 Welcome to ITU Telecom World 2018 here in Durban, South Africa, where I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Fatima Hursi-Mahamed, who is principal secretary for the State Department for Broadcasting and Telecommunications for the Ministry of Information and Communications and Technology for Kenya. Principal secretary, welcome to the studio. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Now, I'd like to start off by asking you about smart digital development. It's the key catchphrase here at ITU Telecom World this year. What is smart digital development mean to Kenya? Well, smart digital telecommunications or communications and development for Kenya is basically in all aspects of life in Kenya. Kenya, the mainstay of Kenya is agriculture. So we have smart technology in agriculture, helping the farmers, health. The government has Jubilee government, which is the government now in place, has four key areas. We call it the big four agenda. And basically that is in agriculture, in health care, affordable health care, affordable housing and poverty eradication. So with in all these four areas, smart technology, smart development is going to be used to help the country achieve its goals of the big four agenda. And what single digital innovation, innovative technology, product strategy or policy do you think it would be the most transformative? Well, in Kenya, we've had quite a few digital technologies. For instance, the M-Pesa, which is mobile money transfers. And that has really changed the whole country. We are a population of about 45 million. And I think 44 million Kenyans are connected via mobile. And a lot of the people in the rural areas are able to transact money. They're able to make savings. They have products such as M-Shwari, where you can save money and then use it to take a loan from the mobile telephone company. We use it for paying our utilities. You can pay your water. You can pay your cable TV connections. You can pay for a lot of things. So it's in connection with banks, which quite a few banks are on board. People are able to make payments. People are able to transfer money. People are able to save. So M-Pesa for us, it has been a big, big, big digital transformation for the country. Absolutely. It's all over. Helping people everywhere. So in terms of key priorities, what are the key priorities for Kenya's government in developing the digital economy? Well, the key priorities for Kenya are things like, as I said, the big four agenda. The government, the telecom industry is liberalized. And Kenya's primary, you know, we have the digital literacy program, where children in primary schools have been given tablets. And their teachers are given a laptop. And then they have servers, they have, you know, projectors, and the classroom becomes a learning experience for the children. This has helped the, you know, school attendance has increased. The children are very, you know, being prepared for the 21st century. And everybody, the family, everybody is excited about learning new things online. And the government, and it's the various, you know, education, like the Kenya, you know, it's school for the curriculum development department has developed curricula for the schools in math, in English, in science, and Kiswahili, which is the national language. So the children are able to learn and the parents are learning from the children and the teachers are also more excited to teach in class because everything is exciting, you know, Internet and ICT is exciting. Yeah. Now you haven't come alone to this exhibition, to this forum and to the conference. You brought a number of SMEs with you. I wanted to ask you what can be done, do you think, to further stimulate digital entrepreneurship and which sectors are currently having the greatest impact and also just about bringing these SMEs with you? What do you think they're going to get, benefit they're going to get from being here? I think the first, obviously, benefit is exposure, being able to talk about their, you know, their innovations to more than just Kenyans. This is a global stage. And I think other countries can learn from Kenya and we can learn from others. So for them, the SMEs, it's the exposure they're getting, the networking opportunities they're getting, being able to go to other stands and see what other people are doing. And with that knowledge, they can go back to Kenya and probably even get more, you know, share with their colleagues and also be able to come up with even more innovative products and services for the people. So I think it's important for us to give that exposure to them. And for us, obviously, we also come to ITU, telecom, to network, to learn, to share. So I think it's a good thing to do. Stimulating entrepreneurship in Kenya itself? For instance, in Kenya, we have an internship program and we're trying to connect the young people straight out of university to give them opportunities in companies. So we have a presidential internship program where young people in IT and are being connected to the workplace and they're able to learn on the job. We also have a program called Ajira Program, which has just started and what they're doing is that they're getting the graduates now or even while they're still in university to get online jobs. So we're already preparing them for the workplace by giving them and they're already earning money from online jobs. And so the government is already making contacts with global companies, with local companies, to give jobs, back-end jobs, IT jobs to these young people and they are making money. So we're already preparing them for the work in the future and to be entrepreneurs themselves. Yeah. And finally, you're here at ITU Telecom World. What's the value of attending events such as this? You touched upon it briefly, but just what's the value of being here I think the main thing is to learn, is to network, is to be able to meet other countries and other people from different parts of the world, learn about what they're doing, sharing what you're doing back home and improving, constantly improving, because you see people who are better than you. You probably see people who are not as advanced as you, but you're able to help those ones that are not as advanced because they are learning from us as well and we're learning from others. So I think it's a good opportunity to network, to meet, to know each other. That human contact is important. Fatima Hirsi, Mohamed, thank you very much indeed for being with us. Thank you so much for having me and have a wonderful rest of the time. Thank you.