 So we're here at ITU Telecom World 2019 in Budapest, Hungary, and I'm here with Gino Um, who is program coordinator for the Telecommunications Standardization Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union, and we're here on the SMART ABC stand. Gino, tell us a little bit about this, what's it all about? Okay, first of all, thank you for visiting our stand, and we've been organizing the SMART ABC program for three years doing telecom. So ABC, nobody would understand what ABC means, but to give you a brief explanation, A stands for Artificial Intelligence, and B is for Banking, Digital Finance, City for Smart Cities, and we bring these three concepts together to find a better place where people can live, and then we also have a SMART incubator program to bring startups. This year we have our startups from Rwanda and Ghana, and they have brought amazing technologies, and we help them how to present their products here, and they also can do some workshops here. And we also have relevant forum sessions going on, but I would like you to see what we have here. Thanks very much Gino, and it's Ghana Day today, so which is the noise that we can hear in the background, there are the celebrations on the Ghana Pavilion. But thank you Gino, and hopefully we'll catch up with you again at some stage. So let's have a quick chat here. This is FairDist, tell us a little bit about what you're doing here and where you're from. I'm Jalan Bernigawa from Rwanda. I'm the founder of FairDist, which simply means Fair Distribution, it's an application that is like a tool for humanitarian activities, project management. This tool can help humanitarian organizations or government institutions in their daily activities like those activities related to social development, economic, where they want to help poor peoples or poor families through their government policies. The application can help those government institutions or local administrations and NGOs to manage and monitor their activities related to those policies set by their government, where they manage their beneficiaries and monitor how all the items are distributed to those beneficiaries, ensuring that the items are delivered to the right beneficiaries and they keep an eye on beneficiaries who have already received what they are intended to receive, and those who are still waiting in order to get a report and is reporting with their partners. Great, well obviously you sound a little bit hoarse, I'm sure you've been talking to a lot of people here, hopefully it will go well for you for the rest of Telecom World. Thanks very much and good luck with your project. Thank you. We're going to move on here to Biddy Build. So Biddy Build you're from Ghana I see, tell us a little bit about what you've been up to here. Yes, so I'm Solomon from Biddy Build and I'm from Ghana. So one major problem facing Africa is housing deficits and it is for this reason various governments are trying to put in place measures to bridge this gap. For instance in Kenya the government currently plans on adding 100,000 affordable housing every year but currently they are adding 50,000 through small scale businesses and then developers. So but one major problem is construction projects generally take 20% beyond time and 80% beyond budget according to the light. So what are the causes? There are factors that are usually due to ineffective project management practices. So Biddy Build is a software, a project management software that intends to help contractors save much money on their cut costs on their projects and also complete their project within time and budget. So basically that is why we do project management software. On time and on budget for construction projects well that's wonderful look great look very best of luck with your project here and hopefully we'll catch up with you again at some stage in the future too. Alright cheers that was Biddy Build and here we've got casual payroll casual payroll as an interesting one so let's tell us a little bit about what you've been doing. So currently there's a lot of issues in the casual payroll management. So first of all when it comes to managing casuals there's a lot of ghost employees. So we came up with this device which has a facial recognition and a fingerprint scanner so that they can be a check in and check out process, a general payroll report and at the end of the day we connect the bank and the mobile money accounts of the employees so that the money can move from the bank account of the company into the mobile wallet of the casual employees. And how far are you are you with this have you had much interest and support for this? Yeah we got a lot of support from ITU and we have already two customers who are already using the product. We are six months ahead and it's a very good experience. Alright okay well wonderful well that sounds really promising well good luck with that thanks a lot okay cheers and we're going to hear Doc, Doc Rep so tell us what is Doc Rep and where are you from? Thank you my name is Pacia Baraka I'm from Rwanda my company is called Doc Rep. It's a solution which helps to provide a pipeline to generate a document like from its generation to it's archiving sharing certification of the document. So it helps different institutions to easily provide an application form by just customizing the way the form will be looking and provide that application form to the applicants and then they can be using it easily and currently we are working with one of the government institutions that are helping us to pilot the whole solution and make it ready to go to the market. Great good so any of you have some good conversations here at Telecom World? Yes we had met different people and we got more feedback from the people and it's a bit challenging but it gives us more ideas how to improve the solution. Your first time in Hungary? Yes it's our first time to be in Hungary and we really like the city it looks nice we had a tour and it's good. Okay wonderful well nice to meet you thanks very much indeed. Okay so we're going to carry on a little bit here we've got a few more people to have a chat with. We have here a global plan and we have Dr. Haro Okamura here. Nice to see you perhaps you could tell us a little bit about a global plan here for our audience. Yeah what I am doing is to provide the connectivity particularly for the rural areas across very difficult terrain reaching even to Mount Everest Base Camp which is now ongoing but basically that solution has already been standardised at ITU T those are three recommendations 1,710,163 the concept and optical fiber cable this is the cable the real optical fiber cable that can be placed just on the ground surface itself you don't need to dig a trench so that it the construction cost is very very affordable and yet this is a submarine cable based technology so that even monkey cannot break this cable so that this is almost very good reliability at the same time and those are very good to solution for SDGs so that's what we are doing to promote maybe not for developing countries but but developed developing countries rural areas this is my first target. So how far up Mount Everest have you got this at the moment? This is about 42 kilometers of fiber it's already manufactured but I don't know the project is a little bit delaying because the difficulty of the glacier moving and every difficult terrain so we are now having a discussion at this moment. So is it feasible that one day you could get it up to the summit there and that would wouldn't have as many queues people going up there or maybe maybe have people doing Facebook lives and that kind of thing from there? It must be very much costly if you go to the top of Mount Everest but you can financially support I will do it. Well not personally I don't think not on my salary but but thank you very much of that and in principle what kind of conversations have you been having here at ITU Telecom World have they been promising? ITU Telecom World is the place under the United Nations so that this is entity that should take care of closing the digital divide and this is the first solution ITU is standardized they are people they they're saying that connect the unconnected connect all but the technical real solution has not been the standard as yet so this is the very much interesting also the Kathmandu post has already featured this solution to be used on Mount Everest or Mount Annapurna area so this is a very promising solution so I hope ITU could support this activity and you're no stranger to ITU events then you've been to many what do you think the value of events such as this is? This is very very much important this kind of solution is not very much you know profitable closing the digital divide is a socio-public activity so ITU is the best entity that support by producing standards that's wonderful well Dr. Okamura I should say thank you very much indeed for your time thank you so that was global plan and now we're moving on here so you've got a couple of products here you've got how do you pronounce that? It's the Nobodo care. Nobodo care and you've got Wazihap and Wazihap perhaps you could tell us a little bit about what you're up to here okay thanks so Wazihap is a initiative which is funded by the European Commission now we have our this initiative is actually set is going and the sustainable and registered in in Germany so all the this Wazihap means like open Wazihap is coming from the world from so early it means open so what we are doing here so we are creating a African IoT startup and innovation ecosystem open innovation ecosystem to create a more open business opportunity for young African talent young startup young entrepreneur so based on the based on the technology that we have developed over the last last five years so what is this exactly so this is a kind of a sensor prototyping board with that this is this is a very typical open source hardware like Arduino hardware and then it also included with the long-range Lora communication module with that startup or young entrepreneur they can rapidly prototype the idea they can rapidly concept the validate their concept with that with their solution so we have developed a completely like the end-to-end IoT solution which is very easy to use and very cost effective and open and that will enable the startup and entrepreneur to to faster the go-to-market actually we are very actively present in more than 15 countries in Africa and we are creating a local ecosystem in Africa being the local talent using the local resources and then using our this open-source technology and engaging with the startup and take-off and innovation that's wonderful that sounds very promising indeed thank you so much for taking the time to explain it to us and hopefully you'll have a great telecom world here thank you thank you okay guys so we're here with Accra digital center so tell us a little bit about Accra digital center what's your name you David tell us a little bit about it I'm David before we heard of operations of Accra digital center and the digital center is a mini technology park and its whole mandate is to drive tech and digital entrepreneurship innovation entrepreneurship so what we do is to support tech startups in different varied ways sometimes through affordable real estate to have office spaces we also supported with programs such as a very equipped tech lab that helps them with emerging technologies like blockchain IOTs AI so as we're here we have some of our startups here who came to smart incubator program with AI also the digital center is there to drive the SME growth so some of the SMEs are already in the market but then they need that congenial atmosphere to be able to grow their businesses I mean sometimes through other support network like proper governance structure again accounting structure legal so we're able to register even the intellectual properties and all that so that is what the Accra digital center is designed for and what do you think the major challenges are for for startups nowadays so the major challenge of a startup nowadays I mean typically we talk about funding but I also talk about also the nurturing so that's why we hear of angel investors so you're not just throwing money at them but I give them holding your hands to help groom them with your governance structure with all the processes that they need to be able to become a global conqueror and so you see a crowd becoming the the the digital center for Africa yes our credit isn't I suppose to become the digital hub of the whole of West Africa in fact currently as we speak we are ITU's a smart incubator partner for the whole of West Africa so anybody going to the ITU smart program from West Africa has to come to a crowd digital center okay wonderful well look maybe we'll catch up with you in a crowd some stage thank you very much Dave that's wonderful nice to meet you okay guys so well there we are we I think we've pretty much covered all of the the smart people who have been talking about their their projects and and their products here and we will I'm sure catch up with the the smart ABC program at some stage at another show but in the meantime thank you very much for joining us