 Welcome to PP18, the ITU Plenary Potentiary Conference here in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today, but it's Paula Ignebire, who is the Minister for ICT and Innovation for the Republic of Rwanda. Minister, welcome to the studio. Thank you for having me here. Now I'd like to start off by asking you there is currently considerable attention being placed on harnessing the power of information and communication technologies or ICTs as an enabler for good, for the development, for the benefit of people, families, communities and nations. What's your perspective on this? To start with I think I'm even very impressed that we've moved away from the notion of thinking of ICT as a standalone industry. And we're now over and over thinking about ICT one as an enabler to the different clusters or segments of the economy, but also I look at it as an integrator. And so when I start with a notion of being an enabler is that it isolates some of those barriers that in a way isolate the different facets of the society. I did mention that I also view ICT as an integrator and that's correct because if you look at the whole drive around bridging the digital divide as a crucial aspect of how eco-access really fosters innovation and entrepreneurship, you start to see how the different technology tools that we put in the hands of the people are able to integrate the different elements of their lives. And so as a personal perspective I look at it as an enabler and as an integrator. Now this is the first Platinum Potentiary Conference for ITU since the world agreed on the Sustainable Development Goals of which there are quite a few, but I wanted to ask you perhaps you could provide some examples of how ICT are helping to drive sustainable development in Rwanda. I want to start off with some time in 2016 right at the time when we were evaluating how much has been achieved in terms of the MDGs and Rwanda had done considerably well in the space and at that point Rwanda was selected as a headquarter that would spearhead implementation of sustainable development goals. That's not a task that comes in very easy but then what it has gotten us doing as a government but collectively with the private sector is to think of innovative ways through which we can really achieve the sustainable development goals. I'll just pick out a few cases just to give you an idea. When we look at healthcare some of the things that we've done and something that the government of Rwanda is keen on is how do we leverage these emerging technologies that are really driving social economic development across the globe to really transform the way we do things back home. I'm sure you've seen it recently even in the news where we've been using drones as a way of delivering blood to the different hospitals and healthcare centers across the country and we've seen a lot of improvement in terms of healthcare delivery thanks to drones mainly around the fact that you're able to serve lives because you're able to get blood in a much faster way. It usually took us about three hours to deliver blood and now it's come down to 26 minutes and so you're able to serve many lives but also we've been able to control wastage of blood by over 80% in terms of how much blood waste was happening due to transportation and storage related elements and so that has been one area and when we go to education the government has placed a lot of emphasis in terms of how do we increase digital literacy at all at different age groups and one of the things that we did a few years ago was really how do we place laptops in the hands of children and we've been part of this global one laptop per child initiative where you know at a very tender age when you place such devices in there in the kids hands it's almost you know triggers high levels of creativity that you wouldn't see ordinarily at you know older age groups and so that's one area but also I think even going forward what we're starting to see because our vision of becoming a knowledge best economy and really driving innovation within the economy one of the areas that we're focusing on is how do we build talent because how do we build an increased scientific research and innovation and we have been able to attract a number of partners who really are coming into that space we have the Africa Institute for Mathematical Sciences that is really focused on scientific research in the areas of mathematics you also have Carnegie Mellon that really has a strong focus on how to build developer skills recently we signed an agreement with Andela that has that is going to train over 500 developers within Rwanda and really the emphasis on talent development is mainly aligned with the different areas where Rwanda wants to lead in terms of innovation and the critical skills that are required to drive those areas are really developer skills and and so that has been a lot of the emphasis and maybe I could touch briefly on two other one element which is bringing services closer to people to improve their lives and through that we've been able to roll out a platform called Irembo it really provides all services to citizens online but beyond providing services cutting the trips the number of trips that a citizen has to make to get a service from government it has also helped in terms of contributing towards the welfare of citizens because one of the things we do in terms of increasing access to citizens is the agency network that happens in the different communities so it's not strictly getting services from really a space you know a physical space and a physical government office but really empower empowering citizens to support each other in driving digital literacy but also in accessing services so those are a number of examples in areas where we are trying to to really promote the adoption of ICT in driving sustainable development goals and maybe I should mention one last element which is really around smart cities we are part of the smart Africa initiative we're part of the member states and each member state has a flagship area they're leading on Randa is leading on smart cities but we're not just looking at the key cities we're also looking at the multiple you know secondary cities across the country but in really tackling issues that are very central and critical to you know urban city development we are actually addressing challenges that are fundamental to the citizens that are living within those cities it's wonderful all very laudable projects and initiatives and you're very much at the cutting edge there obviously of technology and a great example for all nations around the world I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about the digital divide I know that you mentioned that there with trying to address some of these elements but about half the world's population is now connected to the internet the other half isn't just really wanted to find out what specifically is Rwanda doing to get everyone connected so for a start as a country a lot of focus was put in terms of access how do we provide access equitable access across you know the different districts within within the country and that has been achieved and really we've had a good relationship with the different operators who have really invested heavily into you know rolling out high broadband high-speed broadband infrastructure across the country but we are at a point where now the issues that we are tackling are to do with affordability because that's the only way you're able to bridge that digital divide and really increase your you know internet penetration voice penetration across and a number of interventions are in place of course through engaging the different operators so in terms of affordability we're looking at two I could say segments one is affordability of services the other one is affordability of devices and I think there's been made major progress when it comes to affordability of services where we're seeing operators increasingly coming up with innovative parks that that are time best that really allow for the citizen and the user to maximize data usage but also to be affordable to them but once you do that you really have them hooked and so they are constantly looking for these services because they understand the value that it brings to them in terms of devices which is really crucial again one of the things that we've been doing is to engage operators to say can you come up with you know incentivize devices so that you're able to put devices in the hands of the citizens and and make them less expensive that makes it easy for them to purchase these devices and maybe if you need to recoup that investment that can be built into the services without making them necessarily expensive and so affordability is one thing that we this there's definitely room for improvement there's definitely room for being more creative on how we can increase affordability because that's the only way we can increase the you know how much we bridge in terms of the digital divide the other element is on literacy digital literacy it's one thing to have devices and services but it's the other thing to empower citizens to be able to actually use and make use and maximize you know these devices and services that they now have access to and so we're working very closely with different private players to see what are some of the creative ways we can you know drive digital literacy across the modern population besides just trainings what are some of the other ways that we can do this and so those are the two areas that we are focused on to bridge the digital divide which is affordability and digital literacy we covered a lot of ground here but i just wanted to ask you finally what's your message here to participants at itu pp18 and to our wider audience as well my key message and this is something that as ronda we're very passionate about as just like any other across the con the african continent we have a number of countries that are really working so hard to become innovation hubs but i think this drive is really inspired by the fact that we want to move away from being consumers to becoming creators of these innovations of these technologies and solutions and so itu provides a good platform for these kind of partnerships whether it's multilateral partnerships or bilateral partnerships but i think increasingly we need to put a strong emphasis on how we support each other to become creators of these innovations so that we can have equitable development when it comes to the sustainable development goals minister thank you very much indeed thank you thank you for having me