 Welcome to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2018 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today. I'm Mr Siabonga Quelle, who is the Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services for the Republic of South Africa. Minister, welcome to the studio. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for welcoming us. So I'd like to start off by talking to you a little bit about the fact that there's considerable attention being placed on harnessing the power of information and communication technologies and ICTs that enable for good, for development, for the benefit of people, for families, communities and nations. And I wanted to ask you, what is your personal perspective on this? We as a country, we really embrace that because we come from developing nations. We are seeing the power of these new technologies and ICT in particular being crucial for us to deliver services to our people in a smarter way, in a faster way and in an interactive way. We are also, as developing nations, seeing this as part of this agenda which we have been part of to make sure that this power of ICT is cut across every aspect of life, every aspect of government, every aspect of business. We need to adopt them in order to leapfrog our people to development. Coming from Africa, we are really every state and South Africa and government. We are adopting these new technologies as a mechanism to make us leapfrog in terms of development, to be on par with the rest of the development world. Now in terms of sustainable development, this planning potential conference is the first since the world agreed on the sustainable development goals in 2015. I wanted to ask you perhaps you could give us a few examples of how ICTs are helping to drive sustainable development in your country. They are very critical. We were honored that through the ITU, SGU, now serving in the UN Broadband Council for Sustainable Development. But as a country, we are looking at these things to help us to deal with the critical challenges we face as a nation. If you look at the key priority of South Africa is education, digitizing education content. It also helps with access to education. Whether it is online education which is rolling out, particularly for the workers to upscale their skills. Whether it is in basic education or higher education. Because education is such a high priority. That's why, for instance, in South Africa we have connected all our universities to high broadband connectivity as a link of all higher education institutions. I was just putting education as an example. Health is quite critical in terms of people because people move but they go to different health facilities. But in addition, the new technologies assist us to have specialist care where there are no specialists. Just by deploying the connectivity and these technologies to remote hospital and remote clinic, we see that it's going to help us as a country in South Africa to ensure that every citizen has got access to quality healthcare. So those are some of the practical examples. We are a mining country and the new technologies are helping us to reduce the accidents which are caused by mining using artificial intelligence. Those are some of the things which I think are positive and we are doubting them. In agriculture, for instance, in terms of improving agricultural yield and making sure that people have got access to markets and e-commerce, so those are the things we are really developing in our country to ensure that our citizens actually participate and see the benefit of these new technologies which I imagine. I just wanted to ask you about half the world's people are connected to the internet. The other half is not. What is the Republic of South Africa doing to get everyone connected? It is very important to bridge this divide. Developing countries like South Africa, they were not so much beneficial in the face of the third revolution and we see we are preparing our nation, our workers and our people to participate in this new emerging revolution. In terms of the things we are actually doing at this moment, last year we adopted the Internet for All initiative which is very critical in ensuring that we have got innovative mechanism to ensure that everyone is connected. We have got 22 million South Africans who are not connected to the internet then and we are starting now to feel the impact of this because there is a multi-stakeholder forum where business, community and government are working together to find innovative ways to deal first with the issues of infrastructure in the difficult areas because even areas are connected. Now I left the almost half a billion of the world population and those who are difficult to connect. So we are looking at innovative ways. We are working with satellite companies, telecos, we are working with OTTs to really find innovative ways to deploy affordable infrastructure to those areas. What has come out quite clearly? If you make your internet affordable or infrastructure affordable, particularly startups, just this week I was launching one company, a startup, they are not just doing trial, they happen to have spectrum which is like what would be 5G spectrum, it's called RAIN, it's a small startup but it's quite disruptive because they are giving this high-speed internet in townships, in cities and in rural areas at the 4G levels of course. So those are the things people are supporting SMM is going to be key but that internet for all projects has got skills element because what we find is not just on the supply side but the demand side measures are quite critical because we can have infrastructure but people may not use it because of cost, particularly cost of devices, skills and the content, the relevant content is becoming more critical because if we use things like language, use people, things they can relate to, even if they are not rich but they'll pay for it because it's beneficial to them. So that internet for all projects will be giving the first report in January to World Economic Forum but the other initiatives to make sure that we not leave anyone behind is, like I said, the massification of skills. We have our own training agencies, not from our skills going to the university or in the classroom, even part-time causes just to make sure that the SMMEs can use this, the workers can feel comfortable using technologies. Those are things we share. We're working with domestic companies and international companies and our own NGOs to massify the skills, the digital skills element so that people can find comfort in using the internet. So that's why, for instance, we have been pushing the issues of ensuring comfort, security that people feel secure in the use of internet. Those are the things we've been pushing here. I do another multilateral for us to ensure that citizens, even from developing countries like South Africa, they must feel comfortable in the use of internet because internet is a very empowering. So those are some of the initiatives we are doing as a country. Of course, the ITU has been helping us. I'm very grateful to the ITU in terms of capacity building. I'm very happy that we're working with them now as an outcome of the Daven World Telecom that we're building this African Center for Digital Transformation in South Africa, in Pretoria to really help with this multi-stakeholder approach in terms of policy development, in terms of assisting our SMMEs with testing and conformance and standard testing, in terms of helping them to innovate and bring venture capitalists to assist them to commercialize. So we are very happy that we're working very closely with ITU to empower people of Africa. So we're saying we have to reduce this gender divide. It is a very important principle because as a country, we also come from a history of apartheid. And we know what a divide can do because the apartheid system is a system of dividing the people. So our constitution doesn't allow it. And that's why we're working starting with the girl child and empowering young people, young entrepreneurs to participate. Our policies as government, we are required to demonstrate that as a company, if you do business with government to encourage them, we have got also women, we have got youth, either empowering them or in terms of enterprise development, those are very positive things which we have to close quite fast if we are to have everyone participating in the digital economy for the future. Finally, I'd like to extend to you the opportunity to pass a message on not just to participants here, but also to our wider audience as well. Now, firstly, we will say we're very grateful. Let me first congratulate the elected officials of the ITU. We have got full confidence in them that they'll be able to take this organization to play its historical and new role in terms of ensuring that we reach our sustainable development goals by 2030 using ICT. Secondly, we are quite happy with the outcome. Of course, when you're coming to negotiate, you can't get everything. But in terms of key areas of developing countries, I think our teams have negotiated in good faith with other participants and we have achieved in terms of gender issues, in terms of developmental issues, in terms of training and capacity building, in terms of protection of young people and children, so those are some of the things we are quite happy about that the ITU will continue to play this role and really we hope that they can increase their role in developing countries like Africa or continent like Africa to help us to come out of poverty because at the end of the day, what we are facing in Africa is the issue of unemployment. If you can educate or you train them to participate, it will have a huge impact on poverty we are seeing as a continent. It will have a huge impact in terms of development and prosperity of our continent. Those are some of the things in terms of outcome and we will continue to support the ITU. We are grateful to those nations and countries who help us to come back to the council and elected council and the regulatory board and we really commit as a country that will do our best to make sure that we have a positive contribution for the development of humanity. Thank you. Thank you very much for joining us in the studio today and taking the time to be here and we look forward to catching up with you again in the future too.