 Welcome to WTDC 17 here in Buenos Aires in Argentina where I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today Mr. Patrick Hiroshima, who is the Director General of the Rwandan Utilities Regulatory Authority, Roura. Patrick, thank you very much. You've been with us today. Thank you for having me. Now, I'd like to start off by talking a little bit about the overall impact of ICTs in Rwanda's socioeconomic development. Perhaps you could give us a little bit of an insight into that? Rwanda's journey over the last 17 years has been a remarkable story of growth and this growth has first and foremost been hinged on ICT development. Rwanda's vision 2020 from year 2000 to 2020 has been one with ICT at the center of the transformation journey and we've seen a tripling of the GDP of the country. We've seen growth in every single sector and ICT has been at the center of that. You cannot separate ICT from Rwanda's story of growth. And what about the major challenges and obstacles? What would you say the major challenges and obstacles are facing the use of ICTs, particularly in the attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030? First, I would like to say that Rwanda was among the countries that attained the targets for minimum development goals and ICT played a key role in that and looking into the future with the SDGs, the African center for SDGs actually established in Kigali and again ICT is going to play a key role and I don't see how you can be able to achieve the sustainable development goals without ICT playing a key role one in being able to collect data, be able to do policies that are data driven and you're able to monitor the impact of the different initiatives, again driven by ICT and technology in general. So I don't see really the SDGs being achieved without relying on ICTs to do that. In what ways do you think, when you hear, you hear it obviously, an ITU event we see Rwanda regularly joining us in many events around the globe. In what way do you think that Rwanda has benefited with its association with ITU? Rwanda's association with ITU has been quite a long and progressive one. It starts back in 1994 when we had a genocide and at that time there was a potential conference in Japan and Rwanda was not present because we're in the middle of a devastating war and at that time the Plainport conference actually made a resolution through which Rwanda was supported in the post-genocide reconstruction ITU. ITU together with the government of Rwanda was able to put infrastructure in place and restore communication infrastructure in the country. From that point forward we've had a very strong relationship between Rwanda and ITU. We had 2007 Connect Africa Summit which provided leadership in bridging connectivity gaps across the continent and saw billions of dollars worth of investment subsequent to this and from 2013 again ITU and the government of Rwanda have been working together to drive a Trans-Africa agenda again leveraging ICT for Africa's development. So the partnership between Rwanda and ITU has not only impacted Rwanda but also impacted the whole continent. Now we're going to be hearing a lot of great conversation here over the next couple of weeks. I just wanted to find out from you what concrete actions do you hope will come from WTTC 17? I think WTTC 17 needs to shift the conversation. We need to shift from addressing questions of the past and present to looking at present and future type of challenges whether it's at a policy level regulatory level. We see tremendous growth in technology, big data, IOTs, artificial intelligence all these bring questions of policy regulation. They call for better coordination and harmonization across the globe so that we can ensure that the benefits of all these new technologies can impact all of humanity and we can see equitable growth across the continent and across the world. So we look forward to tangible outcomes from WTTC 17. Great words Patrick in your chamber. Thank you very much for joining us today and we wish you the best luck for the rest of the conference. Thank you very much. I appreciate the conversation. Thank you. Thank you.