 GSR 21 Regulatory Roundtable for Europe and Africa. I will be co-facilitating this opening session with my colleague, Mr. Yaroslav Ponda, the head of the ITU Office for Europe. But first, I would like to call on our technical moderator, Ms. Virginia, to guide us through the use of the platform we are using today. Virginia, please. Thank you so much. Hello, dear participants. Thank you for joining. Before starting the meeting, I would like to give some instructions on the Zoom platform and the meeting. The meeting is entirely remote. The audience is kindly asked to keep their camera and microphone switched off to minimize battery apart from when taking the floor. Please rename yourselves and add the represented member state, sector member, or academia before your name. To do so, please right-click on your name in the list of participants. The moderator of each session will recognize the speakers and will give you a flow when the turn comes. Delegates are invited to use chat for any questions or comments. Moderators will be monitoring and any comment may be read out if time allows. You can view and activate the captioning by clicking on Live transcript in the bottom bar of the Zoom interface. Captioning may also be followed on a separate browser using this link. The meeting also benefits of English-French interpretation. Please select your preferred language from the bottom bar of the Zoom interface. The meeting is being webcast live and live streamed on ITU's YouTube account and Twitter accounts. The recording will be available on the website around 24 hours after the event. Every effort is being made to facilitate the smooth flow of this meeting. Thank you for your cooperation and I wish you a good meeting. Thank you very much, technical moderator, and welcome also from the ITU office for Europe. And ladies and gentlemen, it's my great pleasure to kick off with the opening ceremony of this important event and to invite our director of the telecommunication development bureau, Doreen Bogdan, and to deliver the first opening statement. Adam Bogdan, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Yaroslav Excellencies. Madam Mercy Wanzhou, the acting director general of the communications authority of Kenya, Ambassador Thomas Wagner, the deputy permanent representative of the EU delegation in Geneva, Mr. Lassina Cone, the director general of Smart Africa, representatives of the African Union, the African Telecommunications Union. I recognize the secretary general who's with us, John Omo, Beric, other regional associations and heads of the National Regulatory Authority. So good morning, good afternoon, maybe good evening to some. It's a pleasure to welcome you to this ITU GSR plus regional regulatory roundtable for Europe and for Africa. Today's session is the first. We're really excited. It's the first in a series of regional regulatory roundtables organized by the ITU in the run up to the 21st Global Symposium for Regulators that will be held during the week of the 21st of June. With our WTBC on the horizon and of course the global pandemic continuing to reinforce the urgency of connecting the 3.7 billion that are still unconnected, we decided to hold a joint roundtable for Europe and Africa, not only to identify important regional trends and challenges, but also to discuss opportunities. Opportunities to stimulate greater cross regional collaboration and partnerships in the field of digital regulation. Europe and Africa are both very diverse continents and have dramatically varying levels of connectivity between the countries that comprise each region, as well as between the urbanized and the rural areas. But as digital transformation advances across the 90 countries that make up these two regions, there are also many common challenges. Challenges that arise when it comes to optimizing regulation to foster thriving markets for digital goods and services. And as these challenges increasingly span our national and regional borders, it does make sense for us to work together, to share experiences and to find common solutions. In Europe, ITU estimates that some 89 million people remain unconnected and in Africa that figures almost 10 times higher with the staggering 800 million people that are still totally offline. So how do we connect the unconnected and where do those investment dollars come from? Those investment dollars that we need to connect the unconnected communities. Well, according to the ITU's Connecting Humanity Study, the investment needed to bring an additional 3 billion people online by 2030, that will exceed 33 billion for Europe and Central Asia and 97 billion for Sub-Saharan Africa. And huge as they are, those figures don't even factor in the fully fledged rollout of 5G across regions as and when this becomes necessary or possible. So, yes, this challenge is formidable, but the risks of failing to act are even more so. And in our pandemic-struck economies, the digital divide is not just highlighting growing inequalities, it's actually exacerbating them. As the world moves towards digital to bolster resilience against future crises, without that access, people will increasingly be left behind. But being more optimistic, if I may, our research also confirms that ICTs can be powerful engines of sustainable growth. And with an increase of 10% in mobile broadband penetration, that would yield an overall per capita GDP increase of 2.1% in Europe. And that broadband boost is even higher in Africa with a 10% increase in mobile broadband, translating into an estimated 2.5% rise in per capita GDP. Ladies and gentlemen, for more than 20 years, the ITU's Global Symposium for Regulators has focused on helping countries to optimize their regulatory strategies to drive faster and more inclusive growth in connectivity. Fit for Purpose regulation plays that crucial role in unlocking investment and contributing to overall economic growth. We have seen that in our new econometric modeling that has just come out, that it indicates a 10% increase in ITU's ICT regulatory tracker yields a positive increase in our digital ecosystem development index in both regions. And while Europe is on a steady path towards implementing Fit for Purpose regulation, many African countries still face challenges when it comes to creating that enabling environment for digital development. And though regulatory frameworks in Africa have evolved incredibly over the past 10 years, and the strong growth now exhibited in many African markets speaks to a continent that is transitioning fast, that recognizes the powerful transformative potential of technology for development, and that is ready to embrace bold new approaches to drive growth. Today's roundtable seeks to further grow that digital bridge between Europe and Africa and to foster closer cross-regional collaboration. Ladies and gentlemen, ITU is playing an active role in the process of promoting Fit for Purpose regulation by building capacity at the global level, by mobilizing resources at the country level, and also by facilitating partnership building within and across regions. PREDA, which is the Policy and Regulation Initiative for Digital Africa, I think is a perfect example of the important and successful work that was carried out and is continuing to be carried out by the African Union, the European Commission, and the ITU. PREDA is promoting efficient and harmonized spectrum, as well as the harmonized digital policy, legal and regulatory frameworks, and also focusing on global internet governance issues as well, and to enhance African stakeholder participation in that debate. I do want to take a moment to thank my colleagues from the African Union and the European Commission for their constructive collaboration, as well as their commitment to this important initiative. And while PREDA is focusing on the positive impact on regulatory policy, we do have a number of other initiatives that I just want to mention very briefly. We have the GovStack initiative that's facilitating the digitization of government services, the health knowledge and innovation hub. We have our guidelines on ICT infrastructure mapping, and those are just a few examples as well as our case studies on fifth generation regulation, and you're going to hear more about those case studies later today. Ladies and gentlemen, COVID has hit all of us hard in Europe, Africa, and of course globally, but by underscoring our interconnectedness and our vital need to collaborate, I think it has also opened our minds to new opportunities. In building stronger digital connections between our two continents, we see that as a win-win strategy, a win-win strategy that will drive growth, that will boost resiliency, that will improve livelihoods, and that will also help us deliver on the STGs and the 2030 agenda. Today's discussions will feed into the GSR, as I mentioned, coming up later in June. And of course, they will also feed into the ITU's World Telecommunications Development Conference that is planned in Alisababa, Ethiopia. And with connectivity now at the top of global development, we have an unprecedented opportunity before us to use the WTDC to dramatically redraw the roadmap for digital cooperation. Let me conclude by announcing my colleague and longtime friends, Madam Mercy Wanjiao, acting director general of the communications authority of the GSR. Mercy will be assuming the role of the GSR chair of the ICT Regulation Toolkit in 2021. Congratulations, Mercy. We are really excited to have you in that role. I have worked with you for many, many years, going back to the ICT Regulation Toolkit. And I really look forward to working more closely with you in the coming weeks and months ahead. I do want to thank also the African Union, the European Commission, ACTU, BEREC, CEPT, the IRG for really working so constructively alongside with us in the implementation of the ICU regional initiatives for both Europe and for Africa. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. I'm really excited for the discussions and look forward to strengthens and further collaboration. And with that, I conclude and hand back to you, Yaroslav. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Doreen. And allow me to echo your congratulations to Madam Masewan Jiao for assuming the chair. And it is now my great pleasure to invite the Acting Director General of the Communications Authority of Kenya, Madam Masewan Jiao, to deliver her speech. Excellencies, Madam Doreen Bogdan Martin, Director of Telecommunications Development Bureau, Mr. Yaroslav Ponda, Head of ITU Office for Europe, Mr. Andrew Rugege, Director of ITU Regional Office for Africa, the European Commission, the body of European regulators for electronic communications barrack, the African Union, Mr. John Ormore, Secretary General, African Telecommunication Union, Heads of Regulators, distinguished speakers, guests from Europe and Africa. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. It's a real pleasure for me to join you all at this regional regulatory roundtable for Europe and Africa that seeks to engender discussions on issues that are pertinent to the two regions and the overall objectives of both the GSR and the ITU community at large. I wish from the outset to express my sincere gratitude to Madam Doreen Bogdan Martin, the BDT Director and the ITU for according Kenya the opportunity to chair the GSR 21. This is a gesture that we consider both a profound honour and a privilege. I'm particularly pleased that we will continue with the new format launched last year where the GSR 21 program will be a series of interconnected regional environments. These events will allow us to discuss regional regulatory perspectives, challenges and innovative solutions in the lead up to the core global sessions that will be held later in June. This new virtual format will also increase the inclusion and participation of the regional community as a whole in critical discussions that have made GSR a very important platform. I therefore look forward to the contribution of the African and European regions at this first event. I'm very much pleased that we are kicking off this series of regional regulatory round tables with the one focusing on Europe and Asia. In February 2020, on the occasion of the launch of the AU-EU partnership, both sides agreed that the digital transformation would be at the centre of future cooperation. The entry into force of the African continental free trade area, AFCFTA, on 1st of January 2021 is momentous as it brings to the continent lots of potential. Going into numbers, if I may, Africa has a population of approximately 1.3 billion people thereby presenting the possibility of generating economic activity. It is evident that ICTs can be very much utilised in economic recovery through e-commerce and strong trade collaboration and the potential to create a single digital market. The African Union has set the target to mobilise $20 billion in digital investments by 2025 and to create an African digital single market and many more. There is no doubt that regulatory frameworks that are fit for purpose, as Madame Doreen mentioned, are an important prerequisite for success for digital transformation and the experiences from Europe will definitely be of high value in this context. I must say that this round table is a very timely event to take place after challenging time globally. Excellence, ladies and gentlemen, Africa's regulatory market is evolving in the other region in the world. I note that today 64% of the countries in the African region have either a national overarching policy or an ICT master plan up from less than 40% five years ago. What a leap. This is data according to the ITU's latest digital trends in Africa report. In Kenya, our vision as stated in the digital economy blueprint is that we must achieve a digitally empowered citizenry living in a digitally enabled society. This onus is therefore on us as policymakers, as regulators, to work closely with all stakeholders towards fulfilling the mission of a nation where every citizen, every enterprise and organization has digital access and the capability to participate and thrive in the digital economy. Our revised national ICT policy mirrors the technological trends and dynamics to ensure that Kenya's harness the full potential of ICTs. It puts ICT at the center of national development through targeted objectives to provide affordable internet and devices, boost digital skills, encourage innovation and improve public service delivery. It has further instigated institutional and regulatory reforms to align the strategic policy focus. With the right regulatory policies in Africa, I believe that Africa will create certainty. It will build economies of scale and attract massive infrastructure investment. This is good news for the over 70% of Africans who are still not using the internet due to a lack of affordability, accessibility and the requisite digital skills. I would like to echo the discussions in the February African review meeting the ARM for least developed countries organized by the office of the high representative for the least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing states. The majority of LDCs are from Africa actually 33 of them are from Africa and as such we need to be cognizant of the need for individualized approaches in digitization of LDCs and that not all countries are at the same level of maturity. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, the GSR continues to provide regulators world over with a platform to share experiences on best practices that can help countries leverage the immense possibilities that ICTs present to all of us. I have had the honor of participating in GSR meetings for some time now and through the insights gained over time I am confident that we are on the right path to fostering an enabling environment for the growth of ICTs. I truly believe in the importance of GSR now more than ever as we ICT regulators face numerous challenges in view of the pressure of the pandemic and the need for responses and the challenge of connecting and giving access to all. The changes during this year occasional by the outbreak and the continued spread of COVID-19 have truly brought our community together and we have had the opportunity to explore new and flexible regulatory approaches to accelerate the inclusive growth of ICTs. Indeed, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis has magnified the importance of inclusive access to the Internet for a range of issues including health education and the economy. It is therefore important for us to realize that digital technologies will continue being at the core of people's lives today and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. But we also know that the key to realize this ambition is not simply coverage it is also about affordability it's about skills it's also about the availability of relevant content. This is why this year's theme is sport on regulation for digital transformation accelerating inclusive connectivity access and use. We all agree that the COVID-19 crisis is like no other especially with regards to its impact and the sense of urgency it has created for societies to adapt and adapt quickly. For instance, while the adoption of new technologies usually takes time to become a lifestyle change COVID-19 has accelerated this change in ways never before imagined. In Kenya, like in many countries the advancement of digital technologies helped transformation at many levels it increased financial inclusion it increased access to services it has also increased access to justice through the online platform indeed, digitally, we have seen this. These technologies offer various means to cope with different natural disasters and emergencies as was the case when it comes to providing essential public services during the current pandemic. Research shows that regulators around the world have worked hard to ensure for inquiry of education and mandated platforms or to the release of verified health information. With regards to accelerating inclusive connectivity access and use we know that there are still pockets that lack basic communication services despite the rapid growth of the sector in Kenya this is largely due to geographic isolation low population density and low disposable incomes among others and that is why we have accelerated our universal access projects in this season to ensure that as much as possible no one is left behind. The second phase of the project connected over 70 sublocations covering over 330,000 people spread across 15 counties in Kenya as part of the second phase of the voice infrastructure and services project we envisage increased mobile service and broadband connectivity and in effect open new possibilities to citizens in the beneficiary areas. The project is being implemented through the universal service fund that is part of the wider government's effort to ensure that all Kenyan citizens have access to modern and high quality communication services. This is probably food for thought in these discussions that we will be having. Today's sessions on unlocking investment collaborative regulation regional cooperation are very much aligned with this year's theme and will provide crucial insights and inputs towards our global sessions in June. I'm certain that we will make progress and together make this regional regulatory round of the GSR we are looking forward towards your leadership during this very important process for the international but also in the regional cooperation and we have a great pleasure to be joined today by the two distinguished speakers and representatives of the both regions of Europe and Africa and let me turn first to our first distinguished speaker from the European Union, Ambassador Thomas Wagner. The floor is yours. Thank you, sir. Thank you and Dear Ms. Bogdan Dear Ms. Wanchao Congratulations to you, Madam Wanchao, for your appointment. Thank you both very much for your kind invitation to speak at this regional regulatory round table for Europe and Africa. It's a pleasure to be here and to see so many participants representing such a variety of stakeholders. Dear regulators, colleagues, friends as you probably know upon assuming office EU Commission President Ursula van der Leyen pledged to lead a more geopolitical commission and called for a new comprehensive strategy with Africa. There is no need to dwell here on the reasons behind who was called for a new political alliance between the two sides of the Mediterranean as our history and destinies are so much interlinked. Only together we will face our key common challenges such as to achieve the sustainable development goals. Some are quite generic from the need to accelerate economic and social development and reverse climate change. Others are more specific to our bilateral relations like the challenge of addressing migration flows and forced displacements all the way to the need to combat violent extremism. But bridging the digital divide and promoting connectivity in Africa is at the core of this new partnership. As affordable and inclusive connectivity can help unlock a huge economic innovation but also cultural potential of the African continent. And the two previous speakers very rightly highlighted how important it is now to act fast as called the COVID pandemic has shown our crucial interconnectivity and the digital issues are to build better our world. So the good news is that in spite of the postponement of the EU summit initially planned in October 2020 due to the pandemic we are already working together in making digital connectivity an engine of Africa sustainable development. This is why as EU we support and welcome very much the objective of today's forum of fostering increased interagency collaboration between Europe and Africa in the field of regulation in the digital domain. We encourage first on how our approach to digital cooperation with Africa builds on EU recent policy developments. As most of you are certainly aware the digital agenda has become together with the Green Deal one of the two main pillars of our EUKIN agenda both domestically and in terms of international cooperation. I could probably point to the 2015 commission digital single market strategy as a milestone with the aim of keeping the EU's four freedoms the free movement of goods, capital services and labour in the online world. The DSM strategy was built on three pillars better access to digital goods and services across Europe creating the conditions and a level playing field for digital networks and innovative services to flourish and lastly to maximising the growth potential of the digital economy. The current EU commission has come with unprecedented level of ambition when it comes to the digital transformation of Europe. The EU today aims at empowering citizens and businesses ensuring the security and resilience of digital ecosystems and supply chains. Just a month ago on March 9, 2021 the commission articulated its proposal for the EU's concrete digital ambitions for 2013 through a communication and this text does not only define ambitious domestic targets for the EU but underlines and I think it's important in the context of today's discussions the EU's desire to promote on a global level the values the very important values of inclusiveness equality prosperity, respect for fundamental rights and sustainability which previous speakers also insisted on. Indeed as we have often underlines here at ITU in the context of standard levelation as illustrated by the groundbreaking GDPR regulation back in 2016, I would like to insist on the fact that the EU stands for value based and human centric approach to digital affairs leading to an inclusive and fair digital transformation. This includes the promotion of the respect of human rights in an open, safe and free internet and the promotion of democratic principle and transparency in the use of digital technologies. In other words, ensuring that offline rules and principles are effectively also applied online. Those are principle which translate in our external digital policy all across from how we see and support the UN Secretary General's roadmap on digital cooperation all the way to our vision of digital cooperation with Africa. Let me now take three examples of how those principles translate into concrete cooperation with our friends and partners in Africa. First I would like, of course, to underline the ongoing pioneering PREDA project funded by the EU since 2017. I'm very pleased that Ms. Rila Hamazouz who is the PREDA program manager from the African Union Commission is here today and will have a chance to go more in details. PREDA with over 8 million euros budget is indeed implemented by the African Union Commission and by ITU and is focusing in preparedness for African countries to foster universally accessible and affordable broadband services across the continent to unlock future benefits of internet-based services. Its specific objective is to create a more harmonized and enabling legal and regulatory framework for the use of ICT for social and economic development with an emphasis on boosting the spectrum market across Africa. The work of PREDA is organized by three outputs or tracks which I would very shortly recall here. First, radio spectrum management implemented by the ITU second, harmonization of policies and regulations and finally third, internet governance focusing on the creation of an enabling environment implemented by the African Union Commission with the support of the technical assistance. I should also indicate that since 2020, PREDA has initiated the initiative to enhance the cooperation between the four African regional associations of telecommunication regulators and the body of European regulators for electronic communications represented here today by their respective chairs. Second, I would like to underline that starting this year under the new EU budget and especially under our new cooperation instrument we are opening a new phase of bilateral programming worldwide and particularly in Africa in the post-continue context this new phase digital has become a cross-cutting priority through our digital for development policy. This new policy has four main pillars first governance second skills second connectivity excuse me third skills and four e-services for public and private including e-governance. Africa hosts key priorities for new cooperation in the digital domain and today I am glad to say that we foresee to work on policy and regulation as well as e-governance related topics in at least half of our partner countries in Africa in the next years on a bilateral basis beside this main bilateral cooperation track work is underway to develop cooperation on policy and regulation on a regional level third and this is also major innovation I would like to say a few words about how we are integrating a whole of EU approach between the EU and its member states the EU industry civil society and other stakeholders this vision is operationalized through the recently launched digital for development hub which has ambition of becoming a multi stakeholder platform for digital partnerships with three regional branches in Africa Asia, the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean in conclusion I would like to reiterate my deep appreciation to ITU and to the global regulators symposium for your invitation and strongly reached EU's commitment to the EU-AU cooperation policy as a key instrument to reap the benefits of the digital transformation in a fair and inclusive way. Thank you for today's participation and moving forward to the interesting discussions coming ahead. Thank you so much. Thank you very much Your Excellency Ambassador Thomas for your comments and let me put on my other heart as regional director for Africa of the ITU to thank you for your collaboration a lot of which you just mentioned. It is now my singular honor and privilege to invite my friend and strategic partner of the ITU Mr. Lassina Koane Director General of Smart Africa to deliver his keynote. Lassina, please. Thank you very much Thank you very much, dear brother for inviting me. Madam Dureen, Bogdan Martin and Mrs. Mercy Wenzhao Your Excellency Ambassador Thomas Wagner Distinguished and ladies and gentlemen all first of all observed it is my honor to be here today to share with you on these very important topics on regulations for digital transformations. There could not be a better time actually than now as we gradually go back to the new normal to discuss about how regulation can accelerate inclusive connectivity access and use. In Africa our regulators have understood and embraced the need to move towards agile regulations for sustainable digital transformations. That being said there are specific issues that need a revolutionary change in the change of mindset in order for us to achieve full digital transformations particularly if we are to meet the SDG by connecting the unconnected by 2030 with only 24% of the continent connected to the internet according to the recent ITU 2020 report we also realize the yawning 49% users gap usually due to the lack of affordability of the service and associated services. Last month during the African Council of African regulated meeting one of the main discussion was centered on how regulators can support development of sustainable financing model for the deployment and operations of digital infrastructure to meet the SDG by 2030 because 2030 is only 9 years from now. Some of the suggestions included the appropriate and the judicious use of the existing universal service fund which is the USF we all know and point B was like for example broadening the funding contribution to include other stakeholders that benefit from the digital ecosystem to contribute towards the building digital connectivity infrastructure particularly in the area that are considered not investment attractive for example the rural communities the third example was in kind contributions from the national and local government authority towards the reduction of capital and operational expenditure of the deployment of digital connectivity infrastructure an example of which for example low frequency fees payments and services in rural community alternatively the fee can be reduced and not paid in bulk for several years not yet in operations another example could be it reduced in electricity tax or reduced site and right of the way permit fee or tax holiday as a matter of fact for deployment of services in rural community it is very important that we take very practical steps in ensuring true inclusive and accessible and meaningful connectivity for our people and beyond the affordability and financing problem we also understand that the need for the provision of relevant and relevant and relatable content in the local language and basic literature skills for our citizens are also important and that's why we created Smart Africa Digital Academy in 2020 which so far has trained over 300 decision makers from 21 countries and decided exactly to focus on creating digital awareness developing 21st century skills creating demands and demand driven skills and stimulating wage increase as well as capacitating our regulators to be agile and keep up with emerging technology allow me here to also commend the ITU and the UNICEF on the Giga project which is a practical steps in ensuring true inclusivity by connecting every school in the world to the internet on our side we still reiterate our commitment and support this project on the African continent at the end I would like to congratulate Mrs. Wanju Mercer for her appointment as the chairperson for the GSR 2021 distinguished ladies and gentlemen thank you for your attention and I wish you a first full meeting today thank you thank you very much Lassina and thank you for your compliments to Doreen on the initiatives it is I would like to ask now for everyone to please turn on their cameras widen their smiles and let us take a family picture in commemoration our technical people please let us know when this has been done so that we can proceed one second your big smile and this okay great it's done thank you so much thank you thank you very much I would now like straight away we are 15 minutes behind time so I would like to right away invite Mrs. Sophie Madden to introduce the first session on exploring regional perspectives on regulation for digital transformation accelerating inclusive connectivity access and use Sophie please thank you very much Andrew and thank you Yaroslav and thank you Doreen and Mercy and Excellencies for the excellent introductory statements very very inspiring and very excited at kicking off this GSR Plus program GSR 21 towards our regional perspectives I wanted to highlight one paragraph from the chairs words and from Doreen's words indeed we will continue with the new format launched last year a series of interconnected regional and virtual events because not only will it allow us to discuss the regional perspectives but also to listen to the voices from the region from the regulatory community and bring those challenges and innovative solutions in the lead up to our core sessions from June 21 to June 25 we really really want to increase the inclusion and participation of the regulatory community and especially the regional regulatory organizations and regulatory bodies so I really really look forward to this panel to the contribution of the panelists from both the African and the European regions as well as representatives from the private sector so I will be a strict moderator so please look out for my red and my yellow because I really want to make sure that we manage to get all the questions in and that we then manage to hand over for a short lunch break and coffee break panelists today include my dear friend John Olmo secretary general of the African telecommunication union Mr. Alexander Zywotowski the EAPE Greg chair of 2021 chair of the eastern partnership and chairman of the national commission for the state regulation of communications and information of Ukraine Mr. Ali Arhaji permanent secretary of ARTAC Mr. Ali Yaya Simbat the executive secretary of the east African communications organization IACO Ms. Anna Marie Sipkis chair for 2022 and director of telecoms transport and postal services department at the Netherlands authority for consumers and markets Mr. Jean-Cadet Dematos MR chair for 2021 and chair of Anacom Portugal and of course our private sector representatives Ms. Lisa Fuhr director general of ethno Ms. Akinwale Mr. Akinwale Goodluck head of sub-saharan Africa of GSMA and Ms. Arti Hola Maini secretary general AMAS satellite operators association SOA so I'm not going to take any more time but I'm going to address the first question first to the regional regulatory organizations and regulatory bodies so John John Omom what are the top priorities for regulatory association in its dialogue with members to accelerate inclusive connectivity is it building capacity issuing recommendations and guidelines on policy and regulatory matters building skills like we heard from ambassador Wagner John you have three minutes John you're on mute John you're on mute can our technical colleagues help us Thank you very much thank you very much for muting me my name is John Omom I work for the African telecommunications union and pleasure to be here and to see familiar faces I think the keynote speakers have raised a number of issues in terms of the challenges with regard to digital transformation in Africa and I want to sit on those I think the challenge that regulatory association face in Africa relates to harmonization of various policies and legislation regulatory practices to ensure that services telecommunications services a lot of ICT services have no borders to ensure that the ability of cross border flow of information whether interconnection between two networks across the border or data flows across the border that is the first key challenge but the other challenge of course is that nearly 300 million Africans still live 50 kilometers of any broadband connection and so the challenge is that of access access in terms of affordability access in terms of reach and access in terms of quality and so I think regulatory associations need to come together and ensure that countries adopt policies that would ensure that broadband connectivity is made available accessible to the 300 or so million plus population that is still out of reach and I think that is the key that before you deal with the quality of it the quantity of it must be there and so I think the reach of our people to broadband is still a challenge but I think regulatory associations are grappling with that today in terms of infrastructure across borders within countries and ensuring that people are connected in terms of availability and affordability to services. Thank you Thank you so much John and thank you so much for sticking to your time I'd like to turn to Ana Marie Sipkis Barrick chair for 2022 and director of telecoms transport and postal in ACM incoming Barrick chair what do you think the top priorities for regulatory association are in its dialogue with its members and John mentioned the harmonization because there are many cross border and regional issues and in Africa still the issue of connectivity but also access affordability and use Ana Marie the floor is yours Thank you Sophie and I'm so very happy to be here at this regional summit and I think this region is impressive by itself reaching all the islands down to South Africa and from Ireland all the way to Ukraine and beyond so it's an honor to be able to speak as incoming chair for Barrick I think the work of Barrick is also to make sure that as regulators we make sure that we recognize that it is one in Europe one single market telecoms market or we try to harmonize it in that direction and maybe to highlight how at Barrick we approach this we have three strategic priorities up until 2025 but the first is to promote full connectivity and one an example of the projects we undertake there is that we issue guidelines on what we as European regulators feel to be very high capacity networks so to make sure that we all have a harmonized approach so that the telecom sector can count on that and that we are predictable and the second this year for example we are analyzing the regulatory treatment for backhaul as John almost said for all of us it is important that sites are developed to underpin the deployment of 5G so we are trying to make a clear approach throughout Europe for the regulatory treatment of backhaul to connect all these sites so this is in promoting full connectivity which is our first strategic priority our second strategic priority is sustainable and open digital markets because for within Europe it is through the workings of the market that we see that we can all access high connectivity and there for example what we do is we try to harmonize the way we monitor the development in the market for example we have just issued a draft report for a draft report for harmonized definitions for indicators on over the top services so video streaming mainly in this instance to make sure that throughout Europe the way that we look at the development of these new services we take a harmonized approach and that if we start with a dialogue we share the same definitions we share the same data and thus can take better important decisions so this is in our second priority supporting sustainable and open digital markets and I think our third strategic priorities of very interest to this to this session today is empowering end users because you can lay down the infrastructure but it is of course the people and the businesses that have to use them to make sure that they bring the benefits that we are all looking for and before the summer under this strategic priority we will publish the BEREC study on consumer behavior and attitudes towards digital platforms and why are we undertaking such a study because at BEREC as regulators we believe that we need to have evidence informed I see you, evidence informed studies we need to have evidence informed implementation strategies to make sure that we reap the fruits of the digital connectivity for the people that we work for thank you very much Sophie thank you very much Ana Marie so John talked about harmonization the cross-border issues you talked about three very important priorities promoting connectivity through guidelines and through regulatory guidelines sustainable and open digital markets but you mentioned harmonizing indicators sharing the same definitions and data and then the empowering of the end users all very much music all of our ears so I will turn to EAP Reg now to Mr. Alexander Zivotowski to really continue this discussion sir the floor is yours three minutes please hello everyone I am pleased to be here today the chair of Eastern Partnership Network of Regulators of Electronic Communications network which is called TI BEREC the network I am representing today is an independent platform that unites six partnership regulators as well as EU member states western Balkan countries and supports digital transformation in the eastern partnership region through the exchange of best practices and sharing expertise among regulators at present our activities are based on digital agenda of EAPEREC for 2025 launched in 2020 including the promotion of fast affordable and high quality connectivity effective completion of electronic communications market spectrum allocation for mobile 5G reduction of retail roaming charges between the EU and Eastern partnership creation of broadband mapping system and infrastructure deployment are other priority actions for us we focus on the development of very high capacity and secure network infrastructures including both fiber and 5G in regard to the priorities mentioned EAPEREC also promotes effective international cooperation specifically with BEREC IAMEREC, Regulatel as well as ITU sharing the common interest in the promotion of competitive telecom environment the network has been attentively following ITU initiatives, guidelines and documents in EU of the recently signed memorandum of understanding on a high level framework cooperation in the area of information and communication technology to this end EAPEREC has already committed a contribution to the world telecommunication development conference in 2021 recognizing the initiative set at WTDC17 as well as came up with initiatives to establish joint work on the expert level with ITU study groups one and two in conclusion I would like to add that these unprecedented times require unprecedented solutions we believe that through aspirations and constant work digital transformation will contribute to region economic growth and spread the benefits of the digital area to all sections of society to summarize I think the cooperation and sharing the standards between our six European partnership countries and European Union will help us to to foster the connectivity and the introduction of new technologies and I think the cooperation in forums like these are very crucial for us. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so so much for your intervention and so we really are hearing about harmonization about clear data about sustain harmonization of definitions the data the sharing the data empowering the end end users and we are hearing about connectivity but also access and use so one of the issues as well this year one of the outcomes of the GSRs are best practice guidelines and sharing information in the consultation we very much look forward to your input there because these are very key messages coming from the regional regulatory bodies and organizations so I'll now turn to Mr Ali Alaji the permanent secretary of ARTAC. Sir the floor is yours. Thank you Madame I am Alaji Ali I take the floor in the name of the Executive President of ARTAC and to go straight to your question about the different priorities concerning our regulatory association we have a first challenge to raise is the harmonization of regulatory text of TIC which are a little disparate and with the support of our regional community there are a few directives and laws that have been stopped and we have to put them to work the second priority is as John said the access of our population to services and communication it is a big challenge because most of our population do not have access to this service and we have to develop the infrastructure to be able to reach them all and for that we also have to cooperate at a regional level we had the CAP project which is still running and at the level of the CAC there is another project PAK10 which is the one that supports the development of community infrastructure in telecommunications the other major challenge which is also a priority is the reinforcement of capacity because it is a sector that has a perfect mutation and it would be necessary at the level of regulation everyone is at the same level and also at the level of technology which is mutant our benefits in this area of the assistance of several partners starting with the UIT the African Union with the PIDA project and also the African Alliance which helps us in this sense and we also don't forget the GSM which helps us to reinforce the capacity of our members thank you very much for your intervention and I think you really went along the lines of we're building the case from the input from the regional voices so here we have harmonization came up again connectivity access and use and the capacity building because as regulators we really need to stay up to speed with developments and that's very core as well especially Anna-Marie when you talk about everybody needs to share the same definitions and data we also need to understand it in a similar way so I'd like to now turn to Dr. Ali Yahaya Simba the Executive Secretary of the East African Communications EACO Sir the floor is yours Good morning and thank you very much Sophie for inviting me to be part of this very important panel and I'd like to thank ITU for giving EACO this opportunity but first let me also take this opportunity to congratulate Ms. Wanjiao for being appointed the chair of GCR 2021 this is very important to us because because Masi is also the member of EACO Executive Committee so we are very proud of her and are very proud of East Africa but to business EACO takes care of six countries in East Africa and the East African community and when you talk about priorities as a resources of regulator I go along with my colleagues that have spoken for me one of our very key issues is information of model policies and the regulatory guidelines and standards and at EACO we do this through a number of working group but we also understand that in order for us to come with very professional documents that people can act on it we need to have members who are knowledge up to the issues and in such ways capacity building is also one of the key objective here at EACO that we are following and in this regard we are working with our partners and I'm very glad that ITU work with us very close and we get a lot of support from them but we also work very close with Atu and I'm very glad to see my brother Omo here but we also work in private sector including GSMA I'm very glad to see my brother so as we go along in preparation of these documents we are getting a lot of voice from our members one is we don't have only to do with documents they need some time to see some tangible issues and tangible issues that they can associate with them and in this regard EACO have decided to come up with a regional database which is a statistic database basically that is going to go deeper into the statistics of the region so that it helps us to know where we are at a particular time and where we want to go. Lastly but not less important is the fact that as the regional association of regulators we need to remain relevant and to do that we need to be on top of issues that we are trying to harmonize among our members. Thank you Thank you very much and thank you also for highlighting the need for statistics. You will hear when we come to our G5 the collaborative, the fifth generation collaborative regulation I think we as regulators we really need to base our decisions on evidence and for that that data is essential and the regional regulatory associations and organizations really have a key role to play there so thank you for raising that and for bringing that up. I now come to my dear friend who is the MR chair for 2021 and the chair of Anacoma in Portugal. The floor is yours Well Sofia, good morning I'd like to share with you that it's a great pleasure to participate in this event so thank you very much to ITU for the invitation as it was mentioned I am sharing during this year the European Mediterranean Regulators Group e-merge we had the first plenary meeting last week so it's a pleasure to share with you the main conclusions of our meeting mainly concerning the organization of our work for the next two years and also the main goals perhaps starting with the main objectives for 2020 and 2021 and 2022 I'd like to say that there is a great convergence with the other goals that were already presented by the other regional groups so we identified four main objectives for the next two years so the first promoting connectivity as well as exploring regulatory conditions in order to achieve the approximation of the electronic communications markets across the Euro Mediterranean region second objective is to empower end users by identifying good practice when it comes to consumer awareness and information transparency third goal promoting resilience throughout the electronic communication sector in times of Covid the 19 pandemic it's very important we consider and the fourth objective reinforcing the role of e-merge in the shape of the Euro Mediterranean cooperation context in the shortened and longer in times of green and digital revolutions concerning our work program was the first time that this regional group decided to have this kind of work program for two years we decided also to organize or to base our work in several working groups and this will be our objective the best way to improve the cooperation between the different members and to reinforce the capacity building based on the work of these working groups finally I would like also to mention the close cooperation with the other groups that already intervened in this panel and we decide in this last binary meeting to update our memorandum of understanding with BEREC we share as you saw many of the goals of the other groups and we are completely committed to cooperate with all of you thank you very much and indeed the cooperation amongst the groups is very important as well and as you are aware during the GSR we always have the regional regulatory associations meeting and really look forward to have a strong meeting this year so we can reinforce that cooperation but cooperation is necessary between the regional regulatory bodies and regulatory association but dare I put something out there we really need the voices we are talking about empowering the end users we need the voices of the regulatory community and the private sector is very key we have invited a number of representatives from the private sector as well to get their view on as the role of the regulatory associations we've heard now the priorities we've heard the prioritization of harmonization of guidelines of best practices of empowering end users and capacity building how do you think you can be provided with a similar space or join the discussion so that you foster a wide dialogue and discussion that we're trying to do with best practice guideline consultation as well that you can have with the operators and with the regulatory association so Lisa I turn to you first Lisa the floor is yours you're representing etno the European telecom network networks operators association I'm stumbling over my words thank you well thank you Sophie and thank you for inviting etno to this very important and timely round table on inclusive connectivity which is close to our heart so in in our experiences as operators the dialogue we in our members have with the regulatory associations like the one we also have here today and with a barrack is extremely fruitful and it is an important part of our work and it's because this dialogue is based on a broad and holistic understanding of the issues facing the sector and the digital economy today this is important but it must also be a very open and transparent dialogue that based on robust input to consultations and conversations in workshops and here we of course would like to be involved as early as possible in order to have the room and conversation to actually make an impact and have input but I think it actually works and it must work because we understand the need for inclusive connectivity today and we also as a telco sector understand the role we play in order to achieve this ambition so if we also satisfy the needs of the public ensuring that all user groups are carried along there needs to be investments and this requires again an investment friendly regulatory environment I'll just very shortly give you some numbers because we have recently done some research with Boston Consulting Group and found that 5G alone can generate 113 billion in annual GDP impact in Europe and create 2.4 million new jobs in Europe by 2025 so on the investment side to actually reach this level of vision we need 150 billion euros to upgrade the fixed infrastructure to gigabit speeds and we need 150 billions to build full infrastructure to actually enable a full comprehensive 5G vision and I heard Anne Marie's targets and we do and are in dialogue with Berrigan on these targets but we also think that the investment doesn't come by itself from a regulatory point of view investment in telecom needs to become attractive again and this means that we need the availability of spectrum we need public resources in a timely and cost effective way but it also means that we are supporting the development of global scale in the European telecom sector and enabling efficient market structures very quickly in the end I think we need to encourage horizontal cooperation for example network sharing and we need to set ambitious policy targets for digital uptake and here the demand is crucial so in EU we have a regulatory framework we have the code which is now being implemented and it is in this context that the EU initiatives needs to reduce the cost of deployment to make this investment attractive I know this is going on right now but now it's up to all the member states to make sure that this is implemented in an investment friendly way and here both the regional but also the national NRAs they play a crucial role in making sure all this is happening but we are seeing a great dialogue with the NRAs thank you Thank you very much Lisa and indeed that cooperation, that dialogue and really the enabling market structures and market environment the dialogue is very key I'd like to turn to Akinwale Goodluck the head of Sub-Saharan Africa of GSMA to hear your view on really the how can we create that space how can we encourage this dialogue Goodluck, the floor is yours Thank you very much and it's a real pleasure to be here I must very quickly acknowledge Doreen Bogmat, High Excellency Doreen Bogmaten Excellency John Ormo Excellency Andrew Rugege and the DG Messy Wanjua and congratulations madam thank you for the opportunity to speak here this morning I think the reality for us in Sub-Saharan Africa is that our regulators are pretty much up to speed I think that the days when we used to say industry was miles ahead of the regulators I think those days are far gone regulators today are sharp they understand what needs to be done what is really missing is the alignment between regulators and policymakers we need regulators in the region who can look policymakers in the eye and say I don't think that is the right way to go there is nothing wrong with regulators with private sector and MNOs in front of policymakers as a Sub-Saharan Africa stands today we need our regulators to collaborate a lot more with industry and with industry bodies and people representing industry we need to be seen as friends and partners rather than as competitors we need to be in the room when the discussions are starting recently we participated for instance with the ATU when the Africa Telecommunications Union was drawing up a spectrum plan this is the sort of approach that we would like to see we see how the ITU invites us we would like to see similar approaches from the Council of African Regulators from the Africa Union would like to be involved in task working groups etc to drive best practice I think it's important also that regulators must enforce the things that are key to growth every day you hear regulators heads of states talking about digital inclusivity financial inclusivity but next day we see policymakers imposing taxes on digital adoption taxes on take up of internet we see emerging taxes on mobile money the pandemic has demonstrated that financial inclusion is really here and fundamental for our people in sub-Saharan Africa and as mobile money has grown and has supported a lot of the objectives of government what we have seen coming out of the pandemic is that governments have seen this growth area and rather than support it they're beginning to tax it so we need regulators to say to not adopt a look and say well this is financial inclusion this is with the central bank we will be driven by mobile mobile is under the purview of our regulators so we need our regulators to stand up and be counted in this space thank you thank you very much good luck and indeed you touched upon the need for harmonization but you also touched upon that evidence based decision making and that inclusive decision making that dialogue needs to happen and we're talking about the golden standards of 5th generation collaborative regulation when we're talking about the regulatory community you mentioned digital financial inclusion when we're talking about connectivity when we're talking about access and use it really goes across the sectors so it's that cross sectoral regulatory approaches and how do we approach that and you'll hear more about that in a later session today so I'd like to turn to Arti Arti Holamaini secretary general of MAS satellite operators association so Arti how do you see these key elements of how can we be more even more inclusive collaborative and really have that evidence based decision making Arti the floor is yours thank you Sophie thank you including Isowa on this distinguished panel and my congratulations also to Merci for her appointment so to this subject yes satellite network operators and Isowa itself are very involved in the regional and the sub regional meetings across Africa with Sadak, Ekoas, Eaku and of course Artu and we're contributing very actively to the regional preparations within ITUR and the very valuable Artu task groups that John is driving forward we do believe that regional approaches to foster the sharing of best practices whether in terms of how network technologies are being used within Africa or in terms of how are regulated are very important and operators play a central role in this because of their experience and the sector expertise the information in our view really must flow in both directions both national experiences being shared at regional level but also regional knowledge flowing back to member states I'd like to give you an example of what I mean with the national experience right now the South African regulator has put a moratorium on licensing any new services in the sea band because of interference from terrestrial operators into satellite services including aviation safety, science services and broadcasting this kind of information needs to be fed up into the into the Sadak sub regional group because it could be useful for other countries who might experience similar interference and Sadak could of course decide to share this information in Africa wide through ATU but the network operators play a crucial role in this process because firstly they are at the forefront of experiencing the interference and secondly they are also the ones with the necessary expertise to help find solutions an example in the other direction would be the sharing of best practices there are so many examples of transformational connectivity in Africa whether it's connecting schools in Kenya remote clinics in Nigeria backhaul in DRC or even enabling full participation in elections in Burkina Faso thanks to satellite broadband but why do they happen in some countries and not in others, how are they implemented this is the kind of information that needs to be shared with regional organizations and disseminated to inform nationally and again network operators of front and central in this dialogue I leave it there thank you Sophie. Thank you very much Arti and thank you to all for this first fascinating round of questions and answers so we really came to a package of suggestions that harmonization the evidence based decision making the similar definitions the similar understanding the capacity building but also good luck you also mentioned bringing the policy makers an inclusive dialogue goes all across the value chain it goes from the policy makers to the regulators and as you said Arti share examples of good practices of projects that worked why they worked I think that really is a role for the regional regulatory associations and bodies to really share that information and bring these four together to discuss those informations but good luck I think you also mentioned something you talked about the digital financial inclusion one of my favorite subjects there and the need to really work together across the sectors and so digital transformation is a reality we've seen it more than ever since we've worked from home for over a year now we've seen that we need that connectivity that access that use to enable us to access health education finance so it's a reality and it's a systemic transition so I really do believe we require a strategic and holistic approach to be able to leverage ICT and digital across the sectors so obviously we see that issue at national level the mandate the scope where is the mandate where does the mandate and where does discussion start where are the overlaps how can we identify those overlaps obviously for the regional regulatory organizations associations and bodies that's also an issue we need to address and we hope to address that in the road towards GSR and in the collaborative regulatory studies that we've been working very hard on with Yaroslav and Andrew and their teams so John what do you think the challenges from the perspective of the regulatory organizations and bodies are in dealing with governments and regional super national institutions now across the sectors with digital first how do you see that thank you very much I think I think the the challenge is governments by their own right sovereign and so they have the the superintendents of resources that are within their borders now ICT and digital transformation is increasingly a trans boundary issue and so you will find that data is flowing across borders at rates that have not been seen before and in some cases it's sensitive data and so there's a challenge between there would be a challenge between the need for cross border frameworks that seek to have for example data flowing across borders seamlessly as opposed to the sovereign nature in terms in which we know our governments, our organizations and I think this challenge is already being experienced in a number of countries in Africa and how to go about it has been as I've mentioned you know established cross border frameworks show that governments that regions agree in terms of how data is flowing and how for example interconnection is made possible across borders and so I think there are issues there we still stick to our borders imaginary borders as we know them but we ensure that there's free flow of information of data as ICT enables and I think that then is a possible disconnect and opportunity between data consumers for example and data producers how do we harmonize our policies to ensure that the benefits of that there's increased monetization of data for example data is a resource that you have if you have virtually have all information that you need and so how to with monetization of data we need to be worried of the fact that data producers for example benefit as just as data other data handlers and data managers and data consumers for example so I see the dichotomy in terms of the sovereign nature of membership of the member states vis-a-vis the transboundary nature of ICT as we deal with it now as one of the biggest challenge and fortunately countries are increasingly opening their borders and facilitating data flows and trade in that regard thank you very much I see my red card it's a red biro but it's fine we use what we can so no I'm here can you hear me yes yes we can hear you so indeed thank you John and Anna Marielle I turn to you because Joel also mentioned that there's a harmonization or similarity in the priorities between Merck and Berek that there really is that wish to prioritize similar issues so that collaboration can be even closer but with this digital transformation what are the challenges you see in Berek in dealing with governments and regional super national institutions and across the sectors how do you see that Anna Marielle well Sophie actually building on I'm so happy with the analysis that John Omo just presented because I would have exactly the same analysis but even broaden it from data to digital services where I think exactly the same thing is going on so the producers of digital services are transnational and the consumers are national so thank you very much for that analysis I think that makes it so clear and then of course because you have sometimes digital services, digital service platforms and problems are or potential bottlenecks or risks that we perceive are transnational by nature and cannot be effectively addressed from one national perspective but the consumers or the businesses that face these problems have a national basis and have a regular dialogue especially with national regulators so this is maybe not a dichotomy it's a challenge I think for regulators so it means that what we at Berek try is to collect all these experiences and then offer them to transnational legislative bodies in our case the European Commission the European Parliament as well as our national authorities because also there you have to have that dialogue so it does mean that we have a very complicated field of stakeholders both national and international and in order to be effective I think what we at Berek do and also at e-merc is with e-merc and other bodies is to always try to keep those channels of dialogue open and to connect those experiences and to find where we find the common ground and where you have the appropriate level to intervene. For example the Digital Markets Act is very much on the European level where we say that the problems that we want to tackle as Europe are of a European nature so we tackle them in a European way with European competences at the same time we see that for consumer protection for example this is very much has to do with national circumstances and thus the national regulators and the national government have a much bigger say but this changes so fast because the digital world changes so fast so this is a continuous dialogue and it has again as we said in the first round has to be based and underpinned and inspired by what we see in the markets every day Thank you very much Anna Marie Yes indeed keeping the channels of dialogue open and find using ICT telecoms terminology the appropriate point of interconnection between the different between the different sectors and yes a continuous dialogue find the way of dialogue and also find the the appropriate way and base our decisions and on evidence really focus on gathering that evidence so we have those data points I'm coming to Mr. Alexander I'd like to turn first to Jean-Cadet Dematouche because there was that discussion of the collaboration between so how do you see that strategic and holistic approach to leverage the ICT and the digital across sectors and how do you see the dealing with governments and regional and supranational institutions throughout the floor is yours Thank you Sophie indeed this is one of the main challenges so if it's not easy today all the cooperation in the case of the European Union between countries and inside each country between the regulatory authorities and the government and the parliament as it was mentioned before when we look for other regions that are participating in this meeting we see that we need to improve this dialogue at the two levels so at the national level we consider very important the role of the regulatory authorities and it's absolutely necessary that the recommendations the proposals coming from these regulatory authorities are taken into consideration because they are contributing for the development at the national level and a good way to increase this dialogue at the national level is also to increase the dialogue at the regional level because in this case it will be not only the opinion of the recommendation from a national regulatory authority but it will be the recommendation the proposal coming from a group representing several national authorities and also in this case it's very important example coming from other regions so that's the reason why we consider and this is considered by all members of eMERGE very important this cooperation with BEREC because we would like to improve the situation in the Mediterranean area applying best practices and taking consideration these good examples from the European Union a second remark if you allow me, Sufi to take this opportunity to mention as an important challenge is to ensure that these groups and this is the case of eMERGE is receiving the necessary funding to maintain our activities because we have very ambitious working program and this working program needs to involve people, resources and so it was important for us that the European Union will continue to support the activities of eMERGE I am really happy with this support and I'd like to invite others to do the same because this is important not only for the development of telecommunications but it's also important to ensure that the Mediterranean region will find a stable and a peaceful region Thank you very much Thank you very much, Shwo and that reflects what happens on the national level we do need the human and financial resources to be able to implement our plan and our actions I now turn to EAP Reg Mr. Alexander, please the floor is yours Yes, I'll give you an example going from the national level to international to the local regulatory authority we are all busy with providing connectivity both in terms of fixed broadband and mobile broadband and when we speak to our operators in terms of fixed broadband the key issue that worries them is the access to infrastructure of the electricity sector of the residential segment and the tariffs on that and there's always a big challenge to negotiate the equal rules of access between different sectors and this is probably where the key concern of the fixed broadband lies when we speak about mobile business of course mobile operators are interested in spectrum and more use of efficient use of new spectrum and that relates brings us straight into the international arena where we must have international rules and follow the single standards to ensure that connectivity is in place and it's working and even on the local level speaking of spectrum for example here in Ukraine we still struggle with the release of digital dividend and switch out of TV of analog TV mostly for the political reasons but again the finding the right balance of interest between the telecom operators and for example broadcast is quite a challenge and now facing all of these challenges it is usually much easier to rely on a set of international principles on a set of rules that are implemented on a broader than the national level this is where our network and our interaction with the European Union all falls into place and this is why we like to say that the key role of this interaction between the national and international levels is about exchanging expertise exchanging and implementing single standards rules because it helps us to sort out these balancing items on the national level as well so this is how we view it thank you thank you very much Mr. Alexander and we did see that when we saw the whole WTO process the basic telecommunications agreement that these international negotiations really had a huge impact on liberalization of markets way back in the 1990s so I'll turn back to Alhaji from Achtak Sir, the floor is yours thank you Madam to give me a new word in terms of strategy for the government of America the governors are the masters the masters are sovereign and most of them have this sovereignty but in a digital world which has become a prenatal the harmonization is essential and this is where the role of the regulator and the regulatory system is to convince the governors and the community and the local community to harmonize the strategy which most of the cases are in different horizons and in different matters at the level of Central Africa the regulatory system plays an important role in this field through the working groups we have worked on the harmonization in terms of frequency on our borders there is a working group and we hope to reach a global road respect in the sub-region we are also in contact with the CAC, the CEMAC in the context of the implementation of a unique community network to work on a rule which has been adopted in the last year so to summarize the challenge of the regulator which is the Council on Telecommunication of the Governments it is to take them to be able to reach a minimum to be able to set up a global strategy at the level of the sub-region first and also a global strategy for the African region in general and in this field we are counting a lot more the rain of the Prida and also the alliance Smart Africa which are the essential of this fight in the African region thank you Thank you very much and indeed this and the collaboration with regional but also continental organizations and multilateral and multinational organizations is very key so Mr. Simba I give the floor to you for your input to this interesting discussion Thank you Sophie I think one of the easiest thing that we at the regulatory association do is coming up with very beautiful documents we are very good at that but when it comes into implementation that's where the problem starts and in some levels you start wondering why will you approve and not implement so implementation is the biggest problem in most of our work that we are doing and I think I like what Goodluck said I don't know if that is easy to do but the regulator should be bold to look at the policy making the eyes and telling them that this is for the benefit of the country and that we need to do that because you got the feeling as if the regulator sometimes goes into the end and then they bring the product to the government I think maybe it could be that way where the problem comes from so I like the regulator to start involving the policy makers early in when we start these discussions so that they are aware that this is being discussed they should be able to put very clear what are the benefits that are going to get out of those argument of those regulations of course there is nothing you do that would be 100% benefit something that you are going to lose and this is something that we need to explain very clear to the government I want to give you a very simple example about one area network in the East Afghan community I think that is one of the projects that we are so proud of I think the East Afghan community went into one area network before the free roaming in Europe probably but out of the six countries today and it is almost six or seven years not all of them have been able to implement that so you can see the challenge because even that argument was a directive from the presidents of the six countries still that we are struggling in implementing them thank you Thank you very much and implementation is key and results based management focusing on impact is key but for that we also need the human resources and we need that dialogue so I will turn back to the industry representatives we are a team because we are almost making up on time so we really work together as a team for that impact to stay within the limits that have been defined for us so thank you very much for that to the industry representatives Lisa let me turn to you how do you see this cross sectoral approach for that digital transformation and the perspective of the regulatory association and the industry what are some of the actions you would like to make Lisa? Well thank you Sophie and well as I think Anne Marie hinted that there is a lot of different levels of and different stakeholders and us delivering connectivity it's a very local thing it's very based in the different countries but what we see in today's society is that you need connectivity everywhere and the unsurped and underserved are to receive fast and reliable connectivity in Europe what we see is that we have the state aid guidelines which are defining the state aid in the different EU countries and we look to the revision of that of course we think that's important but we also see in the recovery the COVID-19 crisis demonstrated the reliance on connectivity in all our lives so we think in Europe we see recovery is going to be digital and green and we welcome this very much and hope that that can also inspire other parts of the world we think digital and green is important but one thing we think is important is when states are looking into becoming digital we can deliver the supply but the demand side is also extremely important here because the demand side will actually define how much our networks is being used and without use they're good for nothing just a very quick in the end I think another thing that we could work strongly on is that we need upscaling and rescaling of the population so we can talk connectivity and all kind of regulation but I think it's extremely important that we also in order to harness the power of the digital economy that we work on upscaling and rescaling of the population so they're enabled not only in their work situation but also in their lives to interact and get out of the most of the digital society Thank you very much Lisa and indeed the demand side and that's where you have the collaboration across the sectors as well because when you look at the demand side I'm going to turn to good luck now for your brief intervention on this particular question, good luck Thank you very much I think that we have seen a lot of progress regarding the participation and understanding of regulators and indeed policymakers on the importance of also stimulating the demand side Historically we had seen in sub-Saharan Africa a lot of government interventions were always around the supply side so it was banging more network elements for operators it was always about spectrum it was about infrastructure sharing it was moving from passive to active and a lot of other things but more recently particularly at the GSMA working with several governments in sub-Saharan Africa in developing their broadband for the next few years we have seen a big turnaround we're seeing government understanding that you must support the demand side we're seeing government beginning to look at a more conducive environment for devices in terms of reducing the cost in terms of importation in terms of local production of devices we're seeing government beginning to understand the importance of investing in content Historically a lot of the content in Africa is in English, French or other foreign languages we're now beginning to see and I think this is one of the good things about the pandemic is that in terms of bringing education home we're seeing governments and regulators and the industry investing in local languages, relevant content we're seeing a lot more investment in digital literacy we're seeing a lot more investment in empowerment of vulnerable groups so I think by and large we're headed in the right direction but definitely what is still required is for the regulatory will to have the necessary political support. Thank you very much good luck very key points there now turning to Arti Arti last but definitely not least I'm looking forward to your contribution you mentioned sharing good examples and sharing good examples of also the cross-sectoral work and also the inclusive discussions Arti please can you share with us a little bit more on what you've touched upon before definitely so I'd be very concise I think competing priorities is an issue which prevents governments and regulators in Africa who are strapped for resources from focusing on the most pressing issues to start with from my perspective there seems to be a rush to try to implement the latest and most expensive solutions for what are is still emerging economies and with a view on Africa we really must realize that in rural Africa there are sparse populations with low incomes yet regulators are being sold stories of how driverless cars, IoT, virtual reality and all the bells and whistles of 5G will help them raise their populations out of poverty are these really the priorities when you have such a lack of basic connectivity I would say that what is missing are appropriate solutions to the problem where you have low density low income communities often even without power you need cost effective solutions and I completely agree with GSMA reports that highlight that affordability is a big issue and in regions like this it makes no economic sense at all to roll out lines of expensive base stations when you can bring those areas mobile connectivity or community Wi-Fi powered or backhauled by satellite it's a big issue and it's a big issue of the cost so briefly on the demand side I think governments and regulators need information about what different technologies can do and cannot do and they need to make very pragmatic decisions that will deliver results quickly and on the supply side enabling regulatory regimes which include blanket licensing approaches or ensuring regulatory certainty around license fees and access to spectrum because we need to make sure that we continue to see affordable high capacity services but also to ensure continuity of essential services that are relied on today like broadcasting internet safety of life, thank you Thank you very much Arti and thank you very much to this great panel and may I say we need evidence based decisions we need to be inclusive across the sectors across the industries and across the regions and good luck you said we need to be bold, can I say we need to be bold, we need to be brave we need to balance innovation with investment flexibility with stability and that inclusive dialogue is how we will really make sure that digital is the tool that will empower us to empower the end users as you said Anna Marie so in the end it is about making people's lives better and by working together we can make the people's lives better and find the appropriate and the different solutions Thank you very very much I have not eaten all the way into the coffee break Yaroslav I only stole about 5 minutes and really thank this team industry, regulatory associations regional associations for working together to achieve this impact so thank you very very much Yaroslav back to you Thank you very much Sophie and thank you very much for great outcomes of this panel and during which we've heard a lot about the next panel but before we are going to this panel we need more energy and we have to find the time to refill our cups of coffee and to stretch it we had great time during these 2 hours of the discussions and so we propose to have a break of 9 minutes so ladies and gentlemen we are meeting again at 12 o'clock sharp Thank you very much and enjoy these minutes of great Thank you one more time Thank you very much Thank you to all the panel Thank you Thank you, bye bye Thank you very much Ladies and gentlemen this is 1201 as discussed earlier it's my great pleasure and honor to introduce my colleague regional director for Africa Andrew Ruegega who will be moderating the next session proposing on investments so we'd like to request the technical moderator to unmute Andrew and also all panelists and I'm handing over and now the floor to Andrew Ruegega Andrew the floor is yours Thank you very much Yaroslav I was starting to panic because I couldn't unmute but I'm okay now and welcome back everybody from your break it is really a pleasure and a privilege to be part of this conversation on unlocking investment in connectivity with focus on infrastructure sharing core deployment state aid universal service regulation and others can unlock investment in connectivity while preserving competition I have an eminent panel with me and it's my pleasure to welcome Mr. Izayas Barreiro chairman of the board Agencia Reguladora multi-sector the economy Army of Cap Vardy your excused by pronunciation I also welcome Mr. Karol Krawinski deputy president office of electronic communication UKE Republic of Poland welcome Karol Mr. Mark Sakala address the regulation the post of the communication electronic RPC of Congo and Ms. Tanya Mouha director agency for communication networks and services of the Republic of Slovenia of course my only regret here is that I was shortchanged and I only have one lady on the panel so that you will excuse that it's not normally my practice a lot has been discussed about connectivity but the big thing today is investment because nobody is contesting anything about the usefulness or in fact the dire criticality of connectivity meaningful connectivity but everybody was coming back to what would it cost to have meaningful connectivity as universal rights and today our task is to have this conversation about unlocking investment for connectivity and I was going to say unlocking investment in connectivity in Africa but I just learned a few minutes ago in Europe you also need it there was a figure I think of 50 billion dollars that was mentioned so let's treat this issue holistically how do we unlock investment for connectivity for everybody if you allow me to honorable panelists I would like to ask you maybe to give us three minutes for your initial statement and I would like to start again with Isaiah Isaiah please give us your statement about three minutes thank you very much Andrew ladies and gentlemen Andrew I would like to congratulate you for your Portuguese speaking skills I think you are doing quite well so next time you come to Cape Verde you will be speaking Portuguese only well yes how infrastructure sharing co-deployment state aid can indeed unlock investment in connectivity while preserving competition I would start by saying that infrastructure sharing and co-deployment is to a certain extent a triple win situation it is a triple win situation because the owner of the infrastructure by putting in its infrastructure by making its infrastructure available it does that at a certain price the one, the newcomer the operator that intends to use the infrastructure by using this infrastructure it pays for using such an infrastructure and of course it has tremendous advantage of not making a huge investment to bring its services to different areas it's a win situation for the newcomer it is also a win situation for the final consumer because if the newcomers do not need to make a tremendous investment of course at the end of the day the price policy towards the consumers will definitely be a more affordable one so we are talking here about a triple win situation and in this context state aid and universal services regulation also play a major role because of course as we know there are places there are areas where operators can easily move ahead with their investment because these areas are intensely populated and they are profitable but also we know that there are areas that require some kind of incentives for the operators to come and these kind of incentives can be in terms of policy for instance but there are also areas that are definitely not profitable for the operators to come and here state aid universal service fund can play a major role and of course in this case regulation is key I do recall that for instance in West Africa we moved ahead with the you know a supplementary act on universal access and service a supplementary act in EQUAS is an attachment to the EQUAS treaty and therefore enforceable in all EQUAS member states and this played a key role in the sub-region when it comes to universal service and universal access so in a nutshell Andrew I would say that indeed infrastructure sharing is key is a triple win situation and of course it is of paramount importance to have the universal service regulation and state aid to ensure that we bring connectivity to all thank you very much thank you very much I think what I forgot to say is that this man is former SG of EQUAS so he knows everything about West Africa thank you very much for your statement Carol I'm not going to take another risk to pronounce your son names I would like to call on you to please give your opening statements your hi your your situation was perfect Mr Rukczewicki so you said exactly the same good afternoon or good morning evening depends on the point of the globe you you are now I'm deputy president of EQUAS Politionary for Telecon Post also for frequency issues it's my great pleasure to be with you today and I think I will start without any longer introduction first I think the current period of pandemic has accelerated digitization but also the digital divide therefore I do agree with I say as that smart decision making database regulation and policies are more important than ever evidence based decision making helps to create an enabling environment and that facilitates private investments and also increases the effectiveness of public funds needed to to achieve ambitious goals targets and as you said also in Europe the concept of gigabit society assumes that all households will have an access to 100 megabits internet by 2025 which is really ambitious according to our approach to the deployment of broadband infrastructure and services should be based on data and specifically on statistical data geospatial data from surveys and many other sources and we are using the precise data mapping from 5000 in our office from 5000s of network operators and this broadband mapping system is now an essential tool for our office to allocate public funding efficiently and across sector collaboration of course protecting also the competition and our advanced systems and compass as I said thousands of operators also the such a data like routes of backbone and distribution networks indicates that the type of technology has been used and location of telecom hubs transmission system location collocation and so on many many other data which supports our decision process the system can enhance collaboration among various stakeholders and support the allocation of public funding leading to expected results as I said previously also infrastructure sharing place and important role in the process of facilitating investments it's obvious it reduces duplication and direct investments to underserved areas and also providing the better customer service operators telecom operators spending has been dominated by significant investment in technology and infrastructure which is quite risk factor maintaining and modernizing the infrastructure increases this risk therefore sharing infrastructure can significantly reduce the risk of entry and development it also has big impact of competition the market becomes more attractive to new players due to reduce entry barriers such players can reach competition while investing effectively and last but not least definitely I do agree that state aid can be also used to mobilize private investments I think that's all for now over to you, Andrew Thank you very much actually I was going to tell you that subject that you started to touch on data and data informed decisions it's something that I will certainly want to come back to because I think it's absolutely essential but thank you Carol let me turn now to Mark as just the regulation posted in the electronic of Congo please 3 minutes Thank you Andrew what I can say is that it's a very interesting subject and very important especially in the current context where we live in a pandemic context an increase in data and really data consumption even more crucial connectivity in certain areas so how this transparency in exchange, the transparency of data can lead us to to unlock funds to unlock investments I think it's a subject for me to its importance because today no matter the country the regional, world, we find the need to enlarge connectivity of the data and when we talk about connectivity I don't limit myself to the data I also talk about access from Africa for example in certain areas of Africa where we don't only talk about needs in terms of data but also in terms of connectivity of the areas back this need is growing more and more even more during the time of this pandemic so how this transparency to mutualize to make investments target and investments that make it better to better manage our programs and our projects to gather our strength I think this subject to its full importance and I am very happy to intervene and I think that through through different with different words we will certainly enlighten in order to be able to connect together the different methodologies to be able to grow and unlock these investments that can be consented by a sharing of information available to all now I have some apologies to make first because Natassa you are not reflected on my but I am very very glad that you have been able to replace Tanya Natassa Kralovic excuse me but is the head of telecom communication department agency for communication networks and services and once again I am awfully sorry for not noticing this earlier but you are welcome and if you may please the opening statement thank you very much for the floor yes it was the last minute change sorry for this good afternoon to everybody my name is Natassa our director should be attending this roundtable discussion but unfortunately she is not able to participate in this moment because we are having the multi-band option for the allocation of radio for public mobile services so I will represent Slovenia on this occasion I am pleased to participate in this very interesting topic how to unlock investments in connectivity through transparency and we share our experience with you so building very high capacity building networks is essential to ensure connectivity in our opinion the main drivers for investments and building very high capacity building networks are first competition and then second lower construction costs so regarding the competition through many years of regulation of the relevant market that are susceptible to ex-anti-regulation ACOS has achieved the establishment of a competitive environment and conditions on the broadband market because operators are competing for end users on retail markets but also encourage them to build new networks in order to offer more innovative high quality and more affordable services let's say Slovenia has a population of 2 million people and we have 4 large operators that provide broadband services as quadruple play packages and compete for the end users on whole national level regarding the construction costs Slovenia is one of the most rural country in the European Union we have more than 50% of the population living in rural areas like in other countries we have a challenge for building high capacity networks and providing services in areas where economies of scale are not achieved therefore the interest operator in construction is significantly lower one of the option is stated but this area is not in ACOS competencies the second option is to encourage infrastructure sharing and joint construction that means that operators have lower construction costs at the same time I have to measure also universal service obligation broadband internet service is included in our current scope of universal service in Slovenia since 2018 with 4 megabits download and actually just yesterday we have increased the speed to 10 megabits download and it has to be provided to all residents in Slovenia so in order to support and to increase investment we have established two important publicly available portals which are available on ACOS website these portals are portal for plant investment we call it the infrastructure investment portal and the second one is geoportal portal of plant investment enables the investors in public infrastructure to notify their plants for construction of infrastructure online and to allow the interest co-investor to announce their interest of joint construction on these portals are publicly available information about all active joint construction intentions that means calls for interest for all plant public infrastructure including for telecommunications the second one is the geoportal user a quick insight to the various types of electronic communication infrastructure and their data for every address and household in Slovenia the transparent presentation of all this information significantly facilitates the decision making of operators regarding business models ways of building networks in specific areas as well as facilitates negotiators for joint investment infrastructure sharing since 2015 the number of announced joint construction increased significantly by infrastructure sharing for code employment enables investors to better utilize their network and a faster return on investment so according to last available data for Slovenia let's say has 53% coverage with very high capacity network of households in comparison with EU average which is around 44% so we are right happy and successful at the time so thank you very much okay back to you Andrew it seems that we lost Andrew for a minute I think we need more connectivity yes now indeed yes colleagues I think that Andrew has lost his connectivity he's just reconnecting so I propose to give him 10 seconds to do so entirely unexpected but relevant to this what we are discussing more investment for the infrastructure is needed well I don't see him connecting so maybe let's continue with the panel if you agree, thank you very much for the opening statements of this panel and now maybe let's turn into the first questions of the panel so maybe let me turn to Karol Krivitski and ask the first question what Andrew is with us already so I'm turning over to Andrew Justin thank you very much Karol Slav and I would like to make this request before we continue that should any investment be found it should first come to Ethiopia because you can see the problems that I was having with connectivity and thank you for bearing with me Karol I had I guess given you a heads up earlier that I wanted to come back to the question of a data driven approach of regulation so if you allow me let me ask how how an increasingly data driven approach to regulating the telecom ICT market made a difference over recent years in Poland you started to talk about this but please give us some more take three to four minutes no problem okay thank you Andrew the data driven regulation is recognized not only in Poland I think worldwide internationally as an approach that is in tune with the rapid pace of the technological process and progress also it has two major objectives first is to amplify the regulator's capacity particularly in a supervisory role and the second is to inform users choices to steer the market better and to ensure return of investment the role of data is supporting the deployment of broadband is a fundamental aspect of digital transformation and regulation I know it's obvious but I wanted to underline that currently the digital environment is characterized by rapid technological change generating continuous innovation in terms of both business models and users and if we want it or not regulation must adapt to this new context by improving cooperation with all sectors stakeholders not only the telecom operators also including the other providers and users okay our office focus of data driven regulation is on telecom network coverage and quality issues that's said to main point of interest our approach assumes the analytical capacity of the regulator availability of the data especially on infrastructure and services as I mentioned in my previous intervention and this data of infrastructure and services for operators and consumers as well as monitoring of the quality of services and I will give you an example additionally our office constantly monitors also the consumers opinion on telecommunication services not only the individuals but also the institutional and only last year that we conducted surveys targeted to parents to children to individuals and institutional and to businesses and also teachers especially it's important during the remote school service show current trends and customer satisfaction and expectations usage of services and approaches to technologies and this approach to data has impacted to the market in few ways in terms of connectivity let's say 67% of homes past have access to NGA networks in the area of service quality and pricing service show that 76% of customers are satisfied or very satisfied with services they use and significant growth of competition increased the percentage of customers satisfied from a choice of services to 92% so that's the as I said this is the two pillars one pillar is the system which is driven by data pure from from operators and the second is the monitoring of the user satisfaction level and also the monitoring of the needs thank you over to you thank you very much actually I feel very proud because in my data responsibilities I visited one country where they had these systems in place and they were very efficient in that even operators couldn't say that their tower was down somewhere because the regulator already knows so it's the lack of headroom not that it is down thank you very much I may turn to you Natasha about the way you are dealing with this issue and how data driven approach to regulation has made a difference in your country over the last few years thank you very much we are also collecting huge amounts of data from telecom operators and from the market so all regulators should act transparently and pass the Coleta back to the market so we are making a significant effort to make public infrastructure owners, local communities and operators aware of their obligations to announce planned constructions all cases of planned constructions of civil work has to be and are notified to access together with a call out for co-investment in the express must plan their network in a manner that enables electronic communication network and association infrastructure to build at the same time as already mentioned for this person we have established this investment portal and this portal allows searching for construction location as developed by investors this has contributed to a significant increase in joint construction in Slovenia to figure out the impact of co-investment of women and the roll out of fixed movement lines across conducted a mini-serving so operators reported that between 10% and 90% of all investments in fixed networks are made as co-investment so it's important that the data that we get are let's say are passed back to the market thank you very much thank you thank you very much I think it is very useful your experiences are actually comparable from what I can understand but let me now turn to let me now turn to universal service obligation and universal service funds that have been mentioned in the last couple of times so let me come to you Isaias in Capvaldi how does regulation in concrete terms support the provision of universal service across the islands and they are very beautiful islands by the way I know them thank you thank you Andrew beautiful islands we're just a small nation island with 10 small islands half a million habitants and we lack resources we lack natural resources I used to say that even the water we drink we have to take it from the sea and decentralize it that's why for us optimization of resources is indeed key and of course and optimization of resources they have to come together so that we can in fact develop the country itself today we have 80% of internet penetration rates while the African average is around 43% so that's a good indicator so what are we doing in order to achieve that but in fact infrastructure sharing and universal service are indeed key in order to achieve this first of all of course we have the usage of the universal we have the universal service fund we have regular monitoring of coverage and of quality of service and of course when the operators receive the right to use spectrum of course they have attached a series of obligations in terms of development of information society and as a regular we have to follow up on this development on the implementation of the different initiatives so that we can indeed bring connectivity to the remote areas but one of the aspect that I would like here to emphasize has to do with internet as essential or basic service in case by law having access to drinking water to electricity they are considered essential or basic service that means that the operators and even the government itself has certain obligations to ensure that people have access to drinking water have access to electricity so we're currently working on a piece of legislation exactly to make internet access as an essential or basic service and of course the operators are already engaged and that will bring a tremendous contribution to ensuring that we truly have universal access universal service when it comes to telecommunications and specifically when it comes to connectivity and internet access so in a nutshell what I would say is that universal service infrastructure sharing and optimization of resources are indeed key to ensure that everyone is connected and to bridge the digital divide and of course to take advantage of the potential of internet and ICT thank you thank you very much as usual succinct the points now that you spare we need to bring universal service to Canada we do have statistics that show that irrespective of the problems that we are having that could be resolved by universal service universal access funds many many countries are not using these funds they are amassed from the operators and they are not used so my question to you would be why would anybody have a gap in connectivity have a whole lot of funds and just keep the funds and not meet this but this is off script so if we have time I would ask your opinion on that but for the time being I would like to complete the presentation by asking Mark what are the main challenges to ensure infrastructure sharing that as I was talking about among operators in a country like Congo recognizing that it can have a big impact on the costs of network deployment and affordability I will tell you for the question as you said the deployment of all these networks have a considerable impact on the costs and what are the challenges that we can meet in a country like Congo I would not be able to quote the challenges but I would tell you what we have tried to put in place to face the resolution of these connectivity problems I think the first point is that there will always be the deployment of the texts that accompany this just now my colleague from Cape Verlady through the loads that we ask through the licenses that we put in place we already have to have a real vision in terms of infrastructure and infrastructure sharing to improve connectivity in terms of what we study the problems of competition because when we ask for an infrastructure sharing it can go from a sharing of infrastructure support to a sharing of infrastructure through all the national itinerance in the gray zones so there is a study that we have to do for competition questions so that each operator who invests in an infrastructure or even through the investment that this investment is static or in private companies that this investment is profitable and that there is no loss so there is this work we have also put in place as we said universal access funds which allow to go beyond because the operators have this challenge of connectivity in the places or in the loads but beyond these cities the universal access fund is put in place for this which makes us accompany through this fund by different mechanisms the operators to go in the areas back which led us just in 2020 to cover more than 60 cities or villages that were not yet in connectivity as well as data through I can also add we have we push the operators who come to invest at the level of the areas back to facilitate connectivity by accompaniment of the state accompaniment in terms of choice of accommodation in terms of tax but also in terms of the implementation of a license to technology so we do not complain about a certain technology when it decides to go invest in the areas in the areas back and what I can also say to finish beyond accessibility in terms of infrastructure because we come back a lot on infrastructure there are areas where accessibility is not just blocked by infrastructure but also by terminals in some countries especially in developing countries there are still a certain number of high costs concerning to facilitate this accessibility to connectivity and one of the challenges is also to accompany the inhabitants of the countries to have access to different terminals what we have done is that we have voted by a law the de-fiscalization of all access terminals to facilitate connectivity so that's about what I can say on an ensemble of challenges that we have raised at the level of Nouveau to facilitate connectivity always with this transparency and this collaboration between the state and the company to be able to see what are the best ways to share infrastructure to push it so that the first investor is not lost and we have to finish a last point in some cities where there is only one operator who qualifies two years of gray, we have brought operators to not totally invest in totality because infrastructure infrastructure is expensive so we have worked on a national de-fiscalization system to help the operators to open the city but that the signals of all operators are available by the infrastructure of this last one so that we can share some areas of the country to facilitate and reduce investments for the operators but to allow the different users and consumers to have access to all the networks so that's what I can say concerning the challenges we have thank you very much Mark I completely empathize with you do I have an echo somewhere technique okay I empathize completely because I've been there I've been privileged in my past life to be an operator so I completely understand now if I didn't have this nice backdrop you see that I'm at home this is because of this COVID-19 endemic that has really turned everything upside down but on the other hand it has forced us really to realize how critical infrastructure is so my question and this goes to all of you but let me start with Carol again my question is how has the backbone infrastructure of your country related to COVID-19 have there been any challenges how operators with increased traffic that's what I'm suffering from that's why I dropped how have backbone networks been strengthened and monitored data and monitored at the country level Carol please give us your good experience thank you Andrew I think lockdown related to COVID-19 pandemic and sharp increase in network load cost among others of course by learning or remote work was some kind of stress test for operators and telecommunications infrastructure in the spring of 2020 a year ago so the volume of traffic in networks increased significantly in the peak of periods in March and April the number of voice calls increased by by 90% and the data transmission over the fixed line internet increased by 140% our latest survey of institutional clients show that as much as one third of companies have faced increased demand for telecom services especially in the field of voice calls in as much as 63% of the surveyed companies that work remotely of or use in learning the use of video conferencing application and program has increased in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland the regulator so our office has cooperated actively with the operators to guarantee service continuity and prevent or remove the effects of network congestion at the very beginning of the pandemic in Poland president of UK ask operators to take any necessary actions to guarantee service continuity by preventing and removing the effects of network congestion resulting from increased demand of connectivity UK our office collects data from operators on internet traffic and participates in monitoring exercise of course we like to monitor but it was to help the market and users so I wouldn't name it as a burden so this data was also used in monitoring exercise lunch by the European commission and body of European regulators of electronic communication monitor connectivity in whole Europe the situation related to COVID-19 pandemic was as I said a stress test and for operators in Poland which I think now I can say that they passed very well but also further stress the need for new network investments especially in fiber in crisis conditions the optical fiber turn out to be a great advantage especially allowing users to send let's say on average of 30% more data than any other technologies so over to you Andrew thank you thank you very much very very insightful and that last point that it drove investment into fiber is very very important I think that's probably important but it's something that those listening should take into account if you allow me I'm going to cut to two minutes because I have another interesting question that I want to ask so each of you remaining please take two minutes to tell us how you've strengthened your networks because of the increased traffic because now we have traffic increased everywhere so let me go to you okay thank you so also in light of COVID-19 situation in Slovenia the year 2020 represented a stress test of electronic networks and services due to the mass use of information technology and consequently possible issue concerning availability and quality of service so due to the increase in traffic because of work at home and schooling from home it also reflected on higher capacity needs but the operators in Slovenia actually showed a very high degree of independence and they increased both interconnection and base station capacities operators solved this issue relatively quickly quality of service therefore has not been decreased so AQAS didn't impose any additional remedies which would have an impact on quality of service during the COVID-19 so also because of the COVID we have not noticed any increase of NQDR disputes at AQAS so we passed it also very well in Slovenia thank you thank you Louis Marc same question how have you strengthened your networks and suffering from increasing traffic thank you what we have done today is a stress test today the stress has become a permanent activity because it is really a change of paradigms a change of habit that we have taken today and for that investments during this period of 2020 infrastructure has well responded the data was not accessible there was a very good collaboration between operators and regulators as well as the state and all the demand we have at this time also seen failures of sensitivity as the multiplication of amphibious investments in terms of redundancy and in terms of access to submarine cables we have completely changed in terms of vision in the country investments in terms of electronic communication have been reviewed at AQAS because the need has become more and more present and we have put in place the work committees and also well with the minister of telecom regulation and operators consumer structures in order to be able to study in the best cases how to secure secure the data and guarantee that this stress period is not just a stress period but a new way of life and guarantee the debits where we have seen the flows the rates and levels of exposed lives we have reviewed the infrastructure not to respond but to improve and above all to prevent future risks we return to parliament in 2019 brought a tremendous increase when it comes to traffic that seems to be the situation in almost all countries in our particular case we had a 57 increase on 4G traffic for instance 29% increase on 3G and even GSM we had a 20% increase on GSM traffic and of course all this made us increase our international capacity we're talking here about a backbone we increased our international capacity in 50% exactly to give the right response to this increasing demand during this COVID-19 pandemic of course investments had to be made now internally we also experienced some congestion especially on peak hours and we in order to help the operators as regulators we made a spectrum available for the operators and especially during the period of time that people will confine at home we had to make a spectrum available and we did it free of charge of course for a certain period of time in order to make sure that people at home would be able to work and the students would also be able to attend their classes using the various online platforms so yes there was an increase a special increase on the traffic and there was a strong need of a coordinated response from operators on one hand and also from the regulator and there was also a strong need of regularly monitoring the evolution of the traffic we had weekly reports brought to us by the operators on the development on the evolution of the traffic and at our level as regulators we could also take the necessary action so I would say that yes there was a tremendous impact in terms of traffic increase we had to increase 50% when it comes to international connectivity we had to make more spectrum available and we had to regularly monitor the evolution of the situation so that we could take the necessary action and take the next action on time Thank you very much you just confirmed what I thought that increase in traffic in some places resulted to bigger revenues but on the part of a backbone probably a more investment but the question I have here is are the operators taking those increased revenues back into investment to be ready for the next pandemic great I have only two minutes to go but I would like to pose this question what new policies and regulators can be leveraged to trigger a multiply effect on investment in digital infrastructure and services we we do know by now that the tools that we are using are increasingly helpful holistically not only to regulators but also to operators and investors so what tools what tools can be leveraged now and let me again start with Natasha please Yes, okay now based on our experience the main trigger for investment is still competition on the market the regulator has to establish the environment that operators can compete on the market in Slovenia we have three big infrastructure operators and they are fighting for each end users they are building and upgrading then networks but unfortunately there are still some areas that are not covered with NJ network so for these areas for example they can use our portal with the information about planned investments and all other infrastructure which is included in the portal so and users can also expect for universal service if there is no alternative infrastructure available at their household and in the end also of course state aid projects are also very important to cover those areas so that's from my side Thank you Thank you very much Mark please also 30 seconds in terms of a static look towards operators of course the lever which may be in some cases a slight decrease in order to facilitate because the nerves of the war to be able to continue investments and to face it and the state has to really accompany the operators in terms of delaying certain taxes to boost the gain that you have said towards investments and especially to follow the implementation of these projects also coordinate investments of the company that can be in an international way and better target them to be able to respond to the enlargement of our infrastructure Thank you Excellent You also have your 30 seconds to me, Andrew I didn't get your message Yes, do I have the floor, Andrew? Yes, please go ahead But you lost 5 seconds No problem, let's try to be quick It was on my phone, it was the connectivity You see Very quickly, I would say that number one, we need level plane field for everyone When we have a level plane field for all operators, things get better Number two, I would say that we need to promote infrastructure sharing of course universal service, but if we manage to make internet as a basic or essential service we can make a tremendous progress in this area I think I took 30 seconds Thank you, Andrew Thank you ever so much Thank you very much You've been wonderful I'm not even going to try and recap what you all said I think it is evident the role of regulation in ensuring that there is sustainable investment in the country to then expand our connectivity This actually our discussion just now reminded me of a report that I read not so long ago in the 2020 affordability report the Alliance for Affordable Internet makes three policy recommendations One, support and mandate government ministries to collaborate in dig once policies that enable savings in large public works projects Second, enact and regularly update infrastructure sharing regulations that encourage fair access and enable market competition which just came out now and third use publicly funded projects as inter-connective routes to support community networks and community networks and smaller operators I think what you said plus what Alliance for Affordable Internet found out in their research is telling in what we should do going forward in supporting regulation getting government involved getting private sector involved that is the only way There is one thing that I would like to ask and this is if Carol if you are standing in front of a mask who we know has a lot of money or if you are going to ask another Fortune 500 company to invest in this in connectivity in this digital space What treat size message would you give them I'm sorry to surprise you but I would I would say believe in cooperation do the support and please cooperate and of course believe in our regulatory approach and regulatory tools that are used fairly and well and these tools are key to facilitate and to foster the investments which are the resilient source for our times so that sounds but as your question absolutely and I do agree by the way I do agree with your sentiments for they the guys that are bringing cash that believe in us who are making policy and regulation make regulations that are inclusive that are collaborative and that are sustainable and the investment will come you've been wonderful all of you and I ask everybody wherever they are to join me in thanking this very insightful very thoughtful panel that has given us a lot to think about I thank you I now would like to tell you that we do have a 23 minute break because I ate 7 of those minutes so we have a break go and grab something to eat and have a great afternoon and I thank you all again thank you very much general so we'll return at exactly 13.30 how are you? good ladies and gentlemen it's 13.31 maybe let's wait for one minute to give some colleagues to come back from the short but we hope very effective lunch break so bear with us and I will already invite my colleagues and also the panelists to prepare themselves for entering on the panel so it's 13.32 maybe in line with our plan let's kick off the session here ladies and gentlemen welcome after the break it's my great pleasure to welcome you to the next session around table focusing on the collaborative regulation which will be led and facilitated by our colleague Julia Lozanova so I'm having the pleasure of handing over the floor to Julia, the floor is yours thank you very much Jaroslav and good afternoon to all in Africa and in Europe and everywhere else it is a great pleasure and honour for me to be here for this round table discussion we have such an exciting and important topic and a group of excellent speakers so we have all the ingredients of a great debate ahead of us fifth generation collaborative regulation it is a mouthful but you're hopefully familiar to some extent at least with the ITU concept crafted around it collaborative regulation marks a fundamental change in the way that government develops regulatory frameworks and importantly how they implement those it reveals how collaboration among institutions industry stakeholders and cross-sector regulators is critical for regulatory relevance coherence and impact at the domestic international level in areas such as health finance education transportation and energy at ITU we have done a fair amount of research over the past five years and today we are here to put in the spotlight national approaches leading towards collaborative regulation and we will do so with the help of our distinguished analysts let me introduce them Mrs. Cristiana Flutur is the head of international affairs unit at ANCOM Romania she is also co-president of CEPT and chairman of COM ITU welcome Cristiana thank you very much we also have with us Dr. Edmanuel Manasse director of industry affairs at the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority T-C-R-A thank you for being with us Mr. Manasse thank you very much Mr. Fiakre Musimir senior manager technology innovation at the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority Roura good afternoon Mr. Musimir good afternoon colleagues thank you very much and last but not least we have with us Mr. Dimitru Grituk head of the management, policy and strategic analysis department at Anarcheti Moldova welcome Dimitru I am delighted to have all of you for this round table discussion and I'm sure we will have lots of insights coming out of it I will give the floor to all of you for initial thoughts but before I do so we have with us Mrs. Sophie Madens the head of the policy and regulatory environment team of the development bureau my team and she will get us started with a short presentation of the ITU framework for collaborative regulation Sophie over to you thank you very much Julia and thank you to everybody amazing wonderful panel we have with us today so very much looking forward to the discussions and in fact this morning during the different panels we heard a lot about good regulation adapting the regulation inclusive decision making evidence based decision making dialogue across stakeholders countries regions and sectors but as Julia said now we are focusing on the national collaboration this all as we see digital at the center of so much we do and dare I say to digital transformation of societies bless you the session will address collaborative regulation for inclusive connectivity but before going into further details let us reflect on how regulation has evolved next slide please let me give you a little bit of background on ITU's collaborative regulation framework the past 20 years of regulatory reform it's really been like a roller coaster that we've all been on not only in the telecom sector but also beyond and I'm sure you've always witnessed it in your area and why has regulation evolved at such a rapid pace because markets have and dare I say because societies have because digital is no longer seen as a luxury but an intrinsic part of our life and no better have we seen it than in this morning Goodluck talked about digital financial services without the D there is no DFS so traditionally regulation has either resisted or struggled to catch up with markets market developments societal developments today we as regulators we can't afford to keep catching up with the markets in many respects we're expected to lead markets and ensure long-term resilience and growth again we heard that this morning and in many industries the trends driving the evolution of regulatory frameworks over the past two decades they actually have been rather similar the state has often moved out of market operations to leave private sector initiative shape market dynamics and dare I say investments and so we've seen separate regulators created to oversee sector markets and regulations evolving from obligation based to incentive based and as we heard this morning decision-making processes have become more inclusive and consumers and users not profit or market share we heard that from Anna Marie Zipkis and users who come into the center of the regulators attention and regulatory or organizations and associations and again this morning we heard data has become the basis of policy and decision-making it's right there and it's the basis of the priorities so the future impact of regulation has become a primary consideration in regulatory processes and this framework of generations of regulation developed by ITU reflects the evolution initially from a sector perspective and more recently as Julia said in the last five years we've looked at it holistically looking how governments have configured their legal and institutional frameworks for this digital transformation can I describe it as a regulatory ladder where generations one through four reflect the evolving levels of regulatory maturity and there I say market openness and market entry focusing narrowly on the telecom and then the ICT sector but the fifth generation marks a major shift from sector specific to holistic cross sector policies and regulations is it easy no it's a process it's a ladder it's a process where together we discuss we learn the best way for our particular environment G4 in the last decade has become the established standard for ICT integrated regulation led by economic and social considerations yet four and ten countries still language in G1 and 2 and really they miss out on development opportunities in global digitization so this G5 not 5G G5 the fifth generation of collaborative regulation that is really the next frontier in terms of holistic digital regulation next slide please so why do we need collaborative regulation let me say a few words about the framework we've developed which Julia has actually been piloting and leading over the past few years and how we've done it together the digital journey brings together all players from different backgrounds and sizes into one living network it's true for markets but it's also not different for regulation a silo approach is no longer an option for navigating that digital transformation so a few years ago we started building that concept around the best practice experience we found in many countries we found that collaboration is a defining element of digital regulation and a core asset of this fifth generation regulation like we heard this morning collaboration must engage a broad diverse range of stakeholders in informed evidence-based rulemaking and decision-making it gives all the opportunity to participate in that discussion leading towards decision-making and contributing to the success of others and forging inclusive momentum around that key core mission of generating economic and social impact with priority really on social impact and digital regulation now occurs across a network of centers of expertise and enforcement again we heard that this morning expertise build that capacity but also talk across the sector with policy makers with all we have this shared focus on the ability among the government agencies and stakeholders and that really is starting to replace the ICT silo model once the concept of collaborative regulation was sound enough we focused our efforts on developing a metric the G5 benchmark benchmark and that reflects all these trends and we've also been developing a series of collaborative regulation case studies we're working on it right now this is in collaboration with the countries which we have which we have on this panel today next slide please let's look at some of the governance mechanisms so collaboration within government involves various agencies working together on a common issue does it mean we go into the mandate onto the territory the turf of others no but sometimes there are these overlaps there are these common issues ICT regulator shares the responsibility or creates strategies overlapping with other sectoral agencies jurisdictions and as digitization impacts and becomes an integral component of other sectors that interagency collaboration becomes crucial can we just click on the slide so that we have the various mechanisms there thank you and again and again thank you so it becomes crucial to ensure that regulatory certainty but also continuity across all the industries because digital is first digital is center now is there one model is there one way to collaborate no it comes in many shapes and forms in different countries and across various agencies there is no one silver bullet for collaboration to work and to deliver that positive outcome it stands out with its flexibility but is it certain or is it uncertain formal collaboration is more stable but it can still provide rigid under certain circumstances and like with all the regulation we have just having a text does not mean it's implemented so formal collaboration also needs to be implemented and market players expect both flexibility when there's new products services underway but also stability and predictability when investment plans are made so let's think about that when we come to the panel now Yulia next slide please let me hand back to you for the final slide Yulia back to you thank you very much Sophie that was a great piece of background and very helpful to frame our discussion on national approaches to collaborative regulation I will talk just for a minute about the work that we have done with the countries we have today on the panel and a few others so we can also understand where that work comes from over the past six months we've been working on seven case studies with a focus on collaborative regulation in different regions in three different regions and we will be adding at least five more case studies to the portfolio in the coming months in the lead up to the main GSR event at the end of June we have the four countries on this panel that have done a fantastic work into mapping their institutional government systems and looking into how collaboration is actually working and what it is delivering and we are here today to learn from those experiences and also from our global research I'm very grateful to you all for all the work that we have done together to this point and for all the work that we will be doing from now on we have a little bit more to go and we hope that more countries will also join us in this debate and I'm especially thankful to all of you for taking the challenge to do this because we're doing it in a different way we're doing it in an innovative and creative way we're taking you out of your comfort zone and we hope that this will move the debate forward so thank you very much for that so based on the different country case study experiences that we have explored in different regions we found recurring patterns or vectors for the success of regulatory policies for the digital transformation and the digital economy the first vector Sophie already mentioned in the presentation and I would be very interested to hear the views of our panelists in a minute but let's summarize it in this way the best regulation or policy is the one that gets implemented strategies and policies need to be bought but executable and regulars and policy makers need to excel in both vision and operation they also need to design concrete mechanisms to make sure policies make a difference on the ground that they have impact and for this it is key to streamline data driven processes to support regulatory compliance and policy implementation and Sophie already touched upon this idea and this trend actually in the first round table this morning and since the focus on policy making and regulation is on policy and regulation design and adoption the implementation gap needs special attention to ensure that policy goals are met and regulatory frameworks are effectively serving markets and ultimately consumers so in our discussion with the panel it would be interesting to reflect around those thoughts is there a blind spot between legal frameworks and our implementation we'll come back to that the second vector for the success of regulatory policies is unsurprisingly collaboration collaboration has a dual role which needs to be leveraged on one hand the process of collaboration is important as it builds bridges over silos creates efficiencies builds a common language between institutions stakeholders and provides for learning on the other hand putting in place collaborative processes does not necessarily automatically lead to effective collaborative governance collaboration is the defining element of digital regulation the regulation again Sophie just mentioned it however this only happens when collaboration is outcome focused and actually delivering or at least contributing to positive market and consumer outcomes such as lower prices more people connected or new services hitting the markets one last thought here and it goes back to the implementation vector policy implementation also needs to be collaboration based and here we should consider not only government agencies the sector and cross sector regulators which are the natural partners of the ICT regulators and policy makers but also industry players and consumer associations and this has been an idea that has been coming back to debate in all the round table discussions this morning but to some extent it is still not very common to bring the private sector perspective intrinsically and throughout the policy and regulatory processes from design to prototyping to implementation it's a bit like mixing oil and water the environment is lacking the ability to induce a blending of perspectives and genuine partnerships I would argue that this is one of the main challenges in enhancing regulatory compliance and policy implementation in the digital transformation and even more importantly achieving social and economic policy goals I'll leave it there and look forward to hear the views of our distinguished panelists now but before I do that I'll make just one quick procedural point please be brief so we can turn it around a few times and get your sense of today's topics we should leave some space for questions from the audience too so please keep your interventions to two to three minutes and since I'm not very good at timekeeping I will still have to intervene so I really hope that you help me with that to ensure that everyone has equal speaking opportunity and please also do not forget to speak at a base that is not too fast for translation because we have our interpreters helping us get our messages across in also in French thank you in advance for your collaboration Kristiana please ask you to go first and to give us your thoughts over to you thank you very much for the very good introduction of the panel I will try to be brief there is a lot to talk about but I may give you some of our insights so first I think that collaborative regulation might be the only response for the paradigm shift in regulation of the telecommunications sector we are witnessing a historic moment when regulation must adapt to the new conditions to the digital conditions the ICTs have moved beyond the era of voice and text as we all know the boundary between traditional telecom services and digital services is getting thinner and thinner like the telecom sector regulation must also innovate and evolve we see the approach in the European Union with new proposals coming to regulate big platforms to the benefit of end users if we are to take advantage of the digital world we need more secure, more trust and more level playing field in the digital world collaboration between different stakeholders and competent authorities is more important than ever right now we will have to rethink the rules and enforce them in a way that doesn't affect the digital ecosystem's ability to innovate I also feel that this change is more about the end user than it is about the operators platforms or markets policy offers structure and foreseeability however repeated change in policy also results in lack of predictability which can be quite harmful so in my opinion there is not a particular legal or administrative instrument that is essential to collaboration but the stability of the instruments already set in place is a key factor that can help us with the implementation of the new regulations we have different competent authorities that are foreseeing competition privacy data protection, cybersecurity the real challenge is making these entities working together so an inclusive approach meaning the involvement of all parties interested in setting the objectives and actions required from them is very much needed a vision of how the future regulation will look fosters innovation for investment and alignment of business objectives to national strategic goals last but not least in Romania we are always keeping an eye on what other countries do some European member states have already acted for example on the new EU proposals regarding the digital markets so we look at what they are doing in terms of governance in terms of responsibilities and competencies the ITU the body of European regulators BEREC just to name a few our platforms of collaboration instruments and learning from the experience of other administrations and I believe why we are here also at this round table to use the international setup to share ideas and best practices so we must use our diversity to work in our advantage because after all we are facing the same challenges that's it as an introduction and I give the floor back to you thank you Yulia thank you very much Cristiana for sharing those very valuable points and indeed collaboration happens at the national level and within the different countries but it's also so important to actually bring it one level up and to really generalize the work on collaboration across the board thank you for that we will go now to Dr Emmanuel Manasse and we're eager to hear your initial thoughts on this debate the floor is yours thank you very much for this privilege to be a panelist in this inciting and very exciting session as you explain I'm from Tanzania I'll give some experience of collaborative regulation in Tanzania number one I strongly agree that collaboration is very difficult to achieve the goals of digitization or digital transformation I can start with a very good example that the sector that we are regulating is a nebler of various sectors Yulia in your introductory part you said the digital financial service the DFS is there because of that D if you omit the D you remain with digital financial services so you see the important that we are regulating a sector that is transforming and increasing efficiency to other sectors so that calls for collaboration a good example for example we the regulator of communication we are very close to the central bank and that enabled the implementation of mobile money you know mobile money is one of the most relevant and efficient services that have enabled a lot of Tanzanians to have these financial services but how could that be achieved simply through the so called collaboration because the central bank regulates the financial service we are regulating the communication but we come together instead of regulating vertically or horizontally where you take on board those and regulators that are relevant for setting objective or goal to be achieved and then you work together either as you explained could be informal or formal the formal way that we are using a Tanzania we sign the so called memorandum of understanding between two regulators so that we can exchange and the memorandum of understanding is going to specifically consider those issues that we need to work in collaboration to achieve the goal I look at this as the key in achieving each and everything there is a collaboration among the government regulatory bodies collaboration among government institutions and collaboration with private sector as well. Another good example that I can give is when we talk of digital economy or digital transformation we are talking of enhancing and connectivity so that most of the services could be accessed digitally and this involves layout of digital infrastructure laying out of digital infrastructure requires collaborative regulation or requires collaborative effort among institutions let me give a good example if I want to lay a fiber then there is another institution that involves you know the right of way some countries is still a big difficulty and one of the constraints of laying fibers and as a regulator of communication on regulating the land so but you can communicate in a way that we are solving one goal of connecting and digitizing and transforming the society so you sit with the relevant ministry relevant regulators you discuss that look if the right of way is reduced then these private sectors plus the government could let the fiber that is necessary for providing essential connectivity to thank you very much Dr. Manasse indeed I mean your thoughts were the natural extension of the story that we started in our presentation in the beginning of the panel and also really relate very well to even the European experience that Christiana shared with us and it's very interesting indeed because we still sometimes refer to the ICT sector but is it a sector anymore it has really become the foundation of the whole economy so it's much more than a sector and since it really cuts across all the different elements collaboration is what would make ICT is transformational so thank you very much for sharing the experience of Tanzania and for keeping to time thank you and now we will move on to Mr Fiat Moushimir and we're very keen on hearing your take on this topic over to you thank you very much thank you Yuria thanks to the other panelists as my colleagues have aside collaborative regulation is basically a must in this era and the key requirement is actually not only the changes that we've seen in the technology but also within the new emerging business models the telecommunication companies as my colleague from Tanzania have said also coming up with new products they no longer just offering the three main services, the voice data and calls and messages that they did in the beginning of this telecommunication especially in the mobile ecosystem and the emergence of services like mobile money have really made it extremely hard because it rolls the line between financial regulation and telecommunication regulation so it is a must because if we don't intervene either on both sides from the financial side and from the telecommunication side the consumers are the ones that suffer due to this regulatory gap that exists between the authorities so it is mandatory for the authorities in charge to sit down together and actually we'd like to thank the role that ITU has played in this for example the current MOU that we have with the central bank is based on the template that was produced during the focus group which was an ITU FTDFS so they laid out a model template and then that is what we built on with the lawyers in the central bank to help clarify the line between both regulators especially where the authority overlaps and this particular challenge also is faced with other sectors we are seeing a lot of applications in the healthcare delivery medical services online and we have also to sit down with the authority in that sector and agree on how to proceed how the service affects the delivery of the service consumer protection on the ends and who basically is valuable for what so I look forward to actually learning more from my colleagues and we'll be able to share our own experience with regards to this collaboration with the other government key stakeholders the private itself and the industry thank you thank you very much Mr. Mushimir and I hope that you really learn from the other panelists and you find those insights valuable but we definitely have a lot of things to learn from your experience at RURA and in Rwanda in general I worked very closely with our expert on the case study on Rwanda and you have done some really fantastic work in making that collaboration work in really going across all the silos you mentioned the new business models that are bringing new challenges the blurring lines between sector specific regulations there will always be challenges and probably even more so as we go forward with digital transformation but your country experience actually also shows that there are solutions at hand so thank you very much for those insights and we will now move to Mr. Dimitru Grichuk our our panelists from Anarchety Moldova Dimitru are you with us I know you had some difficulties connecting yes I'm here thank you you had some difficulties some issues but great we're very happy to have you with us and please we're delighted to listen to your thoughts thank you same for me yes so as everyone mentioned before me now we are in a kind of a new era let's say in the pandemic situation I think that accelerated by development and the importance of the IT sector so now we as even you mentioned we cannot speak about the development of IT sector without mentioning that it became like an accelerator of development of some new facility some new services that are offered by businesses and even by government to the population so during this period appeared a lot of challenges as for for us for agency for the regulatory agency in this field and also for the agencies and the responsible institutions from other fields just we have to solve them together now even as it was mentioned in the presentation before in the beginning of the panel we I think are trying more to solve all these issues all these problems in a more informal way just using our relations that we established during a lot of time during a lot of or a big period of time that we are working together with different institutions but now we feel it more important like to formalize all these in order to have some touchable results in a way and even during the last I think last week we just established two working groups with different agencies on different topics just in order to have to be able to solve with common efforts some problems that during this but I think that this formalization also depends on the openness in our country more how all the institution are opened to answer to this let's say call that our agency is giving to the market and not even to market but to the economy and how they are and if all these institutions are ready to participate in these working groups and are ready to work on these common problems and to identify those common solutions on these common problems that we have it's more easy if we are speaking about some agency or institutions from the same field so if we are talking for example we had this week good discussions and a good collaboration with national service on radio frequencies management so we have two institutions from the same field and we have some common goals and some common problems and we just want and need to solve them in order to because we are responsible by law with them but when it comes to topics that are not directly responsible some other institutions it's much more difficult to involve them in these processes so this collaborative approach I think as everyone mentioned is very important but each of us has to understand how we can implement it more efficiently in order to all the parties to be interested to be involved in this process so I think we some to be a way more short thank you good afternoon I'm happy hello thank you very much Dimitru for your introductory thoughts and it was very relevant indeed to highlight the importance of exploring constantly and consistently new ways of collaboration and really looking for the one that works best in the different situations and with the different stakeholders so thank you very much for this so that's brilliant all those thoughts were extremely helpful and valuable so now we can go straight to some concrete questions and I welcome the views of all of you on those questions please also feel free to react to the views of your panelists and to build on those so let's start with one of the most challenging but also the most crucial and important questions in upgrading and refining your country's policy and regulatory frameworks for the ICT sector and the digital transformation what has been the single most difficult challenge you have faced and how did you overcome that and I will maybe start again with Dimitru because I understand that he has excuse me for just one second I have a tele worker we will start with you Dimitru so we can so we can let you go and continue the collaboration with the ministry we see that the collaboration is going full steam in Moldova so please take this question and please tell us about the challenges and the solutions you have recently faced in Moldova so yes thank you so I think that partly I have mentioned all the challenges that we are facing during our collaboration in my ICT sector speech but still I want to mention that it's more easy to overcome all these barriers that appears during this collaboration when you are talking about some common challenges with the institutions from the same field when you have some common goals and you just speak the same language but if we have a problem also the last we have a very good example that we had we can call it a collaboration because it was a kind of a common problem of Anarseti and of audio visual consul they have their law, they have audio visual law and we have our law on electronic communication but still even in the law and in our law there are some let's say regulations yes or some provisions of this law that are were separately somehow developed and when we came to we needed to solve a kind of problem we could not find a common solution because we as an agency had to say that and to stay on our positions as a consul had their law and they had to stay on their positions and so we needed if we are saying about how we overcame overcome these challenges we just had to elaborate a common position on this topic and in a way to we can save and to overcome the provisions of both laws and saying that there is such an issue and just to go forward to solve the problem but this problem could not for sure happen if we had together with the ministry of the parliament who had drafted these provisions of the law if we were all parties involved during the process of law elaborations or amendment of the law and these aspects could easily be overcome and must be drafted with a similar in both laws and to be clearly divided our responsibilities and the responsibilities of our visual consul the fact that it did not happen during that period of time that's why we needed to so to find somewhere we can save in same illegal solutions or some not permanent but temporary solutions on these topics so this is a very difficult process if you do not have a collaboration of the first stages of the if we are talking about the law drafting processes because a lot of problems that we are facing we've come from the beginning from the fact that each each stakeholder tried just to solve their separate problem and they are not trying to look on this subject on this field more opened and in more extended ways so to be brief I think that something like this I can explain my position and our challenges that we faced during our activity thank you thank you very much and those were such valuable points and indeed we come over and over again to the same issue of building a common language for all national stakeholders and even international stakeholders on the topic of regulation and again this depending on the areas of expertise and the decision kind of mandates of the different authorities it might be difficult but in your case you have overcome that through some flexibility listening to the others and trying to walk in the shoes of the other regulator effectively so that definitely sounds like a very valuable lesson to take away thank you for that and if you need to leave and continue the collaboration at the national level thank you very much for joining us and you can leave us here and we will make sure that we continue the collaboration on the case study in the coming weeks thank you for sure thank you and have a nice day and a nice conversation forward thank you very much goodbye great so now we can go back to our three distinguished panelists and Cristiana I see that you have a point to make please go ahead yes thank you very much I just want to build on exactly what Dimitra mentioned I think that the problems if we are talking about the legal framework it is of course important to start from the beginning to try to have it in a coherent way and it's very hard to achieve we need the proper legal instruments to tackle this digital transformation for us we have the instruments at EU level yes but we need to adapt them to the national situation and that is not very easy to do as my colleague from Moldova also mentioned to put everyone at the table and to try to agree of course also political consensus is a big challenge and I think it's the case everywhere but it's not impossible in the end we need to everyone needs to understand the need for change and to keep the stakeholders at every step of the way involved is I think it's most beneficial so at every step of the way if we are all engaged both at expert level and at higher management level with all stakeholders and also I'm talking about the national institutions I think this is at least a way to start to have a better start and not to go into problems later on thanks thank you very much and it's very interesting because we realize that the different experiences at the national level in different regions are often very common and I really know that if I can summarize collaboration is a journey it's not that you would have a legal instrument in place that would work right away you need to build the process you need to build the community you need to build the trust with the national stakeholders and it's also a together journey and really all the different stakeholders need to be involved in every step and stage of the process so thank you very much for that we are moving now to another region and I'm really interested in the use of let's say Rwanda Mr Mushimir can you give us an insight in Rwanda's challenges I'm sure you've met some and how you have dealt with them thank you very much well we've had also similar challenges like the colleagues just say it on the legal side I think the biggest challenge for us has been to when you have difficulties with competing demands so for example I'll give you an example here let's say for example we have the central bank who has a policy that is to drive financial inclusion so they want as many people to have access to this particular service as much as possible but they forget that for example the current system that is being used is affecting the telecommunication service so we have also high QA and QE metrics and the more services that are being delivered on this platform affects the metrics on our side or the security considerations that are our priority for whom for them it is a secondary objective because they have a policy objective that is we need to get as many as possible so then you realize that they launch their own campaign encouraging people to do this and they forget to consult with the other entity and in the end you realize that you could undermine each other's which has a score so what basically was agreed on and then is to set up some kind of national steering committee where everyone that is affected in this particular work for example the payment sector over the banks the telcos the regulators come on the table on having similar goals and metrics to ensure that one party is excluded out while they have some power of either stopping or impacting this particular government policy objective negatively so I think that was really hard and it is also very hard to convince other government agencies that have their own KPIs that you need to bring us on the table but when they don't they don't achieve this so in the end we came up with the mechanisms of solving this by setting basically key focal points in particular organizations whenever they know that we are affected or whenever we are going to do something that we know that affects them we have to consult them and we really have to try everything in all the possible engagement until we get some form of commitment from them or they give us a non-objection I think that in the beginning it was very crucial and anyone that is going to go through a similar process may have to deal with the same challenges yeah but trying our best not everything is running 100% smooth but at least we have processes now and it gets the job done thanks well this is effectively the most important part if it works for markets if it works for consumers that really justifies the effort and the energy put into collaboration processes and in your points here I would really like to stress again the importance of the whole of government approach really that attitude of all the agencies to usefully collaborate really to give a hand to each other and rather than closing their doors when there is an issue of common interest you also mentioned the evidence-based decision processes and this is something that was also discussed this morning and this is really one of the pillars of the collaborative regulation governments approach it is very important and again building a common language also in terms of the KPIs of the metrics of the data that we use so the decisions are actually based on the same data this is really important for consistency and yeah I really like the point as well about creating a network of focal points across the organizations really clarifying expectations and roles so the momentum doesn't get lost and every time there is a need to consult the channels are already there that's a very interesting lesson to take away as well great great insights indeed and we can maybe now move to one more question how important is collaboration and collaborative regulation when it comes to translating regulatory actions into outcomes for markets, for consumers and accelerating connectivity and what is really the key to fostering that dialogue between all the government stakeholders do you again need to speak different languages to be able to collaborate with the different groups of stakeholders or is it that there is another piece of magic that needs to be put in place and Mr. Manasseh I will start this discussion with you if that's okay all right thank you very much as you said the regulatory actions that need to be taken in this action of collaborative regulations number one maybe we need to streamline the efforts among the regulatory bodies and the government because when you look at all these services that we are regulating they are saving the same consumers so when you look at the consumer group with the same services that they need financial service connectivity connecting them connected you see all these regulatory bodies the government private sector are saving the same consumers so when you streamline the efforts and try to put and revisit the regulatory framework and see what works and what doesn't work where to regulate and where to deregulate where to have the flexibilities that allow companies to be taken on board without putting too much regulations I think that it could be the proper way of saving the consumers but when you look on the other side as well there's this the whole concept of digital transformation and having the multi sector policies instead of having a policy that is quite specific for a certain sector then you have this multi sector policy a good example maybe I can give that is you have like country has ICT you go to the agriculture sector they don't know what is written in the ICT polis you go to the health sector they don't know what is written in there but the policy in Delhi is talking about the energy is talking about digitizing and transforming but all these sectors are isolated but having a multi sector dialogue and sharing among the regulatory bodies improving the life of the citizens or consumer is through the collaboration of the government the private sectors and the regulatory bodies in ensuring that the services are delivered efficiently, reliably and save the purpose of making the life better for the citizens thank you thank you very much again very valuable points indeed streamlining the actions of different agencies and coordination collaboration is very valuable but coordination is what actually makes it outcome based thank you very much for those thoughts Cristiana would you like to add something to that yes I think so I think the points made by my colleague were very very valuable and I fully agree it is the case I think everywhere we face the same challenges as I mentioned earlier and this idea to have not only collaboration but also coordination it is crucial for the different sectors and as you mentioned for the end users the end users are the same the population of our different countries what an important role for us as regulators or for the policy makers is the proactive role to make the efforts to bring everyone to the same table this is something that looking at the private sector I'm not sure they can do that they can try they can propose or they can make this point but it's up to us to bring them to the table so constant dialogue being proactively done by us I think it's very important in this sense most definitely maybe even not only the ICT regulator the other government agencies but all stakeholders need to be more proactive in seeking the discussion and really trying to troubleshoot and problem solve for the sake of markets and for the sake of consumers ultimately so indeed the challenges are global but there are many solutions that are local and you have the privilege and the difficult task to actually be exploring those in order to find the one that works best in your situation Mr. Mushimir would you like to add something also to this discussion please I think Dr. Manasi has covered my challenge this is exactly similar it is this issue of awareness even within the government itself for we really you said this in the beginning also we think of ICT as an independent sector but in reality it is no longer the case it is an enabler of other sectors and it helps accelerate growth in those particular sectors but the challenge is the people in those sectors the majority of them don't understand or don't know and yeah it becomes a problem you really get into a fight with someone that you actually trying to enable and help and yeah so hopefully I will see if someone maybe has come up with a solution but it is very very challenging and nonetheless if you engage them and then you bring them on the table and you show them the value that this is bringing to them and you actually engage them in really physical ways that they can see and you tell them if we do this is that the results that you're going to have and you keep your word and they see some progress eventually you get some people to buy in and once they start to see the results they start pressuring you which actually is something really good and I'm happy to see that the colleagues are having the same challenges yeah I see them nodding so I think they really relate to what you're saying and again you brought another interesting point which is in order to be able to have that discussion in an informed way and in a sensible way one needs to understand the issues properly so that also brings up the importance of scaling up really keeping abreast of all the developments that are happening in terms of technology so the decisions can really be not political decisions as Christiana referred to in her previous intervention or the decisions of a certain agency just because they have the mandate but really and truly because this is the best solution that the group has found to a certain problem so thank you very much for that and at this point I will ask you for a very brief final word on maybe something that your regulatory authorities planning on doing in the next days or weeks in order to really cover that extra mile in getting closer to collaborative regulation. Christiana could I start with you? Yes certainly I can give you a brief example of what is being done not only by my the institution I work with but by the government by the Romanian institutions so we have the initiatives at EU level now the digital service act the digital market act and at national level for example we now are working in two institutional working groups which have many which have representatives from many institutions and we are working as committees in order to decide the next steps so we are implementing what also my colleague Mosimir mentioned the focal points from different institutions getting together at the same table and discussing so this is something that is going on right now and thank you very much Excellent so the journey continues Mr. Manasseh could you give us your final word please? Thank you very much I strongly believe that we need adaptive, resilient and collaborative and fit for purpose regulatory ecosystem in Tanzania now we are in the midst of creating the digital economy and we see the importance of involving all sectors and sit together to make sure that we bring everything on board and also to make sure that ICT works for all other sectors in increasing efficiency creating jobs and make this life better and easier for everyone so looking at that we see that the center is collaborative regulations to ensure that we regulate horizontally and no longer vertically where each sector think of itself but we think holistically by streamlining and coordinating the efforts to make sure that digital economy and digital transformation is real for all sectors thank you very much Thank you very much indeed and that regulatory dynamic is changing we can all see it and we can all feel it and we need to constantly adapt to it thank you very much indeed and Mr. Mushimir you have the final work from panelists please Thank you very much I would like to thank the colleagues who will be getting in touch with them very soon as I understand this is our program that is almost everyone's program my collaborative approach would actually be on the regional side as some of the challenges that we are having stems from the lack of a coordinated approach within the regional regulators for example as my colleague Dr. Manasseh said if you look at the technologies that are emerging in this particular sector like mobile money and realize that it is a non-standardized technology and every market is doing its own thing but in the end we have our citizens doing business with each other so we would like to see some recommendations on regional approaches especially for dis-emerging new services and my colleague from Europe maybe they have a European umbrella framework that they could work in but it would really be very helpful if we could get a similar thing the East African level for example African Union and encouraging even information exchange and learning from each other between the regulators across these particular challenges that we are facing it would be very, very helpful that's it, thank you Thank you very much so collaboration is also the key to finding regional and global solution to market problems this is an excellent way of wrapping it up because our hour is actually up I really enjoyed my time with you it was such a valuable discussion I hope you did too and I hope that all our audience has actually benefited from your great experiences and vision I would also like to extend a heartfelt thanks to your teams because we've been working with your teams on the case studies over the past months we still need to finalize most of them but we're getting there it was really time well spent and we really hope that it will benefit your own purposes and the findings will also hopefully be helpful for others too and on a final word I would just also like to encourage all of you panelists and everyone in the audience since most of you represent regulators but even those who are actually representing private sector to contribute to our best practice guidelines development as you may have already noticed the consultation for the GSR best practice guidelines 2021 is now open there is a special session on it at the end of today's journey so please have a look at the themes there is a lot about collaborative regulation we're trying to take that concept further and really see how it can be helpful on the ground so we very much rely on your collaboration and on your inputs in order to craft the guidelines so thank you very much indeed for taking the time for the great insights and I'm now going to sign off and give over the floor to Mr. Andrew Rugege the I2 Regional Director for Africa to introduce the next round table Andrew over to you thank you very much sir I was trying to animate myself thank you for the titulating session I would like to let everybody have a stretching break for five minutes and we come back just after your time 14 46 good afternoon once again welcome back I assume that all of you are back it is now my pleasure my honor actually to introduce my partner my co-organizer of this event and the head of the office for Europe Mr. Yaroslav Bonda who is going to moderate our third session of the day I'll let him introduce the session Yaroslav please thank you very much Andrew and welcome again all participants after this short break this is an exciting session because it talks about the collaboration since the morning we heard a lot of different statements referring to the strength and collaboration between the both regions but also strength and collaboration within the ecosystem of the regulators and this is the reason why it's my great pleasure to welcome today the distinguished representatives of the institutions which are really strongly advocating for collaboration in the field of the regulation and it's my great pleasure to welcome Michel van Bellingen Berek Chair of 2021 who is also the chairman of the Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications being the NRA of the Belgium we have also today Irene Kaguá Saban Khambo director for engineering and communication infrastructure the Uganda Communications Commission as well as Solia Amazouz Rida project manager from Rida and Senior Radio and transmission and broadcasting officer from the African Union Commission we have also today our colleague from Sweden who is representing Ulf Larsson program manager of the ICT regulation, policy and practice at Spider Stockhorn University as well as Ms. Elenor Sarfong a very well known person and deputy director and policy lead at Alliance for Affordable Internet at the Worldwide Foundation so welcome to this panel it's our great pleasure to welcome you in this setup we've heard a lot about the big expectations to connect and to bring the new generation connectivity and to unconnect it but also upgrade those who are connected so there is a lot of expectations on the shoulders of the regulators but also on the shoulders of those who are supporting the implementation and this is the reason why today we wanted to see what can be done in terms of the fostering the international collaboration taking a look from the institutional taking a look from the point of the institutional cooperation knowledge development maybe a regulatory harmonization at the regional and the inter-regional level as well as at the different possible financial mechanisms which can be facilitated by the effective regulation but also new innovative mechanisms so let's start the session with the short statements from our distinguished representatives of the institutions and it's my great pleasure and honor to start this series of the introductory remarks and by the introductory remarks of the minister, Navan Belingen the chair of the Barrett thank you so much Jaroslav thank you very much indeed and good afternoon everyone I'm really thrilled to be overview this afternoon as a Barrett chair 2021 the body of European regulators for electronic communications established in 2009 and nobodies that groups all technical regulators for 37 countries so Barrett is really committed to delivering the consistent application of their European regulatory framework in the field of electronic communications more specifically the European electronic communications codes with its four core objectives promoting connectivity and access to very high capacity networks promoting competition also contributing to the development of the internal market in Europe and also promoting the interests of citizens and of course within Barrett we have adopted a strategy 21-25 last year for the five coming years and we have adopted a special mission statement where Barrett aims at fostering the independent and high quality regulations of digital markets for the benefit of Europe and its citizens but it's in its strategy 2021-25 we have also a part dealing with international cooperation and of course we fully recognize that there is an increasing volume of electronic communications exchanged between Europe and the other regions of the world we also see that's this international cooperation with regulators of other regions of with groups of regulators of other regions is beneficial we have issues in common we are also following the trends in technology we are also following the evolution of business models so this is a global and worldless world that's something we have to deal with I need to stress that Barrett's international activities are integral part of the policies of the European Union in terms of cooperation topics and also in terms of priority regions we cooperate with and indeed we have already a good cooperation with different counterparts of different regions like emirc from the Mediterranean sea like ipiric for western countries or like regular tell from Latin America but also memorandum of standing signed with regulators of big countries like United States of America, Canada and India so in this the cooperation with Africa is is growing is more recent but as electronic communications is booming also in Africa and especially regarding the mobile markets and the PREDA project is definitely something we really support this is clearly acknowledged in our strategy 2021-2025 but we will come later to this also I just want to end with two final remarks Europe and Africa have been terribly struck by this Covid-19 pandemic like other regions of the world of course and of course we all recognize that connectivity has never been so much important in our lives to stay in contact with family colleague friends for education for health care so this is something that would be recognized must be recognized telecommunications play a vital role in our economies and societies in Europe and in Africa as well and we are a regulator I have to play an important role by promoting this connectivity and building confidence for this type of services later this year we will publish a draft report on the lessons learned about this Covid-19 crisis and specifically an overview of all the regulatory measures and the best practices. Last point about this introductory remark this crisis has also shown how deep is the digital divide even in Europe with about 15% of the citizens without access to high-speed internet up to 40% in rural areas and for this also this is something where regulators can play a role we will publish later this year study on how to deal with digital divide and with that I will end now and I will back on over to you Jaroslav, thank you very much. Thank you very much for this introductory statement and now let us move on to Africa and it's my great pleasure to introduce Ms. Yiran Kagwa Savankang so the floor is yours Yiran. Good morning good afternoon I think all of us are in that range always a pleasure to exchange ideas and views with colleagues from all around the continent and a special thank you to ITU for making this particular one possible between the two continents you know the subject of the panel is quite unique and I actually thought I was going to come after my good friend Ulf speaking about the context of this specially Prida I mean the spider project yes I have been part of the Prida and of course it's something welcome and for a long time you know we always talk about capacity building and you think of it in the context of telling you what you must do rather than a sharing of experiences as the previous panel was talking about collaboration you end up finding that it's not a one-way street there's exchange of ideas even from you know the African side to the other side it's not always that it has been one direction and specifically I would want to share about the Prida project which myself I have been a part of and as Uganda Communications Commission we've been participating since its inception as a pilot and one of the things that was very unique about this particular program was that it was not setting the agenda or the subject for capacity building for you but rather saying I want to tell you all I have done and the journey I have moved I want you to look at what is it you want to do what are the challenges you have that you're facing right now within your regulatory space on the appreciation that you understand what challenges you're having and then let us work with our experience to help you see how you can come up with solutions that address your local challenges and you know that was a very attractive approach to us in that we were extended not just to the expertise of our peer regulator but also gained from the white sector because Prida was being given opportunity to engage them with their market players so it's not where I give you the good story of saying as a regulator we've done this and it's worked you get to hear from the industry players who also give you their insight and their experience and also the expectations from the side of the market so that when you come back as you develop your solutions you have that fuller context where you're not feeling disadvantaged that you're being biased and just the information asymmetry by your local market players but you have that you know objective insight right from persons who are also engaged in the market so that was indeed attractive and we work with you to make sure that there's a follow through towards getting the solutions and evaluate to see having done that what then happens so we do welcome such initiatives we think there is opportunity we've always argued about difference in level of development difference in laws however it is the appreciation of there is a continuous learning process and there is always something new to learn how we conduct that of course in this case we're even benefiting from the fact that the arrangement that includes academia they know how to deliver you know the capacity building so it's not just about as regulators sharing with each other information can you tell me how you did this process and I give you an outline of the process there's somebody to work with you guide you and even give you insights to other experiences around the continent of course this has also been complimented by having access to services such as Cullen so that these are more rounded when I get the database I then have other need to get to the practical and the practitioners to understand and get an insight of the experience as we develop our own solutions I know you had on time so I'll leave it there for now Thank you very much for this introductory I mentioned the two flagship projects that we hear already since morning the Prida is coming during the many interventions so that's why it's my great pleasure to welcome also with us Miss Solia, Amazuzu who is managing this project from the side of the African Union Commission so I'm handing over to you Thank you, good afternoon everybody It is my pleasure to participate in this panel I would start by thanking ITU for extending the invitation to the African Union Commission and also for creating this opportunity to discuss regulatory cooperation between Africa and Europe as it was mentioned this morning by the EU ambassador the digital transformation is on the top of the agenda between the cooperation between the EU and the EU and it is not materialized through several projects and initiatives including Prida so from our side last year we have adopted the digital transformation agenda for strategy for Africa it is our common approach towards digitalization of our economies and the society and also it ends to serve as the framework that will enable us to facilitate discussions with our partners to effectively use the financial and human resources and also to avoid duplication of the efforts we have other initiative sites such as the digital economy transformation taskforce that has been set up in 2018 and we have a new project that was launched in 2020 for development initiative which aims to support African countries to develop their digital transition plans and we have the opportunity to discuss further on this I think I will focus on the Prida project since it was mentioned many times this morning and it is my area of expertise so the project started in 2018 and I had the pleasure to have with me Eren the first meeting where we called all member states for consultative meeting to discuss areas that needs or that requires continental harmonization and the policies and regulations since we have worked on two topics in 2020 namely the harmonization of licensing and authorization regimes and also harmonization of data protection and the regulations frameworks we tried to do kind of analysis of existing regional frameworks we tried to identify the common principles in order to move towards continental harmonization and also we developed the kind of harmonization tool that will help member states to measure the level of alignment of the national legislations or regulations to the regional and also to the continental one among the objective or scope of the BLIDA project also we have strengthened the cooperation regulatory cooperation between national regulatory authorities and also regional regulatory authorities because so far we have good organizations set up at regional level we have seen this morning with IACO, with ARTAC with CRASA and also WACLA that covered many regions in Africa except North Africa which belongs to another arrangement but we want to move towards more continental regulatory cooperation because so far with regions they work at the regions there is some exchanges between the association of regulators but we want to really to create space where regulators they can discuss all the common issues of continental development we are working on that and also we have the possibility to provide kind of technical assistance to national regulatory authorities namely to come up with corrective measures to enable them to align the national frameworks to the continental original ones it is as a result of the harmonization exercise and of course we have the part related to international cooperation where we aim to extend the cooperation to other regions we have started exchanges with the BRIC and we have our first meeting in September last year where we just exchanged views on the way we see this cooperation and now we are moving towards identifying areas of cooperation because we have noticed that we have same interests we are also interested in connectivity and also creating an enabling environment for Africa digital single market we are working on that so we aim this year to identify the areas of cooperation that will involve the regulators from both sides from Africa and from Europe to create joint working groups that will enable exchanges of best practices and also experiences and also maybe you can get like from feedback from the European side because since they are more advanced than Africa in some aspects and we aim really to materialize this cooperation and put it within the framework of the AU cooperation which is what I can say for the moment, thank you Thank you very much for this introduction it's a nice picture of a lot of activities going on and a lot of interaction also between the both continents so congratulations to these developments and now let me move to our next speaker Ulf Larsson who is representing Spyder which was mentioned already today but Ulf I'm handing over to you for your introductory speech. Thank you very much Jaroslav I hope you can hear me well and thank you very much for this opportunity to be part of a distinguished panel such as this one looking very much forward to the discussions so Ulf Larsson is my name I work at Spyder at Stockholm University Spyder is a center for ICT related research and project in network coordination and also for capacity building in cooperation with developing countries and what I would like to do is to present an example of the regional collaboration through capacity building we see the learning in the training part in this program to be mutual and I want to emphasize that as Irene did since 2016 the Swedish post and telecom authority PTS and Spyder has jointly hosted the capacity building program ICT regulation policy and practice this is funded by the Swedish international development cooperation agency CEDA and the vision is to contribute towards universal and affordable telephony and broadband services for good quality for the entire population the program is an inter-regional collaboration between Sweden and three regions in Africa the Sadek region in the south through Krasa the Ekoas region in the west through Watra and the EAC region in the east through EACO national regulatory authorities participate in the program by sending staff for a program round of about nine to ten month and we have two rounds each year with about 25 participants in each together with regional representatives the program builds basically capacity around supporting the implementation of strategic projects by the staff of the national regulators so the national regulators define projects that they send staff to implement through the training in the program these projects we call them change initiatives because they can stretch over several rounds in the program the capacity building starts with a two and a half week training in Sweden and now this last year we have had it to move online and the first part of this training is that PTS shares their experiences of key thematic areas such as consumer protection broadband deployment secure communication and spectrum management and also an industry perspective on regulation is provided by the telecom company Ericsson and the former swedish incumbent Telia the second part of the training is focused on the supporting the change initiative that the participants are bringing with them to the training this is done by expert meetings and also a project management module that is provided together with discussions on inclusion and gender equality perspectives on the different projects that are presented then after the training during the nine months of implementation of the change initiative the regional organizations EACO, TRASA and VATRA provide regular support and can liaise with dialogue with the Swedish experts this support can from the regional bodies has been testified to be very excellent support for the participants so we appreciate their collaboration in the program a follow-up meeting is held about halfway through the project where we assess the progress of the projects and then an evaluation meeting is held at the end of the round where we are discussing how the change initiative can be developed further in future rounds an alumni network has also been started and developing in order to build support for future collaboration between participants in the program to summarize we see this program as an example of inter-regional collaboration through capacity building and the learning in the training parts is really mutual PTS, SPIDER and the other Swedish actors are learning much through the discussions, exchanges of experiences and interactions with the African colleagues and the focus on supporting the implementation of key strategic projects at the national regulatory authorities that is the cornerstone of the project and the program and this together with the multi-layered collaboration between Swedish actors national and regional bodies across the three regions we see as the uniqueness of this program thank you very much thank you very much Ulf for these introductory remarks it gives good understanding what SPIDER is and what type of the value gives not only in terms of capacity building but also working and strengthening of the institutional cooperation between the European and the African regulators but let me now turn to our last not least speaker Miss Eleanor Sarpon representing the Alliance for Affordable Internet so Eleanor, the floor is yours thank you very much Jarslav and thank you to ITU for this very important session it's always great to see knowledge sharing between regions because that is how we learn to grow and get the best examples across so at the Alliance for Affordable Internet we collaboration is part of our DNA throughout this morning I've heard about collaborative regulation and the importance of sharing ideas so that it's not a sided affair and throughout with FOAI one of the things that we've been doing very importantly is that we have a set of good practices that is that helps to shape the way we engage with government civil society and private sector and Europe has been a key contributor to us those good practices because Europe has been an early adopter of technology of the telecom space and issues like a natural management, licensing right of way passage have always been very importantly well developed and that has been the good practices learned from that has influenced the way we shape the conversations with African governments but when it comes to strategies one of the things that we've learned in a line of work is that you cannot just take a strategy, a good practice and go and transpose it in another country because countries are very different within the context the population demographics even geographies are very very different so if you take a country like Estonia which is a poster child of e-governance in Europe you know you would definitely we admire what Estonia is doing but you cannot just take Estonia as success and strategies and go and plant it in a country like Sigana which has 30 million people which is multi-ethnic and very different in terms of development so it's important to localize the kind of strategies that you're working on and for us at A4AI when we work with national governments one of the things we've learned is that it's important for the governments to originate the ideas, the gaps that they've seen, the problems that they see and we support them with research and also support them with either consultants and also work together to convene bringing together a very inclusive academia, civil society private sector players and policy makers in order to shape the kind of reforms they want to see in their policies and regulations and this is very important the kind of strategies that we are working on because if a lot of companies, private sector companies tend to be European focused when it comes to open space so in terms of knowledge and sharing they tend to have an upper hand when it comes to insights and it's important that in these kind of convenions there is a level playing field, there is an open market and open space for people to share ideas and also one of the things that we've seen in our line of work is in the area of affordability generally a lot of the countries in Europe have met the one for two affordability targets compared to 15 out of 48 countries in Africa so they are great ideas and lessons to learn from European countries of how they've been able to ensure that citizens have affordability but one key component of internet affordability is the economic development of a country so if people have low incomes and they are not able to their low income levels within a country then they are not able to afford one gigabit of data so in terms of affordability we need to look at it holistically within the economic development of a country and that is where I feel that the lessons from Europe in terms of how they address economic development generally holistically is one of the lessons that we can bring to Africa so that ICT is not seen or digital it's not seen as a standalone but it's seen as a whole of government approach and in terms of the regulators that we use we are not just dealing with one regulator but we'll see how we can collaborate between regulators from utilities from infrastructure or transport from ICT sectors as well so that the kind of collaborations that Europe has been able to achieve will be able to send those lessons across to Africa as well now it's not a one-sided affair Africa has also been able to develop certain areas which has been of benefit to the rest of the world like in the mobile money space that is one area where in terms of regulations mobile money has has given quite a lot back to the world and it's important that we share those ideas across board and see how we can leapfrog and develop further so I'll end with two areas where I see opportunities for both Africa and Europe it's in rural broadband connectivity so direct chairman talked about the fact that there are certain areas within Europe that are still not connected with internet and if you look at Europe there are about 78% of rural areas that are just covered with internet compared to 6% in Africa so the ideas for rural broadband access are going to be very important the regulations that are needed for that will also be very important and at AFI we have developed the rural broadband policy framework in partnership with APC, CEPESA Digital Empowerment Foundation and this framework serves to give eight principles of how to expand rural access into various areas and I think that would be a great framework that we could leverage on between the two continents another area I also see is in the digital usage gap I see that within Europe Europe has done quite a lot of work in terms of improving digital access for women but in a lot of countries there is still a digital usage gap so whilst in Africa you have about 85% digital usage gap in other parts of Europe you have quite some gaps across board as well so women from 60% of the workforce but only 17% are in the ICT space in Europe so there is quite a lot of opportunity there as well and that is where we in AFI have been working very closely with policy makers to mainstream gender into policy working together on the e-skills for policy makers training that we have done across various regions which has been very very useful and I think that the key lessons from there in terms of what kind of regulations what kind of policies are needed in order to close the digital usage gap would be very very important across board and I am looking forward to hearing more lessons on how we can close the digital usage gap and also improve rural broadband access and the kind of regulations that will help to foster these two. Thank you. Thank you very much Lenore for this introductory statement which brings us to the end of the introductions. I think during the introductions we learned a lot. You have depicted the way how your institutions are co-operating between the regions and how facilitating this dialogue between the both continents providing support but also learning there is mutual learning always from every exchange and we learned also about the institutional commitments and cooperation frameworks which are currently in the discussion as we know also and there are some political decisions between the both regions European Union and African Union on strength and cooperation Africa is one of the priorities of the strategy of the international strategy of the European Union will be prepared this morning but we also heard about the power of the real work going on the ground with the projects which are supporting those collaborative efforts and Prida and Spider efforts are one of the interesting examples if not the leading worth investigating further. So let me turn first to Michel and following the same question to Sualia regarding the more institutional level cooperation between the regions. Considering the example of Prida, what in your opinion could be additional way to formalize cross-regional collaboration between Europe and Africa on digital regular primitives? Thank you very much Jaroslav and just to remind everyone that this Prida projects has been launched three years ago and is a common initiative of the EU and the ITU as well as I've already mentioned or strategy 2021 2025 we've acknowledged this initiative and we are supportive and in our work program for this year we will also develop a mid-term strategy in relation with or international activities and with that we'll try to have a more stable multi-annual planning of international activities including cross-regional collaboration between Europe and Africa. Now coming back to your question of course we have to bear in mind that a collaboration needs expertise so that's the reason why we see this from the point of view as in relation with or core business where we have developed this expertise over the years and in or strategy 2021-2025 we have also identified three high-level strategic priorities including phone connectivity is the first one supporting sustainable and open digital markets is the second and last one is empowering and users. So coming back to the collaboration within Frida one of the elements of collaboration where Frida is this cooperation between their regulatory authorities in charge of telecommunications and of course we fully agree to work collectively towards developing a common understanding of the new digital paradigms and as well as identifying trends and gaps in existing policies that's for sure but again to make it really effective we need to stick to or core business this reason why in May and in June we have a really important meetings planned on identifying the areas where we could collaborate in an effective way and if you allow me just a few minutes more Jaroslav thank you very much for that we have from our side identify potential topics of collaboration based on the existing but also the previous annual work program Barracks for the last five years and again related to the high level strategic priority we'll have and where we need to identify that that's the purpose of this meeting we need to identify at least three topics of common interest and again on promoting full connectivity we'll have let's say more traditional or classical items and more recent items so an example of that is the interconnection offers and the minimum criteria for reference offers that's the first potential topic more recent is the impact of 5G on regulation and the sharing experiences in 5G another more classical topic is the access to pricing to physical infrastructure and civil works we know that civil works is a huge part of the deployment costs for the build out of broadband networks everywhere especially in Europe again and maybe a more recent trend is the co-investment schemes and criteria to build this new generation and infrastructure sharing mechanism especially for mobile networks but also the monitoring of the mobile coverage that's for the first let's put it that way the first package the first high level strategic priorities on supporting open and sustainable digital markets we have a more recent one this is related to the work done by the European Commission on digital markets so the European Commission as proposed in December two draft regulation one on digital services acts more contents related and one on digital markets more on the competition issues and dominance and on the last one we have developed for our knowledge not only this year but over the years for 2018 and this is certainly a very interesting area of potential collaboration but we also have all this experience regarding the implementation of the open internet regulation and the net neutrality regulatory assessment methodology this has been put in place for several years now and also the way to collect data from OTT services last element on empowering end users more technical or more general items how to handle third party payments charges on mobile phone bills is one of potential items or the use of the E 164 numbers in cross borders misuse and frauds situation this is also developing and more general the transparency issue and comparability of tariffs and more specifically international roaming tariffs or also the pricing of bundles and last but not least the equivalence of access and choices for end users with disabilities so this is just to give you a potential list this is not a closed list but this give you a first flavor what could be the area of co-collaboration within Prida but I need to also stress that this work is done by experts within the the expert groups and so I would like to say that the end user is certainly or may seems unlimited but the resources are not limited so this is something we need to take into consideration but I really looking forward to the results of the forthcoming meetings in May and in June thank you very much for your attention and back to you Giorgio Salve Thank you very much for depicting this is definitely I think the experiences of Berek and all group of regulators are of the high importance Europe belongs to the regions which are flagship regions in terms of the harmonization of regulatory frameworks and there is a lot of knowledge base in countries but also at the regional platforms like Berek so let me now turn to perspective from of Zulia on this and also ask the same question in fact what would you see as the additional way to formalize some pros regional collaboration between Europe and Africa in digital regulatory matters Thank you So for us ICT policies and regulations is one pillar of the digital transformation strategy we are aware about the importance of regulations because it is an evolving landscape and also now it is marked by the conversions of services and technologies and I hear this morning about challenges realized by the African regulators and we from our side we try to coordinate as a continental organization our role is to coordinate between all our member states and all the regional organizations and stakeholders and to facilitate the work because the regulations is specific topics but we try to coordinate and to bring all on board to develop the regulations or to harmonize our regulations in order to respond to African needs and also to the context when it comes to the cooperation between Africa and Europe how to institutionalize this regulatory cooperation I think it was mentioned that there is already an overall cooperation framework between AU and AU and among the proposal for the new project that was launched last year the digital for development is to establish a policy dialogue every year or two times per year a policy dialogue to discuss all digital related matters I think we can think also about something related to regulatory discussions between the African and European side but I think from our side we need to because it's an area of cooperation so we have already from work we have identified the areas of cooperation that is many areas not only ICT but if there is a need to include something on regulatory cooperation I think we will work on that but I think there is further work to be done at technical level to really shape this cooperation and to agree on the ways and means to establish this framework and from our side as I said as political organization we support this idea because from our side we try really to bring all the regulators from Africa on board and to hear from them and in order to shape this cooperation as it was mentioned from the black side who have no working on the identification of the area of expertise from our side also are consulting with our regional association of regulators to see what are the interests in this cooperation and we really look forward to have these exchanges and to create these joint working groups between the African and European regulators because now we start working with association of regulators but after that we extend it to national regulatory authorities as they have the expertise and also they are looking forward to get the feedback from Berek and also from other organizations because we want really to create that space to enable African regulators to exchange and to learn from other regions. Great, thank you very much so this is excellent in fact update from your side that this dialogue is going on that's the commitment of regulatory authorities and also the our associations is very positive in terms of fostering the discussions I believe that with this dialogue which we have here we are also trying to help to foster this collaboration and this collaboration and exchange and we are very happy to discuss similar exchanges and what is happening and what is happening these days. So now let's turn also to our two other representatives who are doing already the work on the ground to Ulf and Leonor and these are the two examples of the initiatives which are building the bridges between the both continents in terms of building the capacities but also between between the private sector interested in investing in other regions so what are the main challenges encountered by your organizations like yours implementing those initiatives do you see any kind of obstacles or some items which should be addressed so maybe let's start from Ulf first Thank you Jaroslav I will be quite concrete with a few points from some lessons learned on challenges with the program that we are doing I think as I mentioned a key aspect of this program is that all the change initiatives or the projects that are developed within the program and that we are supporting needs to be strategic projects from each national regulator now the dialogue between the national regulator and us and the Swedish regulator in order to make sure that we can deliver good support to each of the change initiatives that are proposed that is a challenge and that is quite a long dialogue that is ongoing between us and the national regulator so I I would say that the time aspect of that is a bit of a challenge something we need to work into the development of our program in order to make room for the regulatory authorities and PTS to have a good dialogue the second part is also to align the program rounds with the different budget years of the regulators because as the regulators are planning their projects and then when we invite to come to the program that may not suit perfectly with the budget years so this is something we also need to work further on in our dialogue with the national regulators to make sure that the invitations come in time so that they can plan for this within their budget years so that the participants have the times they need to implement the projects those are two aspects that I would like to mention from our program thank you very much for this and definitely there is space for addressing this and for sure making aware the all regulators of such opportunities like offered by spider might be helpful for planning of the availability of those capacities which has to be trained and engaged in the longer term so we are looking forward also now to this but let me turn now to Eleanor who with the A4AI is working very deeply with the private sector so what are the obstacles and challenges which you encounter these days in Europe? Thank you Yaroslav so we work closely with private sector government and civil society all three as well so one of the two key challenges I want to raise here the first one is about expertise so collaboration involves expertise and expertise also comes with some cost so in the countries that we've been working in if you take Ghana for instance in Nigeria where typical broadband policy planning phase takes about three years from the time from planning to implementation so as you're working through the various decisions the meetings that we have the interactions we have the research that you need to be able to back some of the policy reforms that you're advocating for that requires quite a bit of funding and so one of the challenges that we have is that we cannot be in all the spaces all the time and we require a lot more partners to come on board so we always looking for partners Yaroslav is a great panel a great opportunity for us to reach out to other European governments we've had a very fantastic support from the Swedish government through CEDA who have helped us in funding some of the coalition and activities that we've been having as well we also have we also looking for reach and one of the challenges we have is that we get a lot of invitations from national governments asking us to help them to change policy reforms in their countries and we cannot be everywhere at the same time so we always looking for partnerships and that's why we like the partnership we have with ITU we developed the connecting humanity reports for instance that was a big partnership that we had with ITU on that also with the World Bank developing the moonshot for Africa reports as well that's something that AFRII worked very closely with the UN Broadbank Commission and the World Bank and so we're always looking for partners and looking for regional reach as well so we've signed an agreement with the Smart Africa Secretariat where we'll be training policy makers and regulators and I think that's a great platform we've worked very closely with ECHOAS as well to try and influence and shape the way Universal Service Fund regulations and acts has been done in the region and such partnerships are what we are looking out for and so I'll be very happy to see what we can do with SPIDA what we can do with PRIDA because there are so many ways of making sure that we reach a lot of regions and a lot of countries and also share the synergies that we have and the lessons that we have in this space as well Thank you very much for this indeed the partnership is the key and we learned also with the Team Europe approach that this is key in terms of supporting the development developmental work and so therefore we are very much pleased that also the ITU can serve as the platform for facilitating those partnerships at the regional level but also at the inter-regional level let me just draw attention to the recently launched the newest edition of the digital regulation a handbook developed by the ITU and the World Bank which is offering an extremely sophisticated set of opportunities to learn about regulation with the case studies and very shortly we will have also the opportunities to engage in the special trainings based on this tool made available to the whole world as well as the diverse activities delivered through the ITU regional initiatives which are focusing on the enabling environment engaging so many partners in fostering the discussion on the enabling environment so we hope that with those a lot of stakeholders will be able to join, to learn but also to build the additional partnerships to really provide the necessary tools to close any kind of the gap. But let me now turn to our next speaker coming from Uganda and what from your perspectives talking about the possible gaps from your perspective what more is needed for example from Europe to foster fruitful sharing of expertise and resources on ICT regulatory methods Thank you very much for that and coming after Michelle and of the kind of alluded to many of the issues that I would see very key in that as was already pointed out by Sohila that the agency the regional association level is very useful we all know very and how much work it's done and we recognize that in Africa we also have a number of institutions starting from the African telecommunications Union itself and then looking at the various regional associations across the continent, Krasa Watra, Iapo and Arisean and the others so in terms of if we look specifically on what more can be done I would say there is need for that engagement and all alluded to it in terms of appreciation of what other issues you're dealing with as I mentioned earlier and not coming from the approach of I know what you must do but I need to be able to fit in within your plans and fit in within your context because this especially promotes applicability there is always that tendency for knowledge transfer based on what I think you need to be doing however this affects the usability of the output because then the recipient is not always at the same pace or readiness as the knowledge being provided and as a result you end up finding it fall through the cracks I will listen to it, I will hear about it I will enjoy it, I will learn and then what comes from it so I believe that this exchange of experiences and information between the regional blocks as well as regional I mean the actual regulators needs to be to go beyond just having information passed on but having information passed on for a transformative effect so that at the end of the day you do have an outcome to that exchange of information that something comes from it and this has been seen even within the continent where among ourselves we may share information but if a country by virtue of its policy or other priorities are not yet ready to go a certain direction that information is well taken but will never be acted on and in the long run may actually be forgotten so I think that is something very key if indeed we are to have effective exchange of information and experiences across the continent Thank you very much for this so the point is very well noted I think that this peer-to-peer cooperation coaching and taking a look at the real impact of the provided exchange of the knowledge is something which really wins on the importance recently we don't want only to see the exchange of the information but we want to see real use of the information or the best practice provided and this is something also in the ITU we are working very closely with the countries to observe how the provided technical assistance reflects on the progress at the country level so let's see this in the future developments but in this context I believe that spider is quite quite good at and so what development potential do you see in this type of collaborative capacity building particularly by spider and pts is hosting and providing to the african regulators Yes in our program and in our dialogue with both national regulatory authorities and the regional bodies I think there are a couple of things that have been come up as emerging suggested needs to us and expressed and one such thing is to have a support for new or emerging regulatory authorities of institutional capacity building and that is could be a program or a way of supporting the new and nascent regulators to build institutional capacity building to become more independent that is a need that has been expressed another need that has been expressed workshop for key staff at ministries governing the work of the national regulatory authorities to help them build capacity on how the modern regulatory environment actually looks like so that is those are two aspects that have been mentioned to us and I would like to also mention a third namely supporting the networking between regulatory authorities and civil society organizations and other groups working on local settings to implement regulation for wider inclusion and for the benefit of all citizens so see the networking I think Eleanor is also into that very much and I think that supporting of that network between the authorities and CSOs and other groups is another aspect yes thank you I see that Eleanor wants to react thank you so much I'm so happy to hear Ulf mention the role of civil society in these conversations and one of the key aspects of this kind of policymaking and ensuring inclusivity is that often we see that the conversation is between government and private sector so regulators would have a private sector on the table and civil society is missing but the good thing about having civil society is because they are able to reflect the public and also bring in perspectives that you would not have accounted for and so we found out that when we're developing the national broadband plan for Benin we've had to have women's groups for instance who have been able to bring in perspectives about how the digital usage gap affects them and this is something that you would not have noticed if it was just private sector and governments and so it's very important to have civil society there to pick up some of the cues that you would not have seen and also to make the conversation more rich but I just wanted to add two more areas that I think that we should consider in terms of collaboration on and that's in the area of taxation because we are seeing that increasingly there is pressure on regulatory authorities to look for revenue and we see that the fiscal space there is that experimentation of various ways of taxing and some of these taxation is actually consumer facing so I think that it would be great to find out how to have regulations that ensure that the needs of government is met but then consumers are also protected in that space and the raft of in the digital space as well all these new taxation platform taxation is one area that we need to look at very closely as well so I think that in the needs of the various regulations that we are considering we should look at these ones because this is a very important issue that is coming up another one is about the collaboration between various ministries and sectors so typically we would see that in the digital economy we have digital economy ministries that are coming up ICT ministries but I want to see a lot more collaboration between say the ministries of finance the ministry of roads and transport the ministries of ICT as well in terms of the kind of regulations that are needed to ensure that there's a whole of government approach because this is very very critical to ensuring that the economic prosperity is not just left to one section or sector alone but it has been moved along and the champion is coming right from the top say from the president's level and cascades down it's going to be very important to see how we can use policy regulation to shape this thank you very much for adding those very important items I think everybody can agree with this that multi-stakeholder character of the actions and engagement of diverse groups in the work it's key these days so thanks a lot for that and also for drawing attention to the taxation issues dear colleagues we have still a few minutes remaining I think we learned during this session quite a lot in terms of how the institutional cooperation between the two regions is evolving and strengthening there are already institutional foundations and very good developments which will be evolving soon there is ongoing dialogue between the both regions engaging diverse key stakeholders in this work but I think at the beginning of his state at the end of his statement Michel mentioned one word which is COVID and even though sometimes we are designing some cooperation framework this type of the happenings like the pandemics they are affecting the way how we are collaborating a lot and this is the reason why I wanted to dedicate the last seven minutes to a quick question how do you perceive the collaboration in this context do you expect anything what would change this dialogue in terms of the perspective of the pandemics we remember at the beginning of the 2020 when the COVID kicked off and everybody was shocked we started to ask all regulators with the REC for COVID platform how do they react and how do they in fact provide any kind of measures in order to ensure that we can rely on the resilient infrastructure in this context what do you see as the potential actions between the both regions which could appear and emerge from this perspective and let me start from Michel thank you very much Jaroslav as I mentioned earlier we will try to have a new view over the past practices and the lessons learned from this pandemic we know that there have been a lot of initiatives taken not only by regulators not only by ministries or by competent authorities but also by operators themselves in order to ensure this connectivity you pronounced the right word the resilience networks and this is something we absolutely need to preserve and we need to get ready to another I hope not another pandemic crisis but another potential like we have known for more than one year now and this is something we definitely want to work on during this year and as I already mentioned we will publish a draft report within a few months and I think that this document can be relevant for other regions too not only for Europe as well and as I have to flow I will also take the opportunity just to direct briefly on the last interventions and we will see this cooperation with a total open mind and of course we have to be totally transparent and honest about what is walking and what is not walking so much so we cannot say that we only know successful stories in Europe for the last 20 years that's not correct and just to take an example and because of referred streets independence is a difficult topic even now in 2021 and this is something we definitely would like to cooperate with our African colleagues but this is very complex and it is a kind of everyday struggle even in Europe so thank you very much for that. Thank you very much Michel so let me turn to the African Union Commission Thank you I think from our side we have noticed that COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of digital technologies at continental level because it helped us to rise awareness of decision makers because before they didn't really realize like the move towards digital world because some countries and some leaders they were still somehow reluctant but with COVID it helped to see that now technology is really well adopted by all countries because it was like somehow the only way to ensure continuity of business we expect from future maybe move towards more digitalization of services and also to content but also at the same time the COVID revealed a rebel to us that still the urgent need to think about the non-deserved areas like rural or remote zones that are not connected because if you are not connected in times of COVID it means that you are excluded it means that you cannot have access to information or have access to services and I think it is one of the aspects that all of us to work together with adequate policies and regulations to bridge this digital gap and also to bring digital technologies or digital solutions to the front of our societies and economies thank you very much for this statement and let me turn also to call it from the UCC I'm glad you brought the subject of COVID and the very good work that BDT did I think all of us realized how an information repository has even become more important because everybody was comering for quick answers you know you hear this and you're not very sure so we did work should I also take that gamble typically you know we talk about how you have to go through a full regulatory impact assessment or at least have some time to evaluate the information that you know the strategy that you're looking at and yet all of us were thrown into a situation very similar to what we have with the vaccines where you need a quick solution and you don't have the traditional cycle time to be able to come up with solutions so I actually highly commend the BDT for that initiative of the regulatory tracker especially the one that was established in respect of COVID and I see this as a start you know many of us were used to benchmarking and involving having to travel now with us having all these meetings online it's becoming more and more apparent that we are now going to also think new ways of how we engage in those activities do I need to actually physically travel to Eden or another place to be able to get the insight I require is it that impossible then for me to have an engagement with BEREC in terms of the regulatory associations because now more and more I can participate remotely I can have an engagement remotely you can have sessions very similar to what we have even for workshop so the opportunities that have been by COVID in terms of opening our eyes to what we can do are immense but also pointing to the value of having that regulatory and repository of information and experience sharing within the cycle yes we have the GSR where every year we come and develop the good practices and you can find the previous presentations and the like now even those who would not typically put forward you would end up being able to find different countries that have done something you may be interested in or haven't thought about and facilitate then therefore a follow-on engagement with the respective country either directly or through the ITU to be able to have that information exchange and therefore have that opportunity to leapfrog the development cycles of regulatory solutions so thank you very much and thank you very much also for your kind words and appreciations for the work done in the context of the COVID just to inform you that just next month we will be releasing the new paper on the pandemic in the internment age from second wave to new normal recovery, adoption and resilience where you will find detailed analysis of one year after and how to build back so we believe that there is still a lot to be done and a lot also to be worked on in terms of how to address the pandemics and this might be also one of the inter-regional cooperation topics there ladies and gentlemen we're running a little bit out of time but we have still two speakers who would like to also ask them the question related to COVID from their perspective how they perceive this impacting their activities so Ulf? Thank you Jaroslav and I think the very good comment from Michel and Sohila and Irene I echo a lot of that one thing I would like to add to that is the need for discernment in the future to assess in when it comes to capacity building what parts do we actually need to meet in physically to build relationships and build trust between each other and what can be done digitally discernment in assessing what parts to do digitally and what parts to do physically when we are able to again will be an important part for our program and I think for other capacity building efforts. Thank you. Thank you very much. Last but not least, Alona? Hi, thank you so much Jaroslav and I really echo all the conversations and the sentiments that have been raised just like most of the other speakers have mentioned COVID-19 for us at AFI I made our work very important suddenly everybody realized that not everyone is connected a lot of governments started taking it a lot more seriously because they started when they asked their workers to go home and work from home they realized they didn't have connectivity or meaningful connectivity so it's shown it's amplified the need to have better policies that will be able to embrace and to connect everyone with meaningful connectivity but one other thing that I see is going to be very important going forward is the need for partnerships now with COVID-19 has given us new tools we have Zoom. Before then we didn't really know about Zoom and any of these other platforms and so we have more platforms now which means that we have more ways of engaging just like Irene mentioned and I think we should be able to use that and give more people an opportunity to be able to engage a lot more inclusivity in the way we make and also when we talked about the platform we also crowdsourced a lot of the information and I think it's important to encourage a lot more stakeholders to contribute and to share ideas and so I think the way we have tackled vaccine development by coming together and partnering I think we should do that for closing the digital divide and for also looking for ways of expanding regulation and harmonizing regulation across board. So partnership definitely and also a more inclusive way of collaborating. Thank you. Great, thank you very much for these answers to the last question. This topic is very important to the all regulators and I think that you will see at the revamped portal on the REC for COVID with the new functions, functionalities a lot of new inputs which are really can be seen as the big repository of different solutions which are facilitating for sure the inter-regional and international cooperation in this context. So ladies and gentlemen thank you very much to all our finalists we learned really a lot and I think we are leaving this session with a good understanding on the evolution of the cooperation between the both regions and being also reassured that there is big catalog of the issues which will be considered for being 100 in the future. So one more time thank you very much to the representatives from Europe and from Africa for being with us and also thank you to the participants who are following us patiently and also considering some questions for the future. So thank you very much for this and with this I have a great pleasure to hand over the floor to Sophie Madens and the chair of the GSR 2021 and to talk about the very important outcome of the GSR being the best practice guidelines. Sophie I am handing over to you while thanking to our speakers for being with us at this last session. So thank you very much and Sophie the floor is yours. Thank you and what a fascinating panel thank you very much Yaroslav so if we could have the presentation on the best practice guidelines up and then also I know that Mercy is also online so we learned this morning that Mercy is our wonderful GSR 21 chair and one of the tasks of the GSR chairmanship is really coordinating the best practice guidelines so Mercy will be coordinating working together with the team on these best practice guidelines to set out the process as well the guidelines will be adopted by the heads of regulators executive round table similar as we did last year on the 21st of June and for the first draft guideline for our contributions is the 14th of May 2021 so it really is my pleasure to present to you this year's consultation the process and the background for the best practice guidelines which we've entitled regulation for digital transformation accelerating inclusive connectivity access and use this year again as we saw we have this series of interconnected regional and virtual events allowing us to really listen discuss and learn from the regional regulatory perspectives and these these discussions have been absolutely wonderful and look at the challenges and innovative solutions in the lead up to the global sessions and the adoption so we really hope that again we will increase the inclusion and participation of the regulatory community as a whole so that we can listen to voices and Eleanor voices from civil societies well from regulators from industry in these critical discussions these best practice guidelines are really an important outcome of GSR and have been for over 20 years last year we celebrated our 20th edition and you see the guiding light these best practice guidelines are really the guiding light on topical issues to the regulatory community for regulators by regulators listening really to the regulatory community so we aim to achieve impact by these best practice guidelines guidelines by achieving reach building capacity helping to build that capacity and changing behavior so that together we can move towards effective policy frameworks tools and approaches for market development and user well-being digital for good and digital for development last year and here is a challenge to all the regulatory associations and stakeholders last year we were delighted to receive a good number of contributions we basically had 17 individual contributions by countries by regulators and policy makers three contributions of regulatory associations and regional organizations spanning more than 60 countries as well as contributions from civil society industry players and associations so we really want to challenge ourselves and achieve more listen to the wider regulatory community across the regions so that we get the perspectives and that regulators have all perspectives when they agree on the best practice guidelines so let's use this full advantage let's use to full advantage this new format of GSR so we can really listen to the voices and get the perspectives and we saw today in these fascinating discussions European and African stakeholders have an incredible wealth of experience and expertise to share and we really want to hear your voices so that we can reflect them in the consultation next slide please so we heard about COVID we heard about digital first digital transformation so we really need to address emergencies and changes to markets and societies address how to build back better address how the lessons we've learned from the crisis and we need to look at these lessons learn and we may need to realign certain policies and regulatory approaches we really believe that digital regulation can boost the readiness of digital markets to face such unexpected events that we've been in for over a year now and deliver up to expectations despite the odds so that's why the years guidelines are articulated around ideas views and experiences around three main areas inducing new effective and agile financing mechanisms to digital infrastructure access and use prototyping regulatory patterns for the post digital COVID digital world and transformational leadership to unleash the power of emergent technologies and business models before I give the floor to our GSR chair one small issue please do keep your contributions to a maximum of three pages so that we really we can integrate your contributions into the best practice guidelines and I now have the honor and pleasure of handing over to Mercy to go into the detail of each of the core themes of the best practice guidelines Mercy the floor is yours Thank you very much Sophie and thank you very much to the over 100 participants who have supported me in this program, and I'm sure you will all agree with me that today has been a very enriching engagement listening to various ideas views and experiences and I will now go into the detail if you could go to the next slide please. This slide addresses the first core theme of inducing new effective and agile financing mechanisms for infrastructure access and use and in addressing this we have a few questions that we would like to look at if I could get the next slide please that sets out the questions. Some of the questions that we would like to explore and discuss really recognize that digital infrastructure and services have become the foundation of the digital economy and society and a powerful driver for development. So what are some of the pertinent issues some of the questions we will be exploring are are there any new policy and regulatory tools that can be leveraged to trigger a multiplier effect on investment is there a silver bullet indeed for accelerating the rollout of ubiquitous connectivity how can regulation improve affordability and enhance use a very pertinent question what regulatory incentives can stir the forming of a new financing model what is the new role of policy makers and regulators with regards to building financing gaps and lastly how can new regulatory patterns help craft new breeds of partnerships that would be the first slide of things. Next slide please. Going to the second core theme on prototyping regulatory patterns for the post covid digital world in this particular theme we recognize that rising up to the market and societal changes countries need to live forward to the next level of policy and regulations with new approaches and the possibility of new toolbox if we could move to the next slide please and in exploring this second theme on regulatory patterns we have curated a few questions that would help explore even deeper this kind of prototyping through questions is there a silver lining to the current financial hardship that is being experienced in digital markets and if there is the ideas and the experiences that we share what new regulatory practices tools or initiatives can regulators introduce to solve investment conundrums are there innovative regulatory approaches that can unlock the power of new technologies how can safe space for regulatory experimentation allow fine tuning new business models and foster resilience and last but by no means the least is are regulatory sandboxes the answer to the high complexity of new digital technologies and services in reducing the time to market and in helping secure funding for broad rollout you can see from this curation of questions it really does lead us to exploring these issues and even greater depth moving on finally to the third core theme which addresses transformational leadership to unleash the power of emerging technologies and business models next slide please in exploring this theme we recognize the technology developments and economic disruptions in the aftermath of the global COVID-19 crisis are affecting policy settings in a very significant way we have evidence of investment gaps available funding for digital infrastructure and services and this is exacerbating the need to review policy and regulatory frameworks in very pragmatic ways and even consider options that take us beyond national boundaries or sectors in exploring this third theme we have about four questions if we could move to the next slide we have four questions which seek to explore this even deeper and the questions are is traditional regulatory action going to be increasingly matched with new core and self-regulation channels is digital regulation multimodal by design what mechanisms for collaborative governance are best suited to provide a holistic agile interface for digital transformation and lastly how can the fifth generation collaborative regulation G5 span geographies and markets and in doing so enable cross-border collaboration and coordination on some of the issues that we continue to experience that are related to digital trade taxation protection data flows internet of things and artificial intelligence these are very provocative questions I think they will really push us to really think beyond what has been comfortable to address a situation that is far from comfortable indeed this pushes us to be very creative very ingenious with the proposals that will come out listening to the discussions today I'm very confident that we will come out with proposals that will be something to really think about as we move to the best practice guideline so at this opportunity allow me to open the floor so that we can receive any questions comments, highlights as we come towards the end of this session thank you very much and back to you Sophie thank you very much and I'm afraid we've already eaten into the wrap up time but I agree with you thank you so much for encouraging contributions it really is an opportunity and as GSR chair I'm sure you will help us in encouraging maximum amount of contributions so that we really have the voices from around the world with that mercy thank you very much Jaroslav back to you thank you very much thank you very much chair of the GSR thank you very much Sophie for this presentation just to reiterate one more time the call for engaging in this important process because we are building together the outcome of the GSR which will be used as the reference point by all regulators and beyond so this is very important that all of us we are on board for this exercise and this brings me unfortunately to the end of our deliberations today and to the closing and closing ceremony session of this meeting I have a great pleasure to invite my colleague Andrew Ruega to provide a few thoughts from his side from the side of the regional office for Africa Andrew the floor is yours thank you very much Jaroslav and congratulations to all of you that led facilitated moderated excellent excellent sessions today ladies and gentlemen friends colleagues what a wonderful day we've had I could never have imagined that in such a short time anyone could do justice in earnest discussing such a complicated but titulating topic as we did today exploring regional perspectives on regulation for digital transformation generating inclusive connectivity access and use very often those two last words are left out left unattended access and use connectivity is not good unless there is access and there is use but as the saying goes where there is the will and today I saw the strong will of Africans and Europeans getting together to explore perspectives on regulation for digital transformation in both regions each bringing their ideas to the table on how to accelerate inclusive connectivity access and use guided by Africa's vision of an integrated and inclusive digital society and economy in Africa that improves the quality of life of African citizens the African Union digital transformation strategy has as its overall objective to harness digital technologies and innovation to transform Africa's societies and economies to promote Africa's integration to generate inclusive economic growth stimulate job creation erase the digital divide and eradicate poverty to secure the benefits of digital revolution of economic for social and economic development we cannot hope to achieve this without the right enabling environment by policy and regulatory frameworks and best practices as we've just had which we were discussing today today we had and there is empirical evidence in an ITU report entitled the impact of policies regulation and institutions on ICT sector performance report states that the regulatory institutional framework which is composed of regulatory authority one, regulatory mandate regulatory regime and competition model is linked to a positive and significant increase in communication investment we discussed a lot about investment in this this report underscores the importance of regulation if we are indeed to attract investment in our endeavors we are here today focusing on Africa and Europe because we want to be on the same regulatory page that will enable us together in digital markets where we are both suppliers and consumers of digital products and services for each other yes I said suppliers and consumers because Africa does not intend to remain just a consumer I'm glad to see that the Africa EU partnership is strengthening thank you Yaroslav for the session that very very much referred to the collaboration in particular in the area of digital I commend the EU that has taken all steps through the digital for development hub D4D, digital economic task force, DETF TM Europe the Horn of Africa initiative as you heard Gavstad and others and on their part Africa operationalized the Africa continental free trade area in January 2021 Smart Africa is focused on creating the Africa single digital market A2 is convening member states in the digital space and ITU as the honest broker is bringing together the African and European stakeholders in digital transformation for our continent I'm proud to have presided over the harmonization of ICT policy and regulation in Sub-Saharan Africa initiative that we called HIPSA and subsequently the policy and regulation initiative for digital Africa preda which we talked about earlier both supported by the European Union which have been game changers in the African regulatory environment I will continue to seek partnerships for digital transformation and particularly in our flagship initiatives on connecting all schools as Irene said, Giga youth employment our digital skills for decent jobs initiative with ILO bridge the digital gender gap through African girls can code and others for emerging technologies including 5G artificial intelligence blockchain and others through our office in Europe headed by my friend discussions are underway with Brussels and here in Africa we have initiated conversations with the EU and I must say they are going very well in the 7-year program that they are undertaking Europe our digital journey together is underway and gaining momentum on behalf of the regional office for Africa I thank you most sincerely for your engaging participation let me end by thanking the interpreters who I usually forget and the colleagues my colleagues who worked tirelessly to organize this JSR plus regional regulatory for Europe and Africa once again I salute you I thank you and bid you good evening thank you very much Andrew for this closing speech it has been definitely very intense day of discussions where not only we were able to learn from one other one each other with regards to the regulation of ICTs but where we took a step forward in poster in collaboration between Europe and Africa as I already mentioned which is a very crucial topic as emphasized this morning by the high level delegates of both regions as well as our BDT director Mies Dolin Bogdan we are very much pleased that today with these four sessions which where we addressed many topics we are able also to welcome with us over 280 participants including not including in addition joins by over 150 followers through the live stream so I think this topic of the collaboration between both regions is really on the top of the agenda of many institutions and it's winning a lot of attention of the public sector but also private sector society, academy, international organizations and the others today we have during the four sessions address a lot of different issues but we concluded also on the need for the harmonization to tackle the problem challenges it's also addressed how to foster the dialogue between the regional industry associations and regulatory organizations foster work between the regulators and member states what are the concrete policy actions to unlock much need investment in connectivity in the round table one focusing the fact on investment recurring topic throughout the day in particular the session addressed solutions that the countries deploy to foster investment while it's preserving competition enabling infrastructure sharing and co-deployment establishing universal service regulation which reduces the return and the cost of deployment were most needed it also addressed the issue of COVID and how investment in backbone networks is also needed to satisfy demand in emergency time and beyond in session two we addressed the collaborative regulation for inclusive connectivity and the importance of adopting the G5 framework the fifth generation of regulation we saw two countries from each region exchanging useful experience regarding collaborative practices at national level we moved to the session three taking a look on how to foster international inter-regional collaboration between Europe and Africa in terms of regulation addressing which addressed the need of strategic approach engagement of all stakeholders in this activity and its implementation to address the challenges in sharing regulatory best practices between Europe and Africa and what more is needed in the last session we have seen how the best practice guidelines are an important process building towers GSR 2021 taking place in June I invite you all to submit your contributions to this process to advance this year's topic of regulatory uplift for financing digital infrastructure access and use so let me use this occasion also and reiterate the call coming from Andrew for engaging in several flagship initiatives at the regional level proposed by the ITU which is working closely with the membership and also the flagship initiatives of the BDT and such projects like Frida today we welcomed over 30 speakers from both regions who joined us today and advanced this discussion from the regional most important cross-regional perspective contributing to building the digital bridge between the Europe and Africa special thanks to our distinguished high-level speakers for the inspiring words earlier this morning Madame Doreen Bogdan director of the telecommunication development bureau, Merci Vanu the chair of the GSR one more time congratulations for taking this challenge up also the ambassador Thomas Wagner representing EU delegation at the UN in Geneva Vasina Kone, director general of Smart Africa thanks to all of these interventions this event was able to advance the implementation of the ITU regional initiatives for both Europe and Africa which contain the policy and regulatory component and most importantly focusing on creating the space for the practical implementation and creating of the projects to advance the operations for such an institutional cooperation between the both regions closing let me express sincere thanks to all those who made this event possible today thank you to the Sophie Madens head of regulatory and environment market environment division, NVIDIA and her team sincere thanks to my brother Andrew Rugega regional director of Africa and his effective and efficient team and also let me be efficient thanks to my colleagues who are patiently working day by day and night by night to make this event happen also our collaborators from the global services who are today with us so also thanks to technical moderators, entrepreneurs, interpreters who are behind these things and with this let me thank to all of the participants who stayed with us until the end of this event and you see alone the numbers were confirming the importance of this dialogue and the importance of continuation of this dialogue and the implementation which impacts the both regions so we look forward to seeing you at the GSR 2021 in June however we are drawing also your attention and to the other regional regulatory dialogues happening in the context of the GSR and then more information about those dialogues you will find on the website of the GSR with this we would like to thank you very much for your attention and wish you a pleasant evening and the rest of the day thank you very much and see you very soon on the nearest occasion thank you thank you, thank you thank you, bye bye thank you very much