 Welcome to ITU Telecom World 2018 here in Durban, South Africa, where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Professor Amariko Muchanga, who is from the INCM in Mozambique. He's the director general. Professor Muchanga, thank you very much indeed for joining us in the studio today. My pleasure. Tell us, what's INCM? INCM is a communication outlet in Mozambique. We do outlet communication, and that means telecommunications as well as processor services. OK, great. And what does smart digital development mean to you, particularly in Mozambique? In Mozambique, and I'd say also in the rest of the world, smart digital development means better life for all of us. It means the recognition that information communication technology can improve our life by making life easier, by making everyone to be able to access the benefits of the information that's available in the Internet, but also it means that we can also participate in the digital economy by taking advantage of information communication technology. And what single innovation or innovative technology, product, strategy or policy do you think is most transformative? I see a lot, but one of them that I at least I can see that even today it's changing the life of people in Mozambique is the digital financial systems. That one I think it has enabled a lot of Mozambicans that wouldn't have access to financial services to be able to use it, and that means that they can use it in a very remote area, but most importantly it means that they can bring all their savings to be able to access the financial service. And that also it's enabling them to access to other kinds of services they wouldn't have access to, especially the microfinance, a part of it, and also the fact that they can get micro insurance that's not possible using the traditional banking system. This is one area, but if I look in the future I think that future intelligence will also have an impact. I can see also the advantage of the internet of things in the way that the city is organised. So I see a lot of potential that's coming in the future. Now as we know SMEs are particularly important in the digital ecosystem. I wanted to ask you, how is Mozambique stimulating digital entrepreneurship? One of the very good things that I see in Mozambique in that area is that we are starting to have some niches of innovation that is done by really very small companies that otherwise they wouldn't be able to to exist. If we're not the fact that the information communication technology it enables them to exist. So I see that even places like embassy in Mozambique there is one innovation hub that's called Orange Connors that's managed by the Dutch Embassy in Mozambique, but we also see banks that are creating small innovation houses that enable those wave ideas to go there and develop the idea. That happens at the university as well, it happens in the embassy, it happens in the banking sector. So even here in this particular conference we are bringing 14 of those small companies that are being housed and being nurtured in those innovation hubs. So that's thankful to the ICTs because otherwise we wouldn't have this kind of innovation. And what do you hope this experience will bring to them? First of all they're all from the 14 that we are bringing here five of them they've been selected to go into a pitching. So that means that you'll be able to interact with those who are developing similar ideas and hopefully they can also get funding to be able to continue and develop their products. But apart from that they will also be exposed to ideas from others who are doing research in the same area or developing solutions in those areas. So from there we hope that in the future we may have companies that will grow and be able to bring services in the country. Services in a new area in a new way that we could anticipate. So I'm very happy to see this because we used to see to big applications from outside but when I see small applications that solve the problems locally in Mozambique I think that is really very future looking because it means that now we have people that believe that it can develop a solution that is targeting a particular need of the Mozambican society. Absolutely definitely future-proofing and very encouraging as well. In terms of your digital vision what's Mozambique's digital vision for the next five years? For the next five years what do we see as a challenge we think that if I look from the perspective of the communications regulator and the government we need to create the conditions for all those ideas to develop. So first of all we need to provide a bandwidth for all ubiquitously so that means in respect of a way you're located within the seat on the right area you need to be able to access adequate bandwidth in order to provide service. So we are keen now in developing we have already developed a broadband strategy that we are starting to implement and within that strategy in five years we want to deploy broadband almost everywhere in the country at least in particular I'm to be able to reach 70% of the population that is living in Mozambique so that's it's one challenge. The second challenge is affordability so you have access bandwidth but you need to to be able to provide it at a price that people can afford. So the issue of affordability is one that we are addressing. The third and most important is that we want to develop applications applications that take advantage of that bandwidth to be able to provide services for the community be them services for the industry or services for private sector or services for the government. So the vision in the country is make broadband available make it affordable and third enable people develop applications in local languages. So one applications that are localized in such a way that people don't have to speak Portuguese or English or French to be able to access applications they have to be able to use them in the local language because that's when we can expect that we will have broadband for all and all the benefits that come out of it. Briefly in terms of affordability how can you make broadband affordable? One way to make broadband affordable to all of us first is that we need to to ensure that the services or the infrastructure is developed at a very low cost. So things like infrastructure sharing or looking to low cost technologies that can provide capacity to everyone that will bring the price down. But as you also increase the users it means that the companies are providing their services they can afford to provide it at a smaller cost because they know that the usage is larger. So the more we make devices available to people to be able to use the service it means that it will also make the service to the end user very small. So it's a combination of policies that you need including policies like looking to the cost of importing the devices to the country, empowering I mean local people to build the technology locally so that in the end the price to the service to the end user it has to be as low as possible because only then you can generate all advantage of having I mean this technology we're talking about. Now you've come here to Telecom World in Durban you brought in 14 SMEs here I just wanted to ask you what's the value for you of attending events such as this? This event it's an open eye opening to all of us in particular I think for the small SMEs that we brought here they've never been to an event like this one by coming here they can also dream more than they've been dreaming because they'll be able to see what else is happening elsewhere here in the continent as well as outside so we expect that by the end of this conference the small cameras we brought here as well as all our colleagues and Muslim because they're participating here they will take good ideas at home and see how they can implement it there and to be able to dream of the better future that can be enabled by all the development that we are seeing in the sector. We expect them to be able to focus on those areas that everyone is doing research is focusing what what benefits can be done with 5G capacity for instance to each extent that will the autonomous vehicles can have an impact in way the city functions how can you use the smart seeds concept I mean to reduce for instance I mean the consumption of energy how can you use this I mean to ensure that the transportation in the country is very effective and efficient so there's a lot of ideas that they can learn but but splitting an event like this one so I'm really very happy to see this event coming to Africa because it is enabled for us in particular because we are neighbor to bring much more people than we could be able to take say to a country like a city like Geneva that would be more costing than having the event close to to Mozambique and here in Africa. I quite agree with you. Well it's been great having you in the studio and great having you here of course at the event thank you very much to be with you the very best of the future. My pleasure and thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.