 Welcome to the ITU Plenary Potentiary Conference 2018 here in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio by Mr. Cooper Cruea who is the Minister for Post-Atelier Communications for Liberia. Minister, welcome to the studio. Thank you. Now I'd like to start off by asking you a little bit about ICTs. There's currently considerable attention being placed on harnessing the power of ICTs, information and communication technologies as an enabler for good, for development, for the benefit of people, families, communities and nations. What is your personal perspective on this? Well I believe that ICT now is a way of power in every country. There's not real development that you can, that can be carried out by a nation right now in the absence of ICT. I think that the programs and the resolutions of ITU should be respected and enforced by all of the member states to make sure that the whole process of the development of ICT is sustained not only in one country but in all of the member states. And I believe that Liberia is no exception. That's why we're part of this conference. Now this planning potentially conference is the first since the world agreed on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. I wanted to ask you perhaps if you could provide some examples of how ICTs are helping to drive sustainable development in Liberia. Thank you very much. When I joined the, I became Minister of Post- and Telecommunications about eight months now. I was a new government. But prior to that I've been a partisan lawyer for 28 years. And I see that the transition in ICT and try to see how it benefits the individual country. And in Liberia, as I speak, we have now have launched an e-government program where we're able to deal with our agriculture, education, and we are all tied into ICT. And I think that at the end of it is a country that benefits. And to benefit, don't sit on the counter. That's why we say, look, we grew up, I came here for several men team. And I have other than participating in every program, every meeting, go there and let's carry something by home. Because at the end of the day, we must look at all of the sustainable development that we've initiated. So we're doing very fine with our, now you have right now our educational system, the entire government institutions in Liberia. You don't pay, now your payment or tuition is done online. And it's much smoother than when you were standing in line facing there to go pay money. All you have to do is grab your telephone and then you can just pay your money. So I think that it's a lot. We are on the right trajectory. And we have a couple of programs that the government is very keen to make sure that we sustain the programs in Liberia as well. About, as we know, about half the world's people are connected to the internet. The other half is not. What is your country doing to get everyone connected? Tell you what we're doing right now. We are now working out, looking at our bike boom. And, and, and, you know, we were lucky that they asked cable, the Europe to Africa cable, landed in our capital city. And through the assistance of USAID and the World Bank, to some extent, now we have the fiber cables at now we're building a fiber ring around Monrovia, the capital city. And we like to see that connectivity, not only in Monrovia, but we have put 15 political subdivisions. We are now working out finding funding to extend the bike boom to all of the political subdivisions. That is the only way we see the real results of the fiber distribution in Liberia. And we think this is working for us. And I think, I think we begin, we have begun to see the results because now most of our business partners in Liberia, they want to have the fiber connection. They want to be able to trust our businesses just by just the fingertip of our phone or something like that. And that's been very encouraging. And I think the government of Liberia fully endorse almost all of the programs of the RTU. And they've encouraged us to be a part of all of the programs you have here for this, for this planet potentially. And we like to take something back home so that we have some of the officials of RTU to visit Liberia and say, look, what are you doing? And we'll show you some of those things that we're doing based upon the benefits we reap from the discussion that we've had here during the course of the past two weeks. I'm sure that's a great idea. And we'll have some more discussion and action, I'm sure. I just wanted to just also ask you, perhaps you might wish to extend a message across to, obviously, the participants here at the Planet Potential Conference, but as well to the wider audience too. Thank you. I've made a number of observations since I came here. With participating in meetings, we will notice that there are some countries that are ahead of other countries in the RTC development. And I think those of us who are not there should not sit by and wait for the people to come. We should reach out to them and let them know where we have our workforce and let's see what assistance we can get. We also think that the officials of RTU should not just stay in Geneva. They need to visit the member states and identify some of the problems they have. And because there are some other countries that want to fully participate, that fully want to maybe implement some of the E program, but they may not have the financial capability to do so. Maybe we can look for some fellowship for those countries. And I think the RTU should make some effort in the budgetary appropriation to make sure that some funds are allocated for developing countries or poor countries that really want to follow up, but may not have the finances so that they can get some help through RTU. Thank you very much for having me.