 Your Honour, the Chair of PP8, the Secretary General and your team, your Excellency, my Colleagues Honourable Ministers, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, on behalf of the government and the people of the Republic of Malawi, allow me to bring greetings from the warm heart of Africa, Mr. Chairman, on this occasion of the 2018 Grand Potashary Conference PP18, let me start by congratulating the Chairman for your able leadership and tutelage. Let me thank the hosts, the government of the peoples of the United Arab Emirates for the warm and excellent hospitality according to me and the delegation since we arrived in this beautiful seat of Dubai. Let me also thank the ITU Secretary General, Mr. Haulin Jiao and his team for the excellent stewardship of our organization and all member states present for the commitment shown so far to this conference. Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, Malawi as a country recognized ICT as a key pillar for the economic development as evidenced by its inclusion in the my growth development strategy and midterm strategy for Malawi and the enactment of the national ICT policy to guide the development of the sector. In view of the ITU development goals, Malawi has embraced all aspects of the ITU Connect 2020 vision and the targets include growth, inclusiveness, sustainability, innovation and partnership. The following steps have been undertaken. One, Malawi reviewed the Communications Act 2016 in E-Transaction and Cybersecurity Act 2016 which will improve ICT utilization and access as well as facilitating easier access to the Universal Service Fund USF as a Sustainable Financing Services. Malawi is encouraging competition by among others implementing a convergent licensing framework which has introduced a work in licensing application in the sector. We are establishing the Fibre backbone to connect to the submarine cables through the regional communication infrastructure project RACIP Malawi and the National Fibre backbone project. Distincts, ladies and gentlemen, we are implementing the MADPAPOS Community Tennis Center project and other Universal Access projects as well as the piloting of television white space technology as a way of providing ICT access to rural areas. In order to address the supply and demand gaps in the country's broadband network, Malawi has formulated a national broadband strategy and the cybersecurity strategy to guide the process. The country is implementing the digital migration project in line with the regional and global deadlines and the harmonization of the digital dividends in order to facilitate socio-economic development of our country and we are also championing financial inclusion through mobile money platforms. Mr. Chairman these are just but a few among the many strategies which Malawi as a nation is pursuing to promote ICT development. It is therefore our considered view that the efforts being done by our country will facilitate in bringing of the digital dividend in line with ITU Connect 2020 vision goals and targets. In conclusion let me take this opportunity to thank ITU leadership for the support which it has rendered and is rendering to Malawi. The ITU experts assisted us in the development of the E-Waste Management Strategy and we are expecting experts in the month of November to conduct a cybersecurity training and assist in designing our national cert, CERT. Last year on behalf of my delegation I wish to express my gratitude to you Mr. Chairman for the able manner you are handling this conference and I have no doubt that this will be a highly successful plant potential conference and I wish you well for the rest of the conference. I thank you.