 I'm here with her Excellency Minister Rebecca Okwachi, the Minister for Telecommunications and Postal Services from South Sudan. South Sudan is the newest member of the International Telecommunications Union, having joined in 2011, so their participation here in Busan at her Planet Potentiary Conference 2014 is a truly historic moment, given that it is their first official participation at an ITU conference and their first time to vote at an ITU conference. Minister Okwachi, it's a real pleasure to meet you. Thank you very much. We heard in your policy statement that you've so eloquently delivered to the plenary hall about your national rollout of broadband. Can you please tell us about how you're progressing on the ground and what are your hopes for the future? Thank you very much for this, and we are so glad to be part of this conference, the PP14. Yes, broadband, of course, we know in the ICT sector is a very, very important issue at the moment. South Sudan, as you know, had no real infrastructure, especially in terms of broadband. So now that we are moving together with the entire world, it has become very important for us to focus on having broadband that will help us also to connect very well. We are working very hard on some strategies. We have a very big committee that's working very hard to have our strategies very clear. But at the same time, we are also looking at the fiber optic, which is now, you know, in the ICT world is quick. You can connect very easily. It can help you also with the content and helps you with the internet. So we have planned very well, and we now want to be connected through the eastern part of Africa, that is through Kenya, through Uganda. And also, there is a link also that is possible to the north to Sudan. So we now have signed an MOU with the Ministry of Transport, where we have started with the planning on connecting from Djibouta capital city to Nadapal. That is on the border with Kenya. And our planning also to go through Nimoli, one of our towns, where there is a highway to Uganda in the south. It's also progressing. And we have thought very clearly about how to go towards the north because there is also a link over there. So we are expeditiously following up that, and we have given a promise to the people of south Sudan that by next year, we must be somewhere ahead to realize that goal. So for us, this is a very big leap, and we hope and we pray, and we will work very hard practically to ensure that we are connected with the other countries. And also looking at the fact that we are a landlocked country. We don't want to be landlocked when we are connected by the fiber optic. So this is something which is advanced, and we will see the realization very soon. It sounds like an incredible amount of progress, and congratulations on that in such a short space of time. What steps are being taken in terms of affordable access, particularly for people in remote and rural areas, which of course is a significant issue in south Sudan? Yeah, one very important fact that we need to know is that given again the condition of south Sudan, most of our areas are rural. And now in terms of accessibility with regards to mobile, we have four operators there, and we access a reasonable part of the country. But still, we feel the rural access is still very remote. But again, as I said, we are set on it, and as we do the connections now in the broadband, we want to make sure that we reach there. But also with regards to the mobile accessibility, I think the penetration is not bad. We are also planning with our new regulator now. We told him we are not going to rest on the chair. We are going to run. Also, we are aiming at having our universal access fund. We want to move very quick on it, and that will help us to get some funds, which is reasonably okay to allow us to have the rural areas accessed. We have also some internet connections, which is not very bad. We have about seven internet providers. Three of them are very active, and they have also reached some good areas of South Sudan. But then again, as I say, the rural access is very important, and this is the next state that will concentrate on much more when the regulated body is now in motion. With such development of the market and with so many projects underway, you will need a strong regulatory framework. What steps are being taken in that direction? This has actually been my good news to the PP14. I met with many of my colleagues in Abuja a year ago, just two months I was in office. And when I asked them, you know, what would you advise me? They told me, look, have a regulatory body in place, and have a good regulatory body, and start with very good foundation. This is a message I took from many of my colleagues attending this conference. And in one year, we are back to inform everybody that now we have established our regulatory body. I really want to take this opportunity to thank the ITU and much more the outgoing secretary general with his team. All of them supported us by giving us some experts to help me select the director general for the regulatory body, the National Communications Authority of South Sudan. And in a very short period of time, we had a very good panel that worked transparently to ensure that there is good selection. I had very good three of them, and out of them we selected one. Now that person is in office, and he is also with us here, is Dr. Ladowani. And now we are in motion. I told him also, you will not rest, there is a lot to be done, including some of the items you have mentioned. So for us this is good news, it is a leap within one year, and he is already there. So I think in a short period of time we will see now there are a lot of issues the regulator has to fix. But then it will actually make life easier for us because as a ministry we have been acting as a regulator. And we are combining the regulatory work plus policy work, it has not been easy. But we will divide the job, I believe we will move very quickly. And the regulatory body is autonomous, we made sure it is autonomous where we must cooperate and work in harmony for the sake of delivering services to the people of South Sudan who badly need it at the moment. And with regards to the people and the users themselves, we learned from your policy statement that you have also in parallel put in place a computer literacy program. It would be very interesting to hear more about that. Yes, that one for us, we are saying that we are not working for the sake of telling people we are achievers, but we must see the impact on the ground. And when I came to the ministry I found there was already a beginning of an institute for computer training. And that institute is now also one of our big focus because you need the capacity building, you need the training, you need the education. And you cannot talk about ICT in its bigger picture without having the public involved and much more the women. I always say look, people will tell me you are not talking about gender at the moment, minister you are very senior but I am still also biased towards women because they are more than half of the society. Therefore computer literacy for women is very important. And also our children are very important. They are the future leaders of today and of tomorrow. So that institute for us is one of the institutions that I am going to empower so that they can contribute as a government institution into the computer literacy. I am already doing a lot of advocacy with the women. There is no one forum I have gone to. Whether people are going to eat or they are going to dance I must give a message that they must become computer literate at the beginning but then also they pick up the use of computer to benefit from the programs in computers. The same thing with the children. Now we have experiences from other countries around us like Rwanda and Uganda they have already introduced the computer programs for children in school. It's another step we will move into it but I think as a basic I feel it's very important that this sector of the society is empowered. So by giving them that chance they will benefit us in future plus also the civil servants. Computer literacy is very important for the civil servants. So the institute we have in the Ministry of Telecommunications and Postal Service provides an opportunity for civil servants and then eventually women and children for them to be empowered in computer literacy and the same goes to the civil servants outside there and everybody even our elders who said some of them said they are born before computers they are literally called BBC born before computers but we tell them it's not too late. You can also still learn. You want to use the internet, you want to save data, you want to send emails, you need to be literate. So this is an area I'm focusing on and I want to see the people of South Sudan in a short period of time picking it up so that we can roll together in the sector of ICT. Minister, thank you very much for sharing this very exciting story with us today. I'm sure we'll be tuning in regularly over the next years to update on all the progress that's happening in South Sudan. So Minister Rebecca Okwachi, Minister of Telecommunications, South Sudan. Thank you very much. And please keep on tracking us so that we live through to our expectations and the promises we do to our people for the development of South Sudan. Thank you.