 Welcome to PP18, the Plenipotentiary Conference 2018, here in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates for the International Telecommunication Union. I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Dr Amir Talat, who is Minister of Communications and Information Technology for Egypt. Dr Talat, welcome to the studio. Thank you for receiving me. Now I'd like to start off by asking you about the fact that there's considerable attention being placed on harlotting the power of information and communication technologies, or ICTs, as an enabler for good, for development and for the benefit of people, families, communities and nations, and what is your personal perspective on this? I was delighted when I first took this job, when I felt the consensus of all my peers in different organs of the Egyptian government on the pivotal role of ICT in embracing Egypt's current challenges and problems. Poverty, financial inclusion, education, health, everybody realises the role of ICT in all these challenges. So we're currently working on several very, very important projects in all these aspects. We're working to launch a comprehensive health insurance project by next year in one of our pivotal cities. We're also working on fibre to schools to improve the education system. We've just finished the first two stages of the unified database project that lends a 360 degree of the Egyptian digital citizen, which helps improve our vision on the eligibility of our citizens on their entitlement to social security projects. So all these projects and all these programmes serve as a great testimonial to the role of ICT in our new digital society. Very worthy and necessary projects that plenty potential conferences the first since the world agreed on the sustainable development goals in 2015. I wanted to ask you perhaps you could provide some examples of how ICTs are helping to drive sustainable development in Egypt. It is indeed helping in many, many ways. I'll just pick one or two for the sake of time. Electronic design is one of the areas where Egyptians are working with a lot of focus on enhancing our capability in designing electronic circuits and then have them manufactured and back to Egypt to be installed in different devices. We're also working on training and building capacity and ensuring the closure of the digital gap as you may call it, the skill gap between the new graduates and the demands of the labour market. We're also working on several projects where ICT will be the key and pivotal route for the recipient of such digital services for the Egyptian citizens. Now as we know about half the world's population are connected to the internet, the other half is not. What is Egypt doing to get everyone connected? Egypt has a very unique position in this respect with the second largest country in terms of terrestrial and submarine cable spotting through its soil and seas. We're bound to use this privilege, if I may call it, in order to enhance connectivity. We've improved from 46% to 64% in terms of households with a computer. We're determined to escalate even further on this route. In terms of mobile penetration it reached 99.5% so we're almost there. In terms of internet connectivity we're at 46% so we still have a room to grow. We're working seriously on fibre-to-home projects across the country. We're also leveraging new technologies in Amsans in order to enhance speed and increase the number of houses connected and citizens connected. Finally, we've got a very special audience tuning in to this. I wanted to ask you have you got a message for participants here at PP18 and also the wider audience in their home countries? Yes, I do. The last global competitiveness report has just been issued by the World Bank and I find Egypt market 24 out of 140 countries in the world. So it is a very ripe and promising market with a lot of potential. I call on investors to come and visit us. That's wonderful, Will. Thank you very much indeed for being with us in the studio and we look forward to catching up with you again in the future. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you.