 Welcome to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2018 here in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where I'm very pleased to be joined this afternoon in the studio by Andrew Rugege who is the Regional Director for the ITU Regional Office for Africa. Andrew, welcome to the studio. Thank you Max, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Now I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the theme for this year's Plenipotentiary conferences is connecting the world together and I wanted to find out how's your region been making strides to get everyone connected over the last four years, let's say, you know, since the last Plenipotentiary Conference. Perhaps I'll start from the back end talking about regional initiatives because that has been our thrust. We've got five regional initiatives for Africa that were decided by WTDC and some of them were continued from the last WTDC before 2017. But these building digital economies and fostering innovation. The second one is emerging broadband networks and encouragement of those. The third one is building confidence and security in our networks. The fourth is capacity building and the fifth is in spectrum management and monitoring. Now those are very broad subjects but when you look at them they include anything that will use ICT to develop Africa. Now if you look at the very first one, building digital economies, you start from what can ICT do to make lives better? What can ICT do? When I say ICT it's telecommunications and ICT which is our main strive. How can it help to make the lives of Africans better? So you look at how can you use ICT in agriculture? How can they use ICT in health? How can you use it in education? And particularly in this cycle of regional initiatives we've been working with other organizations. We seek partners in making ICT work better because we can't do it alone. Now for example, just a few examples, we are working with WTRAW in a project under regional initiative 1 which we are calling digital health for Africa. And what this seeks to do is helping countries build their health systems around digital platforms. There are many many little platforms in every country and they all deal with health but there is no unified platform. So we are looking at educating leaders, creating digital health leaders, we are looking about integrating their systems and so on and so forth. But secondly, we are also looking at how do we develop a generation of kids that understand ICT? How do we bridge that divide? And we started with the gender digital divide and we developed a project with UN women called African Girls Can Quote. And what that is, it's a project that has three objectives. One, teaching young girls at a very young age how to code so they grow up in that culture. Secondly, it is building awareness among countries, ministries of education, ministries of ICT to build ICTs and to build coding into the curricula of schools at a very young age. And thirdly, it is to create a platform where the ones that have built these skills can go. One, continue to engage with their mentors, two, find jobs or find entrepreneurship. So that, we launched that last August I think and we had a bootcamp for these young girls, 17 to 20, for two weeks. You cannot imagine what the result was. Girls who came in not knowing anything about ICT, about computers went back with skills that can do gaming, through coding, that can design things, design nice dresses that you could put on a New York artwork. So it's things like that, that on the one hand you are bridging that divide, but on the other you are giving these young people a livelihood and giving them an opportunity to know that they can choose ICT as a career path. Which will be a very strong one I'm sure in the future as it is now, but it could only grow more. And I just wanted to ask you, in terms of the future, what are ITU's plans for the next coming years for your region? The plans, of course we've got operational plans, but we also have got strategic plans that have been cited, for example, during PPE, during WTDC, but all these revolve again on how does Africa develop and how does ICT become a tool to accelerate? How do they meet these SDGs? You know, apart from SDG-9, ICT is really not, does not really feature, it's not an SDG by itself, but it is that enabler, it is that accelerator that will help us meet the sustainable development goals. So in the next four years we are looking to assist countries meet these sustainable development goals. Along with that, it means we are addressing education, we are addressing water, we are addressing agriculture, and we are addressing employment and particularly entrepreneurship. So that's going to be my focus. My second focus is engaging other sister organizations in the in the UN system. You have to take advantage of every facility that you can get, because in Africa there are very few opportunities with the developed private sector that would be able to contribute. So we have to encourage them along, and so I'm continuing to engage with other heads of agencies in the UN system to be able to come together, synergize, and then use ICTs to achieve their goals, but mine as well. That's wonderful. Now finally, do you have a message for participants here at the Planetary Potential Conference and also to our wider audience as well? Yes, I do. Number one, I would like to congratulate everybody. This has been a wonderful exercise. It's not easy to go three weeks with all the fatigue, with all the work, so I would like to congratulate them. To the Africans, I would like to say this is your organization. I'm looking to work with you. I'm looking for your guidance. I will bring your expertise. This is what ITU does. So we are partners. Let's become stronger partners in meeting your needs. And thirdly, to the wider audience, Africa is open for business, especially in this area of ICTs. We are looking for investors. We are looking for partners and we are giving you a platform to meet, to find the needs. You have the supply, so come and see where you can invest your money. Fine words. Well, we look forward to seeing you in the studio in the next few years, and thank you very much indeed for coming in today. Thank you, Max. It's always a pleasure. Thank you very much.