 Dear friends, good afternoon and welcome to this third round table of Rural Digital. We will present two inspiring international experiences shedding light on the promise of digitalization for the rural world. But before we do, I'd like to remind you that to the left of your screen you'll find the buttons that would lead you to the workshops and sands of our initiative. We hope that you take full advantage of the content we prepared for you. Every day, the relevance of digital technologies in our daily lives and in our productive work is becoming more and more important. This is true for the city, but also for the countryside, where interesting experiences are being carried out throughout the world on how to best articulate communities and rural producers to digital technologies. To talk about this topic, we're joined by two excellent panelists, Ms. Annie Lin, Alibaba's Rural Vitalization Commissioner in Pengshong County, Shanxi Province, forgive me for the mispronunciation, and Benjamin Groeb, a digital agriculture expert at the FIBL Swiss International Cooperation. Welcome very much to this event. Annie Lin was the senior director of Alibaba's Phlegete Division. Prior to joining Alibaba, she served as the founder of Lixin Network, an assistant president of MangoCity.com. She developed the first multi-location call centers in China's southern airlines. She has accrued the rich experience in the internet, tourism, and aviation industry. In June of last year, she was assigned to Alibaba's Rural Vitalization Commissioner for Pengshong County, Shanxi Province. She's committed to using digital technology and e-commerce to support rural development, digital capacity building, and sustainable development. Ben Groeb works as a digital training expert bringing digital training materials on organic farming to farmers around the world. He focuses on the delivery of digital training materials from organic farming to farmers, and he's an entrepreneur and has brought his knowledge on sustainable agriculture, digital solutions, and innovations to startups, corporations, the United Nations, NGOs, and government agencies all over during the past decade. With Farm Better, he co-leads a team of change agents in the journey to bring digital advice to farmers in Kenya, across Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Annie Lin, let's start with you, and Ben, both of you, welcome to this conversation. Annie Lin, I understand that you've prepared a video for us from Alibaba Rural Vitalization Commissioner working on local governments on these digital solutions. So let's watch it together, shall we? Hi, everyone. My name is Dong Hong Ling. I come from the Corporate Social Responsibility Department of Alibaba Group. At Alibaba, there is a special task force with a unique role. We are called Alibaba Rural Vitalization Commissioner. Our task is to work closely with the local government officials and farmers in China's less-development regions to promote the economic growth with three focuses, industry, talent, and technology. In May of 2021, I arrived at Pingxun, a formerly impoverished county that is still an underdeveloped region in North China. Although I perform my daily duty in Pingxun, a village thousands of miles away from Alibaba's headquarters, I always feel empowered since my role is fully supported by Alibaba's digital ecosystem. It's my great honor to share my first-hand observation of how digital technology is empowering the less-developed regions to pursue new development opportunities. In the wave of digitalization, new formats of jobs are emerging, more and more flexible online careers such as live streamhorses, cloud customer service agents, AI trainers are created. Maybe you ask, what do these new jobs do with the rural areas? Well, I'll show you some new born careers how to make the lab behind women to realize values and drive the outflow use to return home. The woman who is doing the live streaming in the field is one of the beneficiaries. She has been a migrant worker for a mind kitchen before. When her daughter returned home to start an online store, she had no idea at all about the live streaming. Last year, I let her and her daughter to the 2021 World Internet Conference. It was the first time that she took a flight. She did an eight-hour live streaming a day in the conference and felt no tired at all. I asked her why. She said, I'm so excited. I've never seen so many viewers with no time but to communicate with my fans. Since I arrived in Pingsun, we have conducted live streaming training for more than 5,000 farmers. Most of them have mastered live streaming skills and could connect with the outside world through mobile phones. According to a research by人民 University of China on employment opportunities brought by Taobao Live, in 2020, Taobao Live created more than 1.7 million jobs according to the first China. Among them, we mean we are mostly benefited through these new opportunities. Live streaming is the new job on the screen. I would like to share an interesting job that is behind the screen. We creatively brought a new job related to AI to Pingsun in July 2021. AI artificial intelligence may sound very intelligent. In fact, behind the screen, AI requires a lot of basic labelling work which is critical for machine learning. Since AI is driven by a massive amount of data, AI models require a large amount of high quality data to support, which has led to a huge market demand for data annotation. Based on the local investigation, I worked with my colleagues to classify the skill levels of labelling business and identify that AI could be a good new job for the local community. During the past 17 months, we have conducted intense training for the employees here. Till now, 150 employees have been recruited, up which 70% are college degree or above. 40% are outflow youth returning home. At the beginning, they could labor about 500 pictures a day. After months of practice and training, their productivity increased by 4 times with an amazing accuracy rate of 99.9%. That means they have become skilled professional AI annotators. Let this girl as an example, she used to work outside of Pingshun. She has never thought that she could find an ideal job at hometown that is better than urban city. Now, after a year and a half hard work, she has become the supervisor of this labelling center. The AI labelling job in Pingshun proves that digital technology has brought new opportunities not only to the urban cities but also to the rural areas. Based on this pilot, Alibaba's AI labelling project will be implemented in other underdeveloped counties in Guizhou, Sanxi, and Xexu to help more rural residents to assess new opportunities. Well, let's talk about the barriers we encountered when we were carrying out the above projects. First is the basic infrastructure. There is still gap between urban city and rural area when talking about internet and logistic infrastructure. The Chinese government is trying their best to accelerate the internet access to every village and realize full coverage. Secondly, training facility and education are critical for success. This training center is built by the Pingshun government. Farmers could join the offline or online live streaming course which are offered free by Alibaba, and they could use this live streaming studio without any charge. The big challenge is that it takes long way to educate the farmers to be used to face directly to the consumers. The amazing thing is that if the farmer learns how to do live streaming, the different scenic and dialects turns to be the rural life stream advantage. Last but not least, digital transformation knowledge popularity among government officials should be considered. I've trained over 500 government officials after I arrived in Pingshun. In addition to the digital career opportunities, we are making efforts to explore Pingshun's culture and tourism development with digital technology. This is the Dain Temple, one of the 15 national relics in Pingshun. You could see that it is surrounded by mountains. Few visitors noticed it. How to arouse the interest of the potential tourist turns to be a new topic. At the end of last year, we worked with Friyi and AutoNavy to create a smart destination for Pingshun. Data shows that the ticket bookings of Pingshun's national relics have been forced for the last year. Last month, we cooperated with Timmore to issue 12,000 digital arcs for full national treasure of Pingshun among Timmore VIP members. It aroused great interest and Timmore donated the incomes to Pingshun to protect the relics. We hope that we could find a sustainable and favorable cultural protection model through digital technology and the future. As Daniel Zhang, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group said, Alibaba is committed to the nationwide strategy in property reduction and rural revitalization. In particular, we hope to explore as a pathfinder, a scalable and innovative approach to promote rural development as an internet company. Hope that you could take away something from my sharing. Welcome to Pingshun. Thanks for listening. Aniline, thank you so very much for putting together what an amazing video, what a great experience, so comprehensive, so ambitious. And I think equally importantly, I'm blown away by your level of enthusiasm and the passion that you show for this experience and how you really have the boots on the ground as you share these experiences. Thank you so much. And let me ask you a question. What role would you say the national government has played in promoting digitalization and in the rural experiences that you have shared? What is the role of the national government? Talking about the national government's laws in the digital transformation, I think that the first one is the infrastructure and logistics improving, including access to internet and e-commerce platform and access to rural, access to the logistics network and access to finance and the mobile payment system. For example, in China, right now we are assessing, accelerate the construction of digital infrastructure such as mobile internet, internet of things, cloud platforms and gradually realized broadband access to every village. China's 16 administrative villages have fully realized broadband access. Yeah, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce, as of December 2021, the number of internet users in China has reached 1.032 billion and the internet penetration rate has reached 73% of which the number of the rural internet users has reached 284 million and the internet penetration rate in rural areas is 57.6%. The rural online dealer and online shop have been over 16 million, means 1.6 million. The national rural online retail sales reached 2.05 trillion yuan, an increase of 11.3% over 2020 and the gross rate accelerates by 2.4 percentage points, accounting for 15.6% of the national online retail sales. And secondly, I think that the government need to enable the business environment and give some policy support. That means they have to provide some traditional factors as well as factors specific to economics, to e-commerce like direct subsidies, logistic training and online products service and incubation service as well. And most important that the infrastructure and internet access and the government also need to give some special regulations to make it easier to do the e-commerce. And thirdly, I think it should be the digital literacy education. Education is most important, that means that the e-commerce gears needed to use the internet for operation, provide customer service, how to provide the online customer service and develop online products. It's quite different from the traditional agricultural products. It means that you need to select the standardized products, for example. And another thing like the capacity for training and educate entrepreneurial spirit, I think it's also quite important. Yeah, since if you want to start a kind of business or e-commerce, you need to take some risk and you need to be resilient in pursuit of such kind of opportunities and the digital transformation. So I think that maybe these three key roles should be played by the government. So, yeah, thanks. And Elin, thank you so very much. Very clearly you've outlined a very compelling model for for rural development and in a very strong partnership between private and public sectors. Thank you so very much. It is for me particularly impressive to hear your numbers. The numbers that you list are the size of entire nations in other places of the world. So it's just really fascinating to benefit from these experiences. And thank you so very much for for allowing us not only to hear you, but also to see, you know, the images of what's going on at the landscape level with the people on the long ground. So we're very blessed and we're very, very lucky that you have prepared not only one video, but two videos for us. So next, I understand that you have another video that showcases how digitalization is being promoted in connection to the land and to improve the quality of rural people. So let's watch it together. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. My hometown is Hongcao Town. I love my hometown. The scenery of my hometown is like a painting. It's a year and four seasons. This is where we grew up. The water here grew into our blood. The plants here moved our hearts. Because this is not only where we grew up. It's also where we grew up. Now, the imagination of the digital age is constantly changing the knowledge of traditional agriculture. In the Yunnan family, in the password of the chicken, you can find a better seed in a place like this. Every step of climbing the mountain, you can find a better seed in a place like this. The technology is in a place you can't imagine. It uses quality to give you a better value. There are more. The imagination of the technology has been growing here. It's becoming more and more possible. This land is changing with us. When the technology connects the land of Guangmao and the people from far away, every seed has become a order when it is planted. Every fruit has its own strict standards. When it is picked, it can be sent directly to the kitchen. The specialty of the mountains is that it is now ready to be planted. The land is now a brand because of its quality. The last step is to use the industry to increase its value. The village is opening up a new kind of prosperity in the industry. This is the passion of hope. The younger people are willing to build homes here. They will learn more. Because the hometown needs more development. They want to move the work in the city into the countryside. Because this is the countryside of the era. People are busy in the field. Now, it can be the technology of the production line. It can also be the white collar at the door of the house. It can even be the spokesperson of their own agricultural products. The green products of our hometown. They can do a good job of farming. They can also do a good job of other industries. The young people of Pengbo are looking forward to the development of the hometown. I am here. This is the era. It is opening up a new kind of prosperity for us. Look down. We are standing here. We are holding the seed of hope. We are helping each other. This land can't be neglected. We are proud of each other. We will grow better on a better land. Anilin, thank you again for this very inspiring video that outlines what might seem like the future. I think we have too many respects for you in China, the future is now. It is fascinating to benefit from this experience with your land. Thank you very much. Now, my friends, let's switch to our second excellent panelist. Thank you, Anilin, Ben. Ben, I understand that you have also prepared a video showcasing the great work you are doing with your team at Farm Better. So, very much looking forward to watching it together and reflecting about your experience also. Let's go. Let's have a look. Hi, my name is Sylvia Kurya and I am a small-scale organic farmer from a place called Ndeya, which is in the semi-arid area of Limuru. It is about 40 kilometers from Nairobi. We have been farming on this piece of land for the past seven years. And we are actually practicing agriculture and organic sustainable farming practices. I am going to group them into three main challenges. So one, of course, is the negative effects of climate change. So we find that we don't have enough rain and the rainfall is actually very unpredictable. Right now, we are going through our fourth field, actually going to the fifth field, rainy season. So four times you have planted and four times it has failed. If it doesn't rain in these short rains of November of 2022, then we don't expect much and it's going to be the fifth failed rain. So you find that the effects of climate change are here with us and now we are paying back for what we've done to Mother Nature in a way that we don't actually have enough food. And then something else is that farmers don't have access to information. So you find farmers lack information on how to actually grow food sustainably. And it's worse for farmers, especially in the arid and semi-arid areas. You know, for me, I'm a bit lucky because I have access to the Internet. I can be able to read and look for information. But the local farmer here has no idea where they can get information. So farmers don't have access to any information and they're not able to know what strategies to use in the dry land areas. They don't know what kind of seeds to source for, how to plant, when to plant, what kind of farming practices will actually give them a good return in an arid area. So because of that, you find that the lack of information is a very huge, huge impediment to farmers' success. And thirdly, we also have a very huge gap between science and practice. So you find some research has been done, but we never get access to it. So researchers are working on their own and they don't really disseminate that information to farmers. And farmers on the other hand, even if they get a hold of the information, they can't understand it. Sometimes it's too technical and they're not able to relate to that information to see how it can actually support them. Okay, I've interacted with the farm better up and from what I've gone through with it, I find that, you know, it's an excellent tool that can be able to be the gap or be the bridge between science and practice and also be the bridge also maybe between policy and practice. Whereby farmers are actually able to access information in terms of videos, how to be able to farm, you know, like how to be able to get strategies for your farm and be able to grow your food sustainably. So I find that the farm better up is actually an easy tool that farmers can be able to access at the touch of a button on their phones and be able to get all this information in one package. My name is Michael Zeni-Malenia and I'm the Director of Business Development and Scaling at Farm Better. There are three problems you want to solve as Farm Better. Number one, farmers day-to-day practices are impacted by the negative effects of climate change, yet they lack access to tailored knowledge in order to adapt to the changing climate. Number two, many smallholder farmers across the world lack the digital literacy to use mobile apps. And number three, extension agents have limited budgets to travel to farmers and no effective tools to manage these farmers as well. Now, as Farm Better, we are an agritic company that connects farmers with knowledge on how to improve their climate resilience and improve their livelihoods. We have an app that is designed for farmers or through extension agents for farmers to match their unique profiles with peer-reviewed sustainable land management practices from the Wokat beta base. We're back friends and Benjamin, thank you so very much for putting this video together for us. It's just like dawns on me like the severity of the challenges that our sisters and brothers in Africa are dealing with and the limited resources we have open to address and what seem to be even like simple things like access to knowledge that can empower folks to take control of their own production systems, apparently so simple but so powerful to leverage technology to that and very inspiring to see how you are tackling the significant challenges of agricultural sustainability in Africa. So Ben, I understand that in addition to the video, you prepared a presentation for us to explain a little bit better and offer a little bit more context about your work at Farm Better. We're looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you, Sarush and yes, I think it's really great to be able to talk a bit more as a startup on what we're working on in especially East Africa, India, Nepal and partly also starting in Colombia soon with Farm Better, which is really about bringing digital advice to farmers. That's really where we started out with and then you can see I think a bit the differences of context also from the approaches that we're taking to what you saw from Annie Lin in China, which is just an incredible place when you look at rural e-commerce. That's for me really down the road, but it's just so inspiring to see that. So having said that, what we're really looking at these three challenges, Michael talked about them in the video. We have the negative impacts of climate change and then the thing is a lot of people have access to knowledge but it's often especially if you want to use sustainable agricultural practices, you have to have it locally specific. Soils are different on one side of a hill than on the other. So based on that, you really need to have that tailored knowledge of how to approach agriculture and that's what's missing in a lot of places in the world, especially for smallholder farmers. It's often not such a problem for a larger, more resource-enowed farmers. You have lots of technology, Annie Lin also mentioned the internet of things, sensors and so on, but that's not the case. That's where we're trying to come in. Then we have the digital literacy challenge we also heard about. We really started out working directly with an app just for farmers because we want to be as farmer-centric as possible in empowering farmers to increase their climate resilience because that's where we come from. Most of us co-founders have been working in development, have been working on climate resilience and went from projects to say, let's start a social enterprise and let's try to set this up in a more sustainable way so that it can go beyond project cycles. Then we've met lots of extension agents, public and private, which love to talk to farmers, give some of that knowledge they have on, but that actually often don't have just the resources to actually get to the farmers or they just have hundreds or thousands of farmers to deal with and no effective tool to manage them. I don't know how you feel about all the parties that are being organized in your WhatsApp groups. You just start losing the overview at some point. So imagine working with 300, 500 to 1,000 farmers as an extension agent. That's where FarmBetter comes in, where we're really trying to, based on farmers location and their priorities, match them with sustainable land management practices. We have over 1,000 on the app that are also scientifically reviewed. They're from the Volcott database on sustainable land management practices. What else is on the app? You have on the left what a farmer sees and you have on the right with an extension agent. We'll see if you're a farmer, you are have actually that digital literacy that we're trying to build across the world. You can do this yourself. You know, you answer a few questions, you share your location. We go back into a number of public, some FAO databases and look at, you know, what agricultural zone you're at, what kind of slope your land has and so on. And based on that meta, based on that data, we then match you with sustainable land management solutions or best practices. You might have just an issue with your tomatoes, so you can just go search into it. There's a community forum where farmers exchange on things like, you know, how to deal with certain pests, how to get certain inputs. We have a library in an academy where we have 10 interactive courses now on topics from regenerative agriculture, agroforestry, pruning trees so that you can get a higher price for your wood products. And we're working on a marketplace with currently simple information on where you actually get your inputs. But really trying to work with partners to enlarge that and offer farmers, you know, offer farmers access to climate smart inputs, loans, access to markets, which is a huge thing. For extension agents, it's much more about organizing the group of farmers they work with. They also have access to all the knowledge and the resources. They also have active cases which might be, you know, pest infestation. It might be a challenge that the farmer has told you about that, you know, you're working on and you can then, you know, communicate with a group of farmer in a certain area or beyond. What do we collect and how does that work in terms of actually having tailored knowledge? So, you know, we have a short few questions on farmers' climate resilience, their goals and their location data that creates a unique farmer profile. And based on that, we then match them with sustainable and management practices. I have to talk about more about that if somebody's interested, but I won't go into the details now. We're a relatively small still startup. We're working now in six countries mostly and most strongly in Kenya where we are at about 2,500 users who we're working with and really looking to scale through this AgriPath project across some West Africa, Burkina Faso and also India and Nepal. We're not doing this alone. I've mentioned Wokat. We're working with a number of great organizations really close to farmers and trying to really bridge that science research, you know, practice gap that Sylvia in the video mentioned. We've gotten some funding and some prices and it's just really great to see that traction from, you know, a year ago on this slide. There would have been much fewer people and really seeing how with Sylvia and Michael and Naum, we're strengthening our team in Kenya. We've just gotten a new board of advisors that brings not only the knowledge on business, but also, you know, on sustainable agriculture and on startup, on the startup ecosystem in East Africa. So much about us that was very quick, deliberately. I really want to also have the chance to hear a bit from the audience, the listeners and tell you just a little bit what we've learned over the last few years that we've been doing this. One, we've always wanted to have an app for farmers because we think that's the future. We still think that will be the future, but we're also seeing that right now, digital literacy, internet rates, internet access rates, I mean, you know, outside of China, but also especially in East Africa let's say outside of Kenya, access to mobile money to actually pay for things are relatively limited. So what we're doing now, we have an app for extension agents that integrates directly with WhatsApp so that farmers can actually use a tool they're already used to that they're most likely already using that doesn't, you know, use their data on many countries and interact with the app and the knowledge through a simple chatbot and then extension agents. We've had a lot of talk about, you know, how do we bridge that digital divide, the gender divide for digital advice in agriculture. This research project that we're in, AgriPath actually looks at that. We're researching that across the African and part of Asia, across the African continent, part of Asia, really to try to identify what are the barriers and enablers for women to have access to digital advisory services. It's a lot as usually in agriculture around access to productive resources, but it's more difficult than that and unfortunately we don't have any results yet. That's ongoing right now, but as soon as we have them, I'll be happy to share. And then we've been really focused on having a human-centered design approach in designing our app, in what we're offering, being with the farmers, testing with them and involving lots at least half of the people we work with, women within that. And then the last one for us is really around partnerships. We see that farmers, it's just a very tricky and complicated business. They're really smart. They have a lot of wisdom already. I think we need to build on that. That's really what we want to do. And, you know, what we're offering right now, which is really focused on knowledge, is one part. Farmers, then the next thing they want is always market access. I think Annie Lin and Ali Baba there is creating, you know, interesting linkages, but just generally, you know, getting to markets, knowing what prices are simple things like that. Pest and disease management, especially when we're looking at regenerative sustainable agriculture is a key issue because it's much more complex. And then how do we get the right inputs? How do we get loans and insurance? We don't think, and that's a bit also our learning over the last few years, we don't want to and we don't think we can do that all on our own, but that means we need partnerships, both with public and private institutions with other companies in that field and working with also, you know, the government extension workers, partnering up with them on getting knowledge to people, but also on how to get, you know, farmers linked to the market, improve their livelihoods and climate resilience. I'll stop here, really interested in the conversation. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ben. You're tackling a very, very difficult problem of really fighting against this one-size-fits-all and leveraging digital technologies to do this careful matchmaking between the specific, context-specific needs of a farmer in a particular location and the content and the knowledge that is available that would maximize this product market fit. So it's very interesting how you're tackling this problem and trying to rescue and bring to bear this information available to make sure you do this matchmaking appropriately. I'm very intrigued by a question. You represent a very different segment of the private sector. And in a recent study of the Inter-American Development Bank, they concluded that smallholder farmers in Latin America are not benefiting from act tech. By and large, startup entrepreneurs are not really reaching this particular segment of the population that we're interested in. I'm very curious to hear from you. In your experience as a startup entrepreneur, as a social entrepreneur, what would you say is the role of the public sector in supporting these young innovators that really want to bring their talent to bear in solving these very critical social problems? What is the experience of this budding young social entrepreneur who wants to bring innovation to bear in the countryside? And what is the potential role we can play from the public sector? Yeah, I mean, I think that's quite a question, right? I think Anilina actually has put out a lot of key factors already out there just generally to make sure that business can happen, right? Basically, I would say even simple things like logistics and infrastructure without that is just impossible. And also when we stay on that level, you know the ease of doing business. How hard is it to open a bank account in different countries? How hard is it to get all the different registrations across different countries? So that's just basic ease of doing business beyond the fact that we're in a really fragmented, difficult market with lots of small holders, each one just kind of a small customer. Beyond that, I think there's some areas that are really key in agriculture specifically. That's around how much are we still believing in the public extension system? How much are we investing in it? I think there is a role and there is also a role in a digital future. So we're not here to say, oh, we're just getting rid of extension agents. I think they're a key frontline to make sure that we can reach small holder farmers. So that's it investing generally in research and development and innovation, not just new products, not just new seeds, but also social innovations. How can we use existing networks, communities, and what's already there to really reach people? And then beyond that, another thing that Anilin said, digital literacy, how can we really make sure that people in rural areas who've gone through schooling, they know how to use a smartphone. That needs to be in curriculums. I really think so, not just in Latin America, but across the world. And lastly, I think there's a big point around how much do we as, do you as governments, do the economies really want disruption and wants young new different companies? I think it's easy to say, okay, you wanna support startups, but it's a big step to really create conditions that do that, have accelerators, have support programs, mentors, and really think, you know, basically think from the farmer at the end of the day and think, you know, if I were a farmer, what digital services would I like? What is it that the government, what we can actually bring in onto the digital side? And where do we, that's what was my last point around partnerships? Where do we wanna partner? Where do we wanna bring others in who have experience? And sorry, just one last point, then I'll stop, but it's really what you said about this study, it's across the regions. It's really, really hard to make a business case work with small holders around knowledge. That's why we're expanding it also beyond knowledge, but it's not impossible and it's imperative if we're trying to really create vibrant rural economies that there is kind of perspectives there. And the reason it's so hard, it's because, you know, there's just such a fragmented market with so many different actors with different needs across different countries. Fascinating Ben, thank you so very much for sharing that experience or knowledge, the journey and also those insights that you can gain also from having your boots on the ground and experiencing and really endeavoring to bring that value to small holders, which is sort of at least a population that often gets forgotten in terms of delivering business models or wrapping business models around solutions. So thank you, thank you very much to both of you for these fascinating experiences that show very contrasting reality approaches, context. So it really enriches the conversation and the sources of inspiration that we will draw from in order to continue bringing value towards this initiative. So at this moment, I'd like to open it up for a broader dialogue and question and answer session. And I would like to remember our audience that to please feel free to send your questions to our platform or our YouTube channel, whatever channel you're engaging with us to. So let me start. I'd like to start with Annie Lin with one question for you, Annie Lin. China has made significant achievements in the development of e-commerce in rural areas. What would you say are some achievements that you would highlight that might have relevance for Latin America? Annie Lin, you're on mute if you might unmute your microphone. Yeah, I think I have just a little knowledge about Latin American and Caribbean countries. But as a senior internet users, I have purchased Brazilian nuts and chili red wine, Argentina, yeah, Argentina like a beef and seafood through cowbell. You know, in fact, I'm a senior internet user. And I think that in fact, Latin American and Caribbean countries have high quality agriculture products. No wonder that you are called the rarest breakfast provider, yeah. And I think that the achievement of Latin America and Caribbean countries e-commerce development in rural areas, maybe by the time being, I think they have gained global popularity and have good access to the global market through different channels. And they have tried their best to use the global digital service platform to enable the agriculture products to reach the consumer directly. Yeah, and in addition, I think that the unique tourist resource in Latin America turned this destination to be one of the popular tourist destination in the world. Yeah, in fact, two years ago, I went to Antarctic on behalf of Brighi to join the Antarctic cruise. And I think it was a real Syrian and fantastic trip, I have to say. And after that, a series of short videos to promote Argentina's gourmet and unique sceneries have been issued by Youku and Brighi a year and a half before. And he has aroused great interest of Chinese audience. So I think that the Latin American country is quite skillful or I have to say professional in the digital marketing. Yeah, so yeah, as a user, I think things are, yeah, thanks. And an interesting insight. Indeed, we have a fascinating opportunity, a large basket, the portfolio of food items. And it's just so fascinating to hear that they've been reaching you as a consumer. And thank you for sharing that experience and how fortunate to have had the trip to the Antarctic. That sounds like a fascinating experience. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I'm quite fortunate, yeah. Let me shift to Ben with a question. What role would you say national governments played in promoting digitalization in the rural world in your experience? What is the role of national government in creating that enabling environment and enabling conditions for digitalization? Yeah, I'm going to do what I learned in some of my law classes is usually the correct answer, which means it depends. It's just such a wide question, right? Like I can see that, for example, in the Kenyan case, I can see that, you know, the fact that Safari Common and PESA have really been able and been led also to go into mobile money. So that hasn't been limited to banks, but that's actually to the mobile network providers that has made a huge difference, for example, for digitalization in rural areas and how money reaches and what all the services that can be provided. At the same time, I think it's just a really, really broad question. Generally, they play a really important role. I think the way, you know, licenses are given to telecoms to make sure, you know, to try to make sure there that, you know, internet actually reaches rural area and high speed internet. And Elaine also mentioned it in the broadband internet in China. I think that's a key area on the infrastructure side. And when we go more into agriculture, I think I would also point out the example of India, which has just really, really pushed digitalization generally and has used that also in agriculture. They have a huge, you know, system on subsidized foods. They have digitalized all of that. A lot of the service offerings actually from the governments have been digitalized. And that, I think, taking this kind of role will bring along the private sector because it creates an incredible market. It creates competence to be able to actually deliver these services. And I would encourage governments to really see, you know, where are we providing services in the rural areas, where we can be. And then here's the caveat. Not everything has to be digital, right? But I'm seeing a lot of areas where things were actually much more comfortable during the time that COVID was more present because we could do everything online. And I'm seeing a lot of areas where we are going back to having to go in person to offices and I'm having a hard time understanding that. And I think that opportunity we really need to take and say, hey, we actually have the capacity right now. We've just proven we can do it. Let's push that forward, not just in the cities, but also in the rural areas. That's fascinating. Thank you, Ben. And what I'm thinking is this really like, it's a broad question. The particular needs of the country and opportunities are going to be specific. But really closing this digital divide, at least this basic foundation that would enable the other solutions to be presented and tested. It's going to be one thing of key concern. Thank you for sharing also about those experiences and the advances that India has also made in that front. Perhaps this would be another opportunity in the future to bring experiences from that part of the world as well. And then I'd like to ask you the same question. I'm curious about what your perspective might be on that too. What role would you say your national government has played in promoting digitalization in your experiences? What do you see the role of the national government in promoting these digital solutions and digital agriculture? For the digital solution, I think that the most important of all is education. Especially in this time of digital transformation. I think that education is the most important thing. So normally in the rural areas, we will set up service organizations. That means we will establish e-commerce associations by the local government and cultivate the local e-commerce service team and continuously incubate and foster new e-commerce business through good products and brands and build where the miles referral and attract more people to participate. In fact, it's quite difficult to stop around the interests of the farmers to start the e-commerce business. So I think the education is the most... I think it's the key issue. And secondly, I think that a kind of professional team is quite important. That means talents. So first, the government needs to promote and publicize the training purpose and contents to encourage farmers to understand and run e-commerce business. And due to the COVID-19 interrupts just like Ben said, that now everyone has to work online, live online, purchase online. That means that we will hold online training classes right now by Alibaba farmers two times a week. We will hold such kind of online training classes for the rural farmers. Yeah, it's quite important. And secondly, I think that the government is trying their best to work with the digital platform like Alibaba to lower the threshold of the e-commerce operation by family farmers since they have no ability to build up the digital solutions or digital platform by themselves. So as a kind of digital company, we will provide such kind of inclusive digital technology to enable the SME to do business easily. So you could see that in the rural areas, farmers or farmers could just use a kind of smart phone and do the live streaming and promote their agriculture products. So I think that this is quite important for me. Thank you so very much. I think we often think about the supply aspect of the government role in terms of infrastructure, in terms of funds for research and development, in terms of incentive systems for innovators, like young innovators and startups and from a private sector to engage in partnerships. But those demand aspects of it are very critical too, right? The education, the literacy, the appreciation that these communities might have for the opportunities that the digital world is bringing to them. The interest that the young population might have to engage in entrepreneurship and leverage these technologies towards entrepreneurship. So very interesting that perspective also to not forget about the demand aspect of the digital sort of digitalization of the world. And in that note, I'd like to switch back to Ben and ask you, we know that digital literacy is a major challenge in the rural world. What would you say are the main lessons that you have drawn from your experience trying to bring an app, a digital solution to populations that, you know, so developing the literacy in that space? Yeah, I think for us, it's been really a learning journey, both working at Feeble and with FarmBetter. I mean, we, for example, I give you an example. We started trainings on organic agriculture in Kenya a couple of years ago using two-way SMS systems. So, you know, you send out SMSs, people answer, it's back and forth, and that worked really well. And then we said, okay, you know, let's just expand this to Ronda, right? That's right next door. It's relatively, let's say, digitalized and that didn't work at all. So now we're testing audio messages in the Rondon case. And that's actually, for example, in West Africa, nobody uses SMS. They only use audio messages. So why am I giving you these examples? Because it's very context-specific, but it really pays off to have high literacy rates through your education systems to start with, not just digital literacy, actual literacy, which in the Latin American region is, I would say on average, a really big, you know, is actually a really, really big advantage over other regions in the world. Once you have that, I think there's the digital literacy aspect, what we're seeing a lot is that people actually have smartphones, but only use Facebook and WhatsApp in Africa, in the African context on it. And they don't actually know or find it very challenging to download additional apps. What is really interesting there are what I would say kind of youth in the rural areas. So there's often these discussions around how do we, you know, what could be, how do we revitalize the rural space, how young people don't want to be farmers. So what we see a lot is A, family members. So that's key. Family members, kids, they go into cities and then they teach their parents how to use their smartphones. I mean, you and I, so we probably did that with our parents in the computers, right? And now, you know, the next generation is doing the same thing on smartphones. And the last thing there I think is, you know, are there models where we can use young people who are in the rural areas, who are probably also farming as ambassadors for digital solutions to bring up digital literacy? There isn't really much happening on specific digital literacy programs in much of the world. I'm really impressed at what Alibaba is doing in a rural Chinese space, but there isn't much across the world that would be similar. And I think it would be really interesting and impactful to explore, you know, what can we learn from that and how can we increase that? And it's also digital literacy for what? People don't just want to learn how to use a phone. That phone needs to create value for them so that they want to learn how to use it. So if you have an e-commerce side or if you have digital trainings, that's super useful. But if you have all that and people don't have digital literacy, you basically don't reach your people. And we'll go back to everyone saying, oh, digital doesn't work, but it will work. It just needs, we need products that create real value for the users and we need that push to increase digital literacy to just a basic level where downloading an app is not a challenge. Very intriguing. I mean, there's many aspects of it. I think one of the things that I'm curious about if you could elaborate a little bit more, what would you say is the role of these local knowledge brokers? Like either it is the young person coming back to their community or somebody who's facilitating or translating the knowledge or brokering the solution for a group of farmers and bridging that literacy gap through intermediation. What would you say? What are some experiences learned from that or what are your thoughts on that? So basically, they're key. I mean, even if they're not even if they're not the specific person on digital literacy, what we've seen across the countries we've been working in is that digital solutions have a higher trust threshold. I would call it then like your traditional solutions. If you have a person coming to you, you know, they can show you what they farmed and so on. Digital solutions don't have that. A, they're new. So they're already more difficult for people to adopt. And B, why should I trust this? Why should I trust this app? Maybe it's just a scam. You know, there's lots of digital and otherwise scams. So people are very, are often afraid to go into these things. It reminds me of the early days of Amazon for me when I was like, okay, am I going to put my credit card here? You know, what's going to happen with it if I do that, right? Back in the day. And that I think in rural areas, at least in I would say in East Africa or where we've been working quite a lot is still often the case. So trust, often the government, depending on the context has a lot of trust or extension services. So that can be something really to leverage there also in the digital literacy side. And then usually it's the community itself and family members. So these knowledge brokers are key to really as kind of early adopters of these innovations of showing what can be done to improve their lives. And they're also key. I was just in Nepal a couple of weeks ago. And Nepal, you know, gender, gender, the gender issues are completely different one. There's been huge emigration of men. So most people farming are actually women to the largest extent. And they all have smartphones because that's the way they're in touch with their husbands abroad through Facebook Messenger. So that creates like, that's the other way that these kind of, you know, the people who go to the city or go abroad really bring in digital transformation. Nobody, I never thought of this pathway, but like you'd have much more, you know, women in Nepal on smartphones, rural women in Nepal on smartphones than in let's say East Africa. Very, very interesting Ben. And I think it's just really fascinating how you have been able to sample experiences from different continents and countries and try to draw these conclusions that some of them might be site-specific and others could be, could be of use across context. So it's really fascinating to benefit from from that perspective. It's Aniline, so what does Aniline, you're there. So I have another question for you. In the world, only 48% of women has internet access. Well, the percentage of men reaches 58%. In China, internet users are 60% women and 40% men. Ben was just pointing to some of those facts for Nepal also. But how have you addressed gender gaps in e-commerce and rural digitalization? Yeah, in the trend of digital, transformation, we know that a lot of new formats of new jobs are emerging just like in my video, I recommend some to you. And in fact, just like Ben said, that in the rural areas, the lab behind are normally children, women, and gray hares, yeah. But you know, everyone has almost, everyone has a kind of smartphones, yeah. So that means that women, if they're willing to learn something, this is the good opportunity. So I think that I always like to say education is important. So for example, now I based in Pingson and each month I would like to do more and more live streaming training for women here. You know, women like to talk. I always talk to them. So live streaming is quite suitable for them. Yeah, maybe they just for fun, maybe just to around their interest. And if they know that it's quite easy to do such kind of live streaming, then it's really quite easy for you to tell them, to educate them how to use such kind of smart home smartphones to be a kind of tourist to do business. Yeah, that's the first step. So I think that according to my first hand observation and my underground experience, I think in fact, the lab behind women, they are quite responsible and capable when learning the new things, yeah. So I think that the women in Pingshun, they have some of them even have demonstrated some entrepreneurial potential, yeah. So the percentage, I have to say that the percentage is quite high. And I think that digital transformation in fact is the trend for us human all. And as Hillary said, that human rights, women's rights is human rights. So in fact, it's the same. And I think in fact, yeah, because of the digital technology it has lowered the threshold of some kind of new jobs. So in fact, we have provided such kind of equal opportunities for women and men. So I think that in this kind of trend of digital transformation we will try our best to promote or to offer more inclusive opportunities for women and human beings all. Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Emily. Very interesting on the side of inclusion but also on the side of segmentation, the observations that you're seeing, you know, that women, rural women tend to be natural sort of marketeers leveraging this live streaming, the potential of live streaming. I'm very curious about the experience. I would have a, you know, live streaming has a lot of demand on bandwidth and internet. So it's just very interesting to see that you've been able to deliver solutions at that demanding, I guess, on the internet infrastructure. I guess the testament to how advanced China might be with respect to some other regions. Ben, I have a question in terms of sort of the inter-operation between public and private sector which is one of the important themes for us. What would you say should be three main reasons or three broad reasons to why the public and private sector should engage and work together to bridge or bring this digital solution to the countryside into small older families? What are the top reasons? Why should this engagement occur? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I would say first because already on the non-digital side, it's happening, right? We have private and public extension. We have a lot of partnerships, sometimes competition, but mostly partnership between those actors and why not bring that into the digital age, right? That just seems like a kind of a common sense, okay, let's move forward together. B is just the size of the challenge. I think neither the private nor the public sector alone can really do it without an enabling policy environment. It's impossible to build businesses in rural areas and it's especially much less interesting than doing it in a lot of urban areas. So the private sector can really create the conditions, sorry, the public sector can really create the conditions to make those rural markets interesting and more profitable. And lastly, the public sector can really benefit from the experiences in many countries on digitalization, but also from the fact that if done right, if set up as a business, it'll be kind of a sustainable way of moving forward with providing services to farmers that maybe with limited budgets on the public side might not always be able to be kept up. So I think that the government should really create the right conditions for the farmers to benefit, but also for businesses to be able to come in and then the two, you know, the private businesses really can create wealth and shared prosperity for the people in the rural areas. Excellent point, Ben. I'm actually curious to ask Aniline the same question. From your experience, what are three key reasons, three key incentives for the private sector and the public sector to engage, to bring these solutions and the benefits of digitalization to small-holder farmers? In my opinion, I think that the three key incentives for them is making more money. Yeah, that means reasonable profit is quite important, especially if they can get more money from the e-commerce than the traditional distribution channel. This would be the most important one. Yeah. Secondly, I have to say, education of digital literacy, free provided by government, also so organization is also quite important. Yeah. Thirdly, I think the inclusive digital service platform for SME to do business is there. It's also the key issue. Because they will enable them to access to such kind of new business model easily. So this is my opinion. Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Aniline, so, so very much. And thank you, Ben. This has been just really a fascinating learning opportunity. Tons of lessons to be drawn from what you've shared with us from your responses, from your presence, from your enthusiasm around this problem and opportunity space that brings us together. On behalf of the organizing group, thank you so very much for participating in this digital fair. And we look forward to more engagement. We look forward to expanding this conversation. And we're extraordinarily grateful. In particular, I should say, we understand what time it is for you. Aniline, you're over midnight right now. It's late for both, but Aniline, thank you so very much for making the time to join us. It's my pleasure. Thank you. And thank you, Ben, also. Very welcome. Thanks for having me. Thanks. It's been a pleasure. So we're getting to the closing of this event. And with that, we'd like to invite all friends or our guests to visit the stands of the fair to continue benefiting from the content that we've prepared for you. And if you wish, please share with us your thoughts, your experiences in the social wall that you're going to find in the platform. We want to thank the support of FAO China South South Cooperation Program, a response and recovery to the impact of COVID-19 on rural livelihoods and food systems in the countries of the community of Latin America and the Caribbean states, and the South South Cooperation. We also very much appreciate the work of FAO training and invite you to review the section on the courses available on the fair. And we also want to thank the support of FAO training for its technical support on those courses. On behalf of FAO and on behalf of the 1,000 Digital Villages Program, I thank you for your presence and your participation. See you soon.