 Thank you, Your Excellency, the chairperson of the conference. Your Excellency's ministers and heads of delegations, Secretary-General of the ITU and elected officials, distinguished ladies and gentlemen. The Kingdom of Lesotho is honored to be participating in the ITU 2022 Plany Potentiary Conference and we look forward to working with other member states to achieve a successful conference which will ensure that ITU continues to be an essential venue in advancing global telecommunications. The Plany Potentiary Conference is an important inverter's cast and debate issues with far reaching impacts on governments, businesses and the people around the world. Over the last few decades, increased access and connectivity have produced tremendous economic growth, allowed citizens to participate in the digital economy and resulted in shared prosperity for billions of people in the world. How we approach the issues at this conference will have long-term implications for a competition, also the competitive global marketplace, as well as investments and future innovations in information and communication technologies. The Kingdom of Lesotho fully supports and endorses the ITU strategic plan 2024-2027, in particular its two thematic areas, namely the universal connectivity and sustainable digital transformation. In line with the Connect 2030 agenda, the Kingdom of Lesotho has aggressively embarked on a $6 million project called Rural Connect Program. This is part of our eGovernment Infrastructure Program under this arrangement and the Government of Lesotho together with the Universal Service Fund and the African Development Bank is building based transceiver stations in the rural and underserved areas of Lesotho. The expectation at this point is that by the end of this program we should have achieved close to 100% coverage, shaman and distinguished delegates. The Kingdom of Lesotho with a population of just over 2 million people have been able to achieve slightly over 60% mobile penetration, 79% of our population own mobile handsets. The greatest challenge though is that access to digital skills and the gender digital skills gap. The majority of our people cannot use the mobile set beyond just the voice, the basic voice access. In order to address the digital skills challenge, the Kingdom of Lesotho embarked on an aggressive project called Schools Connect. Under this project, post primary schools are connected to the internet and they have internet for 3 years for free for students and staff of those schools. Due to lack of financial resources this initiative is not going at the rate at which we would have appreciated. Hence our appeal to the ITU family for assistance. Regards to addressing ICT skills gender gap, the Ministry of Communication Science and Technology in Lesotho has partnered with a number of NGOs to spearhead a project called GALS coding project. Under this project our sisters are taught the ICT skills including programming, machine learning, robotics and AI among others. Finally, we reaffirm our commitment and availability of the kingdom and the government of Lesotho to continue participating in ITU activities and contributing to the achievement of the objectives of the unit. As the Kingdom of Lesotho we are not contesting any of the ITU positions now. However, we will fully participate in elections and we hope that all member states will vote for our candidate in the coming IPU PP 2026. I thank you very much for your kind attention.