 Welcome to WTDC 17 in Argentina. I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today Mr. Abdul Karim Somalia who is a Secretary-General of the African Telecommunications Union. Mr. Somalia, great to see in the studio today. You see me too. Thank you too. Now I'd like to start off by talking about the theme for this World Telecommunication Development Conference is ICTs for SDGs. How does this theme resonate with your members? Yeah, I think you know Let's go back to first on the past. I will tell you when I work on my own countries we use at the beginning to fight with the UN local to put ICT as priority. But at those time most of the UN systems say no, there's no need. But now today people understand that. And especially the United Nations understand that ICT is across all the sector. Especially when you come to African countries where we have a lack of things like education, like health, like transport, like sending money because we're an associated way we don't have enough of banking. So all those things today we are so happy that the United States already puts them that ICT should be used to achieve to rid those SDGs. And so for us we think that our members already embrace those ideas. And all African countries at the beginning they don't want to invest on the ICT. Mostly we open it to the private sector. That's good. But on some area we think that member states should come and help private sector to achieve to reach some area because we think that the ICT should be across all the sector. Now the African Telecommunications Union represent a very wide range of members. What specific challenges are your members facing in integrating ICTs in their development agenda? I think what you said we have more than 46 African country member of the A2. It's not all the 53 who member of the A2. But however, the challenge for Africa is what? Mostly we're facing quality of service. Mostly we're facing the cover because until now we have to explain it clearly that there is area where many African countries there is no single senior on the wide range core beverage is still a need for us and it's still a big issue. I know we're talking about universal service access but we have to accept that member states should continue pushing telecom operator not only on the broadband but even to single to phone we still have the problem. Sometimes we have the signal but this one is not a good signal. So I think the coverage is another issue. We should continue facing that but also we know that our member states will find the funding issue also is another big problem for us. What about regulatory and policy reforms? What do you think needs to be put into place especially in Africa in order to bring connectivity and attain the sustainable development goals? I think in terms of the regulator issue I think we have to say that yes we have a lot of regulation. We open all the sector for private sector but today I think we're facing another kind of regulation because at the beginning we regulate too much waste but today there is regulation of the internet. I mean that is the data and this I think most our member states should be prepared to see how this regulation should be as always people say that's the dynamic regulation. So I think we should open our continue to open and especially for those even those new new coming on the sector because at the beginning we have traditional telecom operator but today we have a new new ICT provider. We were not afraid to say that but they were there they were in our door. So it asked to see how to manage them Facebook, Google, WhatsApp all those new technology. We have to see how to embarrass it. We will not say that we have to keep away of innovation and also with this new technology we have to push our young people to be involved so they can innovate they can create. So this I think is there is no way that we have to turn back on those issues. And finally what concrete actions would you like to see come out of WTDC 17? You know we're still here now at least two weeks. There is a strong discussion which we think that is okay. I think it's on the bilateral cooperation. We think that it's good. We have developed country here. We have those countries here but the atmosphere is good. But however we think that they have to understand there are some countries who until now need support. Not only those who come in for more but implementation of regional initiative. It's sometimes a big challenge owns IT itself but so we ask those member states to understand that to allow some funding to help some region who need to implement those initiatives. So I think we ask them to look and to understand the request that we ask sometimes. It's not because we want to ask but we think that cooperation should always be there. Mr. Somalia thank you very much for joining us in the studio. It's me who will thank you. And we wish you the very best for the future which I'm sure will be exciting and very much something to look forward to. So we hopefully we'll chat with you again soon in the future. Yeah we are also there. Thank you very much. Yes thank you.