 Welcome to ITU Telecom World 2019 in Budapest Hungary and I'm pleased to be joined in the studio now by Professor America Muconga who is the Chairman of the Board of the Regulatory Authority of Communications of Mozambique. Welcome to the studio. Thank you. Now Professor Muconga I wanted to ask you, innovating together connectivity that matters is this events theme. What makes connectivity important in your view? Connectivity is very important mainly because if we look to the importance of telecommunication, if I roll back say 20 years ago, if there was no telephone for instance it would mean that myself and you wouldn't be able to communicate. So that essential means that maybe I couldn't talk to my wife or call my kids and that was it. But today telecommunication they have moved from only allowing for people to connect to becoming essential for the function of an economy in society. Today if you don't have connectivity it means that for instance you cannot get money from the bank, you cannot pay electricity, you cannot get electricity, you cannot pay for water, you can't book for an airline ticket, you can't book for a hotel. So today connectivity is much more important than what it was before and because of that connectivity is important today not only for those who live in the cities but it's also important for those who live even in the rural areas. So it's essential that we get connectivity to everyone because only then we can get the effect of communications as part of the engine that makes society to work in the economy to develop. What single innovation do you think is going to contribute most to digital transformation? Well and this this is very important because as you you you the more connectivity you provide the more services you see that come that you wouldn't expect. Just to give you an idea, until recently we all thought that to expand the financial services to rural areas then we have to have the bank there but after the innovation that came with the introduction of mobile banking we know today that we can take the services to rural areas without even having the bank there. So some innovations that they were not even thought of as part of the system that could change the the future they're happening and they bring the effort. I'm very hopeful of the impact 5G will bring because when we talk 5G we talk sensors, we talk agriculture, we talk education, talk health care. So suddenly we see that there are innovations that we couldn't think of before because of the level of technology at that time but today they can come and have a transformative effect into the life of the people. And what does the regulatory landscape look like for communications in Mozambique? Mozambique today I'd say that it has a very advanced regulation. As far as I know from the interaction that we have with other regulators it's perhaps the only country where you can get a license for virtually any service with the exception of just one service as mobile telephony. This is the only one that you cannot get it but all other services you simply walk in and get a license. And in terms of collaboration and cooperation how important do you think that is and how important do you think that the role of governments is within this? Collaboration is very important. When I look to the role of a regulator in a country, regulators it's in between government, operators and consumers and it's very important to balance the importance or the objectives of each of them. We want of course consumers to have a very good service at affordable prices but we know that companies also have to make money and we know that the government has societal objectives around this. So we need to balance those objectives and collaborating especially now that we want to expand services to rural areas. Collaboration is even more important because as we see from the perspective of the operator he always wants to start where he can get a quick return of investment but we want to connect the other half and so for that there's a need to have a collaboration between the regulator and the government and the operator so that we can bring the services to rural areas. Now you're taking the time to be here I wanted to ask you what's the value for you of attending events such as ITU Telecom World? Well attending we as a country when we come to an event like this one like now we have this tent we look this an opportunity to bring our innovators so that first I mean they can showcase the solutions and products they are they are bringing but also an opportunity for them to link with the rest and learn from what is happening and from there they can develop more ideas or they can expand their audience in order to become a service that we think that they will have a transformative effect to today economy. You know Mozambique has natural resources like gas etc we know that can be useful also for developing the economy but innovation, ICTs etc they're proving that they are they can bring more revenue to the country they can bring more wealth than the traditional energy or traditional agriculture etc not that agriculture and all industries is not important it needs to be developed but also we need to tap on the advantage the science can bring and so coming here for us is an opportunity to be part of the global digital economy. And how well have the SMEs been received here? Very well and last year when we attended this event in Deben one of our innovators one of our startups was second in the ranking we have also we're brought to this country six startups and we hope that the products that they bring to also be among I mean the highly ranked within I mean the other startups that are here in this conference so we want to continue improving this and I'm very glad to see that the innovation and the innovation that is happening in Mozambique it's supported by the industry so for instance one of the incubators is within the private banks in the bank we have one innovation that's working within the embassy the Dutch embassy and we have innovation of course at the university we have innovation central bank so we have participation of various entities that are interested in bringing innovation and as such it will help to develop some small and medium enterprises in the country that in time can develop services and bring wealth to the country. Well Professor American Machanga thank you very much for joining us in the studio and very best of luck with your SMEs and in their in their competition rankings and hopefully we'll catch up with you again in the very near future. Thank you very much we will be here definitely next year somewhere but together with ITO to develop in this network. Thank you very much.