 Welcome to the ITU Studio here at the Global Symposium for Regulators 2023, GSR23 here in Shamal Sheikh in Egypt, where I've got the great pleasure of being joining the studio today by the Honorable Fili Mappolani, who is the Deputy Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies for the Republic of South Africa. Welcome to the studio. Thank you very much and thanks for having me. Now, I'd like to start off by, let's talk about the regulation landscape in South Africa at the moment and what it looks like, what are the main challenges and also what are the main opportunities there as well, I suppose? Well, thank you very much once more for having me. The regulation landscape in South Africa, a very exciting moment. We've got in the main one big regulator and two other smaller one. We've got ICASA that regulates the telecommunications, the broadcasting as well as the postal sector. And we've got FPB that does regulation of mostly online. It's mainly for the protection of children. And we also have got DOTZETNA, which is a domain name authority. Now, SNS and WAN Technologies, there is a need for these three regulators to work together. Because as you know, more and more is going online. And therefore, there's a need for ICASA and for the two regulators to work together to regulate the space, both online and the traditional way of regulating content. And so in terms of, is it rural populations? Is it the economic situation that's giving you the most concern? South Africa is a developing country. In fact, one of our leading intellectuals used to call it two countries in one. In a sense that you find areas of our economy, which is highly developed, sophisticated, very complex financial system and all of that. And you'll find other parts of the economy which are too rural. You may think that when you go to those countries, you may think that you're going to another country. So it's the challenges of this developing country. So those challenges are bringing with it a number of issues and areas that we need to address. One of which is to bridge the digital divide is to make sure that we extend connectivity. We make sure that those of our compatriots who are living in the rural areas have got access to the internet. So there is a project, a broadband policy program that we have developed in the country which we are rolling it out now. We're calling it SA Connect. So through that policy intervention, we're hoping that in the next three years it's quite an ambitious program. We're hoping that in the next three years we'll be able to make sure that 80% of South Africa's population have got access to the internet. We are working with the mobile network operators through their obligations that we've imposed when we allocated the spectrum. So it's one of our flagship program because we want to make sure that for everybody to benefit from this digital economy that is rapidly growing, everybody must have the ability to access the internet and enjoy all the associated benefits of having access to the internet. What is the advantage of coming to this symposium? What do you hope to get out of it? Well, we are coming here as more policy makers. We are hoping to interact with the regulators and to share the best experiences and to understand what is the regulatory landscapes not only in our country but across the globe. But also we're coming here to emphasize a point that as and when the regulators are doing their job of regulating the industry, they must understand also the complexities of the challenges that the policy makers are also contending with. But we're also here to share experiences to get the views of the industry as well as to what do they think of the impact of the regulations, the impact of the policies that we're bringing in. So we're looking at it as a forum through which we're going to share knowledge, we're going to share experiences. Now everybody's talking at the moment about artificial intelligence and about their concerns about that. Is that something that concerns you as well? There are areas of the artificial intelligence which of course needs to be looked at but artificial intelligence is a technology that we must embrace. That's why in our country following on the recommendations of the presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution we have established two hubs of artificial intelligence institute through which we want to leverage on the knowledge, on the resources of the universities because we're doing it in collaboration with the universities to harness the potential of the artificial intelligence together with the associated technology. So for us it's a technology that we need to embrace but with each technology there are also other areas which we also have to look at other risks that we have to look at but in general we think that it's a technology that will help us to help the advance of our economy. Deputy Minister thank you very much indeed for being with us in the studio today and we look forward to catching up with you again very soon. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you very much indeed for tuning into this particular interview there are plenty more on the ITU YouTube channel as well as the SoundCloud channel and other places where you might access your podcasts and for further information please visit www.itu.int. Thank you very much indeed until next time.