taste not the Perian springs for the shallow drafts intoxicate the brain and drinking largely sobers as again In our journey in Malaysia we went through hills and veils trying this, trying that spending some money here and there because in those days when we started the journey because there was a dream the dream was to transform Malaysia and become a developed country to become developed country by the year 2020 to have ICT as the driver in the next engine of growth that was the policy set by the Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir and that was the driving light if you like there were no books to refer to there was no programs to refer to there was nobody to look at so as we went along in that journey for the last 15 years many times when we've had to drink deep because we were thinking oh we know this one this is the solution two years later we were proven no that's not the way to do it we're a little wiser I think we now know enough to know what we do not know it's useful to know what you do not know for when you know that then you know you're a little wiser but I think long and short we've been very fortunate that the industry in Malaysia has also been supportive to also share the same vision to develop the country including foreign investors from the AT&T coming into Malaysia so that ecosystem you know Intel is a big partner for Malaysia that entire ecosystem helped by friends and colleagues alike has definitely helped us along our journey because only in 2006 our household broadband penetration was below 50% now in 2013 six and a half years later we've almost hit 70% of our household penetration on broadband and we hope to grow further and God willing you know we'll get there thank you thank you very much so we have run out of time so I would like to thank you very much distinguished panelists today for sharing their projects I think at least we have learned about very different ways of financing in learning programs from universal service funds from private sector partnering with public sector with also banks international banks, local banks so I think the duty is in every of us to try to find the way to make it happen the first question that we have at the beginning how we make it happen so just if minister can allow me using his words so tenacity and don't give it up so if you have your dream how to make that happen in your country go for it and partner with public and private sector and you will find a way to do it so thank you very much