 Welcome to the ITU Studio GSR23, the Global Symposium for Regulators being held in Shamash Sheikh in Egypt. We've got the great pleasure of being joined in the studio now by Emilia Nikim Bua, who is the Chief Executive Officer of the Communications Regulatory Authority in Namibia. Mr. Nikim Bua, welcome to the studio. Thank you very much for having me. Now I just wanted to ask you really about, let's start off by talking about GSR23, about your presence here, why you think it's an important event and what you hope might come from it. So we came obviously as the Regulatory Authority of Namibia to participate. We find that GSR is a valuable initiative in that it sort of sets the tone for us regulators in terms of the guidelines that we must follow, the best approaches, but also because it creates a platform where we can share experiences with other regulators, share opportunities, share knowledge. So it's really a learning experience for us as regulators and it gives us a great platform to be able to just reinvent ourselves and ensure that we are focusing on the right stuff. So in addition to that, we will also be participating in the discussion on affordability of devices, which is very close to the work that we are doing because we believe that universal connectivity is not meaningful if consumers are not able to afford the devices to enjoy the transformation that comes with ICTs. Exactly. And what are the major challenges at the moment and opportunities as well in Namibia regards to telecommunications? So with Namibia, we currently enjoy 89% 4G coverage, which is great. But what we have realized is that out of the 2.2 million active subscribers that we have, only about 27% actually utilize data. And this is because there is a limitation, both in terms of the price of data, but also the affordability of devices. So we are really exploring that as a challenge to see how we can bring both costs down if digital transformation is to become meaningful for our citizens. So many people have got devices that are very limited in terms of their data. Is that right? Yes. That's particularly because of the cost of the devices. It's not affordable for many of our households. And this is why we've started working with our minister to see how we can bring down the cost of not only the data, but also the devices to ensure that our citizens are able to be part of digital transformation. Absolutely. And what about youth and gender? So there's a little bit about what the situation is with regards to young people and access to computers and to, obviously, to smartphones, et cetera. And also about the balance, you know, is there a gender imbalance in terms of connectivity there as well? Not so much. I think the imbalance comes in when you speak about the utilization of the technology and this is why we currently started an initiative on digital literacy so that we can focus particularly on young people to educate them not only how to utilize the devices, but also on the opportunities that exist within the ICT ecosystem for them. Our countries face a lot of unemployment challenges and we just believe that some of these can be resolved if the focus is really on digital literacy and highlighting the opportunities that come with the ICT ecosystem. What about access to government services? Are they mainly online or they still require a physical presence? Some of them are online, like we recently just launched with our Ministry of Home Affairs where the passports and the IDs can be applied to and the visas. You can do those applications online. The government also has a big drive on e-government services collaborating also with the public sector and the private sector to ensure that they really understand the benefits of digital transformation and that we complement that drive by our government to ensure that we have as many services online as possible. And investment in infrastructure, how is that going with regards to particularly rural communities that obviously tend to be the ones that are the hardest to reach? Over the past two years we have seen a huge decline in the investment into infrastructure but what we have done from the beginning of this year is we have started to release spectrum to the operators but we are imposing conditions with that spectrum for them to take services to their rural communities and we hope that that initiative will actually take off quite well so that we can see more and more of our remote areas becoming connected, especially because Namibia is a very vast country but we are also densely populated so it's a huge challenge to ensure connectivity. We've also started looking at utilizing satellite to bridge some of the gaps especially for those areas that are very remote and we are very excited because we have entered into some agreements with satellite operators where it's the same device but it hands over from terrestrial to satellite and we hope that that will really assist us to bridge the gap. Looking at the future in terms of the landscape, what do you think that will look like in Namibia let's say in ten years now or what would you hope it will look like? We are actually very excited about the future because we believe that if we are able to implement a lot of the initiatives that we are working on right now we would see Namibia becoming a real digitized society in terms of having the right skills but also in creating the content and the services that are required in order for Namibians to enjoy a full online experience so we are very very positive about the future and we believe that if you visit us in ten years you'll be very amazed at the opportunities that we'll have on the ground. Well we hope to visit you well before that but certainly absolutely we wish you all the very best for the future. Meenilik Abur, thank you very much for joining us in the studio today and hopefully we'll catch up with you very soon indeed. You're very welcome, thank you so much for having us. Thank you. And don't forget we've got plenty more interviews on the ITU YouTube channel as well as our podcast channels and for further information go to www.itu.int. Thank you very much.