 Welcome to Geneva for Wissi's Forum 2019. Creating a fair and equal knowledge and information society is at the heart of Wissi's Forum. To discuss it, I am joined by Alison Gilwald. She's Executive Director of Research ICT Africa and Professor at the University of Cape Town. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much. Now, Alison, you were speaking on the opening session, representing civil society and academia, and you were talking about digital inequality. Why is it such a big issue now? I think we've spent the last decade focusing on connectivity and bridging the digital divide. And although we have very limited evidence of what is happening, particularly in the developing world or developing countries and particularly in Africa, the evidence we do have suggests that connectivity is only part of our problem. So there's still many countries where getting full coverage of the country, because it's mainly a wireless connectivity challenge that we're facing. Fibre is just too expensive to get it to remote areas. We actually find that in many countries there's well over 90% mobile broadband coverage, and yet internet penetration levels are a fraction of that. So countries like South Africa, Rwanda, Lesotho, these countries have over 95% mobile broadband coverage, and yet they have penetration rates of as low as 10% in the case of Rwanda, of 50% in the case of South Africa. So there are a lot of people who could be online if they could either afford to be, or they were interested to be, or were aware of the internet, or if they had the skills to utilize the internet in a more effective way. So I think we've been focusing on the digital divide from a connectivity point of view, but in fact as we move from voice services to more value driven internet database services, the divide, the inequalities are far greater. And in fact one of the central challenges that we face, I think that policymakers face at the moment, is this digital inequality paradox. The fact that in fact as we bring more and more people online, the greater digital inequality is getting. And it's not only inequality between those connected and who aren't connected, those who are and those who aren't, that obviously remains a big challenge, but it's also between those who are online able to use the internet productively for their well-being, for their prosperity, and those who are barely online switching on their phones for a short bit to use very expensive data to make an urgent call or to find a job or something, but not really using it beyond some of the most basic communication needs. So what can we do to address this digital divide challenge? So what we find also from the evidence of the after access surveys which we've done across the global south and including 10 countries in Africa is that the main determinants of being online and the intensity of which you use the internet is education. Education actually is the underlying factor of inequality in relation to gender inequality in relation to urban poor inequality. It is really at the core of inequality. And this is a classic human development challenge that we have to address and of course it's not easy to address. We'll take intergenerational strategies and multiple generation strategies to address, but there are things that we can do in the short term and we have to do them. We simply cannot continue to do the same things from a policy point of view, from a regulatory point of view, from a business modeling point of view and hope to have the exponential growth that we need, particularly in Africa, to catch up with the rest of the world. So a few of the things that we can do, for example, is have far better spectrum usage. We need to of course make high demand spectrum available for the networks that have revolutionized Africa by providing firstly communication services and now mobile money and financial inclusion and all these wonderful things, but as I said very unevenly. And so the other factors besides education which limits getting online is affordability. And even where we have reasonably effective regulation is a challenge that's created competitive markets. Even where we have some of the lowest prices like Mozambique, for example, some of the lowest data prices in Africa, the price of the current mobile communication models we have are simply too expensive for large numbers of Africans, the majority of Africans. Even in a country that has 50% penetration such as South Africa, over 30% of people say they're not online as much as they would like to be because they simply cannot afford those services. So we've got to find new business models, new licensing models. We have to make available the high demand spectrum that these big networks require in order to evolve their businesses and create the backbones and networks that we need. But we also have to liberate some of the spectrum for greater public use, for free public Wi-Fi so that people can buy the very small data bundles that they can afford but then can access public Wi-Fi networks in order to access government services in order to do business, create opportunities for themselves and their families, etc. We have to move from these big national exclusive licenses that lead vacant whole swathes of spectrum in rural areas and allow secondary spectrum use, much cheaper business models, regional licenses that could deploy dynamic spectrum, that could deploy secondary use. And these opportunities, public Wi-Fi, secondary use, even community networks enabling communities who are maybe being serviced by one operator but certainly not getting the competitive benefits of lower prices, being able to come online without high regulatory transaction cost licenses and legal frameworks, etc. And this is very suited to the evolution of GSM. The 5G spectrum is very geared to public Wi-Fi handover, to dynamic spectrum use, multiple purpose use, etc. So I think just speaking about one area spectrum alone, there's a lot that we could do to bring down those prices, to bring people more online, simply from an affordability point of view. And the key here is collaboration, isn't it? It's going to take a collective effort to bring out all the positive changes that need to be out there to address the challenges you mentioned. Absolutely. And even more so when we look beyond simply the infrastructural challenges. I was just speaking about a very small portion of that now. But now in the internet environment that we're in, as we move from voice to data services and over the top services and various global platforms, etc., we require a whole new regulatory framework and a whole new collaborative framework. We have to see much greater state coordination between the public and private sector in order to deliver these public services that states simply cannot afford in most countries to deliver. We need to see much greater cooperation with civil society around creating the rights frameworks that we need around the data governance frameworks that we need to create a secure and trusted internet environment that we want. And that's not simply about cyber security and data protection and taking the boxes on that. It's actually getting data justice in an environment where data has become increasingly valuable and new power relations are determined around that in these very globalized markets with very big powerful platforms that transcend national sovereign governments that we've traditionally regulated in that sort of fashion. So there's much greater collaboration that's needed between national governments, international fora, public and private sector, civil society and the state in order to deliver on social contracts. This concept of data justice is very powerful, isn't it? Can you tell us a bit more about that? How do you define it? I think it means a lot of things to a lot of people but I think the idea like digital inequality is that if you simply layer over different technologies or new forms of data services and things over old inequalities and in architectural inequalities that exist in our societies you simply perpetuate those injustices, you simply perpetuate those inequalities that you very actively have to redress inequality if you want online equality not simply to reflect offline inequalities. And in fact, because of the value attached to these new data services because of the power relations attached to them you will not only mirror offline inequalities in fact they will be amplified online unless we tackle them. Finally Alison, let's talk about WISIs Forum because it celebrates its 10th anniversary this year and you were present from the very beginning weren't you? So how have you seen it evolve then what do you think it's done it into and why are you still here after so many years where it's still important for you to be here? Well, I'm not sure why I'm still here. Because I think some of the sense each year when it comes back in our decade is a sense of deja vu of oh my goodness we're still struggling with some of these issues but of course these are the same challenges because of as I said global inequalities, structural inequalities that we have but in a very new environment so it's the most dynamic fast changing industry in the world it requires incredible effort on the parts of multiple people to make it work it requires significant institutional building in order to protect the citizens that are involved now in this environment and we know that those who are most vulnerable to not getting online, not being able to afford to get online are also the most vulnerable in terms of the risks and harms that they face in this enormous data onslaught that they receive out there and that their data is used to grow and build and monetize so each year we might be talking about similar themes but the challenges each time are new and different and so I think we've come a long way when we were first speaking about digital divides in terms of basically getting people on to basic voice services and SMS services affordably whereas now we're actually talking about getting people into the so-called fourth industrial revolution participating equitably and harnessing the opportunities that exist there while mitigating the risks that are certainly there as well Well Alice and Gilwall, thank you very much Thank you so much