 Your Excellency, Chairperson of the Conference, Your Excellencies, Ministers, and the Heads of Delegation, the Secretary General of the ITU and the Elected Officials, distinguished delegates. On behalf of the South African delegation, I wish to congratulate the government and the people of the United Arab Emirates for the excellent hosting of this ITU plane port conference. In particular, I would like to thank you for the warm hospitality we received since our arrival. Further, we pledge to work with all of you to us achieving successful outcomes of this conference. At the core of ITU's mission is to connect the world. Mr. Chairman, 53 percent of the world's population remains unconnected. That is 3.9 billion people. 3.1 billion of those unconnected are located in the African and Asia-Pacific regions. We believe we can achieve our mission of connecting every citizen if we build partnerships and our people's confidence in the use of the Internet. Last year, South Africa adopted Internet for All Initiative in partnerships with 60 domestic and international stakeholders with the goal of to connect 22 million unconnected South Africans to Internet by 2020. The project rests on four pillars of innovative deployment of affordable broadband infrastructure in unsafe areas, affordable access to Internet services and devices, massifying skills, training, and awareness, and stimulating demand through development of relevant content and application. This project has also assisted us to reduce the gender-digital divide to less than 2 percentage points. South Africa remains an active member of the global ICT family, having been a member of the ITU since 1910. In Africa, we serve in various structures with the vision to connect Africa and achieve the African Union Agenda 2063. South Africa supports various initiatives of the ITU. Since 2015, we have been serving as an active member of the UN Broadband Council for Sustainable Development under the ITU and UNESCO leadership. We have been actively participating in various ITU committees and regional meetings. Last month, we hosted a successful ITU telecoms world in conference in Daven, South Africa as a leader of this conference. And with their support of the ITU and other international organization, we have launched African Digital Transformation Center in our capital, Pretoria. This center's objective is to incubate enterprise talent, harness innovation, and prepare our continent to take full advantage of the fourth industrial revolution. Excellencies, it is under this backdrop I wish to reiterate my government's request to all of you all to support South Africa's candidacy for the election to the ITU Council representing Region D. We also appeal for your support of our candidate, Mr. Mandam Kunu, for the Red Regulations Board. Once elected, we'll collectively work with other members to advance the development of the ICT, promote gender mainstreaming, facilitate equitable representation, and to strengthen the rural space international system. I respectfully request the valuable support of your government for our candidacy. I thank you.