 Let me welcome the eminent panel to the discussion that we are about to have, which is of course on whether digital innovation can work in sub-Saharan Africa and we have some experts to talk to us about this. The people I want to welcome is firstly Lito Arlege, the executive director of the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats and I'm not exaggerating if I say that he is really the main stay or one of the most important leaders of liberalism in Asia so we're very happy to have you here with us at the opening of this event. We have Gilbert Weidrao-Gol, the president of the Africa Liberal Network since officially since 2019 but in reality already since 2018. From Burkina Faso, a former minister, a candidate for the presidency and one of the great promoters of liberalism in Africa. I'm very honored to have the president of Liberal International with us, Hakeem-Mail Haite, who is the first president of Liberal International, the World Federation of Liberal Parties and who comes from the Middle Eastern North African region. In fact also the first African president of Liberal International so it's a big honor to have you on board. And then our main speaker for today, one of one of my great political heroes of this time in international liberalism is Minister Audrey Tan from Taiwan. Audrey Tan is the, how shall I put it, one of the great heroes of digitalization in the world, in a liberal fashion, a promoter of freedom and one of the great persons behind the very successful way that Taiwan has mastered the COVID-19 crisis which I think is an example to all of us and I think it is one of the enduring scandals of our time that Taiwan is still not accepted to participate in the World Health Organization whereas it gives such a fantastic example to the whole world in this crisis and in previous crises as well. I'm delighted to have you on board for this discussion as well. Now for the opening remarks, I will first gladly go to Eugébert Wédraux in Burkina Faso. Eugébert, the screen is yours. Thanks Jules. Dear friends, I am pleased and honored to attend this meeting to charge an important topic. I would like to first thank Minister Audrey Tan for accepting the Africa Liberal Network's invitation to chair his time and expertise. Congratulations to Taiwan's President Che Ngwen and her government for their second term in the election. This was not only a proof of Taiwan's efficient effective democracy but also evidence that the 23 million Taiwanese approve the excellent quality of leadership. Our gratitude to the President of our Global Federation Hakima for supporting this meeting. We appreciate your community and leadership as the leader of the Liberal International. Also, thank you Jules for your continued support and collaboration as we continue to work in close partnership in the African continent. Lastly, through you, Lito, I would like to express my gratitude to Baikim, the chairperson of the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats for all the support provided in the preparation of this meeting. According to the 2018 survey of Pew Review Center, Sub-Saharan Africa has a lower level of internet use than any other geographic region. The GSM Association and Industry Organization that represent the interest of mobile network operators worldwide also reported in 2019 that mobile internet access is only at 24% in Sub-Saharan Africa. Part of the reason for this low penetration is the high cost of the internet. According to the Alliance for Affordable Internet African Consumers, paying some of the highest rates in the world for internet access as a proportion of income. Prior to access to digital technology, there are other contextual issues in the region that may impinge our own digital social innovation. Decay findings of Africa Liberal Network, ILN, and Friedrich Neumann Foundation FNF Sub-Saharan Africans and Freedom and COVID-19 Survey conducted on April, May 2020 provide a glimpse of those issues. For example, 60% of Africans do not think that all the news about the virus are true. The main objective of the African Liberal Network in this meeting is to understand the key characteristics of Taiwan's digital social innovation, particularly in relation to the country's pandemic response. How digital social innovation can be improved in Sub-Saharan Africa and what we can learn from Taiwan's innovations. And lastly, how Taiwan has used digital social innovation to improve its outstanding pandemic response. Thank you all for your attention, and I look forward to great discussions. Thanks, Jules. Thank you so much for this, President Jules-Barre-Waiter-Augot of the Africa Liberal Network, and we'll return to you later during our session. I should then, for the opening remarks from Asia, like to give the floor to Lito Aralegan, the Executive Director of the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats. And it's wonderful to have you on board here as well, and Lito in the screen is yours. Thank you, Jules. I will be reading a speech from Cald Chairperson Bikim Shao of Taiwan. It gives me great pleasure to welcome all of you to this webinar organized by ALN, Cald, LI, and the Frederick Noman Foundation. My sincere apologies that I can't join you live this time, but I am comforted by the fact that we have an amazing list of speakers who can share their valuable insights on this topic of digital social innovation. I am particularly pleased that we will be hearing today from Taiwan's Digital Minister Audrey Tang, who will be sharing the role of digital social innovation in Taiwan's response to COVID-19. While we are extremely proud of how we have been able to use new media and the latest technologies to encourage people's participation in containing this pandemic, we also have to recognize that some societies may face more constraints in putting digital social innovation into practice. Two realities are particularly pertinent, digital divide, and democratic deficit. In both developed and developing countries alike, it can be observed that the gap between those who have access to the Internet and those who do not is growing. Probably both as a cause and result of this, people also increasingly feel distant to the institutions or officials that are supposed to represent them, leading to popular disillusionment and apathy. Both of this phenomena, digital divide and democratic deficit can be considered as threats to democracy and liberty. Our efforts to constructively engage our people would come to naught unless we effectively address these issues. We hope that the discussion today can provide us guideposts on how we can make our societies more democratic, inclusive, and participatory. This, after all, can be the best societal antidote against COVID-19 and the pandemics that are yet to come. Thank you so much for your attention and may you have an engaging and productive discussion. Thank you so much for this, Lito, and many thanks to Peking Xiao for these words and the efforts that she has made. One of the first Asian liberals that I ever met, and someone that I greatly admire. We will move to our main speaker of our panel discussion, Minister Audrey Town from Taiwan. She's the first transgender minister, I think, in the world, but also the youngest minister ever in Taiwan, and that has meant a sea change in Taiwanese politics, but I think way beyond that and way beyond Asia and in the world. People are taking notes of Minister Town also because she is, in particular, because she is one of the leading advocates of transparent digital democracy, one of the issues that, of course, we're all wrestling with a difficult issue. We're trying to get our head around how that works precisely. She's been active in this field by founding her own company when she was only 16 years old. I think for many of us who dream that we would be able to do that, which she's actually accomplished it, and I'm delighted, Minister Town, to give you the floor. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me here, and I remember fondly last October when I visited Addis Ababa. I was in a co-working space called Blue Space run by Dr. Ilanika Brimadine, and I met many very young entrepreneurs just as I founded my first company when I was 15 years old. Indeed, we talked about a lot of social innovations that are not necessarily digital. For example, we talked about how to brand the bubble tea in Taiwan, because in Taiwan, if you add a tapioca, whether black or white, to any tea, including rooibos, known here as the Doctor's Tea from South Africa, you instantly get some sort of bubble tea. There's no restrictions from patents or trademarks or whatever from people mixing their own bubble tea. First, what I'm trying to say is that social innovation, any new way for organizations in the civil society to contribute to the public good is essential for anything, not only counter coronavirus. So while some of the ideas that I will share today will be around the use of digital, none of it replaces the good old technologies such as SO, which is the most important technology in countering the coronavirus. And also, I also want to say that the digital amount of the using of the bandwidth in all the technology that I introduced is very, very small. You can power all the technology that we use here by just the WhatsApp or SMS or phone calls or television amount of bandwidth. None of this require the kind of live streaming bandwidth that we are now currently using. And so without further ado, I will launch to my presentation and please feel free to ask any questions in the chat or to our moderators. So such innovation that is to say people who participate from all walks of life in order to public benefit society is the cornerstone of Taiwan's response system. And there's three characteristics and I call them fast, fair and fun. And these are the main ideas that enable Taiwan to have no lockdowns. We didn't close our business and schools. And next week, actually, we're removing the last of the restrictions like very large public gatherings and so on because it's been almost a month now with no local transmission cases and confirmed cases stay well below 500 and there's about seven deaths. And so the collective intelligence is the first and foremost of the fast, fair and fun system. Whereas many jurisdictions began countering coronavirus early this year, Taiwan started from last year. Last December, when Dr. Lee Wenliang, the PRC, with the blow up posted that there are new star cases, he got inquiries and eventually punishments from his local police institutions because of the lack of the speech and press freedom. But at the same time, the Taiwan equivalent of Reddit, a online board called PTT has somebody with the name no more pipe here reposting Dr. Lee Wenliang's case whistleblowing here. And instead of facing discipline, the head of Taiwan's CDC immediately noticed this post and issued an order that says all passengers flying in from Wuhan to Taiwan need to start health inspections the very next day. There's to say the first day of 2020. And this is two things about Taiwan. First, the civil society trusts the government enough to talk about possible new SARS outbreaks in the public forum. And because many people are interested in that, it's suddenly garnered a lot of public attention. And that the government trusts the citizens enough to take it seriously and treat it as if SARS has happened again, something we have always been preparing since 2003. And because of this open civil society, according to the civics monitor, Taiwan is the most open society in the whole of Asia. We enjoy the same freedom of speech, the same freedom of assembly, the press, as other liberal democratic countries, that was the emphasis on keeping an open mind to new and novel ideas from the society. So the first innovation I'm going to share with you is a very simple technology is called a call center. Anyone in Taiwan can pick up their phone and call 1922 until any of their ideas to the Central Epidemic Command Center or the CECC. We allocate a lot of staff to the call center to ensure each and every new tips, new cases and things like that receive a full attentive listening staff, which will then feedback those ideas to the daily press conference. So for example, there was one day in April that a young boy that said they don't want to go to school because their district in the rationed mask system where all the children are entitled to receive 10 masks per two weeks, they only have pink medical mask in that district. And so the young boy doesn't want to go to school because their schoolmates may laugh at him for wearing a pink medical mask. And they tell the 1922 that and the very next day, everybody in the CECC, you're looking at our Minister of Health and Welfare here, wore pink medical mask, making sure that everybody learns that the color doesn't matter. And any colors mask that protects you is a good color, which is again a social innovation. And this kind of fast response builds trust between the government and the civil society. People are much more willing to call 1922 when they know that if they have a good idea, it will be amplified to the entire country within a couple of days on the daily, every day at 2 p.m. press conference. And we work with the journalist community. They answer all the questions from the journalists, the CECC people, which is always broadcasted. And we make sure that we get every hour, a minute from each broadcasting television companies, so that for public good, so that we get 24 minutes a day to livestream a brief public service announcement that is an extension to this Ask Me Anything press conference. So none of this requires a lot of bandwidth. This is a very simple use of existing technologies, that's television, that's telephones, but very powerful because everybody can feel that their idea, their collective intelligence informed the decision making. Another focus in social innovation is on the fairness. For example, when we ramped up the facial mask production, Taiwan only manufactured less than 2 million medical masks per day. But today, we manufacture more than 20 million medical masks a day. So we make sure that everybody can use their national health insurance card to purchase masks from nearby pharmacies. And fairness is the guiding principle. And what we do is that we publish the stock level, the availability of masks of all the pharmacies. And we publish it every 30 seconds. This is unlike a paper-based bureaucracy where if you publish some numbers to your website, you have to get a person to review it. And so you publish maybe every week at the fastest if it's high priority at the end of the business day. However, we use the idea of trusting citizens with open data and publish the stock level of all the pharmacies availability of adult and children's masks every 30 seconds as soon as you make a purchase. You can see the stock level of the pharmacy where you made that purchase actually go down by nine if you're an adult 10, if you're a child within a couple of minutes. And everybody, even if they have very limited bandwidth, can use chatbots to access these tools or people who are with blindness, they cannot see them up. There's also voice assistants. You can have the Google assistant or the Siri assistant to get you the numbers. And you can also subscribe it in various kinds of ways. And because of that, the Gazero community, one of the most active civic technology communities, they see themselves not only as civic technologies, but actually civil engineers, because taken together, these more than 100 tools have the vast majority of Taiwanese people as the people who use it. And so because of this, we ensure everybody can get the same inclusive access to the information about essential supplies and talk to the nearest pharmacy that still have those essential supplies. And so this ensure and also because we have a single payer national health insurance system, which covers more than 99.9% of population, people who show any symptom will then be willing to take a medical mask, go to a local clinic, knowing that they would get treated fairly and without incurring any financial burden. And this also enable creative people to make dashboards. The less people see that where is our supply increasing. For example, when we moved from three masks a week to nine masks per two weeks, you can see an increase on the dashboard. And it also shows that where is an oversupply or undersupply. And so this whole system is co-created with pharmacists who use very simple technologies such as forms like Google forms, online survey forms, or chatbots over WhatsApp like systems to tell what they see that needs improving in this allocation of resource system. So based on the analysis, for example, we see that the people who have collected masks in the first month was mostly is about 70% of people, but mostly it excludes people who work in municipalities who are young who don't live with their family. And so they go off work very late and they cannot go to any pharmacy because of them has closed by that time. And because of that, we work then with convenience stores which open 24 hours a day. So you can see our Prime Minister smiling very happily here. And so we ensure fairness of all kinds. Firstly, we are inclusive of people with like very need to make a very long trip to pharmacies. We also allocate their local health centers and so on to host those masks. And later on, based on evidence, we then work with alternative pre-ordering systems. So now you can take your NHI card and go to any convenience store, more than 12,000 in Taiwan and pre-order the mask. And so we ensure fairness of all kinds. And finally, I would like to say that this is a stressful time and people feel anxious. There's a lot of panic buying, a lot of conspiracy theories which can be more damaging. The infodemic can be more damaging than the pandemic. In Taiwan, our counter disinformation strategy is not based on takedowns or lockdowns. It's based on the very important idea which I show here. It's called humor over rumor. So when there is panic buying of tissue papers, there's usually a sense of urgency, a sense of outrage, even a social injustice that people will just share this viral conspiracy theory without bothering to check whether it's true or not to their WhatsApp group, to their Facebook friends and so on. So how do we without resorting to takedowns or lockdowns, how do we make the clarifications spread faster than rumors? Well, we use humor. So when there was a panic buying of tissue papers, there was a rumor that says, oh, because we're ramping up the medical mass production, it's the same material as tissue papers. We will soon run out of tissue papers. And so people go panic buy. But within two hours, we have a memetic payload, a simple picture that people can share in social media very clearly from our prime minister, from our premier, who you see him smiling a couple of slides ago. Now he is showing his botox and wiggling it a little bit and say a very large print. We only have one pair of botox each, meaning that we don't have, there's no point in panic buying tissue papers. And then there's a table here that shows that the tissue paper are made out of materials that are paper from South America. But the medical papers are actually plastic products that came from Taiwan domestic material. And so even though we're ramping up the production of one, it doesn't hurt the production of the other. And this went absolutely viral. And we can see people who have been exposed to this fun meme, they will no longer share the conspiracy theory when they later see them. They get inoculated against this virus of the mind. And this is not just a single short point. This is this whole methodology of the CECC daily press conference gets translated by the Minister of Health and Welfare, Spokes Dog, or DOGA CEO. This is taken after this very popular internet meme, the DOGA meme. So for example, when you're indoor, you need to keep three DOGA away from each other. That's physical distancing. If you're outdoors, you need to keep two DOGA away from each other. And it reminds you to cover your mouth and nose while sneezing, not to do what the DOGA is doing. And you need to have good hand sanitation habits instead of putting your limb real well, your hand to your mouth. And so the medical mask become then a symbol of reminding each other to protect themselves by reminding not to touch your face and wash your hands thoroughly before touching your face. And this is a much easier sell than respecting others or other altruistic incentives. This is primarily caring for oneself and reminding other people to caring for themselves. And that's how we make sure the Taiwanese people feel calm and collected even during the pandemic. So this is the brief outline. I understand we are at time, but please feel free to ask questions and read more if Taiwan can help us. Thank you for listening. That's the end of my slides. Thank you so much, Minister Tan. This was, I think, a wonderful presentation. And you certainly brought home points that are of use and of importance, I think, to all of us. So many thanks for that. And I would swiftly move to Morocco, to Hakeem El Haite, the president of Liberal International, an important member of the movement populaire in Morocco, and someone who has been dealing with such issues also for a long time and who's taken a great interest, I know, in a fight against COVID-19. So I'm delighted to give you the floor. Hakeem El Haite, president of Liberal International. Thank you, dear colleagues. Thank you very much. I'm very happy to participate today to this webinar. Happy to meet with our president of ILN and very, very nice hearing, Minister Tang. Minister, it's with a great, great pleasure and interest that I listened to you. This is an amazing success story which deserves to be shared with the world. I think that COVID-19 should teach the world humility. You know, my mother used to tell me that small streams make the big rivers. And while you were dealing very fast and with a very, I would say, tough decision, the COVID-19 crisis, the world was hesitating everywhere in the world. I think that the problem we faced is more in substitute towards the virus and the best practices and the distancing and the mask. You know, for example, in France, we had heard for weeks discussions about the mask and some leaders or some politicians were recommending to use the mask, other not. And it was very, very more easy to take benefits and advantage from what Taiwan was doing. And to take advantage also from what you've listened to, you have taken from the crisis in 2003. So really, I would like to congratulate you. And it's making me say why it's why liberal international was a big defender of the participation and the seat of Taiwan within the WHO. You know that with the liberal international, we believe that the health of any country is of a value for all. And we also are fighting against any political machinations which can deprive any member or any human being from his right in health. And it's why together with Alde Party, together with FNF, we have urged WHO to take into consideration your request to become member of WHO because the experience of Taiwan in country COVID-19 is unique. And the countries who had the same performance are very rare around the world. Only four or five countries, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong. And I heard the Prime Minister from Zealand and also from Israel saying that they would take advantage from your experience and apply the same strategy to contain the COVID-19 crisis. So, Minister, it's really helpful for the world that we share your experience. And I'm really, really amazed by your strategy, the fast, fair and fun. And I'm very curious to know more. I know that you did not have any lockdown in Taiwan. And this is amazing because now the world is facing a second crisis which is the economic crisis. We have to deal and to manage the health crisis while we have to relaunch our economy. And this is just a mess because to relaunch the economy is more complicated than we can imagine. We have to coordinate all the transportations. We have to coordinate the opening of the borders. We have to put fun and fund the enterprises and the budget of the state are just over busy, I will say. So, I'm very curious to know. So, you have had a very, very fast reaction because you will prepare and you decide not to have the lockdown. Is the end, I will say, using digitization to give all the tools to the population? Is there any risk for the privacy of the citizens of Taiwan? Taiwan is promoting itself as a democracy. And you know that our fight is to respect the privacy of the citizens all over the world. Is there any risk using digitization? My second question is more broader and it is related to Africa. You know that Liberation International has called the mobile industry to develop mobiles in Africa because we think that we can democratize many, many issues fighting against poverty, democratize education, and also democratize the early warning system to face climate change disasters. So, this is also one pillar of our fight and we are in partnership together. We may work on such issues. What can Taiwan do to make things easier for the Africans where the rate of connections is low? How can you help and do you think that we can easily introduce such tools when people are not used to? How can we behave and do in Africa to make things happen quickly? And my other question, so we were tracking using digitization. I have always a problem with this word. What is about testing? Because what we heard about South Korea is that they were making masks and the mask was obligatory. Then they were testing massively and tracking the infections. What is about Taiwan? Did you use the testing also to track the infections and the contaminations? Lastly, what can you advise all our countries to do to maintain the trust of the citizens because with this wave of misinformation and it's why in liberal international we have created this weekly newsletter and this program of webinar because people are lost and we wanted to update our members about the credible practices and the credible news. So, how can we maintain the trust in this wave of misinformation? I can tell you that in Morocco, my country, the trust in our king and in the government has incredibly increased during these prizes but this is not the same worldwide. We are seeing that people are losing trust because they are lost. What did you do and what can you advise? So, this is very quickly what I wanted to tell you. I'm very, very impressed by your humor over rumor. This is nice and I think that it can keep the people aware about what is happening and following the recommendation of the government. Thank you, Mr. Tang. It was really interesting to listen to you. Thank you. Thank you. These are all great questions and each can have a seminar to respond to them and so I will just give very brief, very short answers and maybe we can expand a little bit further with feedback from Facebook. I know that there are some questions from Facebook too. So, first question which is more about the idea of privacy, let me say very clearly that we have not declared an emergency situation. So, every single thing, because we're a continental law system, every single administrative measure that we do must be constitutional, pre-approved by the legislation, accountable to the public hearings and also adhering to our Personal Data Protection Act. The result of this is that we do not collect new data for countering the coronavirus. There is no app or Bluetooth application rolled out in Taiwan. As a rule, we rely on traditional way of contact tracing of interviews by medical officers to the people. So, we have a very strict border quarantine system where everybody who returned to Taiwan, if you're a Taiwanese citizen, they have to visit this quarantine hotel for 14 days. But if you are a Taiwanese citizen with plenty of room in your apartment or house, you can choose not to go to the quarantine hotel and stay in your house for 14 days provided that you do not live with like elders or other vulnerable populations. But then your phone, which basically already have their phone signal monitored by your telecom provider, you need to provide your phone number. And when the telecom provider detects that your phone moves out of your home and they don't know the GPS, they don't know which room you are in, they know a very rough like 15 meters radius idea of where your phone is. But if you break out of that digital fence within the 14 days of quarantine, it sends a SMS to the local household manager or the local police. So, it doesn't have to be a smartphone. This is not even digitalization in the traditional sense. This is just a telecom agreeing with the people going into the quarantine, a contract that says if you keep in your home for 14 days, we thank you. We pay you a stipend of about $33 a day for your effort. But if you break out of the quarantine, you need to pay us a thousand times that as a fine. And that is really very privacy hurting, right? You don't have the freedom to move in your home quarantine period. But that is ruled constitutional because first you have a choice. You can go to a quarantine hotel if you want. And also, that's the constitutional cause says that this is better than the alternative which is get everybody in a sense of uncertainty in their personal freedom so that we have to do lockdown which infringes even more freedom of movement. In this case, the 14 days has a clear termination point. It doesn't collect new data. It merely notify the household managers if you break out of the digital fence. So, that is a narrow harm to privacy in exchange to a greater public good and is seen as proportional by the constitutional court right after the SARS outbreak in 2003. And because of that, we do not have to do massive testing as they see in Korea because we never entered the face of community spread because of the strict border quarantine and control. Indeed, the mask map that you see in my map, it's actually, I think more people use that idea in South Korea than Taiwan because starting next week, we have so many mass produce. It's resuming in addition to rationing normal commercial buying and selling now. We're giving a lot to our international friends in need. People who will do not collect their nation ration mask can dedicate those portions and already more than 600,000 people dedicated more than 4 million medical masks to the international humanitarian aid community and it's only increasing. And so because of this, we do not have the mass testing. But you can, of course, get a RT-PCR testing and pay for it yourself. But we do not have to do that because of the success in quarantining and contact tracing. And the other thing is about trust. So, I think this is very telling that our Vice President, Dr. Chen Jianren, recorded a video and you can see in the Taiwan Can Help us website that I just shared with you in the last slide. Well, I think it is better to show the visual if you can help sharing my screen for a little bit. This is a website called Taiwan Can Help That Us. And what this says is that who can help? Taiwan can help in time of isolation which is solidarity, the timeline and then the crash course from Vice President Chen Jianren because he is also the authority on epidemiology. He literally wrote the textbook on epidemiology. And so you hear Dr. Chen Jianren explaining important ideas like the R-Nord, the 20% of curve, how to flatten and beat the curve, what the international people are doing and things like that. And so this makes this a co-learning experience for the entirety of the social sector so that everybody becomes kind of an amateur epidemiologist after viewing this crash course or participating in one of the interactive games like What Happens Next by Nikkie Case in this case and using simple comics which is also translated into Taiwanese Mandarin. Everybody can try the various different lockdown methodologies, different trace technologies, the use of masks and things like that. And everybody can see exactly this scientific why of such measures. So instead of saying... Is it written in English? The methodology, is it in English? Yes, it's all in English. So we can share this with our members. Yes, please do. And these are the two websites that I just showed you. Yeah, thank you. And please share it with your members. So my point here is that it's not about the citizen trusting the government. This is about the government trusting the citizens to provide a scientific account working with YouTubers and professional comedians to make sure that everybody can understand what's happening, what's going on. And so that was that. And so finally, I think the mobile access is essential, but it doesn't have to be like 5G. A lot of the essential technology that I outlined here can work very well with even just a phone-based network or 3G-based network. Even though we have now voice over LTE, we make sure that even the most remote places in Taiwan, they can still access to the essential services, digital services like the mask map and so on, using very low bandwidth or even just regular landlines. Or nowadays, we're looking into using even automated tele-machines as they ask for accessing the government services. So we make sure that this technology is good if you have extra bandwidth and pervasive mobile access. But I think pervasive mobile devices is even more important because then you can go to the areas with good reception or with a good broadband and download most of the things into your mobile device and you can do a lot of on-device computing. So in Taiwan, we always prefer this kind of autonomous computing technologies that doesn't rely on the public cloud, but rather use open source technology. You can build your intranet in your school, in your community very easily. And this is even we have broadband as human rights. We support this kind of local based private cloud technology because of the autonomy it gives to the local community. So if you're interested in that sort of privacy enhancing technology, here's a few that we personally use like Sandstorm, like GCMeet that we don't have the time to go into detail. But I think if you're interested in rolling any of this out, we're very happy to provide not only technical support but also best practices how to merge this with everyday citizens access and as well as with the public service and how it works. This is a great thing. Thank you so much. We have quite a few questions that have come in online. Maybe if you would take three of them at the same time because we're also moving quite fast with our time. There's one question here from Robert Woodstock Brown. Many congratulations by the way on your birthday, Robert, who says that he hears that Taiwan doesn't accept to use Zoom and he asks what medium should liberal international use for its Congress in November. And he's very happy to see you again. Second question is from Minnie Salau, who is a big fan, she writes, and she says politicians like to look serious. How did you get their buying or how do you engage them in the strategy humor over rumor? I think that's an excellent question too. And then two more questions that go in a similar direction coming from Africa. 60% of Africans do not think that all the news about the virus is correct. How can they take the COVID-19 pandemic more seriously? And another question also, what advice would you give to our people who don't take this pandemic seriously? Great questions. So first of all, I'm saying that we already, actually the second link I provide called GC Meet, that's our Zoom replacement. It's open source technology. Anybody can set it up yourself without relying on cloud deployments or cloud data centers in many cities in Taiwan in the new type of city. I think many schools using a very old computer can set it up as a video conferencing hub for the entire school without relying on external traffic. And so feel free to use Meet.gc.si if you just want to try the Meet GC platform. And if you don't trust the person who set it up, you can easily set it up yourself as we did in Meet.gc.tw. So that's the Zoom response. So the buy-in is very interesting because we have a Premier that is very welcome, even though he is in his 70s now, very welcome of new ideas. And so this works best again with a visual. So I will share with you a visual. And hopefully you can see my screen. This is one of the earliest example when our Premier came to the office. There was a rumor that says, perme your hair will be subject to $1 million fine starting next week. So he wrote out this within two hours saying it's not true. And showed a photo when he was young and says, I may be bald now, but I will not punish people who look like my youth. And a fine print that says what we have done is a label and requirement for hair products taking effect on July 2021. And the Premier, as he looks now, says, however, if you perm your hair many times a week, it will not damage your pocket, but it will damage your hair. And if you keep doing this, just look at me at what will happen to you. And so you see a style here, right? He makes fun of himself. He doesn't make fun of others. So it makes it a positive humor. And you have laughed about it. So that means that you will not buy in to the conspiracy theories anymore. And so this I think is attributable to the good humor more than anything of our premier Xu Zhenchang and the humor over rumor very easily spread because all the other ministers see how much of a positive effect that it had worked for the premier Xu Zhenchang. And so everybody else just follows suit. So I think really Xu Zhenchang and the team now that the person who designed those very funny memes is our spokesperson for the administration. So we're in for more treat. So that's that's the response. And so how to take COVID-19 more seriously? Well, I think that the most important thing here is just to get into a sanitation habit. I mean, Taiwan not only have seen our COVID-19 you know, counter COVID-19 strategy a success, but also influenza and other respiratory diseases all just go way down because people see washing their hands with soap. Even very young children have a nursery rhyme that tells them to remember how to do this hand washing. And so we also share those know-how and medical supply and so on to our allies. For example, in I think Eswatini, of course, but also the Minister of Foreign Affairs just retweeted that the liaison office of South Africa also received a face mask and so on. So nowadays because we have so many people want to dedicate their medical mask to countries in need. It creates a pressure to our foreign service to find more countries in need that they can send our essential supplies and testing kits and the protective ears to. So I think we are very much welcome our you know, international friends to tell us what they need and we're very happy to help. So that's where the hashtag talent can help and also talent is helping coming from. So I think it's not just enough to say that we're taking COVID more seriously. I think it's more like we're building a new social norm where people take care of protecting their own health against pretty much all the respiratory diseases. Even after we develop a vaccine, there's no saying that whether the virus will mutate or not. So I think it's better if we just keep the physical distance at all times and wash your hands properly. Thank you. Thank you so much for that reply. We have I think two more questions which we probably have to take as the final questions of this fascinating panel discussion. One is from Rose Sakada and she says in the coming months, we expect many Africans to return to the continent as the lockdown eases or even ends in some parts of the world. And there is a fear that this might coincide with the anticipated big period in a number of African countries. What would you advise as the best way to prevent the worsening of the pandemic locally? And then one other question more on digitalisation in Africa. Of course digitalisation Africa is way behind, although it is growing extremely fast at the moment. But the prediction is I think that by 2025, almost 70% of people who have a smartphone is much lower now. Now I know in South Africa, Huawei company is already importing 2 million cheap smartphones. We've just discussed Zoom and whether or not not to use that. Of course Zoom has a server in China. Should we be happy with this offer from Huawei? So first of all, we are still negotiating with Zoom. They already promised to never send our traffic to the PRC again. But at the moment, they consider Hong Kong and Taiwan to be in the same region, which is probably not good enough for Taiwan. I guess it was good in the last century, but not good now. So we're still negotiating with them. Once they agree to set up their local survey in Taiwan and also instead of installing any software, we'll probably just use the browser as we're using now. Then maybe if they confirm to that and we can inspect the local data centres, Dataflow, that will reach a agreement. So this shows a general idea of how to negotiate with commercial entities. If you know and own the technology, the underlying technology, including the connectivity, then on the upper layer, the application layer, you can sandbox its behaviour. That's how the Sandstorm technology that I shared on the chatroom works. It treats every technology within it as malicious and only allow strictly essential connectivity and affordances to make sure that you can run any application within it without trusting its author. So the same approach of understanding the stack of technology and controlling the lower stacks while inspecting through active cyber security, penetration testing and cyber threat hunting measures, then just a zero trust container that can contain potentially malicious applications. I think that is the kind of attitude that one needs to take when you're taking any offer from any foreign entity, actually including Taiwan, don't trust us. Do your penetration testing, do your own testing because this kind of trust then is earned. It's not a blind trust face. So that is my brief answer. I believe Hakima, once you have the floor, maybe Hakima would like to speak. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Minister, I welcome your offer to support the African colleagues. And we have Gilbert together with us, with the president of the Alliance for Liberal Africans. So I would like to ask you if we can relay on you to effectively bring your help to our Africans friend. Together with Gilbert and Hans van Vallen, the president of Aldeepati, we have tried at the beginning of this crisis to lobby for support of Africa from the EU and Hans did an amazing job. And Carl Paquet, the president of FNF, did the same with the German government. I formally asking you if we can relay on you to be our ambassador in Taiwan and to discuss together with Gilbert what we can do to support our African friends. Certainly I can be your advocate. I don't know about foreign methodorship and how that works. And for people who have asked about when you reopen how to do contact tracing properly at the border so that you don't have the second wave, I'm also very happy to introduce you. Actually we held a conference of that sort between 14 different economies and also many bilaterals from epicenter to epicenter outside of the WHA assembly. And because it's all virtual, we're happy to work in your time zone as well to provide this kind of epicenter to epicenter consultations. And I think in the 14 country, mini-lateral, pre-WHA, everybody enjoyed very much in working through the Taiwan model of the Taiwanese playbook. And we're very happy to hear, we're here to help. Thank you Minister Gilbert. I'm counting on you so that we can continue the work with Minister Tang and take advantage of the Taiwanese experience and also the gift of Taiwanese masks for our African friends. Very good, that will be done. Thank you very much. I will make the follow-up with him and we try to see how we can do it. Jules, your microphone is not activated. Yeah, your microphone Jules. Jules, you don't have your microphone. That's what you get. Thank you so much for that, Hakeem, the President of Liberal International, just asked the President of the Africa Liberal Network to promote these ideas in Africa and to work with Minister Tang in Taiwan on these matters. It's also a fantastic bridge to Jules Baird, to whom I would like to pass the screen, to close our panel discussion with a short summary. I would in any case like to thank Minister Tang and I would like to thank Hakeem and Hayte for their contributions of what I think was important and hugely interesting exchange of ideas and views and very inspiring. So thank you very much. Thank you, Jules, for being an amazing moderator. Thank you. Thank you, Minister Tang. The end of our meeting. On behalf of the African Liberal Network, I would like to start by thanking everyone for their strong participation and interest on this important topic. Special thanks to Taiwan's Digital Minister, Audrey Tang, and I hope that we will keep in touch and see how we can improve our collaboration. Thanks to the Chairperson of the Council of Asian Liberals and Democratic Bikim. Thanks to you, dear President of Liberal International, Hakeem, for your work and everything you are doing for the Liberal International. And thanks to our partners of the African continent and the Regional Director of Friedrich Neumann Foundation, Sub-Saharan Regional Office, Jules. To all of you around the world who took time out of your busy personal and professional schedules to connect and follow this discussion, thank you. It has been a pleasure being with you all today. Thank you and have a great day. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you and have a good local time. Thank you. See you next time, Minister.