 Welcome to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2022 here in Bucharest, Romania where I've got the great pleasure of being joined in the studio today by Councillor Cooper W. Cruea Sr. who is the Minister of Post and Telecommunications for the Republic of Liberia. Minister welcome to the studio. Thank you very much for having me. Now I'd like to start off by asking you a little bit about progress. What is the progress that your government has made in the area of ICTs over the past few years since we last met? Well thank you very much. In terms of progress I remember the when our current administration took over the president was very concerned about our development in RTC and so one of the things we had a look at was to review our legal framework. So we're able to develop a new ICT policy that was very inclusive and that ICT policy has been working very fine and then it helped us to move further you know with our ICT programs and we're able to by that we're able to develop a legal framework for our cybercrime prevention so we drafted a new cybercrime act for Liberia. In fact that will be the first act ICT cybercrime act for Liberia and that act is presently before the legislature the Senate for passage of the law and and and then as we speak we now completed the draft of our of our personal data protection act all geared towards improving our ICT programs in the country. So we are following the first step of those who are ahead of us and but want to make sure that we do it right there because we want to make sure the legal framework that are in place and so that at the end of the day we are be able to protect our cyber space. What have been the main challenges in the development of your ICT program? Well you know Liberia is a developing country so our challenges are not very different from other developing country but but to specifically address some of them will be like a manpower development that's been a serious challenge for us and and and we think we think it's important capacity building. When we started our program we needed training in an area of ICT training in the area of cyber security and as we speak we've done a normal training not only within the sector where I head but we'll be able to extend our training to Georgia's we'll be able to extend our training to security police and and and and now that we've read it I think we've read it for implementation to the to the extent that we we have had a number of discussions or series of discussion with ECUAS they've volunteered to help us set up our forensic cybercraft lab for Liberia and so again you can't train people if they don't have the equipment to work with so we are looking forward to setting up a forensic lab of cybercraft forensic lab for Liberia and and and to continue on the training aspect of it because you'll be more efficient and proficient with better training better development in the manpower in the country. And you've got to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to cyber security don't you? Oh yeah we definitely want to be because you know this is a cyber crime is a global concern right now and in every nation ought to take some steps to make sure that you address you prevent it don't wait until it happens before you move our way so we're trying to to be proactive with our programs. Finally are there any final words that or message that you would wish to convey to our ITU leadership currently and of course the newly elected ones too? Well I tell you thank you very much for that question because it's important you know as a developing country a nation we think that ICT program or the leadership ought to now begin to take a poster that would make them to look beyond Geneva. You have to be able to to get people out there to visit your member countries see what their problems are see if you can make take some decision to be able to address the problem because if you wait for everybody to come to you before you address their problem it might be late it might be late so we look forward to the new leadership we see new faces we are encouraged by the results of the election but we like to look at the practical aspect of it in terms of what they do for our member state and what they do for Liberia we're very concerned about that. Well Councillor Cooper W crew senior thank you so much for joining us in the studio and we very much look forward to catching up with you and hopefully come and see exactly what's going on in Liberia in the in the coming months or years thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much.