 Welcome to CBS 2018 in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic. I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Dr Cosmos Zava Zava, who is the Chief of Projects and Knowledge Management for ITU. Cosmos, thank you very much, Adie, for joining us today. Thank you. Now, I'd like to start off by talking a little bit about this event, the capacity building symposium, basically. It's really important of events like this to build digital skills for the future. So perhaps you could give us your impression of that? Yeah, the capacity building symposium takes place after every two years. And the purpose is to help the international community to build the necessary skills or to bridge the skills gap against the backdrop of imaging technologies. For example, now we are confronted with big data, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence 5G, and other such technologies. So it is important to update and upgrade the skills across the globe. And we, of course, at CBS, we bring all the stakeholders from government in terms of policy, regulator authorities in terms of the regulator framework, the international community, basically academia and also the private sector, since they are the providers of the technology. And in terms of the people who are gathered here, you said there's quite a wide range of different people. What are the kind of conversations that you've been hearing here? We've been hearing that each one of us has a role to play. The private sector who generate or bring up new technologies have got a role to play when they deliver these technologies. Also, they can contribute to building capacity, particularly for those who come from the least developed countries. But we also know that in formulating public policy, government is going to take into account the various challenges that exist. For example, climate change, adaptation and mitigation in the application of information and communication technology, and also natural disasters, but also measuring the information society, using statistics for measuring the progress that each country is making towards the attainment of 2030 development goals and also, of course, establishing an information society, which is inclusive of all. But academia, because it does the laboratory, where strategies are cooked in terms of upgrading skills and making sure that from the secondary school level to tertiary education at universities, the students become an e-generation group who can use effectively technology to improve the world at large. Now, people have come here from far and wide. Why do you think they've been so attracted to come to this event? We are providing a unique and highly differentiated product. We provide a public platform which brings everybody to the table. And this dialogue is very important in order to tap into the experiences and ideas that each one of the constituencies they have. And what is important is that we are focusing on South-South cooperation, making sure that the South shares its experiences with the South, but at the same time taking also into account North-South relationships to learn from those who are a little bit more advanced and also them to learn from those who are playing catch-up. And that is very important. So the diversity of countries from small and developing states to the least developed countries, countries with economies in transition to advanced countries is quite important because you cannot provide services to nobody. There must be a market somewhere. But for you to provide that service, you have to understand the needs on the ground and to get involved through dialogue at a platform like this where we are unmasking technology and showing a human face to it. I can see the advantages for all the players here. But what about ITU itself? Why is ITU so keen and so interested in capacity building? ITU, particularly the development sector, is focused on capacity building because it contributes to the development agenda. And that is very important, participation by everybody. So inclusion is a very important element, but you can only include if someone understands where they are being included. So inclusion into the information society, facilitating people to use technology for their welfare, for their day-to-day life is an important element. So we run the World Summit on the Information Society and the dialogue is exactly about this. So capacity building is very important. We know the technologies that are emerging and we know the impact they have on people. And for us the best way to bridge the digital divide is to bridge the knowledge divide. And that way we give an opportunity for every player to contribute to socio-economic development. So for us in ITU it is a natural development and we are lucky because our membership is diverse. We have member states, governments, and we also have regulatory authorities and we have the private sector. Civil society, of course, the World Summit on the Information Society do participate, but most importantly, academia. So it is important for us to prioritise capacity building. Talking about every player contributing, you are also recognising and pre-meeting young innovators here. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about that. Absolutely. We want the world to take advantage of the demographic dividend. UN statistics indicate that the young people constitute the majority of the world. And we are lucky because then they tend to naturally be a digital generation. And the uptake is very high in terms of use of technology. And then it is easy to make sure that there is universal usage and access to information and communication technology. So we want to help startups, small and medium enterprises, and to grow the young generation into an entrepreneurial generation. So we brought four startups and we will talk to the importance of innovation. And we are going to award them for their creativity and innovative minds. And probably this will filter through to others to encourage them to be part and parcel of this new initiative that we are trying to introduce. Because we cannot continue to look at today's problems with yesterday's eyes. We have to be creative. We started this in 2016 and it worked very well. And it's something that we wanted to encourage. We've been focusing very much on how the future workforce should be prepared. And just really wanted to get your opinion on that, really. Yes. As you can see, many people are talking about the displacement of manpower. There are many shops that are closing down, or businesses, brick and mortar that are closing down. But instead of talking about this disruption as a negative, we must look at it through another pair of eyes and say that it's an opportunity. Opportunity to upgrade skills, opportunity to train people. But the kind of training must be appropriate to the needs on the ground. So new approaches to data analytics, for example, training in how we can use and mobilize Internet of Things, how we can use artificial intelligence, and also look at the legal aspects associated with these emerging technologies. This is very important. And we are committed to looking at this and making sure that it becomes natural for people to learn new skills in order for them to fit into the global matrix. Otherwise, if we don't upgrade the skills, we are going to have a lot of unemployment. And, of course, with unemployment comes depression, and with the depression comes also under development. And we don't want that to happen. So we have to prepare. And we start from here during our global ICT capacity building. ITU also has the ITU academy, where on a daily basis we are training hundreds of people. We also have what we call centers of excellence, six in each of the six regions. And we try to upgrade skills and to pop into the future and to see how best we can help people cope with the developments in terms of technology and how they can optimize the use of those digital developments. Finally, what do you hope people will be taking home from coming here and getting together with everybody else around here? First of all, we grow membership. We would like to have more members from academia to be affiliated with us because technology is a tool that can unlock a lot of dividends. And particularly now that we are implementing the sustainable development goals and the development agenda for 2030. Second, we would like all these constituencies to go back and relook at their policies and to see if they can train and retrain, learn and relearn in terms of how they can use technology to achieve their goals. So we want technology, information and communication technology to be part of the integral corporate strategy. And it has to filter from the lowest employee to the highest employee. And if we manage to do that, then we know we would have won. But we also want, of course, the regulatory authorities to assist the market by addressing the issue of inclusion. Those in rural areas, the elderly who have no knowledge or little knowledge on how they can use the technology, but also the young people in terms of protecting them through appropriate cyber security strategies. So our idea is that when everybody lives, they live with excess luggage in terms of knowledge, and when they go, they deliver also these skills and knowledge particularly to their senior management and also to their colleagues. And so that when they are formulating policy in terms of government, they take the ICT component and integrate it into the national policies and also the regulatory authority in terms of their regulatory framework. And that we can look back and say we have made an impact. Well, you certainly made an impact here today. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you for having me.