 Here in Rwanda, land of a thousand years, we're coming together to find brand new ways to unlock thousands of opportunities to connect the unconnected and make universal meaningful connectivity a reality for the entire world. For the welcoming remarks this morning, I'd like to invite Honourable Paola Ingabiere, Minister of High City and Innovation to give her welcoming remarks. Honourable Ingabiere will then introduce Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau to also give her remarks. Thank you, Israel. Your Excellency President Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda, Mr. Hulindzal, ITU Secretary General and fellow elected officials, ambassadors, dignitaries, esteemed colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, please accept my warm welcome to Rwanda and to the eighth edition of the World Telecommunication Development Conference WTDC 2022. I must thank your Excellency President Paul Kagame for your kind vision and leadership that has enabled the world to congregate in Rwanda for the very first WTDC to be held on the African continent. This WTDC is our chance together to achieve consensus on key issues we will deliberate so that we can bring the 2.9 billion people worldwide into the digital world they currently do not know. Universal, affordable and accessible connectivity for all underpins our individual and collective efforts in industrialization, in building the digital economy, in ensuring our youth have access to information that improves their lives and have access to jobs created through the new future of work. More importantly, we have all experienced the impact of COVID-19 and we've seen why connectivity is and will continue to be a cornerstone for our individual and collective resilience of humanity. This is why I see that the success of WTDC 2022 will be measured from the yardstick of how far our collective decisions over the next two weeks will lead to a better world and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Of the 2.9 billion that remain unconnected, majority of them are our youth, majority of them are African youth, majority of them are African women. The just concluded Generation Connect Global Youth Summit was one of the most exciting events I've had the pleasure of engaging in recently. Our youth told us that they want to sit at the decision making table or at least to influence decisions that impact how they live, work and play. Let us continue to use the opportunity provided by the Partner to Connect Forum to create new and innovative partnerships that will build on the success that has already been achieved. We used to say that the future is digital. Now we must accept that the present is already digital. Let us use WTDC to shape the digital present we are into today and even better digital and connected future. I thank you and now please join me in welcoming Doreen Bogdan-Martin to deliver her opening remarks. Thank you. His Excellency, Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda, the Honorable Minister Paula Ingabiri, Minister for ICT and Innovation of the Republic of Rwanda, Mr. Hulin Zhao, Secretary General of the ITU and my fellow elected Directors Mario Manjevich and Chai Sabli, Ambassadors, dignitaries, esteemed colleagues, dear friends, good morning and welcome to the 8th World Telecommunications Development Conference. I thank His Excellency, President Kagame and his team for their extraordinary, extraordinary efforts to ensure that this event delivers the powerful outcomes that we are all working towards. In some sense, this event may feel familiar, familiar to many of us. We understand the structure. We know how things will play out over the next two weeks. We've all been there before, right? Wrong. This event may have the same name as previous World Telecommunications Development Conferences, but in all important respects, this is a very different ballgame. In the five years since we last came together for the WTDC, the world has changed unrecognizably. We faced a global pandemic that devastated our communities, inequalities have grown, energy and food security concerns are growing, the climate crisis is accelerating and our SGG targets are falling by the wayside. Digital technologies can help. They can help in each and every one of these areas, and yet their promise is still not being fully realized. All of us have worked so hard with enormous dedication over the years to make universal affordable connectivity a reality. Our efforts have borne fruit. In the last five years since we last met, we did succeed in bringing 1.5 billion new users online. But yet, the reality is that we're still not shifting the dial fast enough. We're not shifting the dial fast enough to get the world's hardest to connect communities and people living in LDCs, LLDCs and SIDS. That's why this conference has to be different. Ladies and gentlemen, the UN Secretary General at the last General Assembly said that the only way to confront the critical issues that our planet and our people are facing is going to be through collaboration and cooperation on a truly unprecedented scale. Digital inclusion is going to be the bedrock of that global collaboration. Not as an end in itself, but as a means to empower people to improve their lives. That's why a more people-centric approach has to be at the heart, at the very heart of our work. And that's why this conference features new elements, new elements that have been designed to shift our thinking, to mobilize our collective energies in new ways. One of these new elements you've heard it already mentioned was our Generation Connect Global Youth Summit, which took place last week. This groundbreaking event brought together young people from 115 countries to debate issues that concern young people in the next generation. Their call to action will serve as an important input to the work of this WTDC and as one of our young leaders, Sinead, brought to us yesterday at the Broadband Commission. She said that we don't want to inherit the future. We want to build it. Another innovation is our network of women that so many of you are generously supporting. And I want to say that we were thrilled at the Youth Summit. We actually achieved, Mr. President, you would be very happy. We achieved parity in the number of female and male delegates. We got to that 50-50, which is quite historic for the ITU. But perhaps the most important of all of our innovations that we have brought to this event is Partner to Connect, the Partner to Connect Digital Coalition. It's a coalition to connect the world. We have mobilized over 200 pledges with more coming in. Tomorrow we'll be announcing some new ones. These pledges made by our Partner to Connect partners are going to be showcased throughout this WTDC, kicking off tomorrow with the high-level roundtables of the Partner to Connect digital development series. Partnership, of course, is not new. It's not a silver bullet. But I think as a community, we have too often failed to take a holistic, whole-of-society approach that really pulls parties together, galvanizes all resources, and most importantly, monitors our progress in a collective manner. It's time for us to do that so that at our next World Telecommunications Development Conference, we can report on truly transformational change, especially in the communities that need it most. Ladies and gentlemen, let me close with some inspirational words from one of my favorite holiday films. It's a wonderful life. Anybody ever see? It's a wonderful life. It's a great holiday film, and it's about a man named George. George was an ordinary man, and George did lots of good in his life. But somehow in the middle of his life, he sort of lost his way. He lost faith. He lost faith in his ability to make a difference to his community. And because the film is a fairy tale, George is briefly transported to an alternative future, a future in which he gets to look back on what his life or what the world would have looked like should he not have existed. The film is so adored because it illustrates the immense power that each and every one of us has to influence the lives of others. It shows that our smallest decisions can have a truly profound effect on the shape of the future. That our actions ripple outwards, assuming a significance and an impact that we could never have imagined. That each and every one of us has the power to change the world, and that by working together we can achieve the impossible. Ladies and gentlemen, let's remember this over the coming two weeks, and let's allow it to guide our decision making, to inspire us to be bold, to go the extra mile, to try something new. But most importantly, to put the interests of people and planet first, and work together as collectively as we can towards our common goal. We, the digital community hold in our hands the solution to so many of today's challenges, we can truly change the world. So let's use this conference to do just that. Thank you. Thank you, Honorable Minister and Director Doreen. I'd like to now welcome Ellen Taylor, the youth representative for Generation Connect Global Youth Summit, and I would like to hear if the youth are really with her as you represent what they had to discuss over the last few days here in Kigali. Your Excellency, Honorable Ministers, Mr. Secretary General, Director Bogdan Martin, delegates, Honorable Guests, good morning. My name is Ellen Taylor and I am a 23 year old student from Canada. In 2021, I had the opportunity to develop and participate in the creation of the Youth Summit and call to action document. This experience has been incredible. I would like to begin by introducing myself in a bit of a broader context. I am the youth of the world in 2022. I'm the first generation of digital natives and carry the voices of many different young people from around the world. Community workers, entrepreneurs, researchers, students like myself and young professionals from various backgrounds from all regions. I was born in an era of unprecedented technology innovation and disruption. As I come of age, I want to be able to enjoy the digital world fully, safely, and inclusively. You, decision makers from around the world, have been the digital pioneers. You carry the power and the responsibility to accelerate digital development and really work towards building those sustainable development goals and achieving our 2030 agenda. The time to act is now at stake is my very future. Your Excellency, I have here a document, a call to action titled My Digital Future. This document represents the voices of over 420 young people from around the world, and it was developed over the past few months through online consultations. It was then further developed at the Generation Connect Global Youth Summit where we had the opportunity for participants who are physically there to give their final revisions. The call to action addresses several areas that you as leaders can take to deliver meaningful connectivity for youth. While there are many important details in this document, I would like to emphasize a few here with you today. Firstly, my peers and I would like to encourage leaders to engage youth in meaningful decision making opportunities. Youth, those under the age of 30, represent 50% of our global population, yet we are consistently underrepresented and ignored in places where decisions are made about us without us. Secondly, my peers and I would like to encourage leaders to help create and support youth-led initiatives between the ITU and other UN organizations. As I saw at the Youth Summit, and I think as you can tell from Ms. Bogdan-Martin's remarks as well as the Honorable Ministers, there is no shortage of powerful, innovative, and creative young people who are ready to lead us to tackle complex problems that will improve our collective future, but we need your support. Lastly, my peers and I would like to encourage you to collaborate with different communities such as the private and public sector, academia, and civil society to open pathways for sustainable digital development. This call to action holds the aspiration of young people for decisive actions by global leaders in digital policies, governance in the digital age, youth engagement for the future, transforming education and building digital skills, creating decent jobs and livelihoods for youth, and transforming culture and communities. This is our call to action, and we count on your listening ear. It is not a coincidence that the Youth Summit was held directly before this World Telecommunication Development Conference. The meaningful and equitable inclusion of youth, the digital natives, must continue to be discussed and emphasized during this conference. As a member of the Canadian delegation, I will continue to advocate for youth, particularly young women and youth from marginalized communities during WTTC discussions. We cannot afford to dismiss young voices anymore. Our digital future is today. Thank you. Thank you, Ellen, and all the youth you represent for the inspiration, the call to action, and the commitment to action. To welcome you all to Rwanda, how we do it best, I'd like to invite and welcome the National Ballet for Utile Reza. Please enjoy. Isn't that fabulous? I hope some of our visitors will find time to take some lessons, and hopefully in one of the evening's sessions we'll get to see how you do it yourself. Please, I invite you to now turn our attention to the screens once again to hear from Mr. Antonio Gutierrez, Secretary-General of the United Nations. I'm pleased to greet the World Telecommunication Development Conference. My thanks to the Government of Rwanda for hosting. The potential of digital technologies to help us make up lost ground towards the sustainable development goals is tremendous, but so too are the challenges. Over one third of humanity still has no access to the Internet. The digital divide reinforces social, economic, and gender divides. It exacerbates inequalities in all dimensions, from urban to rural, from literacy to healthcare, from childhood to older age. Your task is to map out a new action plan to bring the nearly 3 billion unconnected people into our global digital community, because leaving no one behind means leaving no one offline. The Kigali Action Plan must put humanity back at the center of technology. Your discussions will inform next year's United Nations Summit of the Future and the global digital compact that I proposed in my report on our common agenda. The compact will bring together governments, the private sector, and civil society to agree on key principles for an open, free, and secure digital future for all. I encourage you to be bold and ambitious, and I wish you every success. Thank you. We are grateful to the Secretary General. Please help me welcome Mr. Hulinsha, Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union, to give his remarks. Mr. President, Ministers, ambassadors, Madam Director of ITU Development, Telecommunication Development Bureau, and as a Director of Radio Communication Bureau, and Director of Sanitation Bureau of Telecommunications. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm really pleased to see you all here for this WTDC. We just enjoyed very much this cultural show. I think today we are here in Kigali, one of Africa's great cities in Rwanda, a model of digital transformation for the Africa continent and for the world. Thank you to the people of Rwanda for the warm welcome and the extraordinary, extraordinary hospitality. We are honored by the presence of His Excellency Porokagami, President of the Republic of Rwanda. Thank you, Mr. President. For hosting and addressing the conference, your words will be a source of inspiration for us, like those delivered Secretary General of the United Nations, just as we heard, and the last time at WTDC five years ago, the message from Holiness Pope Francis at our last WTDC, stressing the importance of leaving no one behind. Much progress has been made, with almost five billion people being online today. We have seen the strongest growth in ICT, uptake in the developing world, and that is very encouraging. Yet, one-third of humanity is still offline. That is close to three billion people, mostly people in developing countries and in poor areas, rural areas, areas where we need to attract investment, something that is being one of my priorities. I echo the UN Secretary General's call for universal connectivity, with affordable service by 2030, and hope this conference will make a clear way on removing all remaining barriers to connectivity. What makes me confident is all the young people we saw during the youth summit earlier in the previous days. Those, also, the Nelson Madeira called our greatest asset of our planet, when he came to Geneva for one of our major events almost 30 years ago. We have obligation to them and to each other to connect the unconnected, drive the development of new technologies central to achieving the UN's sustainable development goals, and continue to show the world what ITU can do as a technical and equally important development agency. I must add a few words here that we have established this development sector of ITU almost 30 years ago, but still the public perception of ITU is still a technical agency, not yet as a developing development agency. So we still have to work more to make sure that these status be widely recognized and supported. I look forward to the output from the conference, which will be fit into the ITU's strategic plan to be endorsed by our plenary position conference in progress to Romania later this year. I also like to draw you a tangent to an information document I have just provided for your consideration based on the many outputs of the WISIS Forum 2022 that concluded last Friday in Geneva, relevant to the discussion in this conference. I call on the spirit of collaboration of the IT family and wish you all successful WTDC 2022. I would also like to take this opportunity to recognize two individuals showing us I think that we have our chairman of PP 2022 nominated. And we have our strong supporter from private sector, Mr. Carl Slim, who joined us yesterday for the broadband commission together with President Kagami, both of them served co-chairs of this important institute and very important United Nations Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development since 2010. Now I would like to invite President Kagami to come to the stage to deliver his remarks and keynotes addresses. I'm honored to present his excellent name is President Kagami with a certificate that recognizes Rwanda states the transformation and commitment to bringing broadband connectivity across Africa and the world and surely his strong leadership as President of Africa State and as champion for ICT in the world. So Mr. President Kang, what do you think? Mr. Pauline Zal, Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union, ITU. Mr. Doreen Rodan Martin, Director of the ITU, Telecommunication Development Bureau, ministers, senior government officials, my friend Carl Slim, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, allow me to begin by welcoming you to Rwanda. We are happy to host you. It is my pleasure to open the eighth edition of the World Telecommunication Development Conference. As mentioned earlier, first ever in our continent. I thank the International Telecommunication Union under the leadership of Pauline Zal for the good work being done to bridge the digital divide. Mr. Zal, your contribution. In this sector has not been lost on anyone. I want to thank you for your immense contribution since you came office. We have seen notable improvements during his tenure in Rwanda and all over the world. The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies, but challenges remain. Access to high speed internet has not kept up with the first pace of digital transformation and the digitization of the economy in general. All such inequalities are left unchecked. Development will accelerate to more and more. In some parts of the world, while elsewhere, it slows down the numbers speak for themselves. One third of the world remains offline and the majority are women in developing countries. The responsibility to shape the future of the digital economy and ensure no one is left behind lies with us and all of us working together. No company, country, or institution has the resources to do it alone. We must therefore prioritize public-private partnerships to expand affordable digital access and equip vulnerable citizens with digital literacy skills. We have a partner to connect digital development around tables happening during this conference where new opportunities are available to us, which we should fully exploit. As we strive to achieve universal and affordable connectivity, youth should be at the forefront. I want to reassure the area speaker representing the global youth that some of us had you very clearly. Young people are already the most connected members of society, but that also means they are the most exposed to online safety and privacy risks. In the case of Rwanda, for example, last year we passed a personal data protection and privacy law to create a safe enabling environment for both consumers and entrepreneurs. The COVID pandemic has imposed huge costs on every country in the world. One of the only silver linings has been the demonstration of the power of digital connectivity as a tool for a serious knowledge transfer and economic growth. We cannot let that go to waste. Now, more than ever, is the time to act quickly and decisively so that when we meet again in four years, by the way you are welcome to meet again here in Ikigari, we will have exceeded our expectations. Once again, I'm happy to welcome you and I hope you will feel at home during your stay with us. I wish all a productive conference, and I thank you for your kind attention. Excellent. Thank you so much for your remarks. This brings us to the end of this opening ceremony and we'll proceed to a group photo as protocol guides us. Ladies and gentlemen, let's now rise as his excellency President Kagame departs from this plenary and thank him for joining us and opening this ceremony for us. Colleagues in protocol will guide those who will participate in the group picture. We kindly ask everyone else to remain in the room. You may take your seats and I thank you all for attending today. And I hope you will enjoy the rest of the conference and may it be fruitful and enjoyable and enjoy the hospitality of Rwanda and Rwandans. Thank you so much.