 I'm delighted to welcome to the studio this morning his Excellency Mohamed Ibrahim. He's the Minister for Posts and Telecommunication for the country of Somalia. Minister, thank you very much for joining us. You're welcome. You're here for a focus group on digital financial services. Can you tell me why this kind of focus group is important? I think it's just about time. I think it's important that we have a group specifically looking at this sector. It's an area that we overlooked. The governments thought someone else was doing the ITU thought someone else was doing but in fact nobody was doing it probably. So the time has come that this group to look at it and see what are the implications. How do we increase financial inclusion? What are the imperatives? What are the rules and the frameworks that cover this? I think that's why it's important. Do you think this kind of initiative will contribute to digital financial inclusion? Bringing people together from different sectors around the world? I think so. I think it's already happening but it's a bit haphazard because it's happening in different levels. So you have spectrum, you can say for example, from the ambassador level where it's very fully functional to an area like Somalia where it's happening but maybe the legal framework is not strong enough to mitigate risk and make sure that citizens get what they deserve and so on. So yes, it will help and it's again very timely. It's very important for the embanked, the poor people even in a poor country like Somalia even more so who need to have financial services to get away that they can be part of the community again. What kind of policies either are being implemented or are being considered to help promote digital inclusion particularly in a country like Somalia which has challenges of a large poor population? See, in our case you're right. The issue in Somalia is a little bit different. It's actually unique in a way. We had almost two and a half decades of properly functioning government. That makes the challenge even greater but having said that, the good news is that the private sector actually worked without legal framework. Somehow the telecommunications sector just kept on going and many people and you probably read this in the literature, many people comment on how efficient they worked and how cheap it was but that was in the past things have changed now and there's a lot of competition. So by having mobile money or what people back home call airtime, in other words people buying airtime and then using that airtime for financial purposes is quite useful because for the poor people people who are earning a small amount of money, it's a big challenge for them to have a bank account in other words they might not be even able to have enough money to open a bank account but having a $10 or $20 mobile phone all of a sudden they have a facility that will put them back into the financial services. What are the main challenges for you in Somalia and implementing a digital financial services policy framework? We have few challenges. One of them is probably unique to Somalia. This is the violence and the terrorism and so on which is diminishing. Those I guess started young kids are now no longer powerful and they're marginalized but on the other hand there's another problem that we share with the rest of the world which is how do we create the necessary legal framework to manage two industries that somehow got converged. You have the telecommunications sector and the finance sector and all of a sudden now we have those two becoming one where you can do your voice and data as the old way of using mobiles as well as using that for financial services. Now the question is the politicians and the governments must move fast enough to come up with the necessary legislations to rule this area to actually say how do we manage this? How do we govern this? Because all of a sudden telecommunication is no longer just a voice and data. It's actually more than that. It's also money involvement. These are actually, as you say, these are both actually highly regulated sectors. Does that help or does that hinder? Well in some countries it does hinder and it's an interesting point to elaborate. You see one reason that mobile money worked better in developing countries might actually explain what's going on. If you look at Australia or the US for some reason mobile money didn't take off for example as fast as in Kenya or in Somalia and the reason is because the rules are rules. They're very rigid and they're very formalized and the government and the governments want to know what's going on whereby in developing countries the technology just took off. There was a need for money and liquidity in the economy and people just say how do you do it? If it's mobile let's just do it. Let the governments and the institutions catch up when they wake up one day which they did ultimately and now we have to legislate literally working backwards. We're looking at this focus group meeting on promoting better international institutional cooperation. How important is that and how do you see that playing out? There is a need for collaboration. I guess it's just like anything else we do whether it is in medicine or a culture or whatever. The need for this focus group if you look at any other endeavor in whatever we do in human history when you look at it at the global level as a big issue you never get the necessary answers for the specific problem and hence the need to focus so we have to really drill down and say look we're not just talking about financial services in general. We're looking at one specific area. We're looking at financial services but through mobile through iPad or whatever it is through electronics. Now if dollars as we knew the green back and the engold we trust and no longer that's not the case and we have now zero someone's then obviously we need to collaborate. We need to collaborate with industry, with the ITU, with the telecommunication, with all these other industries and without that this will not work and we don't want it to fail because really a lot of things depend on this. Could you tell me a little bit about what's actually happening in Somalia right now? How are people using the service? How do you envisage it further developing? It's now almost indispensable. In other words using mobile phone or mobile facilities for financial services. I don't think we can go back. A lot of people now rely on this. It's not secret anymore. The whole Somali economy is virtualized. In other words you will hardly see cash in Somalia. People are using mobile money. You go to a shop. You will notice cash still is actually a number. People will tell you call that number to pay for your bill. Now is that good or bad? I guess it depends on where you sit, whether you are on the government side and the legal frameworks and people like me who worry about to make sure that Somali citizen or any other citizen anywhere else in the world gets what they bade for and risks are mitigated and people get value for money. And others who will be on the other side and worry about the market model. I'm going to say no, no, no. We really have to just keep bushing and it doesn't matter even if we take risks. The greater benefit is for the good and we have to do that way. So it's a debate that's still fluid. We're still trying to figure out where we will end up. But I am optimist. I think the way forward is through technology. Not just because I'm a technology expert involved in the industry but I can see already the light. I can see where we're going with this. So with a small footprint, with governments doing as little as possible just to make sure the rules are working, this will continue and it will develop the national economy. It all sounds very positive. One last question. Is there a cyber security development? Are there risks there of accounts being hacked or some kind of abuse of the system? It can happen. I don't want to exaggerate that part of the business. It's just like anything else. Even the big banks have problems in that area whether you are in a small country or whether you're in Australia or US. It's a risk that we all face. Now as we speak, for example, tomorrow on the day after there's a big conference in Berlin talking about cyber security. So that I'm not belittling that. But what I'm trying to highlight is the money involved, better section. It's not actually that much. For example, in Somalia we're talking about $300. So even in the event something goes wrong, really the end of the world. It's something that the companies can recover. I'm not saying that should be the way we run the business, but it's doable. And we shouldn't be scared. I think we should allow the private sector to take risks. Governments to be legislating and making sure that risks are mitigated. And for the long run, I think that will help the poor people. Minister Ibrahim, thank you very much indeed. You're welcome. Thank you.