 We are here at the World Telecommunication Development Conference in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and I am pleased to be joined by Francis Wangusi, who is Director-General of the Communications Commission of Kenya, appointed to the position on the 21st of August 2012. The Communications Commission of Kenya is the regulatory authority for the communications sector in Kenya. Thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you. I would like to start by asking you, could you give me an overview of ICTs in Kenya? How have they helped the life of Kenyans? Thank you very much. The ICT landscape in Kenya since the liberalization of the sector in 1998 is comprised of four mobile operators, about 103 ISPs. We have also licensed categories like application service providers where we have 111 and content service providers we have given licenses to 168. We do also licensed and regulated broadcasters. We have 103 FM broadcasting stations, 14 TV stations on analog transmission and we have now about 25 licenses that are on digital platforms. In as far as the ICT services in Kenya are concerned, we are having about 1.8 million subscribers with our latest statistics on the mobile platforms. Currently I think we have almost 77.3% penetration with mobile services in the country so we are not doing very badly. However our internet penetration is still low. We are having about 11 million people who are direct subscription to internet and quite a host to about 17 million who actually are users of the internet. From the statistics that we produced last December, I think 100 Kenyans can have access to the internet. What challenges are you facing today with regards to ICTs? We are having a host of challenges given that first of all some of the transformations that we have received in the lives of Kenyans as a result of the application of ICTs include the economic, social and cultural transformations that we have had. In fact economic wise we have quite a number of applications that have emerged in Kenya as a result of the presence of the ICT sector in the country. Currently financial inclusion is one of the most advanced innovation we can say as far as that sector is concerned. But we have other applications in health, education and even it has influenced the political landscape. But even after having said that in our attempt to try and make Kenya a homogeneous and egalitarian society we have tried to use ICTs in a number of ways but with it has come a number of challenges. Issues pertaining to really penetration to all corners of the country has been a big challenge ostensibly because of some of the factors like the demographics of Kenya where we have one area of the country that is very concentrated the other area is partially populated but people keep moving from one place to the other providing such services has been a big challenge. I think the ICT challenge we are facing right now is to try and make sure that we have affordable services in the country. We also have issues of cyber security and vandalism of some of the networks in the country have been quite a bit of a big challenge. Of course the issue of literacy is also a challenge to us because some of the services that are being introduced are a bit complicated to the ordinary consumer and we need probably to do a little more to make sure that really they optimize the usage of the services that are available in ICTs. We've talked a little bit about the challenges here but what about the opportunities? What is Kenya's strategy to maximize the role of ICTs in socio-economic development in the country? Quite a number of opportunities have a reason. Just as I had said earlier we have now we are using ICTs in ensuring that the whole society is connected in terms of the socio-economic services. Financial inclusion has been one of the things that probably we are known of in terms of our ICT innovations. Of course the health services in the country we are now getting a wide application of ICT services in order to share the little health resources we have including the doctors and so on and so forth. This is one of the areas that is reaping greatly from the ICT services. Even the educational sector, we have had opportunities as a result of the ICT sector in connecting universities colleges in Kenya through for example one of the bodies like Kennet which makes universities and colleges to share resources which is an aspect that has greatly improved the educational services in Kenya. We have quite a host of the other things like even climate change given that Kenya itself as a country most of its economic sectors are climate sensitive. We really use ICTs in trying to make sure that we sensitize our people on how and when they can be able to plan their crops and so on and so forth. So I must say that ICTs have really transformed the lives of Kenyans. Politically of course we are one of the countries that very quickly moving into making sure that we apply ICTs in terms of ensuring transparency in the political process. Voting for example using biometrics in order to be able to register people for Aminas voters and also generally a number of ICT platforms are being used in Kenya to sensitize people on who could be the best leaders that they can be able to choose. Something that previously was not there. So we used probably before then to just only use one single mouthpiece that was government controlled. Right now we have a host of platforms from broadcasting stations to the internet to the use of the mobile platforms to be able to disseminate messages and so on and so forth. So all in all I must say that ICT in itself has played a very big impact in the transformation of the people's lives. Well that all sounds fabulous and very proactive in future thinking and I wish you the very best with that. And thank you very much indeed Mr. Wangusi for being with us today. Thank you very much. And thank you for being with us too.