 I can ask the moderator to start the recording and then we can go. Okay. I need to be a co-host or a host back to be able to record. I think the live stream is the host now. Okay, all good now, recorded at starting. Thank you. Yeah, you're all good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the second day of the Russian edition forum for Africa. This session will be brought live to you on Swabcat. Use the chat to comment Q&A box and connect with each other directly. Use our hashtag rediscover innovation to bring the conversations. This session has English and French interpretation. If you would like to take advantage, you can click on the link below. Remember that you can only ask questions on Swabcat and in English. Andrew, you have the photo of your keynote. Thank you. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Great. Excellencies, dear friends. Ladies and gentlemen. Good morning. Good afternoon or evening wherever you are. It is such a privilege for me to be here today with you on such an important occasion to open this edition of the regional innovation forum for Africa. This theme is more than relevant for our region. Building partnership to mainstream entrepreneurship. We already know our region's potential. We know that our abundance of resources and our great in both senses population of young people have untapped capabilities. Yet, despite this potential, people in the region still suffer from underdevelopment, poverty and lack of access to basic rights education and sanitation. But this is not the whole story of Africa. The continent is diverse. And so our experiences and capabilities. Africa has innovators who know what problems need to be solved. Entrepreneurs have the power to turn these problems into opportunities and these opportunities into thriving businesses. There are already these two entrepreneurs working on innovations to solve problems like poverty and lack of access to education. And we are hearing from some of them during this forum. However, entrepreneurs in our countries with limited resources need greater support to be successful in exploring these opportunities. They, the talent, need the infrastructure, the capital, the market, culture, policies and an overarching national vision and strategy aligning that can support these entrepreneurs when they embark on their entrepreneurial journey. In line with the mandate developed at the 2017 World Recommunication Development Conference, ITU works to close the digital innovation divide and transform countries into thriving and competitive digital economies in partnership with member states and other relevant stakeholders. The most recent regional development forum recognized the importance of innovation with region through the Africa Regional Initiative 1, building digital economies and fostering innovation in Africa. Africa's are in the process of drafting the region initiatives for the next cycle spanning the 2022-2026 period, placing the fostering of digital industries and innovation ecosystems at the forefront of our development agenda. They are not doing this lightly. They are doing this because they know Africa's future lies in being innovative, fostering innovation by saving on resources and using them more efficiently, using technology to advance like the rest of the world. We can't afford to be always remaining behind. It is very encouraging and I'm very pleased to recognize the partners of this regional innovation forum. The Africa Telecommunication Union and I saw my friend John is on the call already. John, I very much appreciate your support and that of the Africa Telecommunication Union. The association of African universities, the coalition on media and education for development forum, smart Africa, the regional consortium of experts for development, our city, Africa, UNESCO, chair for emerging technologies for development and of course the world food program. Thank you for your support in organizing this important discussion and more importantly call to action to help us reach our collective objective of accelerating digital ecosystem transformation and its impact on cross cutting sectors for an inclusive society. This forum is yours and aims to be the platform for ideas to discuss ideas from divergent to convergent to identify the key takeaways of these discussions and to develop national or regional flagship projects to be started as soon as possible. And why not? The regional innovation forum for Africa started yesterday. We discussed on what we need for the tech entrepreneurship and key sectors, sector development in Africa, focusing on the continent's key sectors including agriculture and health. We were excited to launch ITU's new report, regional good practices, accelerating innovation, entrepreneurship and digital transformation in Africa. Good practices can serve as a case study for what the ecosystem needs by identifying what has worked in other ecosystems and adapting them to create our own brilliant ecosystem or vibrant ecosystem. We were excited that discussion included a young founder of one of these good practices. We also had entrepreneurs and ecosystem builders who are finalists in this year's global south digital innovation challenge. These innovators have come up with ideas of a pandemic that can be shared and scaled up in different countries. And I think that is where the trick lies. All across the continent we've got young people, young innovators, and we need to give them a platform where they can share the innovations that can be then scaled up in their own other countries. As you already know, ATO and ITU also organized innovation challenges earlier this year. The theme was best ecosystem practices in Africa enabling youth ICT innovation. The winners of this challenge also participated in this panel showing the diversity in innovation across the continent. Today several countries in Africa have ministries of digital economy or technology or ICT combined with innovation and youth. This is because for today's development digital ICT innovation, youth and entrepreneurship go hand in hand. So how do you go from this being a compartmentalized approach to an all of government, all of private sector, investor attractive environment and ultimately an all of Africa single digital market approach. Today, building on insights shared yesterday, our distinguished officials will discuss ways that stakeholders can accelerate the development of a regional innovation ecosystem that supports countries in integrating ICT innovation into national development agendas. Ladies and gentlemen, join me in congratulating the Republic of Niger and the Republic of Mali who in collaboration with the ecosystems and the support of the ITU both conducted co-creation exercises to develop their national digital innovation profiles. These digital innovation profiles assess the national ecosystem enabling agreement towards common goals for the ecosystems and culminating in identification of recommendations and projects to achieve this agreed vision. I recommend that our member states draft their digital innovation profiles with us if they have not already done so and Niger and Mali co-create and identify at least one national flagship project to accelerate digital transformation. Ladies and gentlemen, the key words so far in this forum are collaboration between stakeholders and ecosystems, partnerships across and within the public and private sectors and best practices to close the digital gap and unlock our potential. Let me add my own, let me add my own to ensure that our ecosystems, our ICT innovation ecosystems are not, that they are gender sensitive. We need to include our young ladies and we need to encourage them, we need to work with them in order for them to bring their part of the game, part into the game. They have a lot to offer. Those who know me will know that I'm passionate about the closing of the digital gender gap and this not least in innovation. When I started, I said it was a privilege for me to be here with you on such an important occasion. This is not least because I'm in my last two days of service to ITU. It is my honor to be retiring from ITU on such a high note. Let me take this opportunity to thank you, the wider public that have supported me and have supported the regional office from Africa that I had and particularly the strategic partners. I would like to thank you, the smart Africa, R2, UNESCO and the many others that we have been working together on many things including innovation. It is also my privilege to have my successor, the new regional director for Africa of the ITU and I would like to thank all of you for your support. Most of you would know because of previous work in this field, in the field of development, in the field of connectivity, in the field of internet governance, her name is not a stranger to many of you. But we will collaborate with her and the regional office for Africa so that we are able to continue to serve the member states to make sure that the quality of life in our countries for our people continues to improve with the contribution and acceleration of ICT and digital solutions. And with that, as the moderator, I look forward to continuing our very rewarding collaboration and I wish you a rich and fruitful training in this digital innovation ecosystem and the rest of the discussions during this forum. I hope that our paths will cross again or in fact will cross often on this subject of Africa's digital transformation. I thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Serge. Hello everyone. And I would like to start before introducing our panelists to say hello to everyone and thank you very much Andrew for his great words, and for everything he has done for the regional office and for the region, especially in the African region. Thank you very much Andrew. I know that we have not finished seeing each other and I know that I walk, as they say, in your path and so I will do my best to ensure and continue not only what you have done but also what we all have to continue to do so that our continent can truly see what digital transformation is. So thank you so much Andrew. And you know, you'll be around. We'll see you. Excellent. Distinguished guests, I would like to welcome everybody to this panel and I'm going to start by introducing our panelists. We have John Homo, Mr. John Homo, who is the Secretary-General of the African Telecommunications Union. John, if you can bring your camera. Great. Good to see you. We have also Mr. Didier, Director of Technology at Smart Africa Secretariat. Didier. Ravi Louvoir. Then we have Mrs. Mariko Asasambara, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Telecommunications and Digital Economy for the Modernization of the Administration of the Republic of Mali. Mrs. Mariko, Ravi, I would like to see you again. It's been a very long time. Hello Mrs. Mariko, it's been a very long time. I've been in place for a very long time. I would like to meet you again. I would like to meet you again. Please, please, so that I don't continue to call you. Mrs. Kulibali. Kulibali, very good. It's Mrs. Kulibali. Yes, Mrs. Kulibali, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. So, our panelists are the last, Mr. Asan Barazi-Moussam, the Minister of Post and New Technology of Information of the Republic of Niger. Is he there? No, maybe not. Serge? Yes, he's connected. I think he's muted. Okay. Thank you so much for picking up on our side to know if he's coming. So, I'm going to continue in English. John, since... Okay. I think Mr. Barazi is connected. Wonderful. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. All right. So, we're going to launch into the panel, and I'm going to start with John. Mr. Orville, something crucial that we've been working with you, as Andrew reminded everybody. So through your work at AOTU, what are some key challenges and opportunities in the digital ecosystem to achieve sustainable development goals in the region? The floor is yours, sir. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. I'm Rachel and it's a welcome to Africa. Thank you very much Andrew for the kind words and I want to thank each of my colleagues for being here. Now directly to your question, I want to say that innovation is something that is quite clear to this union and I think pride in participating in this forum with the activities where we're looking at sustainable innovation and the economic ecosystem, the theme really for Africa as a continent. It's important because most of us are... John? John, interpretation is saying that the sound is too poor. Can you maybe push up your mind so we can hear you better? Okay, let me just do that. Thank you. Hello, is it better now? Is it better? Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm sorry indeed for that. I was just saying that the theme of this meeting which is sustainable innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems is one that is very dear to us as Africa because we are just heralding an era where digital transformation journey is one that all our countries are engaging across the continent following up on the AU digital transformation strategy and so the need for Africa to leapfrog and jump quickly into the bandwagon in order to ensure that technology in terms of systems and services work towards the development of Africa is one that cannot be gained fade. Now, in terms of opportunities and some of the challenges, I want to just talk of two main opportunities that I see, one of which I've mentioned briefly and that is the untapped potential of this continent in terms of incorporating ICT into our facets of life, be it political, be it economic, be it health, be it educational, agriculture and all that. The potential is huge and they're still quite untapped and that for me is a monstrous opportunity that any technology company that is willing or looking forward to innovating ideas for products that are in health, that are in agriculture, that are in politics would certainly want to look at this continent as one where one can easily innovate and make money and so there exists a great demand as opposed to other regions for customized ICT services and solutions. The second one that I would think about at the top of my head is the large pool of the youth in this continent and very agile people, very tenacious people. A good number of them are deeply, deeply, deeply interested in technology and with the untapped potential that I talked about, there exists quite in many of our countries now a growing number of young people that are curious, that are interested, that are looking forward to opportunities and generating ideas on how we can develop African solutions to African problems and so those are the two key opportunities that I see. Of course, we have a couple of challenges that have alluded to. We have a large number of the population that are still living below the poverty level and so may not be able to afford certain systems and services that are related to technology. For example, smartphones or internet connectivity, they are rather take the little income that they have to meet their more basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing and so that is one area that we need to look at. The lack of coordination amongst various organizations that are playing in this space is something that I have talked about previously and continues to concern me. I think we are still in our little fiefdoms as institutions, as organizations, each and every organization is doing this or that and I look forward to a day when we can harmonize all these policies under one umbrella for purposes of a big impact and so that is another challenge that I see. They are still not enough in my view coordination of the various innovative activities that are happening in the continent or even between countries and that is one challenge that I think we need to look forward to solving as a continent. Of course, limited capacity building opportunities especially for the youth that I have talked about and also mentoring and of innovators and digital entrepreneurs. ITU in conjunction with us is doing something that I really want to applaud in terms of mentoring and of innovators but there is still a huge potential in that area for organizations to come together and marshal mentoring and capacity building opportunities in this area. There is also quite a bit of lack of resources and enabling policies in terms of facilitating innovation and so we need to work a lot more with our governments to ensure that the policies that are in place for facilitating innovation and the development of innovative ideas are made by our governments, by our companies, by our institutions so that we have an ecosystem that is friendly, that is conducive to innovation. Of course, lack of capital is a great, great challenge. We have young people, many of them, that have fantastic ideas but still lack the opportunity to access a capital to assist them in developing their innovative ideas. So those are some of the challenges that I fear around and I would wish that we focus on. Thank you very much, Ova, to you. Thank you very much, John. I think among some of the things that you referred to, I really would love to pinpoint, yes, the challenges faced by youth in a continent that is mostly in the majority made up of those people so we need to care for them and the other challenge, of course, is, yes, lack of institutional coordination from governments to all of the partners who are supposed to actually be building, help build this ecosystem, work together. So thanks for pointing that out and at ITU, we've been working with you and we've been working with other partners and we're really hoping that as we go, this gelling of efforts will materialize so that our region gets to really do the lip-frogging that we've been talking about for years. So thank you, Andrew. I would like to now turn to John, excuse me, see Andrew is around. So thank you, John. That's my other name. Wonderful. Thanks so much. All right. I'm going to turn now to DDM, Mr. Kuyukim Fura. Smart Africa has been playing a key role in the continent towards connect, to innovate, and transform. What are some of the key challenges and opportunities in the judicial ecosystem that you are seeing in achieving sustainable development goals in the region? Thank you. Floris is yours. Thank you very much, Anna Rachelle. Good to see you again after a long time. And I'm very honored to be here with the Excellency Minister with John Ono and Distinguished Panelists to share a little bit as you, the perspective of Smart Africa in the digital transformation of the continent. For those who know Smart Africa or for those who don't know Smart Africa, it's an African organization that has been mandated by head of state from African countries to support the digital transformation. And among the principles that were at the core of the vision of Smart Africa was to accelerate the digital transformation, to support socio-economic transformation in countries, but also to federate the capabilities of the continent. Here we talk about the continent of 1.2 billion, but then you realize that mostly most of the countries over the last 20 years have been having really a domestic focus, a national focus. So Smart Africa offered an opportunity for countries to actually work together. So that's just in brief what Smart Africa is and the vision of Smart Africa is to create a single digital market by 2030. Not very far. Nine years is seems to be far, but it's not really far. And the proof is if you want to recall what happened in 2012, you might have some ideas and it's like nine years and nine years behind us. So it's become a bit it's not that far and we believe that because of the political will which is there, this vision will become a reality. But let me talk about opportunities. We all know, I think and that's as John mentioned earlier, digital economy, digital transformation in the global economy. It's obvious today that a country cannot really talk about economic transformation without talking about technology. And so it's no longer an optional direction to take. It's really a must for economists to embrace digital economy, digital transformation to become relevant for the future. So the importance of digital technology in the global economy makes it a strategic sector both economically, but also politically. And for developing countries, digital economy is a strong lever of economy and social development. And digital tools also offer new opportunities for action to African state given that, giving them the ability to monitor the territory, population economy, but also offering considerable perspective for improving public services and strengthening the productivity of the administration. I'm really bringing this other aspect to complement what my brother John mentioned about the private sector and the opportunity for the private sector. I think there is also a really great opportunity for the public services and also improving the productivity on the administration. And it's really often new opportunity to boost economy growth. And this is really, really important, especially after the pandemic that we've gone through where economies are trying to really rebuild and go back to their feet. So economy growth, job creation, digital economy really often an opportunity to support the economic goals of the country. But also it's a source of productivity, productivity gains for other economic sectors, be it health, education, governance and so on. And thus I'll say in terms of opportunity, in terms of challenges, we cannot emphasize more that for digital economy or digital transformation to happen, political leadership is very key. It needs to be on the top of the agenda. It needs to be a top priority. And African governments who are working with Smart Africa, by joining Smart Africa, it's a sign of commitment that they are going to prioritize technology and to invest more in digital transformation, not working alone, working also with the private sector and in order to mobilize all the resources and work together to achieve this vision, their vision, the national vision. Connectivity, we can't really, I think you mentioned it in your question and we talk about connecting of it and transform. Connectivity is still a major element that needs to be taken into account because we still have, over 60% of Africans who don't have internet or reliable connectivity even if we've been witnessing a mobile revolution which has happened and swept across the continent. But it's only 26% of people in Africa currently who are using mobile internet versus 49% globally. So that's why it's need and why it's not being adopted. Of course, coverage is an issue. There are some places, especially the rural areas, which are not properly covered. So there are connectivity gap, there's also usage gap because people don't have the right tools, the right devices. And we can't really talk about innovation, digital innovation if people are not able to interact with the digital economy. So connectivity is important, the devices are important, but affordability and digital skills are also important. I'd like just to touch briefly two last points. The first one is that we need to attract more funding. We can't, all these plans we're talking about can only happen if we have adequate funding. It starts by government, of course, by prioritizing and allocating resources, but also we talk also about investment coming from partners, development partners, private sectors in different digital programs. So we still have some financing and funding gaps. And lastly, policies. Without the right policies in place, without the right regulation and legal environment, we can't really talk about digital innovation. And if we really want to get the maximum of digital transformation, we need to have the right policies. And even better, we need to harmonize our policy of the continent because we're not talking about just a national market, we're talking about an African market that has over a billion people. So those are the points I wanted to add on top of what John just mentioned. Thank you very much, DDA. And you touched and actually added on points that John made, but some of them that you talked about are leadership. It is very important for the leadership to be involved so that all of the, we were talking about the African continent through a free trade area. How is that going to boost, for example, technology adoption, technology production on our continent? And how are we going to harmonize our rules? When we look, for example, internationally, what is happening in terms of taxation today, it's a big issue. Are we going to fight for the next nine years before we start looking into, for example, how to harmonize the trade of goods and technology included in our continent and things like that? So thank you very much. You really came forward with things that we need to keep in mind. So thanks again. Thank you very much, Madam Anne. It is a pleasure for me to be here. Hello. Thank you very much, Madam Anne. It is a pleasure for me to be here today. for me to be here today. Mr. the Minister could have been here today, but his last-minute agenda was not allowed. So he took care of transmitting his sincere greetings. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to take the floor to affirm the effective addition of my country, Mali, to the goal of this forum, which is to build partnerships to integrate entrepreneurship and innovation. We are part of Prenante, and we do not have a reserve for the creation of a digital ecosystem that is favourable for competitiveness. It has allowed me to express my gratitude to the Bureau of Development and Unity for their support at a time when Mali is in the process of re-dynamizing her digital ecosystem. The profile of digital innovation for Mali has been reflected with the contribution of the Prenante party of the ecosystem, especially the entrepreneurs, the universities, the public sector, the private sector, the financial sector, the support organizations for entrepreneurship and civil society. The vision of Mali, which has come to its end in the ambition to make a network for Mali, a sector of human development that is sustainable, a source of productivity and value added for the other sectors of the economy for the public administration. It is an important level of national economy. Certain activities have been carried out while a good number of points are still to be carried out. It is in this context that the government has asked for technical assistance for the development of new plans to accelerate digital transformation. Our ambition during this short transition is to achieve the basis of a change of culture, methods and strategies. The existence of the development in the governmental development of transition in the department dedicated to the digital economy participates in this ambition. Our ambition is that Mali also has a competitive platform in the regional and digital domain. This is why we are working to help not only the development of the Mali economy but also the development of the Mali economy but also the development of the Mali economy but also the development of the Mali economy in the regional and digital domain. We are working to increase the national coverage for telephonic networks, to increase services for the administration, for the consumers, to reduce internet access rates, to increase the quality of the service, to facilitate the creation of companies and employees, to increase the revenue of the state through a safer and balanced regulation. Mali is already a representative and legislative framework aimed at the installation of strong, transparent and favorable markets with texts on information society, the protection of personal data, the cryptology, the transaction and electronic exchange, the cybercriminality and the cybersecurity in the development. As you said, the challenges, the number and the change of the creation of the innovation ecosystem of the RAP are enormous but they are not insurmountable. We have the right to strengthen the imagination of creativity supported by a firm political will to build a digital economy that is durable, solid and inclusive. To do this, we need to take into account a critical mass of skills in the digital industry. The efforts need to be supported and accompanied by the private sector and the public sector. We need to work together to improve the skills supported by the state at universities and professional training so that the citizens can take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the digital sector. We also work with the actors and artists of the digital industry. We work, I would say, to be the actors of our digital industry. And I remind you that without the ability to create and employ more people. It is about wanting a prosperous Mali, a rich Mali of its natural resources but especially a rich Mali of its digital and intellectual resources. And we need to have our capacity to achieve the basic of a digital, dynamic economy with a certain development that is durable and supported. We trust our genius and we want to use the recommendations that he has made in collaboration with the digital ecosystem. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. It is very nice to see the Mali arriving here. I am very happy to see that we have reached the end of this relationship. In addition to taking into account all of their concerns, the Mali aims to really put a proactive environment that will serve as a lever to make this country one of the main components of African digital actors. Thank you again, Madame Coulibaly. I will now turn to Mr. Barazi. I hope he is with us. So, Mr. Barazi, if you can give us in three minutes what the UN has done in terms of opportunities to be for those who have the best practices of digital innovation in the country and in Africa in general, you would be recognized. The floor is yours, Mr. Excellency. Thank you very much, Madame Anne. I would like to thank you for your lecture. It is true that there was a very good initiative to make this union a digital innovation because in any way digital innovation has become a very important obligation for us, for our entrepreneurs, our companies and the public sector to be competitive. So, we have engaged in a study, which has been conducted by the agency for training, which has been conducted with unity. The report was practically postponed two weeks ago. We did not have the time to exploit this report very well. I think that I agree with you that it was done only two weeks ago. We did not have the time to exploit it to be able to put it in harmony. I have only done it three or four days. I have done it since the report has raised a lot of inconsistencies in our politics, in our ways of doing it. We have done a lot of recommendations. I would like to leave the time to say something very important that is very interesting, so that we can really give this institution what we want to do. We have a chain to facilitate things. We have an institutional initiative. As you can see in the report, there are so many decisions between the ministers and the administration, but there is no coordination. It is for this that we are being able to make sure that the digital can be built. This is the economic development of our country. This is the level that I can say on this report. I would like to continue the discussion with you. I was on the phone with him the first time that you called. Thank you very much for this invitation. Thank you very much for being with us. We are very happy to be here. As you said, we will be on your side to make sure that we can help those in need. Thank you again for being with us and we welcome the Secretary-General. Thank you. Thank you very much. I will continue on this session. If you want to do it well, it will be with pleasure. I have my session. I don't need it. You can see on the screens. I'm not sure. If you want to stay, I will come back to you later. Thank you again. Thank you again. Thank you again. I will leave to Madame Coulibaly. Madame Coulibaly, if you are still with us, I would like to ask you a question about the digital transformation of the region. We are part of the Mali with many of our countries in the region and even all over the African region. We are trying to go towards this digital transformation. In addition to what you said, what are the cooperation mechanisms that you have so that the Mali also integrates in the region on everything that happens in digital transformation. If you can talk a little more about it, it will be with pleasure. Thank you. Thank you Madame. The integration mechanism we are in a young country in the West African region. So we are working with the young people on the principle to go to this digital transformation. We also have the support of the Mali Bank a project that supports the Mali in relation to digital transformation. Through this project, we have even defined priorities to go to this digital transformation. The primary priority is the revision of our texts. The texts are regulated so that it is conformed to the actual evolution of the digital transformation. The second priority is the infrastructure. The second one is the transition to digital transformation. In our countries, we are really focused on the infrastructure. We have 70% of the population who live in the middle and who can access the infrastructure of digital transformation. Our second priority is to put the infrastructure of the entire population. And the third priority is the service of the population. The population has to access this service that demands the minimum of things. With the digitalization of this service the population will really be relieved. So this is the third priority that we have. We also have the CDEO space. Through the CDEO we support our process of digital transformation. So this is what I can tell you in relation to the four cooperations that exist in addition to the UIT. Thank you. Thank you. It is important to remember that the reconstruction of the texts is really the coordination of all of this and indeed one of the ways of coming to the service to the citizens. I will now move on to Mr. the Secretary General of the Post and the new technologies. Mr. the Secretary General how did the minister accelerate digital transformation? Knowing that the post has always been traditionally in many of our countries one of the focal points of for example the bank, the services to the citizens the offices for example the last kilometers in the most remote places in our countries. So what do you do in this sense in Niger? Thank you. Thank you for your question. The minister said we are in the head of the ministry. The president of the UIT has entrusted us with the harmonization of the contributions of all the actors as he said earlier. We are in the process of thinking and working on the harmonization of all the actors to decrease the emissions of certain agents, of certain structures that prevent us from coordinating with the sector. This is the first work in December. I arrived in two months, he has five months and the political will is formal you have to harmonize the contributions you have to decrease the emissions to allow the sector to advance quickly. To come to your question, the post sector I admit that you have asked a very good question because the post is developing in a way that is always disorganized because we have a dozen or more actors who are present everywhere but who are not in rule. What do I call them? Because in our legislation or regulations, each operator must have a license. If you organize the ministry you are clearly asked to organize this sector to put it in a rule. The sector is advanced. You have a dozen actors everywhere you can send your agent, you can send police it works very well but we have no visibility because this sector is not also organized in terms of regulations. We have to have a license. All the others that you may know who are a dozen are not in rule. We are reviewing how to bring them to take a license to send us clear data through good regulatory conditions. Otherwise, the sector is advancing very well except for the regulation. I don't know if I answered your question but that's what I'm asking for the moment. It's a question that we ask a lot, we have the license. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's nice to see once again that countries have been attacked by institutional theft, which is very important and very effective. Thank you very much for being with us. I will now move on to Mr. John. Thank you for staying with us first of all. I would like to ask you how can you accelerate the development of competitive regional and national digital innovation ecosystems? Mr. John, I would like to ask you some of your members talk about some of the issues that they are having in harmonization and making sure that citizen services are really going to citizens and all of that. How are you seeing that? What are your members talking about? Mr. John, I was asking how can you accelerate the development of competitive regional and national digital innovation ecosystems? Having heard from your constituents. Thank you very much for the question and I want to thank the previous speakers for the comments that have been made. There are indeed a couple of opportunities that exist and some of which we have seen in collaboration with other organizations, some of others at the individual level. The single biggest opportunity that we see here, and this has been happening in the last 20 or so years when we opened the market to competition. Four or so years ago, following the AU digital transformation strategy for Africa, all our governments have opened up their countries to opportunities that are brought by digital systems and services. The key area that we have worked on is on e-skills framework. This is one of the points that I alluded to earlier. There is quite a jointed nature in terms of either at the continental level or even at the individual government level in terms of how e-skilling is undertaken. We have undertaken a survey in this regard and developed a strategy. One of the points that has come forth is that the ministries are not enough coordination even on the e-skilling at our national level. It is a surprising thing in this day and age. They need to ensure that there is a common approach towards the e-skilling. It is still a ministry of education issue which justifiably is the case or should be the case. Another player is playing in that space in the development of our e-skills curriculum. The ministries of ICT, the operators themselves, the hubs that we have in the continent. That is one that we have seen in that space. We have worked with the membership to develop a strategy in this regard. We do hope that we can use that as a model. We are working with the members to use that as a model of the e-skilling framework within our national governments and authorities so that there is a coordinated approach towards e-skilling. Indeed, if we don't e-skill with reference to the fourth industrial revolution with new technologies coming up with just also a year ago issued out a strategy for Africa following up on the African Union's digital transformation strategy on how Africa can be mainstreamed into the new technologies and we do hope that working with governments we can implement that. We have, as was mentioned by Andrew earlier in the second phase of the second year of our innovation challenge very interesting ideas from our youth and this is something that is very dear to my heart. We need to upscale it and see that the players in this industry get into it so that the impact is bigger and larger. We are working now towards the creation of a portal probably where each country will have their space so that we can highlight the sort of innovative ideas that are being generated mostly by our youth in each of the portal for each and every country. We have worked with the membership in the area of Spectrum as a key enabler in the digital innovation space with our governments to ensure that Spectrum is readily made available for networks so that they can be encouraged to innovate. Something that I am sure is very dear to your heart the migration from IPv4 to IPv6 we are working with with the challenges that we have seen of late but we do hope that especially at the political level there is still quite a lot of information in terms of what needs to be done yet Afrinik and indeed players in this space have a lot of information resident with them and so what we need is to unlock the political goodwill that is necessary for the movement to IPv6. Lastly cyber security and confidence building again it is something that we are working on with the African Union. We just had a meeting about this two days ago in terms of developing a strategy the opportunities are many. If you want to know the resilience of an African go to any African market whether Mali or Kigali or Niger or wherever and see what the capacity of an African woman what they can carry to a market the Lord that they can carry to a market and you will see the resilience in our people and so the ability to tell this lady that the market in the outskirts of Niger is offering you a better opportunity than the main market in the city centre the ability for her to access that information is what is the opportunity we must give that lady so that she markets her product to where she can get the best return for those products. I hope I've dealt with your question a bit in view of the limited time that we have. Thank you. John, this is really great. I think it's a great way to finish. Unfortunately, I think we're running out of time and I don't even think that I'm going to be able to ask another question to DDA. DDA, John, Madam Pulibani thank you all for being with us today and I think building partnership is what we've been doing this morning and listening to each other but also knowing what each other are doing you all said it we need those partnerships we need the mainstreaming of entrepreneurship we need the institutional part to function we need the affordability we need our youth to be involved and we need the leadership that comes from our leaders to be involved in this and make sure that we're progressing it and of course we cannot leave half of our continent you know, on the side and that is women and that is young ladies and John, I am happy to tell you that this is one of the continents where we have the most young ladies involved in IPv6 so we can make it happen you know, so thank you all really for being here with us this morning ITU is here for you, the regional office is here to help you go forward and we're counting on you and on your partnership to make digital transformation in Africa in reality, thank you thank you very much thank you Andrew thank you thank you Andrew thank you John, thank you for your contribution my pleasure thank you Hassan thank you thank you thank you you are muted oh sorry I'm ok I'm ok how's Kigali? Kigali is doing well I'm on the way oh ok, in two days? not exactly in two days but I will be coming welcome Nusa to South Ogan Kavisa alright, bye can we have music inside while we look for our moderator? Louisa, you have the slide for session 2 which I sent you yesterday I emailed him some of them are hi Doreen hi I'm just looking for everybody, I'm promoting Devin because he's in the room good afternoon everyone hello good afternoon hello good afternoon join me in this part of the day how's everyone keeping today thank you so much how are you? is everyone here except for Calvin? Melanie is here Alex is Alex here I'm here thank you can you all please turn on your cameras there's a screen is that Louisa? this is not the slide to share this is the slide with all the panelists on it that's it this is a light screen okay we're only looking for the moderator Louisa could you please recent Calvin's link I've asked Steffen for it as well yes Doreen the email from Kevin that's what you said okay I'm going to look for it so the PowerPoint you sent me is not the right one I sent you that PowerPoint yesterday this PowerPoint that you were sharing is going to be shown at the end of the session by morning okay can somebody mute me from that end I don't know where I can't mute myself but we can hear you I think my phone is frozen I want to join with a computer but in the meantime okay I'll mute you just a quick question do we have access to the questions on swap card ourselves or can we log in deal so what we do is we're having Aida send the questions to Calvin via whatsapp you can also have a swap card open on your own if you would like to but Calvin will read them to you perfect 100% I think we'll just open it up I'm finding it there's an echo yeah I need to disconnect alright let me mute you do you like me to mute you Africa session 2 Louisa Violet is connected from two devices so we need to delete the phone but I don't know which is the phone and which is her computer I'm okay I've removed the phone I don't know but my connection will remain stable on the laptop during you are muted we can't hear you Apologies panelists I think Calvin is on his way Calvin are you here Calvin okay I'm renaming you okay Calvin please turn on your mic everyone's muted yes I am okay everybody's here are we ready to go live Louisa yes from my side okay can you start Calvin please begin good morning everyone and good afternoon whatever you may be can I synchronize my microphone and my audio yes we can we can hear you but your sound is not very good you're not coming very well sound wise I don't know what you can do is the sound better now yes it is thank you Calvin so welcome to the mainstream innovation and entrepreneurship capacity in Africa I'm the project manager for capacity development at smart Africa so I joined smart Africa with ambition ambitious program which is an initiative that aims at federating the different capacity development initiative across the internet into a sync platform so I'll be here today as a moderator for this panel session it is my pleasure to introduce all the panelists around here and I'll start with Dr. Violet with the QA specialist workshop coordination of Africa higher education as the AAU Dr. Violet if you can hear me please the floor is yours for one minute presentation yes so what I want to really share is with regards mostly to curricula because when I look at it in terms of innovation if we do not look into the curricula then we are going to have problems and I want to believe that with this event or activity we are also covering higher education although maybe it could be really open and broad but when I have just a focus on for example higher education I am looking at the kind of questions which could be asked today which people may be asking today do we need an overall of the current education system if yes why what needs to be changed needs analysis needs to be done who should be involved in the change process and what will be the roles of those involved which skills set should those to be involved yes what kind of skills are needed by the 21st century graduates and waiters how can effective changes be done so when you look at all these questions I know maybe I am going to be given more time to elaborate maybe with some of the decisions that will come in so this requires us definitely to make sure that everything seems to be ICT and Internet of Things everything is ICT driven so all our programs and what we are doing right now we need to now make sure there is an appendage of an ICT aspect although you know it is broader than that thank you I appreciate that we also wanted you to have a one minute presentation of yourself and what you do and so that we know your background and while you are doing that I will invite the technical session to review the translation because it is like we lost the translation Dr. Violet maybe in 30 seconds thank you so much so my name is Dr. Violet Mahuku I am with the Association of African Universities where I am a quality assurance specialist I have got a strong background in curricular issues and so the most important thing I do is the institutional evaluations institutional evaluations the teaching and learning, the research, community engagement curricular design, curricular review and so I am really passionate about looking at the contemporary issues and how universities can remain relevant and one of those things is to check on the trends and current issues and we know with the fourth industrial revolution the coming of the COVID-19 pandemic the push is on incorporation of Internet of Things and ICT driven workspaces and everything I also do a lot of capacity building workshops in quality assurance to make sure that we improve the quality of our education research workshops, innovation university industry linkages industrialization and intellectual property workshops and a research chain the world research chain, it's a lot I could spend at the world the world yes, thank you thank you Dr. Violet for this impressive profile and that adds a very great contribution to this panel I am with you by Dr. Lauerle Cole from CAFOR CAFOR standing for the Coalition on Media and Education for the development of Africa Dr. Cole, if you can hear me please go ahead thank you very much I am Dr. Lauerle Cole I am the Executive Director of CAFOR I am based in the African Union Commission Headquarters and I work very closely with the Department of Education Science Technology and Innovation CAFOR is a membership organization which has members from all over the African continent basically professionals, experts in every discipline, in business in law, in education and the arts and so many other areas so our concern in CAFOR is that recently the population of Africa has been rising tremendously young people and our education systems are not responding to really the requirements needed for young people to come and employ it so we are an advocacy group also in a way we have technical experts in our group in CAFOR which has about right now about 60 members and scattered all over the continent in every region from North, South, East, West, Central and we are basically working with a lot of organizations to continue various organizations as we have universities where we regularly attend their meetings and also other meetings I am really thrilled this afternoon to be here to be working with ITU which is a new partner to us because I see that the ICT issues are extremely important and I want to speak about that of course and particularly the ICT ecosystems are needed with education and training in Africa and how I think we can coordinate our activities together and bring all the expertise that we have at our disposal to make sure that we have an enhanced and successful IT system that will respond to requirements and needs of Africa and I particularly focus on that Thank you Dr. We really appreciate this introduction for the sake of time they will have to come back again to this topic then we just move on to the next panelist because we are out of time Mr. Alex Magoo from the STEM Impacts in Nairobi, Kenya if you are here with us please the floor just for one minute introduction please let's keep the time over to you My name is Alex Magoo I work with the STEM Impact Center which is based in Nairobi, Kenya and we run a series of mobile cutting labs and creative spaces for young people to be able to explore and capacity build in science and technology I think you have heard a lot of emphasis in science tech and innovations from Violet and Dr. Lauri and as an institution we have committed ourselves to reducing inequality gaps and especially for women and girls who come from low income areas and marginalized communities young people in rural areas arid and semi arid areas and even informal settlements so do they have access to meaningful learning experiences so we provide that through our team cutting labs which are mobile and the model is we can go to any town, any country and support community and our main mission is based on the sustainable development of the STG4 and which calls for substantial increase in the number of youth especially for girls and adults who have relevant skills especially vocational and technical for them to be able to be entrepreneurs, to be able to fit in decent jobs and as well as to fit in to be employable so that's what we're doing here in Kenya and Nairobi and we're supporting countries as well through the mobile team cutting labs and we're delighted to be part of this workshop. Thank you so much Alex, I really appreciate this perspective you bring into this question today. I'm going to jump straight to Miss Melani Keita from Melanin Capital CEO, Melanin Shikihemi Joyce yours. Thank you very much Kevin and thank you so much for inviting me and Melanin Capital to this wonderful discussion. My name is Melanin Keita I'm originally from Mali and Congo actually and grew up in France my whole life so as an African of the diaspora I was very frustrated to not be able to be an entrepreneur and support my home countries which is why I co-founded Melanin Capital which is the first digital impact investment bank dedicated to African and its diaspora and our role is really to ensure that our private capital from the continent and from the diaspora can be mobilized to support sustainable businesses and startups in our continent. So we offer digital services on investment processing and investment structuring to support ultimately local small impact businesses in Africa. Thank you so much again for the invitation and look forward to the conversation. How pleased you are Melanin thank you for being here and joining so I'm going to call in Mr Dugara Leia the founder for Brilliant Computers if you can hear me the floor is yours Mr Dugara. Yeah, good afternoon everyone and thank you for inviting me to this wonderful event my name is Dugara Ilia and I am an entrepreneur a youth advocate and I am the founder of Brilliant Computers I am also the champion of Nigerian Youth SDGs Network at Amar State so Brilliant Computers is an ICT based organization incorporated solve ICT related problems and to train youths and women on digital skills and computer to close the digital divide and while the Nigerian Youth SDGs Network is a coalition of Youth Leeds and a society organization made up of up to 250 plus members in that seven states of the Nigeria our mission is to amplify the voice of the youth and enhance their participation in the development of agenda in their own country so I'm very very happy to be here thank you very much. So much Mr Dugara I'll simply move on to our next panelist Mr Devon Clark I'll take this as an academy Mr Devon, if you can hear me the voice of us for the presentation. Good afternoon, thank you so very much for having me it really is a privilege to be among such brilliant minds and engage in these conversations that are necessary for the advancement of Africa and the official acknowledgement of Africa and our step foothold into the global economy so I'm the CEO of Full Tech Business Academy is the big data and end user experience developer as well as the material developer such as the following business creativity textbook which is a blended learning SDG based curriculum the entire curriculum that we are developing is wholly based on the SDGs and the accomplishing of the SDGs so it is to teach social entrepreneurship as well as innovation within entrepreneurship we have a foothold based in South Africa that we are looking to diversify and disseminate our courses right through Africa and beyond and we look forward to the conversations to follow as well as the deliverables to follow from the conversations thank you very much for having me Thank you Mr Devon I'll simply go to our last panelist Ms Wendy and Hiraymi manager innovation research and development communication authority of Kenya if you are here with us the floor is yours for the presentation thank you okay thank you thank you so much Halvin and thank you to all the panelists that are here yes my name is Mwende and Hiraymi I work with the communications authority of Kenya at the research and innovation department I'm here on behalf of a group of students or participants that took a course that was facilitated by the ITU the course is available on ITU academy available actually for free so registered for the course and got accepted and the course is digital innovation ecosystem training building entrepreneurial communities and competitive ICT industries for job creation so I'm here to speak of our experience as a group of five from various African countries so thank you very much thank you so much for your quick introduction I really appreciate that so the floor is now the panel is set we need to now come in and see how this perspective comes together so our first round of questions will be what are some of the approaches to building innovation capacity and how can we leverage on the partnerships so let me start with Dr. Mukaku and to see how we can leverage on public and private partnerships to enhance smooth transition of youth skills group from education to work or industry if you can hear me please Dr. Makuku DeFloisius thank you so much yes sir these approaches are very very important and what I would put across is helping students and our youth being taken to the industry floor themselves I think it's very important because when we talk a bit outside where they are going to work or where they can work it's also good now to check them there to the shop floor and see in practice what is happening and in addition to that we also need to make sure that when we are maybe doing work shopping them or teaching them in cases of universities the approaches should be learner centered they are supposed to be hands on minds on that is how the skills can be transferred to them and that is very important the approaches that we use and also in designing our curricula and so on we are supposed to have the people in different industries coming to make a contribution of what we can have in terms of for practicals and what we can have in terms of content those modules or courses that will make up the program and we want to miss it we need to check what is there which is needed and you hear the word skills mismatch skills mismatch it comes with that that people are not coming together the key stakeholders are not coming together to now say what is it that industry needs which we need to train our youth to do and do it perfectly but without first of all building the curricula together how can we do it really have gaps so we need to bridge those gaps by working together in terms of internships industrial attachments a few details they do help people go and see the actual things and they also get involved thank you thank you for this great perspective using a user-centric you are muted can you hear me thank you so much for this perspective you're bringing in having a user-centric approach with hands-on practical dimension of the youth so that it can be very guaranteed for these jobs so thanks for that contribution I'll see Dr. Paul okay okay let me first of all begin by saying that success of any ecosystem would depend on how various elements interconnect and how they interact with one another okay sorry I just requested that you can speak up so that we okay can you hear me am I loud enough yes you're loud enough what I'm saying is that first of all the success of any ecosystem would depend on how the various elements interconnect and interact with one another when you look at the education as an essential priority in all the agenda policies and frameworks of both the United Nations and the African Union we realise that ICD deployment and integration can include all facets for the education system and we also consider some of the challenges that African education and training systems are facing right now and this includes number one access to quality education and training for all African citizens we have really over 30 million children going up to school at the moment also we have a massive shortage of teachers a similar 30% of the workforce and also we have a challenge of improving quality of instruction and teaching methods that enhance the body availability and relevance of the school textbooks so the fact is that ICD ecosystem can actually enhance the relevance and quality of education and training and number two can offer marginalised population groups particularly female and rural learners increase opportunities for learning and skills development capacity development for key stakeholders in the ICD ecosystem will also empower learners by giving them a digital culture and the ICD knowledge skills and qualifications that will enable them to become full-fledged stakeholders in the United Society so the other issues I would like to consider here first, integrating ICD education and training remains a challenge number one that's because of our stakeholders education stakeholders are not sufficiently involved in speaking and steering and also the cultures brought together by the educational process are different on the one side you have the highly innovative and dynamic ICD sector which exists right now which is developing in both the western world and developing world and on the other hand also education systems remain very conservative as a sector and this makes the interaction very very difficult so to ensure a capacity in our hands it will be better if we support ongoing dialogue that will bring together these filmmakers from African and representatives of development bodies the private sector and civil society strengthening this partnership is extremely critical in this platform and it is and they are quite indispensable to give various stakeholders a shared understanding of ICD opportunities the policies and strategies needed for efficiencies of ICD by education and training systems and also to make sure that we have the the partnerships required are successful for integration of ICD and now what is important here is partnerships I think partnerships is crucial and organizations will partner with one another to review lessons drawn from countries that have reached different phases of ICD integration, education and training for example we are talking about the formulation of financing, limitation monitoring of ICD policies ICD as a contributor to teachers professional development also and improvement in teaching practices the development and sharing of digital content should be paramount there should also be the deployment of ICD hardware and of course throughout these sessions we are talking about connectivity issues which are major challenges particularly in Africa also there are challenges in scaling of ICD services also which means that we have to start new kind of learning opportunities using cell phones ICD to expand learning opportunities for marginalized population groups and public-private partnerships for ICD education other challenges include teacher training and my sister here Violet has been talking about curriculum curriculum content also that would match skills with jobs to students information, communication and technology, ICD skills education and also physically bringing technology into the classroom and use it also outside the school to ensure that complete quality learning takes place so these are the issues which I would like to bring out here but I can go on and on and on I mean the other ongoing projects programs that we are doing right now we would like to share them with you but I would say that finally in our bid to support an effective sustainable and replicable model that would be consistent with the continental education strategy of Africa CESA 1625 which in terms of transform in Africa, we would also like to work with other organizations like Mended Ones like ours to improve the quality of teaching through ICD based teacher professional development support school integration of ICD in education and to improve learning across the curriculum also improve teaching and learning in terms of low student take up and mediocre achievement in terms of its encouraged sourcing and regularization of open education resources OER in the classroom and also define a minimum and affordable technology configuration of schools. Here I would like to see how we can interact I know that AAU is very easy for me to interact with the Africa University because we are like Mended but I think about the same things and certainly we have met many times and certainly in many forums here in elsewhere but certainly we should get together more and see how we can look at the solution. I've just highlighted. Thank you very much. Thank you so much and the contribution the points here are very essential for what I would say here we need to have sort of investment of quality both at the students and the teachers level we need to have inclusion and capacitation of the stakeholders in general content creation and also infrastructure these are some of the recommendations we are gladly taking and I will just talk about STEM I have an entrepreneur in the STEM sector Alex so I just have a question for you Alex so what were the contribution factors for your tech entrepreneurship journey and leadership especially in supplementing kids university and university students through STEM collaboration with other stakeholders. The floor is yours Alex you can hear me. That's a good question Calvin and I draw my inspiration into the entrepreneurship journey from my own experience about 25 years ago I was a three year old in a remote village in Moranga which is in Kenya and growing up in the village I will say all I aspired to be was a police officer because over the holidays national holidays you'll see police march and it really ticked me and it was intriguing for me until my family was fortunate enough to come to the city and in the city I met a new perspective I came across computers and I fell in love with computers from a very young age I think in grade 7 I knew I'm going to do something in computing however going on into high school so I dropped physics which is a requirement for you to do computer science you must have done physics in your high school so I went to university and I'm applying for computer science at the University of Nairobi and you know the whole world crashing on you so eventually I didn't end up doing computer science I went for political science but I still had that strong interest for technology so the university had a fab lab I spent a lot of time there learning 1,2,3 and you know one day I thought how many young people have to go through what I've gone through dream shutter of what we want to become and you know desperation so I took it upon myself that I'm going to mentor young people into tech and science and technology and since that day our journey has been phenomenal we've been able to reach many young children through partnerships especially the government of Kenya through the ministry and we were able to do a pilot STEM program together with them and my story was the inspiration to starting the STEM program and the question was our teachers are not trained in ICT they're not trained in engineering or computer science so it's just to do a program in robotics and coding so I give them my story and my background and that's how the journey of entrepreneurship took many steps among many other things but it takes a lot of curiosity and determination and I believe our young people are more than capable into being innovators creating the next cutting edge technology that will not only affect or impact our community but worldwide so it has been a native of passion and interest from a young age to pursue technology but you know losing that opportunity for me it was not the end for me I ended up in a field whereby I will make sure that I reach as many young people and like Dr. Violet and Dr. Lauby have said that the future is in science and technology and it's the high time that we get prepared for the industrial revolution and the question is what are we doing to prepare our young children not us, our young children when grade 4 they are already born into technology so they know how to operate a computer a mobile phone by the time they are 3 years old so how we also incorporating this curious mind the imaginative into meaningful and appropriate pedagogy for that to be matched in the classroom so we do cooperate with a lot of institutions mostly in teaching and learning so that we are able to develop appropriate activities that will not only enhance numeracy and literacy but mentor young children and they become they aspire to solve their own community problems with the technology that we have in aspiration that we are going to have the next big thing of Africa and that has been the entrepreneurship among the many journeys that and I will say it takes a lot more to be where we are and interesting in our young people so I'm here because of many actors who have also been working with us Thank you so much Alex for this great perspective here it is believed that the continent has very young and on top potential so exposure of this youth at the very early stage is essentially key collaboration partnership inspiration is also essential with this I'll have to get into the innovation and I'll see one innovator here with us Milani in the FinTech sector I just want to know how do you foster innovation and public-private partnerships to support entrepreneurs in Africa Thank you so much Kevin and yes blended finance is actually at the core of what we do because after the training part that Dr. Makoto and Dr. Kohl and Alex have explained there is a need that for entrepreneurs to then get access to finance to be able to scale up their innovation for even us Melanin Capital it was a very big challenge to be able to develop a product because when you start with your idea with your concept and you have to build the technology to then gain money nobody is interested in financing your business in the meantime so you really have to bootstrap and you have to find also people that believe in your project to volunteer in the meantime when you don't have the revenues that are generated so as our role was really to understand how we could support entrepreneurs that were still not at the stage where they could be interested interesting for traditional financiers like private investors private capital investors or banks and how we could support them to get to that level of bankable and investable let's say so we basically worked with this concept of blended finance because even me personally in my career as an impact investor I've been working a lot with those concepts mixing basically private capital so direct landing or direct equity capital and grants or guarantees from public donors to enhance basically the impact of our investment and I thought how can we actually not only support one to ten entrepreneurs but how can we do it for a large number of entrepreneurs like 300 or 500 leveraging our technology and this is what we've managed to achieve actually with one of our largest partners APSA Bank and the African Guarantee Fund to support 300 women entrepreneurs in Kenya through our investment processing and investment structuring service so on one hand we use grants to finance investment readiness and training programs for those women entrepreneurs we explain to them how to fund raising we give them all the concepts we support in preparing all the documentation for their loans and we audit them and then on the other side we structure with APSA and the African Guarantee Fund a direct credit line that will be guaranteed up to 70% to support those entrepreneurs and not require from them any collateral so this helps basically for very small businesses that need maybe only from 1,000 years dollars up to 100,000 to have access to finance that would be without collateral let's say and that would be easier accessible for them so this is why we believe that blended finance collaborations can really support to achieve more impact to go into sectors that needs more inclusion for women and youth or to support for example climate change adaptation technologies which are not yet ready and needs more patient capital or more less demanding capital let's say to grow so yeah that's basically the whole scope I would say thank you so much Fenani it's known that Africa is entrepreneurs and funding seems to be the primary the limiting factor so with the blended finance we believe that we can at least rescue the innovation potential of our entrepreneurs in Africa especially women entrepreneurs thank you for the contribution I will move on to Mr. Dugara who may tell us more about how we can bring all this together and ensure that this effective delivery so Mr. Dugara the question for you is how can the government schools and the private ICT training centers prepare young people to be innovators and entrepreneurs entrepreneurship driven and employable into this digital world in order to contribute to the development of society and close the digital divide if you can hear me thank you thank you so much first of all I would like to start with a brief background from Adamaa State so Adamaa also called the land of beauty is a state in northern Nigeria that has been disturbed by the insurgency of Boko Haram I maybe you guys have heard about it for over 10 years and many communities were displaced so I grew up in the capital city which is Yola where almost everybody around me is an IDP in one way or the other which increased unemployment rate and introduction of some gang within the state capital so this is because the young people are unable to access job opportunities due to lack of employment credibility and competency in computer and digital literacy I made a number of young people who are ready to work but don't possess the credibility or the required skills needed in certain workspace so many of us struggle to understand what is being written like if you are given something okay can you read yes you can read but as a result of poor education system we are unable to understand it so that is why brilliant computers has now come in to educate the young people on digital skills and computer so this is challenging as small jobs and opportunities are out there but our young people are not well equipped to assess them and entrepreneurship on the other hand is not encouraged from the one our parents down here only told us to go to school get a government job and that is it so some solutions I think government schools and ICT institutes can do to help prepare young people to be innovative, entrepreneurship driven and employable is government should invest more in teachers to provide them with trainings that will lead to a positive transformation in our education system to prepare and empower our young generation with quality education as we are lacking that down here so government should also collaborate with youth-led organizations NGOs and other private entities to create platforms for youths graduating from secondary school level to take interns in various organizations and workshops to learn physical skills for at least three months before moving to the university also training for employment should also be designed to equip fresh graduates from the university and some out of school youths with employability, computer and digital literacy another thing that can help foster this is creation of job clubs so government or private organization can create job clubs that bring youths in such jobs to discuss about their problems and possible ways to prepare themselves for the right job position and seek advice from experts where needed also the government should create entrepreneurship hubs and come up with innovative ways to support recognize and showcase young entrepreneurs and innovators within the local and state level with the winning prizes for great project ideas that is if you have a great project idea government can support you and take you to the next level so this will encourage young people to develop unique and productive ideas that will contribute greatly to the development of our community so when it comes to ICT training centers down here we only tend to train on only computer but I will encourage ICT training institute to also develop curriculum that will equip our young people with digital and soft skills not just computer training because adding soft skills and digital skills to a computer class curriculum will make young people job ready and be able to start their course of study whether they study graphic design they study web development so with the soft skills they have and the digital skills they acquire they can be able to start a career in their course of study or gain employment so schools also need to take computer education seriously down here by employing certified ICT teachers and having a standard computer hub for practical teaching only the theoretical aspect of computer in secondary school level will not equip our young people with the right knowledge needed so I think with this measure as put in place I believe our young people have a better chance of becoming innovators, entrepreneurship driven and employable in a demand state so thank you very much Thank you so much for this great perspective we simply understand from here that we need to find a way to unlock the mindset change we expect from the youth in order to get entrepreneurs right from the tender age you've mentioned quite a lot of initiatives going on at a more stick and we understand the context in that region job clubs, entrepreneurship hubs these are some of the initiatives we can leverage upon and that takes me to our next panelist Mr. Devon are there challenges that still exist beyond the creation of entrepreneurship especially in terms of labor because jobs is all about jobs what are the perspectives, the flow is yours Yes, most definitely so within South Africa we find that we have an unemployment rate within the youth of well over 50% so with that comes a skills shortage so this is why Fultek has designed an ecosystem approach to the creation of entrepreneurs as well as the creation of jobs so that then provides us with a platform to provide a specific androgogy that is pertinent to skills development not only for entrepreneurs and the creation of entrepreneurs but also for skills developments within TVET colleges and the like so that we can also uplift the working community that will be employed eventually by our entrepreneurs so as to create an ecosystem that is supported from bottom upwards it's important that we ensure that we get all the key players involved in the creation of entrepreneurs that's why we have a strong focus on key strategic partnerships which is SDG 17 which then leads us towards accurate and pertinent education being SDG 4 as well as in the creation of jobs which is SDG 8 so we have a very keen focus on focusing on tapping into an unearthing innovation and entrepreneurship within the disadvantaged communities be it rural or township communities which is quite vast within South Africa as well as the landscape up north right through Africa and with that we then look to establish local incubation hubs which through the inclusion of the local community the skills development of the local community as well as including the plugins of the necessary strategic partners be it from local MPOs that deal with ECD right up to those that are involved in initiatives within those communities such as agriculture whatever it may be we then look to plug those into the ecosystem so as to create social entrepreneurship with a social awareness of what the communities are actually in need of and then using the education that we provide because it's mindset driven first course is a blended learning course which is purely based on creating the entrepreneurial mindset and that mindset isn't just something that is needed for entrepreneurs but it's also needed for the workforce to understand what entrepreneurs are actually going through and what their vision is so as to buy into the culture of the entrepreneur and the business and also to drive the passion within the business as well you need to have that buy in from the staff and from your work colleagues as well as the community so as to ensure that you have a catalytic intervention if we can teach how to learn as well as then how to teach we are then able to create a generational not going to affect through entrepreneurship and through job creation so that's why we look so carefully at building an inclusive ecosystem there's been so much that's been said towards mindset there's been so much that's been said towards leaving no one behind and this is exactly why we look to then through the open dissemination of accurate and applicable education that can provide dignity as well as hope and opportunity to those that exist within the disadvantaged communities that have unfortunately had education withdrawn and thus opportunities withdrawn and that's exactly what full tech is built for you know we have the big data center which is the business academy which generates material for our entrepreneurs as well as creates end user experience but on the ground we have our nonprofit company which is the institute for entrepreneurship and the basis for the institute of entrepreneurship is to be that vehicle for transformation where we have an absolutely inclusionary clause where those that are disadvantaged women children whomever that we have a direct way to create an intervention that will then provide them with education that is applicable and this is why we then look to not only affect the creation of entrepreneurs but to backward integrate our education right down to ECD level eventually where we can start to create a mindset from a very young age as Dr. McCook alluded to is that we have to we have to get down to grassroots we have to understand that the curricula doesn't just start after school in higher education that we have to backward integrate our education back to ECD back to childhood again going to Mr. Margot's comments about learning and being introduced computers when these three years old these are all things that we need to we need to tap into we are fortunate all of us here that are on the panel today we are unfortunate enough to have been unearthed we have been discovered we have discovered but it is now up to us to be the platform to start journeying with our entrepreneurs and unearthing the talents that exist within Africa and teaching them how to leverage what we have as well as understanding what is still lacking and how we can then create that to create a supportive role so right down from the creation of the entrepreneurs to creating interns that through the incubation hubs that we create through the Institute of Entrepreneurship that they can then experience entrepreneurship and that from that they can then become interns to the entrepreneurs that are within the co-op workspace within the incubation hubs as well as then provide them with a community linkage so that they can then go and practice within the community and go and see what is lacking within the community to identify opportunities for business creation and that will then obviously lead us to our main vision for incubation hubs is for that to be the center of smart city development so that the TVET colleges and the MPOs and NPCs and the community that is linked in the locality they then have a direct buy-in in the creation of the smart city they have a direct buy-in in the integration of their community with other communities within the full tech group as well as our key strategic partnerships and with those smart cities it then allows them the necessary access and the ability to trade between communities as well and that is the main vision of the full tech group and how we then look to disseminate and use our education, our entrepreneurial education to create sustainable and catalytic interventions within the creation of entrepreneurship and innovation Thank you so much Mr. Klap for this great input with this we may close the first round of our questions then and move on to the second panel there are questions in the chat we are capturing that for the later stage of this with this we can move on to the second one and the second round of questions will be more oriented towards how we may proceed and streamline these approaches we have brought in here I'll start with Dr. Makoku Violet and ask you what are some of the new approaches to building innovation capacity and how can we empower how can we empower and engage community to build their own ecosystem if you can hear me Dr. Violet please the floor is yours Thank you so much may you repeat the question again Yes, what are some new approaches towards building innovation capacity and how can we empower and engage communities to build their own ecosystem Okay, thank you so much for example I think just the last speaker was talking about an Institute of Entrepreneurship in your head you can imagine what goes on in there and I look at innovation apps what can go in there all these things I think when I look at the youth and realizing that most of these ones they are coming from high school they are now entering universities and we have a lot of universities I think it's up to our vice chancellor and the university leadership to approach government to make sure that they are supported into having these innovation apps having these Institutes of Entrepreneurship also across the continent and these should not be limited to the business area because sometimes you find if it is in a university it can be in the faculty of business and what if you know everybody else needs this such that if we are looking at the school system maybe from kindergarten to university we need to have some entrepreneurship courses or modules that are offered to to children, to students to the youth some of them can have many projects that they can be asked to do and you know at every level this can be done but they begin to appreciate I remember our last holiday I have children, 10, a girl 10 and a boy 10 I took them for classes they were all holiday they were not staying at home so when they went there they were practically taught on how to build robots and how robots operate imagine a 10 year old but in some instances you find even at a younger age than 10 some can now do it and so by the time they go to higher levels they are accumulating these approaches but by the time they reach to the higher level where we now want them to make use of these skills they have accumulated more of them what I also want to say is that ladies and gentlemen the world is moving forward very very fast I think you agree with me that every month we hear banks saying systems upgrades hospitals are upgrading the assistance governments are upgrading the assistance to be digital to have digital and ICT are driven work spaces so what I'm saying by this is that we do not have a choice we do not have a choice and therefore we need to take note of the fact that whatever we are pushing to the youth whether in the school or in the university whatever it is there should be an appendage of some ICT something those who do art, music, design dance everything they should be an ICT component I think Dr. Kaur just captured it very very well but for it to happen now those who teach those skills they need they need the regular capacity building so that if it is a lecture if it is a teacher they need to be taught those skills so that somebody talked about conservative education we remain with conservative education when we are not retraining and retooling those who are supposed to teach our youth and so it should be a multi-pronged approach of capacity building for everybody who is involved so that we are at the same level so these lecturers teachers are trained to teach in a different way and to teach those things which we want to be transmitted to the youth and then they go and disseminate the youth absorbed and we know we have changed that generation and that is very very key I want to say two things before you stop me number one these days life long learning is for real and people should take it seriously every skill that you need I think Devon talked about the skills game and earlier on Alex talked about it as well that we have skills games this is real but what we need to do now is to bring all stakeholders like I've said but the most important thing is life long learning if you look at the time when Moodru platform came it was simple but now something called the big blue button is there if you don't retrain lecturers on the new Moodru platform and improve the Moodru platform then it means they won't be able to teach as students and you go on to look there are too many examples I can give and then I want to say the current statements which we shouldn't forget which is going across all the time is that because things are changing too fast we say the limit of the 21st century are no longer those who can read and write but they are those who can learn and learn and re-learn so each time we need to unlearn certain things and throw them away we learn new things and run with them when they are absolute we throw them away so you can say I did this last year your last year is too late so what will happen if you don't do that you become irrelevant when you become irrelevant you become absolute and then you die a natural death thank you that's very inspiring and thank you for stressing on the impact they won't just mention that I think the local incubators we have in South Africa a model that we can use to leverage upon to have the significant changes we're recommending and the emphasis on life learning also is essential we need to assist and learn so I'm moving now to Dr. Koh Dr. Koh can you hear me what two new approaches and partnerships are needed to embrace the new paradigm in capacity development the floor is yours for about two minutes of intervention thank you Dr. Koh first of all we must put a high emphasis on workforce skills I think everybody here is talking about workforce skills now I've had Alex I've had Yvonne Dr. Makuku so let's put a high emphasis on that while we still don't consider worker skills in some quarters to be the most familiar in job education in Africa we know that all country benefit from new investment and from studies education systems quality education that's the second thing Dr. Koh if you can increase your volume I'm sorry I'm sorry I'll just speak louder I'm using a very small device that is why maybe what I was saying that we have to put emphasis on worker skills because we have all been talking about it since the beginning of this session the other thing is that we should not only invest at formal primary and secondary education we have just said that that life long learning is something that we should follow Dr. Makuku has just said that I agree with that 100% but also we should make sure that we have significantly more technical and vocational and refocusing of tertiary education on engineering mathematics, science and other marketable skills okay we should review this situation in non-formal and informal sectors I mean Dr. Makuku has just alluded to that also problems such as worker training and entrepreneurship support when done alone just like that are not likely to have any significant impacts but because barriers to growth are the same factors that dampen Africa's overall economic growth so therefore African government need to target their reform programs well enough to move all barriers and also unleash private sector growth I would also want to say that combatting the issue of partnerships we should also ensure that technical partners from all at all levels are able to design training programs for secondary graduates also matters related to mathematics, science, subjects engineering technology and other types of innovation because we are talking about partnership now we have different partners each one doing their different things but at least they can come together and design something that is unique so that the curriculum can be easily followed I would like to now relate to what we are doing at CAFOR so that just to share some experiences and just to see how that can contribute to these new approaches and partnership that we need to embrace the paradigm in capacity development first of all we are focusing on communication we are a media and education group and we want to enhance dialogue on innovative skills for Africa's youth we want to design specific communication messages for the public to enhance dialogue boost awareness of the importance of these subjects change mindsets ensure the development of positive attitudes towards sciences and encourage young Africans in continuing to embrace science technology, vocational education and training and other entrepreneurship related disciplines and we also want to enhance dialogue mechanisms among enterprises and also enterprises here I think Devon gave us a very good example of what they are doing in terms of entrepreneurship and I want to ensure that they are established institutions to support employment oriented skills development so that we could support enterprises as Devon stated what Alex is doing Alex is a very young man giving us a good example of his education and he is doing something fantastic now we would like you to share some of these things with us because we are in the education sector and we would like to know for sure what has been going on at the grass level on the ground because sometimes we are too academic and we tend to do research here and there and write books and things like this but if we know exactly what you are doing we can have more grass roots information we can enhance our training and that training will ensure that access to employment oriented skills development for young people is improved with specific measures to address specific needs or employment opportunities for women, youth and vulnerable groups including students from low income groups, refugees migrants IDPs, disadvantaged and disabled what is the call I mean what interrupts you here because we are left with a lot of time it will soon end can you wrap up in just 30 seconds yes the other thing I want to talk about is that we should be engaging with the private sector and other stakeholders the private sector has been very very long in the African governments they lead them to bring on their old very informed sector when you are in the private sector where somebody will follow you if you are struggling then you are left on your own I think we should engage the private sector and ensure that it contributes to improving skills development by participating in design and development of employment oriented skills and also ensure true advocacy and communication programs that lessons learned best practices are designated at the national regional and continental levels I think I will stop here for now since we are out of time that's a call I will jump straight to that transition to Alex to see some of the approaches we can use to catalyze social innovation and tech entrepreneurship in Africa Alex if you can hear me share with us some of the approaches thank you Alex yes please what are these approaches necessary to catalyze social innovation and tech entrepreneurship in Africa I definitely believe to catalyze social innovations in Africa and I think even globally we need to embrace a triple helix approach which works across government, private sector academia and including other non-state actors because I believe each one of these have their own roles that they can play as innovators, entrepreneurs policy level and I like the comment by Dr. Lodi that these need to connect or bridge the gap between the academia and the grassroots organization so using this approach can be one of the ways in which a partnership through many actors can be formulated so that lessons from the ground are able to also be incorporated in research and moving on secondly I will emphasize more on an ecosystem approach and we all believe and we know that if you want to go far you need to work with other people and this may go also to young people as young people in the continent we may not have as much resources we need to accelerate our innovations we need to be in groups of like-minded organizations we leverage on our strengths to support one another and it's a model that has worked really well at the STEM Impact Center and we realize this we began the STEM Impact Center and our approach was to work with other like-minded organizations and we've been able to grow even outside the country without even setting up offices in those countries so how are we doing this and how do we leverage on one another how we can be able to support other organizations the other thing I may emphasize is connectivity in terms of infrastructure broadband it's really important that we are able to connect with one another across continent, across the nations across villages and connectivity is a big issue especially in areas, arid lands so why we leaving those young people behind so we need to also be invest in such infrastructures that bring about connectivity the other will be creating a culture in favor of STEM education and why am I saying this I have had an experience in our center and the communities we go people when we're teaching robotics coding mobile app development you'll find that and majority are parents they're like they don't see the benefit of what we are doing with their young children or the youth what they are looking for is grades okay we need to ensure that we sensitize our people down here that it is of importance that we know what science and technology is all about we've become consumers rather than creators how are we going to prepare our young people in the 4th industrial revolution is it that you're going to be left 100-200 years behind so it is because our culture is not that favorable to STEM education and through partnership and linkages we can be able to catalyze social innovations across Africa in any field not only STEM education but also in sexual productive energy all these are factors that catalyze innovations globally Thank you so much for this input and that brings it to the previous comment by our other members so I still remind the panel that we have to make a presentation shortly so we just prepare a presentation we need to allocate time for that so I just move on to Melanie just tell us how we can mobilize private capital locally and from the African diaspora while leveraging our digital technologies to support our entrepreneurs over to you maybe if you have one minute to wrap up thank you Absolutely I'll be short Kevin thank you so much so mobilizing private capital and especially capital from the diaspora but at the same time is one of the biggest challenge on the continent as at Melanin Capital we realize that only 30% of this private capital is actually mobilized towards our local private sector and even more so on SDG private sector so this is something that we are trying to solve actually and we realize that the problem to mobilize private capital and the capital from the diaspora was risk and cost this is actually two things that we can solve with technology we are reducing cost by using our digital solution and processing all the due diligence process through our technology from formalizing small businesses through financial accounting that is done automatically through our platform to even automatizing audit and rating scoring rating risk scoring so that the investors can feel a bit more confident and have more trust towards those businesses without paying all the money that is usually mobilized to pay lawyers and tax and accounting auditors the second part is the risk and we discuss this a little bit with blended finance but that's the key to try to provide blended finance providers with technology infrastructure where they can plug in into programs that have large volumes of startups to support and guarantee the investments of those private investors so for us this is really like the core of our let's say vision because we know that there is 300 billion of US dollars out there from private savings of Africans through banks, pension funds or through the diaspora remittances that are still not leveraged on to support entrepreneurs that are being for example trained by Alex or Devin who is on the ground and needs this capital to go to the next level so that's let's say how us we are solving the problem thank you so much for this great approach and I'll simply move to Mr. Dogara what are the main contributors of this literacy gaps among the youth of Africa and how do the gap affect the development of innovation and job creation can you hear me please thank you for this question first of all I would like to start with why is digital literacy important to youth so we live in an information era where internet access is foundational to use to access key information and digital media necessary to navigate our daily lives so understanding how to ethically use the internet and other technologies is critical in helping young people achieve their goals so in my side according to the internet world statistics Africa's internet penetration is 43.2% for now which is the lowest compared to the rest of the continent across the globe so there are many factors contributing to digital literacy gap in Africa but lack of basic infrastructure put in place had a huge impact on the development of tech innovation and job creation especially amongst the youth during this pandemic so for example here in other states there are jobs online but it is very very difficult for normal youths to apply despite the fact that he has an android device in his hands he cannot operate it to get things done in a profession and I can say that 60% of people in other states who have android devices only use it to make calls, watch movies play games, music and take only pictures and these really affect the gaps between the digital literacy so the question is how do we bridge these literacy gaps so to close these gaps they need to focus on developing the infrastructures necessary to provide access to technologies in the continent most vulnerable communities is very very crucial there is also need for government private entities and angels to collaborate and develop programs that build young people's capacity in computer and digital literacy in rural areas and cities to connect the digital that is training the rural people on digital and computer skills in the massive scale by the government so because sorry I didn't have to interrupt you because we are out of time okay okay thank you we appreciate this contribution I will just let Mr Devon quickly, if possible we need one minute if this promotion for entrepreneurship is enough to change the title of joblessness and reliance in Africa so Devon please you have one minute to give us that perspective unfortunately not, the creation of entrepreneurs is not enough and it is needed from from all stakeholders and that is going to be from first of all everyone on the panel all of the people listening as well as government agencies write down to our presidents they need to make a call for proper action as well as the realization for the youth to understand just how much of their future is in their hands and that they have a direct effect on their joblessness as well as the organization such as ourselves and I speak of ourselves broadly as everyone here on the panel that there is opportunity and as for us to obviously educate them as Dr Coles mentioned that we need to market this make them available make sure that they know of the availability of these of these interventions and to also understand that it is not just a single intervention it is something that should be life long the way the full tech life long commitment we provide them with a life long access to all the material that we do provide which is the fundamentals of sustainable entrepreneurship it is a complete course a complete curriculum that we are busy developing so far we have eight courses outlined six of which are going to be in development soon and that is a blended learning course that then enables them to build their mentality build their mindset as well as as a sustainable organization with impact as well as having a social entrepreneurship key element towards their education as well as towards their business thank you Thank you so much Mr. Glackow I will invite you to make a presentation right now I don't know if the technical support can enable that Good afternoon everyone pleasure to be here it is really great to listen to everybody as I mentioned I was part of a team that took a course with the ITU and great to hear the initiatives that you have because indeed for us most of us at the other course were policymakers people from government because I think that is the focus of the intended audience or the target audience for the course but we also had entrepreneurs and people in private sector so what you have been saying I have been listening at the course offered us an opportunity to say we sit in our offices we sit in meetings but are we doing what you want us to do for you to enable you to provide the service or the innovation that you are thinking about so during the course we are divided up in groups our group was team 5 and selected an area that we can consider for support and we did something on creating a sustainable technology driven agriculture ecosystem every one of us said we have a large population of African countries so we have so many people we need food we need agricultural systems that are able to provide us with food so I think we can move to the next slide so our idea was to ensure that all African countries have sustainable food security and safety by 2025 by developing a competitive tech driven agricultural ecosystem maybe I should have indicated at the very beginning that as I said all of us were different from different places policy makers, regulators, government officials and the idea is we always say innovators come to us and we will show you how pitch to us so this is me as a regulator or a policy maker government entity trying to pitch to you our problem was how to explore agricultural innovation ecosystem and how to at the end get sustainable food production I think we are on the next slide and so that was our problem at the very top you see we were using an application called Muro I think the previous slide please yes that slide yes so our problem what is the question how to explore agricultural innovation in the ecosystem so we used the mural up and as you can see a lot of posters and ideas to create ideas so what you come up with a problem so one of them is lack of political will and failure to effectively implement strategies because all our government in Africa have fantastic strategies documents but implementation is probably another story so there's probably also a lack of access to technology farmers do not have access to technologies we have investors Melanie is being one of them Alex being one of them as well you know we have innovators but they're struggling and why are they struggling probably we'll look for the solution for that maybe policy implementation financing so we identified as you see the yellow stickers what are the problems then the purple stickers quite small and also are the challenges so there's lack of policy there's lack of lobbying for the appropriate policies so as Melanie Alex you want probably something in finance something in education something in technology so are you lobbying to write ministries to the right regulators and so the so the purple stickers indicates the challenges that we found and maybe moving on yeah so here we're trying to build the solution for an ecosystem strategy so moving with the purple stickers as we said for example lack of policy lobbying to the appropriate agencies lack of training which was one of the issues that we covered in this session so training and capacity to enhance approaches to and for our project was agriculture so is there training sufficient training to support farming systems technology farming systems then probably there's no platform for the ecosystem to for the ecosystem systems players to come together to provide sustainable food so because the ecosystem is the government and it's another slide the government the logistics because the farmer yes produces crops but maybe by the time they reach market they are spoiled or can't stay I mean so there's need for to also look at the whole ecosystem then so as you see all this is idea generation through the mural it was quite an interesting experience so maybe moving on to the next one from this we identified what are the strategic policies I mean priority areas and probably one of the solutions would be you know what is in the yellow stickers is maybe we need continuous exchange of information through training and seminars we definitely need supportive policy environment for agricultural initiatives we need to encourage funding because that's a key that is enough funding coming into the country or African countries to develop agricultural systems that are innovative so is the FDI directed to agriculture we need e-commerce because now everybody is online I take my mobile phone and if you're in an African country of course we are most of us are would send a message to the lady who sells vegetables outside your gate or on your street to deliver tomatoes, onions, etc so that is our form of e-commerce and if we can enhance this to encourage more people or farmers to actually have sustainable development that they know they produce a crop they know who their market is so there's efficiency in terms of the system so and also through that we are able to collect data and through data collection you can then enhance food production maybe more people want maize rather than millet maybe more people want tomatoes rather than I don't know any other vegetable and also we are looking at deploying technology to enhance weather prediction all of us in our countries are facing climate change so how do we enhance the data we get from our meteorological organizations or even our own one of the examples that we had in our group is that if for example Alex you're in Kenya and you know that if you see the Jacaranda trees flower or you see safari and it's moving then you know the rain is coming how can we enhance traditional means of you know there was one of our groups saying we have rain makers in Africa is it possible that we can gain their knowledge and put it on an you know enhance it and integrate it in technology so moving on to the next slide so we have talked about stakeholders all of us in areas of finance education and this is stakeholder mapping for agriculture so stakeholder mapping you'd say for example that those stakeholders you need to keep satisfied that those need to actively engage those that need just to be formed and those you know you need to monitor what are they doing in terms for example with that maybe they entrepreneurs like yourselves academia is there research coming out on agricultural systems that needs to be implemented in terms of those that need to be kept informed and so you know improve their interest and availability is entrepreneurs because are we encouraging people to come into farming I know there's a move most people when they seek to retire in Africa always go towards farming and say okay I'm going back to my rural area and I'm going to farm because I have a big farm I've been living in a city in a flat and now I have space and I have time and I'll go back so are we also encouraging entrepreneurs to come into the sector also we have for example ministries of youth and ETC we can encourage the youth to come into so this is kind of stakeholder mapping who, where and what we needed to keep engaged so that we can at the end of the day achieve our objective so moving on to the next slide okay we have about if you don't mind it's about to finish so we have identified one of the problems is policy there's not supportive policy maybe stakeholder know-how of the challenges involved in agriculture and agriculture innovation ecosystems also in terms of capabilities so once we have identified the problems then we seek solutions and as you see I'm moving on with my sticky notes and replacing them we place them in particular places so that for the problem on policy I would say there's need for data collection there's need for connectivity ETC and for the solution which is the green sticky note is probably come up with a think tank for stakeholder know-how there's need for us to have a platform for capacity building or sharing of knowledge on a regional basis on a national basis in terms of capabilities maybe an avenue or a platform to share information in the ecosystem what is new where you are at can we implement it and so moving on to the next slide okay so we are inviting you to help us realize our dream so join us in the journey of unlocking the potential of the agricultural sector in Africa so that we can deliver our provide for our citizens for ourselves safe and reliable quality food and at the end of the day soft, wild hunger so I believe that's the last but one slide so this is our team we had a group from Botswana Goitze Paulinas from Nigeria Mavis from Ghana and Mr Bar from the Gambia and myself and the last slide yeah so let us work together for a green and sustainable future and yeah I hope I have done a good job thank you very much Wendy for this excellent presentation yeah absolutely maybe I would really push for it but that was I would like to really thank the ITU for the opportunity to you know for the course we've been at it for two months so more thank you thank you and all the rest of the team for you know your dedication for the last two months and continue on the course we are not yet through so thank you so much for the opportunity thank you thank you so much Wendy and I'm going to invite the interpreter to stay a little bit for five extra minutes if they don't mind please stay on for the presentation I just need to jump in straight to some questions we got from the chat before we make a panel round table to get the final points from the final words from the participants for the panelists so I have a question there that comes in give me one moment I just ask Victoria to please bring up the questions we've received so far if there is one first question from the school how do you envision that very needed bridge between the bridge building between fast advancing innovative sectors and the conservative ones I mean what may be what may be easier but how what may be easier but how I don't know if she got the question properly I think I sent it to your chat yeah I saw the question and I yeah they want to be easier but how how is very difficult definitely no doubt about that there are many many many issues that are involved here and I'm transforming you know the whole education system using digital technology and the first level skills for teachers and students I mean that could be responsive to the marketplace and minding knowledge of societies is not going to be very easy but as I said in my presentation when I was speaking I spoke about a fast you know ICT you know ecosystem that is developing so fast what is education remains very very conservative I think that Dr. Mukubu also alluded to that so what is my position on that I mean education has to be there should be a revolution I mean we have to revolutionize the system completely I mean using ICT ICT ICT true and true and suddenly we have to look at for example there are two approaches I want to look at here one the first approach I have an overhaul of the whole school system using ICT integrating new digital schools of decision frameworks developing leadership and vision integrating across the curriculum ICT school culture we need to have implanted in the system ICT professional development and resources the other issue now is here how to make sure that there is a face approach to teacher development for ICT using new conceptualized ICT completely as a framework for teachers to understand integration and educational policy in the curriculum in pedagogy management and organization and professional learning so I mean if we want to talk about how maybe we should think along those lines now bringing teachers through progression pathways from initial to technology I need to interview because you already have over time then I will start with Dr. Mokaku for a final take away Dr. Mokaku Mokaku, sorry about that you just need to give us 30 seconds on what you take away from the session today in 30 seconds please let's skip to the time we don't have much time we can ask Dr. Kohl to give us in 30 seconds take away Alex you may want to go next in 30 seconds what is your take away thank you Kelvin I think my take away here is that we are more than capable and maybe I may want to call to action this panel you have the government private actors almost everyone find us we have what it takes to start the revolution Mr. Kohl is asking for I'm equal to action this panel so what do we do next what are the next steps for us so we've talked so much and how can we start the conversation in terms of action thank you very much yes my key take away from this great session is that indeed we need this kind of forum to foster collaborations to be able to work with incubators tech solutions and governments and also finally I would say also call to action for governments to be inclined to work more with entrepreneurs like Alex to be able to maybe test different solutions and to try to provide this infrastructure for entrepreneurs to solve social and environmental solutions with them with the technology in an environment that fosters financing and collaborations thank you so much again thank you Eleni so I don't have much to say but the key take away here is we need to encourage collaboration between the government and the private entities in order to drive a better result to equip our young people with this so thank you very much thank you so much Mr Dovera so I'm going to go to Mr Devon for the take away collaboration it's so necessary and I'm going to start with everyone on this panel I will be in contact with all of you in terms of how we can disseminate our information and ensure that we are making an impact and that what we do learn we teach and that no matter what we do that we don't stop until an impact is made and if we need to shake trees we shake trees but we need to start moving with the earth we need to move with the earth you know there's so much of of the current the current system works against the earth it's now for us to start working with the earth to find how we can use our resources in a sustainable way to take over it's time to rise thank you Mr Devon thank you so much thank you thank you my take away is as we started this panel is that we are starting from kindergarten to policy makers who have all the grey hairs that we have on our heads so how could we develop or build capacity from the very fast person who goes to kindergarten for years to grow into innovators entrepreneurs policy makers who understand and will take Africa to the next as Devon has said we are and all the panelists have said we are the continent of not the next century of the current century thank you so much thank you everyone for this very very important discussion so we look forward to documenting all these recommendations and following up on it I think ITU, Smart Africa will be here to see how this can get through and get into what we try to all feel and happy sort of African and the primary position is built to match our needs with this I will simply come to an end the session today and thank every single participant here for their support thank you and see you in the next sessions bye bye thank you bye bye