The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
***
>> Okay. Okay. You can ‑‑ for this, I will not get the English.
>> Okay. Good morning, Africa.
>> Good afternoon. Good evening from wherever, please, you are. So in this meeting, we have a number of dignitaries from our continent, and we also have the host country, the state minister, from host country, for SES, the Internet Governance Forum, she will also be speaking to us, and for us to know the preparation and all of that. And we will hear from the rep from ECA and we have another presentation.
So after we listen to the address, then we will go into discussion. So the discussion about Africa, Internet Governance Forum and then what we can do to support the host country. So at this time, I would welcome Mr. Jim Paul to give us the welcome address and then the opening remarks.
>> JIM PAUL: Thank you very much, Mr. Moderator and Your Excellency, honorable ministers, and dear friends and partners, thank you very much for joining us in this meeting, in particular, to allow us to prepare effectively for the next round of the Internet Governance Forum, which will be held in Africa, as well as the Africa Internet Governance Forum which will be held from the 14th to the 16th of December. So in just over a week's time, and which allows us to highlight some of the key themes which we would like to, I'm sure are represented in these events.
I think obviously in the context of Africa, Internet Governance is very much around the agency of African citizens so that the Internet can truly serve the purposes of sustainable development for the citizens of our continent. Too often, we are dealing with the issues of Internet Governance by reacting to what is happening, at world or reacting to situations that are defined elsewhere.
At the same time, there is an emerging ‑‑ there is an emerging momentum around the use of the Internet and all of its provisions in sustainable development in Africa. We have seen that in the context. Response to the COVID‑19 pandemic, where a new generation of entrepreneurs is making use, for example, of the opportunities of e‑commerce, to be able to trade freely and effectively, leveraging the emerging opportunity of the African continental free trade area.
We have seen through initiatives such as at African medical supply platform which was created in the context of COVID‑19, where entrepreneurs have been using the provisions of the Internet and the opportunities of such platforms to showcase their innovations in terms of medical ‑‑ medical equipment and facilities, and putting them ‑‑ putting them online in a way which made them much more accessible for procurement teams from within the continent and even beyond.
These kind of examples are the kind of innovations that we want to really showcase in terms of Africa's ‑‑ in terms of the African Internet Governance Forum, and we also have a lot of positive examples that we can showcase when this Internet governance forum comes to Addis Ababa, in 2022. Notably some of the things that the African commission has been involved in includes the African Girls Can Code which is the first edition held with ITU and UN Women was held in December of 2020, very successfully, bringing young women and girls together in person, in Addis Ababa, to access coding capacity building, as well as young women and girls connecting from across the continent.
These are the type of initiatives that we hope to further showcase in the African context, as well as properly showcasing the opportunities that are there for young people across the continent.
We also want to make sure that this is appropriate focus on the needs in the continent that includes, in particular, capacity building but also resources that would be made available for African governments to be able to properly put in place the enabling environment to make full use of the Internet, and to build the opportunity to fully implement the African Union digital transformation strategy.
So with these few words of introduction, I would now hand back to the Secretariat to lead us through our discussions and we look forward very much to hear from the minister from Ethiopia who has kindly joined us so we can hear a bit more on the planning for the event that will be held in Addis Ababa, and my colleagues will also be sharing a bit more details around the Africa Internet Governance Forum which will be happening in just over ‑‑ just under a week from now.
Thank you all for being here pane for participating in this very important discussion, and we look forward to all of your input with a view to having real effective African agency around the regulation of the Internet but most importantly about using it for sustainable development.
Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: So thank you very much. At this moment, I will hand over to the moderator, to take over.
>> Good afternoon, everyone, and I hope those online can hear us clearly and thank you for making our time to be here. We recognize our friends and also our ‑‑ yeah. Yeah.
Dignitaries. Honorable minister, sir, the parliament. We have honorable parliamentarian here from Tanzania. Please, I need us to recognize her in as much as we recognized the honorable minister of the state ‑‑ the communication ‑‑ I mean communication, right? Okay. All right. From Ethiopia.
And director from ECA. So we are here to talk about Africa 2022, and Africa is hosting what these people have done today, or this week, that we're looking at. Are we ready? And where is our stand ag? What can we do from now until when it happens? And the anchor is the ECA. I want to say that Anya is here. Oh, Chengetai, please, you can greet us.
Hello. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you.
Okay.
So ‑‑ and you know that we in 2020, we had a tragedy and we lost one of our own very person, who would have been here to anchor this, but he's not here. They were moving on with the spirit ‑‑ his spirit is still working with us and so I would like us to just take a minute to have a minute of silence in honor and remembrance of Markan Fye, please join me.
(Moment of silence).
>> May the soul of the departs rest in peace. Amen.
So having said that, we remember him very well. So I will hand over to ECA. Let's not waste time. And oh, Anya, do you want to say something to us.
>> ANYA: Thank you, Mary for moderating and organizing this session. It a pleasure for me to be here and thank you for inviting me.
>> MARY: We will remember that the chair of the MAG is our very own. I'm not sure if she's here. I'm not sure she's here but for the meantime, can we have ‑‑ we have Chengetai, and we have Anriette, and we have Anya. Are they going to say anything?
>> Yes. Briefly from the Secretariat.
>> MARY: May I ask, are you preparing to come to Africa?
That's the big question first.
(Off microphone comment).
>> MARY: Africa, you have heard, they are ready for us. Anya.
>> We already went to Addis Ababa for the first assessment and we came back with high impressions of first of all, the city, of the ECA premises and the government's enthusiasm to host a very good IGF next year. We hope, of course, next year to have a big IGF in Ethiopia with many more colleagues in person than this is here, hopefully in safe conditions.
And one of the goals that we will try to work on next year will be, of course, in addition to preparing the IGF capacity development. I think the biggest asset of the continent are young people. You have impressive youth network, of youth IGFs, mostly youth represented through the national and regional IGFs. We would like to see a robust capacity development component done in a bottom up manner and consultative manner with young people with the African continent and also connecting them to youth from all over the world and we'll see next year. Hopefully we will work together on that.
>> MARY: Thank you very much for the reassurance that IGF is coming to Africa and it will be in Ethiopia and anchored at the ECA and for good marks ECA has gotten, we are happy about it.
So over now to Marta. Thank you, Marta. How prepared are we? Where are we? What is the status?
>> MARTIN: Thank you, Mary. First of all ‑‑ thank you, Mary, thank you, colleagues for attending this important meeting. I will say by John Paul, ECA is ready to work closely with government of Egypt, yeah and the IGF Secretariat to offer this meeting.
But I just remind you something very important, ECA was requested to have this meeting in Africa, because since this is the beginning, there is a lot of IGF organized elsewhere. IGF is a multi-stakeholder. We want to show what's happening in Africa. IGF next year in Africa is not for Africans to come and to participate. We have to be involved in the substance of this meeting. It's very important. Because we have several skills and several innovation and also at the regulatory framework, we have a sovereign model we can show to the rest of the world. We have several experience running across the continent.
For example, highlight some, last week we organized and innovation industrial investment week. We were around doctor more than 1,400 start‑ups in Africa.
We developed several applications. Also, we have several fora talking about this ‑‑ the digital infrastructure in Africa and also the critical infrastructure, the issue of regulatory in Africa.
We have a final payment system, a final payment committee, and we have several eLearning platforms. I think it is a time for Africa to be ‑‑ to be present in the digital era. Your participation is very important, and I talk about the substance. I think it's better that we will have a committee to get several together to see how Africans with participate to organize several side events to be present in the several plenary on the exhibition also to show some use case in Africa and I ‑‑ I would like to highlight this first.
The second, I think, I will be ‑‑ before I give the floor to my colleague, who is working in conference to tell you where we are at the level of preparation, would like also to discuss issue related to the next African IGF happening next week. I think we are all ready for that and we invite everybody to attend this meeting. It will be online and it will be hosted by Nigeria, and I will take this opportunity to also invite the honorable Minister of State to attend also this IGF online.
Honorable minister, you are invited to attend this African IGF online next week.
>> Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, and good morning. Good evening, wherever you are, all over the world you are following virtually this meeting.
And I would like to thank that you invite me to share what's our preparation as the next host country. So what we have been doing here is our preparation in a way which will focus on critical course of addressing Africa's issue. So this can't be realized without collaborating with such and similar for platforms. So I believe our preparation should focus on collaborating with major stakeholders in region to challenge infrastructure. So I would say IGF 2022 will be a great opportunity to Africa, but this requires to engage relevant stakeholders in Africa, like this platforms.
As you are all aware, the issue of infrastructure and power will remain a challenge for our continent, Africa, together with the help of African nations and we should be able to mobilize international support and raise awareness on the main issues of connectivity, and power.
And also we need to work together to design the agenda on oldest and new challenge, which are facing at this time. So the Ethiopian government has a need to access and work with organizers of this session and others to raise awareness and supports on it. So connectivity and the last mile access to connection including the most remote areas, accommodating this living in rural and unconnected areas, which are not feasible for business perspective, to support digital transformations.
To also mobilize support to power, especially investment access. Last mile connection, diversifying energy sources, and great solutions must be addressed in collective voice. So therefore, I would like to give you this opportunity to call upon all the stakeholders to work with the Ethiopian government to use IGF 2022 as an opportunity to address the pressing issue of the continent.
I would like to assure you that we will create a platform that will enable your engagement out of preparation, and I'm sure will have a truly African IGF by the next year and once again, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the organizers and welcoming you all to Ethiopia. Thank you so much.
(Applause)
>> MARY: Thank you, the honorable minister. And thank you for reassuring us. And I want to reemphasize the collaborative local operation that you have already mentioned. So we're looking forward to that.
And so we have heard that the host country is also preparing. So we go back to ECA.
ECA, please can you ‑‑ can you tell us more of what you are ‑‑
>> My colleague will talk about the level of preparation of ECA.
>> MARY: All right.
>> Okay. Hello, everyone, it's a pleasure to be here and to have firsthand experience on how the IGF done and I'm happy to say, along with my colleagues Anya and Chengetai that we are more than ready to host this conference. We have various plenary rooms. We have two huge halls that could be connected electronically and that could accommodate up to 1300 participants. Of course, it's all dependent on COVID and hoping that it will go away.
We have multifunction rooms that could be used for catering facilities. The ECA premises is quite vast, with the incorporation of the government, we could use the space to build maybe modular rooms. This needs to be discussed, of course, and so this space is really the limit: We also have various repeatable hotels in the area. When we hosted the final scene for development, we used the hotels in the vanessa continuity which are in walking distance to go to the side events. There were 300 events hosted here. So we could use those hotels in the vicinity. We need to work collaboratively with our colleagues in the government on how no organize the transportation, and how to do the logistics.
Also we have adequate space for registration or even offsite, we can organize that. So this is also under discussion. We have also ordered beautiful weather in December. So we are able to ‑‑
(Laughter)
‑‑ use our beautiful ‑‑
(Laughter)
‑‑ beautiful terraces outside areas so that you can enjoy fresh air, and we are more than excited to organize this conference. Over to you.
>> MARY: Thank you. Okay. So I know Chengetai and Anya would have, you know, downloaded to you what is required to host and this is the distinct IGF ‑‑ the one we are going to on the 17th. Most people here have attended, like ‑‑ like ‑‑ I know who he is. He's attended almost all of them. So I'm not sure there's one he has not attended. We know what is expected. We know what goes into preparing for it is not ‑‑ is not granite. It's not granite. That's what our people say. A lot of work needs to be done. A lot of support. We know we have infrastructure issues, so we need ‑‑ we need easier to connect with operators in Africa, MTM in particular, should come strongly to support us. We need the power sector. We need power, because if we don't have power, it will be a disaster.
And so there are other things ‑‑ apart from the social site, there is the technical. There is the logistics. There is the administration. There, is you know ‑‑ even volunteers. We need to raise volunteers, no less than 100 or 200 volunteers that will do a lot of logistics work, ushering work and the rest of them. So it's a huge, huge call to action. So I don't know whether we have started making such moves. Yes? You want to say something? Do you want to say something?
>> ECA, we see the need and we have the infrastructure and also at the country level you will get second operator and I think South Africa will bring a lot of innovation and infrastructure in the country. The minister can confirm. We worked closely with them.
>> MARY: That's fine. That's Gladdening to hear but we'll continue to work on it and make sure that we get it well done.
Before we go into forming a task force or forming a task force, we should be able to focus on it and see what we can do at the Africa level and I hope the heads of state in Africa, they know about this, that IGF is coming to Africa, and that their countries are also needed to support this move to bring IGF to Africa.
So is it just because it's regional ‑‑ I think it's a regional thing. It's not just Ethiopia. So we will all get our hands dirty to make sure that it happens and happens well, okay?
Thank you.
We have ‑‑ we have ‑‑ before we go to the task force and the discussions, we have a friend and support from IGF SA. That is IGF support association. Markus, are you online?
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Yell, I'm online. Can you hear me?
>> MARY: Yes, please go ahead.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Good afternoon, Excellencies, it's a great pleasure to join you at the Africa IGF and reconnect with many friends, even if it's only online. And on behalf of my colleagues on the Executive Committee, and we miss one of them, it's my pleasure to convey the greetings of IGF SA to the African IGF.
Let me say a few words about the IGF SA. It was set up in 2014, to support the IGF and also the NRIs. Over time, we shifted our focus away from the global IGF to the NRIs. We still support the IGF trust fund and IGF SA is recognized by the UN as a contributor, however, we found that our modest contributions can have more impact with the NRIs. We are happy to see the growing recognition, the growing NRIs get. They are the key component of the wider ecosystem, and the central part of the discussions leading to the IGF plus. The Secretary General's common agenda and the global compact. All of these global processes are important. Good Internet Governance begins at home and the NRIs play an important role. They can talk to their governments and locators and advocate for Internet‑friendly policies or maybe more importantly, stop well‑meant policies that could have unintended consequences with a negative impact on the Internet. We do have examples of national IGFs that play such a decisive role.
The ultimate objective as stated in the IGF mandate, to have a better Internet. An Internet that is global, open, interoperable, stable and secure, and the NRIs play a very crucial part, a crucial role to this end, that is to have a better and effective participative government of a global resource and we all look forward when the Internet governance for U. meets next year in Africa.
Only the IGF SA has its General Assembly and many of you are members of IGF SA but all of you are invited to join and maybe. It meets at 12:45 also here in Katowice and online.
And with, that I thank you and wish you an excellent meeting.
>> MARY: Thank you very much, most of us in the NRIs in Africa have benefited the support of IGF SA. So we are grateful. We want to open the floor for about ten minutes so we can finish before we form the task force. Anybody have a comment? Please.
There are people who are not following, any language issue? Somebody promised to all right.
Okay.
>> Thank you very much. I'm speaking from the Gambian IGF. I want to make a contribution as I think we are going back to the continent for the global IGF since Kenya and I think it's very important if you look at ‑‑ I think that was 2011, now about nine years. If you look at that nine years what has happened the continent is that we have engaged our young people better and through the youth IGF and a lot of them are present here today. So I think they should all stand up, please, stand up, from the African youth IGF stand up.
I think we have to attribute that if we are talking about agenda 2063 of the African Union our youth are the driving force and I will want to encourage all of them to be very active and collaborate with the Ethiopian government and UNECA so they take a lead role in this IGF and be our voice for the continent. Thank you.
>> MARY: Thank you.
>> My name is Nazar Nicholas from Tanzania, what I would really want to see on Africa global IGF in Africa is to be able to showcase the innovation of young people in Africa.
That's very key because as you know our continent is very young and I would like for UNECA and the Ethiopian government to make their channels open for the young people so they can participate fully from pre‑events all the way to the event itself. So that's fundamental for us. We have a contingent of young people in Tanzania everywhere who can showcase what the continent is doing.
Number two ‑‑ just a little.
Number two is to tap into the brains of people like Mary and others who have been in IGF for so many years and they are an asset to the organizers. That's way wanted to say.
>> MARY: I have someone who graduated from being a young person and being an ambassador for us. Maybe he wants to make an intervention.
>> Thank you for admitting that I have now the graduated.
(Laughter).
I mean, I definitely endorse the comment ‑‑ the comments about involving young people, not as a tokenistic thing, but in reality. The continent is getting younger. If we are doing it without them, then we are deceiving ourselves. We must demonstrate the multi‑stakeholder nature of the IGF. You know, civil society should not be an afterthought. So are all, you know, stakeholder groups and I trust that the process that leads to that happening is making sure that in the planning of the activities that government of Ethiopia, the ECA. The ECA is familiar with the multi‑stakeholder groups and we build up from the ground up with all of those groups.
It will be a shame if we end up last minute, now being tokenistic and looking for young people, looking for women, looking for civil society and all of that. We have all that we need to make the continent proud and use this moment to bring all of the groups together to work to 2063. It's not just theory. It's practical.
>> MARY: Thank you very much. We still have the honorable MP will speak. Do we have people online? All right. The MP.
>> Thank you very much, Madam Mary. I'm a member of government from Tanzania. The one thing that is very crucial for this IGF community to Africa is making sure that with also create that platform to ensure parliamentarians from African countries be part of the Internet Governance in Africa and it's particularly important because most of the policy, the legislative and the regulatory framework depends upon us as parliamentarians from Africa.
So I think it's very important to ensure that we create that environment, and facilitation for parliamentarians from African countries to participate fully. Thank you.
>> MARY: Thank you very much. Before you continue, our very own person Anriette is here. So we want to say thank you for coming and sparing this time and we will be calling on you. You are not tired, even if you are finished with global IGF. Africa is hosting IGF in 2022 so we need your expertise. We need your hands. We need everything to support us. Please.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUSYSEN: Thank you so much. I had another arrangement and I had to double it up. Thank you for organizing it. It's so amazing to see such a strong African presence here at the IGF. And I think we need to continue that, and just the few things I heard as I walked into the room. Again, saying that the presence of civil society is important. I think if we take all kind of struggle, conflict, or tension, out of the IGF, the IGF will lose its power. We have issues. Went deal with challenges. We have access challenges. We have who shut down the Internet and we have social and economic deprivation. We need to bring those topics to the IGF. And if the IGF becomes too neutral, too friendly, I think it will lose its impact. It's about boldly understanding and cooperation and it's also about openness and honesty and confronting our challenges.
I want to say that the key to effective participation is also nuts and bolts. It's detail. Our MP from Tanzania would have been a fantastic participant in this process, we should have had other MPs. The MPs go through the international parliamentary union and not all African MPs are necessarily part of that network. So we need to do the next steps ourselves. We can't always just wait for the secretariat or the UN do that. We need to take those steps and find out what opportunities there are at the IGF and connect them into the system.
So, yes, back to you, Mary. I do think Ethiopia will be challenging. Ethiopia is going through challenges. There's a lot of inaccurate information in the media about what happening in Ethiopia. So we need to work with that as well and try to spread information, but, yes, I think it's an important opportunity for us.
>> MARY: Thank you, Anriette. We have journalists here. We please want to change the narrative for Africa. Okay.
We have online Ghana hub, Ghana hub, are you ready? Can you speak, please? One minute.
>> Hello, my name is Edward, from Ghana Communication. Ghana Telecom. I want ask this question. How fast will our connections if the rural areas are connected? And my second question is how possible will be ‑‑ how possible will it be able to reduce the online harassment such as hacking people's beings? And my last question will be how will we know the information we get on the Internet is accurate? Thank you.
>> MARY: Thank you very much for your questions we will come back to your questions. Let's see, one minute each.
>> So briefly, I think just adding up to the question of inclusion, and echoing the young people's concerns I think it will be important, critically important for IGF to be intentional and inclusion of women and girls, because we have seen statistics. We are not doing well on gender digital divide is real. Women are not included and they make half of the people in the continent. We need to support the Ethiopian government so mobilize African women and girls to be part and parcel. Process. Thank you.
>> MARY: Thank you very much. Go back and tell your girls, tell your women, they should connect to the online.
>> Thank you.
>> My name is Rafuel. It's in those days that we say youth are leaders of tomorrow. Today, they are our leaders. Most of them even do no more than what we ‑‑ their parents do know. So I will want these gathering to encourage all governments, all countries to ensure that we have association of Internet government forums in all universities. If that is done and they are encouraged to ensure the competitions for them so that at the end of the day, they know what we do here and then the sky will be the beginning. Thank you.
>> MARY: Thank you.
>> Then me Madam Chair.
>> Good afternoon. My name is Solifanai. I would just like to speak up for a stakeholder group that I think is often underrepresented in discussions on Internet Governance and which is the disabled ‑‑ which is persons living with disabilities. I would strongly urge that we consider their involvement in the planning because they are equally affected by internet and Internet regulation. Thank you.
>> Thank you so much, Madam Chair and colleagues all connected here. My name is Keith Hu in Dari for those who have not connected before and I'm the youth representative of the IGF MAG and I support and coordinate the Africa youth. I think as all colleagues said, they echoed on the role of young people in the planning of this IGF and I think we have seen a lot of young people taking the lead, not only here in Poland but we also saw in 2019 in Germany. Think I on behalf of young people connected here and we also left back in the continent. We have the capacity to be very, very involved in the IGF 2022.
I would like to add the ECA also to open doors from the resident coordinators, at the national level to see how we can support young people at national level, and also support the NRI, the youth IGF at the national level because it's also very important. Lastly, in Niger, you recall that we started for the African parliamentarians on IGF. I think this is also a good opportunity for us to advance that. Looking at how we can plug in members of parliament, ahead of the IGF next year.
And there's the young African parliamentarians association. I think it would also be very, very helpful to reach out to them and see how we can, you know, tag along on the parliamentarians because they still play to hop on to it. Thank you so much.
>> MARY: Please, one minute.
We have less ‑‑
>> Okay. Bonjour. [ speaking French ]
>> MARY: At this meeting, someone volunteered to interpret.
>> Yes, it was me. I could have helped on that. He was just saying that we need to be more inclusive and getting language.
I will maybe take that we need to make sure that the IGF 2020 in Africa should be more participatory. We need to involve civil society in the preparation of this upcoming IGF forum but also maybe to say with my friend, the one from Senegal to include the president of Senegal who will be the next president of the African Union. I don't know if you already have some contact with him so that true him, the state African leader could participate, because we need all public, private, and civil society to be involved in Africa.
>> MARY: Thank you very much. That's good information for us. And Eric, please.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: For this African gathering for it to be more impactful, that it's organized for day zero and we get interpretation. If all plans go ahead, it will be in Addis, we can organize our own interpretation or we can ask the UN to provide it.
Already the Latin America group, for the last few years, they have a Latin America and Caribbean on day zero, the first day, and this has worked to strengthen their participation in the IGF as a whole. Let's have the African gathering and give it two hours, three hours even, and do it more substantively in 2022.
>> MARY: Is it Anya who wants to say something?
>> The idea was to summarize whatever was said in English to the French audience so that we have ‑‑ from my colleague, what he just said is very important. [ Speaking French ]
In English, it's very important that when you come to IGF, people say, yes, we are ready for it. We need volunteers. At the national level you see one or two people who end up doing the job. So we don't leave here without to that.
>> MARY: Back to ECA.
>> The first outcome is the idea of Anriette to have Africa day and I think we put our outcome and next year we can organize Africa day, ECA is ready to provide the translation for ‑‑ mar.
>> MARY: Thank you. We want to I have a task force.
>> For the task force, we have several proposals, parliamentarians, the youth and the private sector and I think we can have one nominate for each category and we can have this task force. I think we can ‑‑
>> Okay, this is the suggestion. Anriette, do you think that will work for us?
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I think it's very good and thanks very much. I think the suggestion is very good and thank you. I know we can rely on ECA support for this, and we can make it an Africa morning. It doesn't have to be the whole day, because there are also other events. So I would ‑‑ I hope that someone from ECA would be willing to be on the task force.
>> Yes.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Emmanuel, would you be on the task force. I think it's important to are for people to deliver. I'm looking at Keith because I know he's a deliverer, but I think it's a good suggestion, Mary.
>> MARY: Okay, the anchor is wisdom. This is the ‑‑ he's the brainchild of this, please let's acknowledge wisdom. Wisdom thank you very much.
So what we are doing to do is that ‑‑ we already have a platform that we are all discussing. So that's a starting point for us and we don't want to wait until September to start planning. We want to start planning from yesterday.
>> Okay, now we start from yesterday, and we'll have the first meeting during the African IGF of the committee.
>> Okay then.
>> I think now we have ECA is the task force. Went have Ethiopia.
>> MARY: Yes.
>> We are going to have the Secretariat of IGF and now we will identify the representative of civil society, parliamentary, young people, eh? We don't need to have a big ‑‑ yes, I think ‑‑ if we have a committee of seven, six number is largely enough.
>> MARY: We have the youth and our parliamentarian and she can volunteer. We already know that you do that and we have those that are working hard. But I think ECA, you need a consultant.
I just want to mention this to you. You need a consultant. So that you don't have to carry everything. Those that understand what ‑‑ how it goes, please. And if the consultant works with the Ethiopian and the task force, it works well. That's what happens in IGF. There's very few in IGF Secretariat, but they work with a consultant.
[ Speaking French ]
>> Mary, can you interpret?
>> He wants the issues to be discussed during the African IGF. He talks about access. He talks about cost and quality of service.
>> MARY: Thank you. We have the rapporteur, please, we need to share the outcomes of the ‑‑ of the meeting so that we can tell ‑‑ we can also support ECA. Is that okay? And the government of Ethiopia to see what. Okay so you round us out.
>> That's fine. We need the name. I think we ‑‑ we can have the name now for the committee. And (Off microphone comments).
>> MARY: I give us the motion for applying and you are available to serve on the task force. That's important. Thank you.
I want to thank everybody. We have two minutes. Mata, if you want to say the close thing or Anya, do you want to say something.
>> A big thank you. A lot of action points from this meeting. I want to advise as well, Mary and everyone else, Her Excellency as well, colleagues from the African Union do connect with the host country, with Poland. We also had a program committee which worked very well, maybe on the roles, how they were appointed. Same with Germany. I think both of the host countries set really some new standards for the IGF. So it's worth hearing advice from them. And thank you very much for this meeting.
>> MARY: Meta.
>> Just to say thank you to everybody and the support of ECA for this ‑‑ for the next coming IGF in Africa and I think the contribution are for all Africans starting by the government, the parliamentarian, the private sector, women, all can attend, participate to make success for this African IGF and don't forget to attend the next African IGF.
>> MARY: Please go register, AFIGF.Africa.
>> And then the next week, we will have the regional Africa meeting for WSIS in Djibouti. We have two events before the end of the year. The WSIS African review, as well as the setup of the national committee, the international committee for the IGF 2022. Thank you very much.
>> MARY: Okay thank you. Honorable minister, please connect with your colleague ministers in Africa.
Just press the ‑‑
>> Thank you. Okay.
I would like to thank all of you for giving us very constructive comments. So we really appreciate. It shows us how cooperation works and ensures us the solidarity here. So we are thankful for this. I would like to say a few words, what has been already raised. For example, the cooperation platforms are the most important thing. For African countries because we are going to use this IGF 2022 as an opportunity for African problems, just challenge and solving those problems. So we really appreciate that. So the task force is very important, but I would like to add while we are establishing the task force, we have no identify what are the major challenges when it comes to connectivity and power all over in Africa. So how are we going to come? So this will be a good opportunity to create the topic here that will be a good opportunity. So the other thing is engagement of the civic society, private sectors, public sectors are very important. Because we all are together. We all are going together. So we must participate. That's the other most important phrase that is inclusive women and girls. As we know, there's a gap. There's a divide. Digital divide. So we have to minimize this divide. So we have to make them on word on women and girls.
>> MARY: Thank you. Tell your people that didn't understand what she didn't understand. If you have session, you can leave. Our time is up. There's a session coming in here so ‑‑
>> Hello, everyone, the next session will be on data flows organized by the International Chamber of Commerce.