The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF 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.
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…free of services. Very critically, the strategy looks at coherence of policy frameworks. While also assessing what are the infrastructure needs, which will power the continent's transformation. The development of continental frameworks such as the continental data policy framework, the interoperability framework for digital identification and the continued continental strategy for artificial intelligence, also all progressed in 2022.
However, the digital divide is significant in Africa between and within regions and countries themselves. Specifically, the gender digital divide remains high. Only 34% of women use the internet compared to 45% of men.
Moreover, 15% of rural households have access to the internet in 2021, compared to 50% of urban households.
We also note the lack of affordability of digital services. And this remains a bottleneck that exacerbates the use gap irrespective of internet coverage.
Beyond mobile internet coverage, access to fast, reliable and high-bandwidth broadband to sustain businesses and productive processes across the continent remains inconsistent.
Special attention needs to be given to some of the following elements including digital ID, excuse me, cybersecurity, financial technologies, blockchain technology, the development of the cloud, smart cities, the transition to internet protocol version 6, geographical blocking, the future of e-commerce, internet governance and net neutrality and the development of nanotechnology, amongst others.
In the field of digital identity, we have been pleased to accompany the efforts of the federal republic of Ethiopia in implementing a comprehensive policy framework to ensure that no one is left behind.
These efforts will -- that allow better access to all citizens -- and in the era of external shocks.
We have also worked to establish a center on artificial intelligence in the Republic of Congo, a regional center of excellence and we are also setting up a similar center of excellence on cybersecurity in Togo.
Meanwhile we have also worked with the -- thank you very much. Seems to be better.
Okay, hopefully this is -- I apologize, my voice is also not the best. I had to do lots of speeches at COP and my voice has not quite recovered.
So we have also established -- sorry.
Meanwhile we have worked with African in the creation on the online African trade exchange or ATEX to facilitate digital trade payments and financing under the Aegis of the African Continental Free Trade area.
So distinguished delegates and friends, going forward -- third time's a charm. Distinguished delegates, going forward, as noted by the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, two seismic shifts will shape the 21st century.
First, the climate crisis and digital transformation. A just energy transition for Africa, as well as the adoption of sustainable value chains will require a digital policy and infrastructure backbone. From agriculture to transport and energy, the appropriate deployment of digital technologies can allow African countries to improve value addition and multiply employment opportunities.
We need to use the digital tools at our disposal to deliver on the promise of our common agenda. Which proposes a summit of the future in 2023 with the technology track leading to a global digital compact.
Ladies and gentlemen and dear friends, as the world gets ready to prepare for the celebration of 20 years of WSIS and WSIS Beyond 2025 Africa needs to be ready to reflect on its performance and move forward on the basis of evidence-based policies and implementation strategies.
The continent being the least connected will also be at the heart of the proposed summit for the future.
ECA is pleased to organize this crucial and timely Africa WSIS 2022 Review with its key partners ITU and the African Union and we invite you all to actively participate and provide suggestions and recommendations that would enhance the draft report and ensure that Africa attains the meaningful connectivity which is at the forefront of the 11 WSIS action lines.
And most importantly, this connectivity, which is essential to delivering on the SDG's. This will be critical also for the attainment of the African Union agenda 2063 and we look forward to working in partnership together to achieve this. Thank you very much.
>> Thank you, Jean Paul for this remark. You highlight very well the digital divide -- and it is a platform to discuss, to see how we can -- test, test, test, the divide in order to leave no one offline by 2030. Thank you very much. Let me -- I would like also -- [ inaudible ]
[ Applause ]
>> You have an important role to play in the regulatory side. As you know, we have to face several issues on this on this regulatory environment in the continent, giving these images of what digital intelligence and internet seeing nanotechnology. Now let me give the floor to one of our key partner African Union commission, Moses who will present the commissary of sales technology and also infrastructure. Moses, you have the floor.
>> MOSES: Thank you. Mr. Jean-Paul Adams, Director AUC, madam (?) ITU Director [ inaudible ], UN Envoy on Technology, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the AU Commission, I welcome you all to this event of the Africa world summit information society digital review meeting 2022.
We are pleased to host the global internet governance in Africa. And this comes after successfully hosting the World Telecommunication Development Conference this year as well. Which shows the commitment and readiness of Africa to embrace our digital future and contribute to the debates and the development. Especially that we have seen during COVID-19 pandemic. Utilization that's demonstrated its key role to support national resilience in our countries.
Ladies and gentlemen, the WSIS brought the global community together and adopted a common set of principles and a vision of modern information society. As we take stock of the implementation of WSIS, let us note the progress and reaffirm our commitment to building on that progress to ensure that digital transformation is accelerated in Africa.
Our leaders have recognized digital transformation as a driver for social economic development and critical to the attainment of agenda 2063, aspirations and UN sustainable development goals, by adopting the digital transformation strategy for Africa in 2020, as the master plan that will guide our digital agenda up to 2030.
As part of the implementation of the digital transformation strategy for Africa, the AU Commission in collaboration with regional economic communities and regional institutions, partners have taken a number of initiatives including but not limited to the following. The continental data policy framework has been developed and adopted during the AU Summit in February 2022 and its implementation we are now embarking on its implementation the AU interoperability framework for digital ID has also been adopted by the same summit in April 2022. We have also developed the AU digital education strategy and work is ongoing to finalize development of sectorial digital strategies for agriculture and health.
A draft child online safety and empowerment policy has been developed as well and process is under way to develop a continental cybersecurity strategy, as well as reviewing the AU Commission convention on cybersecurity and personal data protection with a view to update some of the outmoded articles.
Implementation of digital infrastructure project is also ongoing through the program for infrastructure development in Africa.
Ladies and gentlemen, in conclusion, let me commend the outstanding work of all stakeholders in Africa that are working to the attainment of the WSIS outcomes and wish you a successful meeting and reiterate that the AU Commission will continue to harness with its commitments towards the implementation of the digital transformation strategy for Africa.
Africa AU Agenda 2063 and the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Thank you.
>> Thank you, Moses for highlighting all this digital framework adopted during this year and also the work done in collaboration with ECA and other partners.
Now let me give the floor to the Envoy of Technology, Secretary-General. You have the floor, and thank you for coming.
>> Merci beaucoup [speaking non-English language]. Ladies and gentlemen, it's very impressive to listen to the progress on the WSIS action lines made by the African continent. This gives us hope and it's very timely, this reflection you are having ahead of the WSIS forum in 2023.
From the perspective of the UN Secretary-General as was mentioned earlier, the digital transition and the green transition go hand in hand. And the fate of agenda 2030. The state of being on the 17th sustainable development goals would be determined largely by what happens in the continent in Africa.
What we've heard today from the regional commission and from the African Union's perspective, shows that there are good trends on connectivity, but at the same time huge urban gaps, gender gaps, and the global gap that Africa still continues to experience, not only with regard to physical connectivity but also with regard to excess and affordability data rates in some parts of Africa. Still very, very high compared with per capita incomes. We also see gaps in the area of data and digital public infrastructure.
So there are three things that I could underline today as a focus for policy makers, also in view of the distinguished presence of parliamentarians in our midst.
These are the following. First more aggressive action on bridging the connectivity gap. This would [ inaudible ]. This would require innovative partnerships, this would require innovative combination of technologies. Copper, fiber, satellite, radio and it could also require innovative public private partnerships. [ inaudible ]
We need the common rates such as digital identity universal payment mechanisms to facilitate the access of citizens at large into the digital economy.
Innovation will not accelerate. We have exciting news of the startups but we need to do much more so that will only happen when we have the digital public infrastructure that rewards the entry barriers -- . The third thing that I'd like to emphasize is getting Africa ready for the data icon, the initiatives that should be application has taken with regard to data protection with regard to interoperability and those are commendable and Member States would have to follow-up by creating their own data ecosystems which would mean investments in the human resource data scientists, machine learning specialist, which would mean opening up public sector data sets, combining them smartly with private sector data sets. It means making them available through innovators and researchers and improvise the privacy in effective ways so that data-driven and innovation can explain.
It would also mean coming to the cutting edge where data and AI meet other sciences whether it's genomics, whether it's new materials, whether it's in agriculture, so all these issues would have to be tackled at the same time.
There is no easy way into the digital economy. Those who have made it in Asia and Europe and North America have invested years of effort and the same would need to be done.
Let me close just by underlining the opportunity with the global digital compact in 2024 to bring more political attention to these issues. To bring more resources into play and essentially to bring the world together on how to approach the digital transformation in a human-centric way.
The global digital compact would be the first set of such leaders. It would cover not only the protection side addressing the decisions.
[ Inaudible ]
So my office invites all of you to contribute to the global digital compact. Provide your interests. The process is open until the end of March and these meetings themselves here at the IGF are an opportunity for us to think together, to bring in science from Africa into that important discussion. So let me close by thanking Matar and his colleagues for the excellent work you are doing in following up on the business agenda and also in helping us take forward the [ inaudible ] [audio difficulties]
A common understanding the compact Africa can reach (inaudible)
Now we are at the end of the (?) (inaudible) I would like, as a commitment but provides a statement. Thank you very much.
(Inaudible)
(No audio)
(Inaudible)after which we will create a link with the compacts. After which we will do some recommendations and conclusions. We are very open to (?)
Just to give you an introduction, let's go to the next slide.
I wish I had the remote controller. I will continue that it has been discussed in the opening session. A lot has been done in terms of infrastructure in communication infrastructure. But the gap still remains that 50% of the rural people don't have access. We have to address that gap. Again, we are saying, as a continent it's only 67% that are connected. So we need to deploy infrastructure. We need to bring women in the focus. Not just women, young girls, the youth they need to be there. Because once we do a connection, we do a lot of connection, what do we do with this technology? Capacity building needs to be done. Basically we need to move from access, accessibility, what are we using it, issues of contents and the like.
So just to put a link between SDG's and WSIS, let's go to the next slide.(Margaret)
SDG, more society intent.
(Inaudible)
Energy work in the infrastructure. We need to focus on that.
Again, which has to do with the society. Across the SDG's. What we are saying, the WSIS lines are aligned to SDG's and the continent we need to move all of them together. Let's go to the next one.
Just to show now which are the WSIS action lines and which SDG's they are interacting with.
So, for the interest of time, we will start with action line one, the role of government and stakeholders for ICT's in development. From the African union commission a lot is happening in this sector. We have the policy framework. We have the interoperability framework for digital ID, we have continental approach for artificial intelligence. As Member States what are we doing to make sure we domestic, nationalize what is happening at the continental level. The countries, a number of countries actually have started coming up with digital transmission strategies. In the case of Kenya that launched its digital transformation study.
It aligns. Other countries, I know they are doing the same. Let's continue.
Technology seems to be letting us down. I need to be moving with my slides and that is not happening. Basically I highlighted some countries. I know a lot of countries are doing a lot when it comes to this digital transmission strategy. Senegal doing quite innovative things. The case of South Africa. A lot is happening and they are aligning to the continental digital transformation strategy. Again, when we are still under action 1 we have seen quite a lot of progress when it comes to operationalization, which cuts across the continent. And currently there are 54 member Africa states. October 2022 for four of them had already deposited their instrument. And I have highlighted the countries.
Again, you can see we are doing well with regard to that in cognition across the continent.
We go to the second action line which is information and communication infrastructure. And this is where we are talking about meaningful connectivity. We are saying we are connected. There's a lot of connectivity going on across the continent. But is it meaningful. By that are you able to do basic things in the internet. It's not enough to have
2G or 3G. We probably need 4G. The next thing is agenda. We have discussed that, I'm not going to go back to it.
Then we have discussed between the gap between band. We have projects. The PIDA project that is cutting across the continent and 11 of the projects that were adopted in 2021, related to ICT. And again, a lot is happening in terms of internet exchange point. In terms of data centers. And I know at the national level there is a lot that is happening that we need to take stock of.
And just to get some statistics from ITU. Again we see where we are positioned. In terms of fixed broadband, I know we say we have moved to mobile connectivity. So that may not put too much emphasis on. But when we come to percentage of those using the internet in the last column, in 2022, only 33% of us across the continent in the internet space. And the global average is 59. You can see how much we are pushing the global average.
And in addition to that, this connectivity is the urban areas. And we know majority of our continent are in the rural areas. We are saying we all went online, with COVID, education, that's a population we really need to address.
And again I'm not going to emphasize this, I think we have discussed that, it's not just about connectivity. Let's now go to affordability.
Why are people not using. They have access, why are they not using. Is it also because of content. Is it priorities what are the issues. We need to sit down, do research to understand country by country what exactly is happening.
If we have connected up to the rural, why is usage not there? Are we trying to contextualized if we go to particular rural areas look at the socioeconomic activities and make sure we are pushing that. They have broadband but not use it. When we use it, it won't be to our benefit. We have to link it to our socioeconomic activities. There's innovation and I give the kids of Ghana, Rwanda who has done a lot in terms of connectivity. We need to emulate that as a continent and link up. Promote our start ups who are doing something in the internet space.
Then we move to the third action line you went to first, access to information and knowledge. And again, we know during COVID this was critical to access the right information. Was that happening? And when it was happening was that information accurate? Was it timely and the like? I think this action line really improved in the last two years. But we need to have again legal framework that will protect access and peoples rights. Because again you don't want a lot of civilians and the likes another area to focus on. With regard to access to this information, have we empowered our national education and data centers? Those are institutions that most countries have them as PPP. Private public partnership. With that there are institutions more neutral we can use to disseminate information to the local people. The libraries that are after the rural parts of our countries, again those are some of the avenues we need to focus on. The UN government in 2022, 54 countries are below the global Egov development index. The government being at the forefront. That means the critical information that the general citizens need is not availed to them.
This just shows, because goes now to capacity building. In terms of capacity building a lot has happened in the last one year. But have we integrated ICT, imagined technologies in our curriculums, in primary, secondary and tertiary curriculum. We need to incorporate our higher institutions of learning to be able to train and to produce students on workforce that is aligned to what is available in the market. So again, we are not doing so well when you compare to the other countries. This is in addition to basic standard and advanced. Basic is opening files, copying and editing. Standard, able to work in PowerPoint, Excel and advanced people are able to do programmings and the like. We need to look into that.
Again, targeted capacity building. We need to identify the gaps that are there. We know it is happening. We need to ensure that capacity and critical infrastructure. We have information infrastructure, sorry, -- I'm confusing myself.
That we need to ensure that we have expert teams that are dealing with incidents and responses at the national level. And then we need also to leverage. We know UNECA is doing a lot with coding camp. We know PRIDA, the project I'm working on is doing capacity building with internet governance. We have trained 1,500 young people from across stakeholder groups to be able to understand what is happening in the internet governance space and be able to train their neighbors, relatives and the like. ISOC is doing a lot of training that is useful for the continent. Building in ICT's. If you are not confident in the digital space then you are not going to use these technologies.
And with advanced use, many people getting into the digital space then we are having cyber instances that needs to be addressed. And we also note that even when we have the Malabo Convention, we know we don't have the right numbers of signatories, but countries have been aligning the national strategies to fit into what is in the Malabo Convention. It recognizes its existence. So again, that is a good step we have made. And again, a point I'm going to make many countries have set up the response teams that are working with the government, with the private sector, with the civil society to ensure first of all they are able to monitor what is happening at the national level and report. Then again, vulnerable group we must protect, the young people. According to a report global alliance 2021 reported 4% of the young people in the middle in North Africa, that 1% in central Africa and 57% in southern Africa experienced at least one online sexual harm during their childhood. So this is reporting in the past. What is happening now. During COVID, we locked our children in our houses and we were busy doing other things. What happens when we give them mobile devices, toys to play around with? Again, that's an area we really need to focus on and see what needs to be done.
Keeping children safe is becoming important for the continent and we need to work together as a continent to ensure we have the right policies. Some countries have documented initiatives, such as childhood safety initiative in Kenya. We have cyber tips to keep children safe online from Ghana. And started in 2021 and Zambia. Those are just some of the key thing that's are happening across the continent. Decision in Africa to guide policy making. African union is coming up with a child online policy, continental guide that other countries can start domesticating and seeing what they can share, what they can adapt. We know we have to contextualize these things. The global issue that's are facing us, we must come up with a common strategy we can deal with together.
Then we go to enabling environment, action line #6. The African trade exchange platform was launched in May 2022, which is a good way of creating an enabling environment from the continental level. At the national level, entrepreneurship has been promoted, most countries are doing quite a lot to promote that aspect of it. The governments again, I give the case of online services some are doing 22. From the e government report, Rwanda had 22 online services which is quite very good. What does that mean? That when it comes to dealing with citizens, sharing information with the government to government, citizen to citizen, government to private sector and the like, then you don't have -- I can't remember the last time I went to a government office because I can get all that information online. That's the kind of enabling environment we are talking about. We go to the next slide.
Number seven which is ICT applications. I don't even think I will go into the details into this because there is quite a number of ICT applications that are addressing e government, e business, e learning, e health, e employment, e environment and e agriculture and e science. Emphasizing we need laws and regulations to be able first of all to provide this information but also to protect our people, to ensure we are comfortable in that digital space. And we need to up our performance at the digital index. Again I reemphasize only four countries were able to get a higher rate of 0.6 so that's an area we need to focus on.
Let's continue. That just gives a highlight of the ten countries that did best. But again, even as we are doing best, you see we start appearing from #65. Clearly there are 65 countries that were ahead of other African countries in these e-government digital indicators. But again, as a continent, most countries went ahead, in terms of the ranking.
Let's go to the next one. There's only one country that went slightly below. That is Zimbabwe. But all the other countries, they went, an index higher, which I think is good progress.
So going to e-business, I think most of these projects were highlighted during the opening session, so I'm not going to go deep into them. One thing I want to highlight is the last one, we have integrated payment system that's have expanded in the last one year. Again, what does that mean, digital space is becoming safe in terms of online transaction. We go to the next, yes. This shows what is happening in Africa in terms of integrated payment systems. Which again gives us the confidence to be in the digital space. As you note, there's good progress.
Again, I don't want to go into the details with regard to e-health because there's a lot there. So many e-health systems that were developed, so in innovations addressing the health systems starting from addressing the ailment themselves to managing the patients across the many hospitals to ensure records are with you as you move. You don't leave them in a particular hospital. So they are quite a lot. But again, health infrastructure is concentrated in urban areas. We need to ensure we are dealing, or focused on e-health, connectivity infrastructure to promote e-health. I remember way back in --
Every village in a health center should be connected with this broadband to ensure doctors are not just left to deal with children, old people, all sort of ailments. One single doctor. I think we need to think about that and ensure we are supporting them. When it comes to e-learn a lot happened. So many innovators were able to integrate these platforms to ensure we are reaching as wide as we can. Then the question is our teachers, did we train them. Are they using e-learning or the technologies the best way possible in an optimal way? Again that's a gap we have. At the national level you will find teachers in urban areas they are more updated and equipped than teachers in rural areas and all doing national exams. That's an area we need to give more emphasis.
E-employment with the government index, it shows a lot of government offices, ministries they are announcing jobs using the e-platforms. The moment you move digital there is more inclusion. And environment that cuts across a number of SDG's. There's a lot that happened. Sorry, I'm moving fast in the interest of time. I want to give you people time to ask questions. E-agriculture a lot happened. We have UNECA with a project in Botswana. Then we go to e-science and that's where we need to set innovation -- intelligence was launched in Congo -- I think during the opening session, there is another in Togo. In terms of innovation, research, in terms *f making sure we are doing our own research to ensure climate change we are addressing it in the best way possible, all this technology dumped in our continent, what are we doing about that. We need to do a lot of research to ensure all of that is taken into account.
Then when it comes to action #6, cultural diversity, identity, linguistic diversity and local content. We are a continent of diverse culture, diverse language and the like. I think we need to take all these into account to ensure people aren't just left behind because their content is not there. They aren't able to use that. First of all we have young people who are able to do all the interpretations and ensure we have the right content in the internet. But are we doing that?
And just to highlight, the second review goals agenda 2063 goals, there was moderate progress of 45% with regards to aspiration an Africa with a strong cultural identity, common heritage, shared values and ethics. That is an area we need to focus on.
Again, we noted that UNESCO adopted legislation on Indigenous language. As Member States what are we doing at the national level to ensure we align to that.
When it comes to media, which is action line 10, a lot happened in terms of -- anybody could be a media personality. With that comes regulations and ensuring that we are doing the best possible journalism. Ethics, guidelines and the like. That's an area that has moved forward but we need to be sure we are doing the right thing. And number 10 ethical dimension of the information society. If you noted this affect all the SDG's. That again we need to ensure we are promoting ethics in the digital space. Official intelligence is an area we need to be there to ensure it's not an avenue of exclusion. Not an avenue of where what we aspire as a continent is not being progressed.
And I go to the last action line, international and regional corporation. What are we doing in terms of this. I will narrow down what we are doing at the IGF. One of the areas where we have regional corporation. As you all know, we always have national IGF, regional IGF, continental IGF. Continental IGF we bring the private sector, civil society, the media and the like. Just going by what we had this year, it was held in Malawi in July.
1,835 participants. Again, those are diverse group of people. They are the old people with different abilities which I think was good.
Again, probably good to mention during the Africa school of internet governance the focus was the open-ended Working Group. We need to discuss issues of norms, CPM's of the global safe, we are there and need to be safe. A number of things were launched, network of parliamentarian and Africa women in cybersecurity.
Good, what is the link between WSIS and digital compact? This was discussed in the opening session. At the international level, Africa is aligning to the digital compact aspiration. Use of digital technology for the realization of 2030 agenda for sustainable development and enhancing inclusive digital access for societies across the globe. The global digital compact is expected to outline shared principles for an open, free and secure digital future for all. We need to be there, we need to put forward our aspirations and what we need.
So what are some of the recommendations we are giving? That we need achievement of universal and meaningful connectivity by 2030 and legal aspects are taken care of. We aren't just moving in implementation without the legal and policy area. Attention given to digital leaders and digital skills, that is targeted capacity building. Let us contextualize the capacity we are giving. Again, collaboration, SDG's. Needs to be optimal and complimentary. Sorry, I'm rushing. Regional cooperation we need to participate on discussion to do with norms and CBM's. We need to prioritize our activities as a continent. There's a lot done by the World Bank. It's worked on 17 countries. Very elaborate projects we all need to borrow from.
In conclusion, Africa made good strides implementing the WSIS action line. We need to deal with inclusion, urban, young people in the best way possible. We need to start now domesticating the framework and leverage financial digital inclusion for those country that's have made strides in that. Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you, for this comprehensive presentation. The report will be shared within, in January. Because we are going to finalize. It is a draft. We are going to finalize the report by the end of December. And we will share with you. But we will put the report online, if you have any comment or any input, we will give you the link. As you say from this, you have seen from this presentation, a lot of progress have been made by African countries, this year implementation of the WSIS action line. But we can just highlight a few. On C1, in the policy side, a lot of things have been done by the member state. But we need to focus more on the regular side for emerging technology and to integrate the e-commerce and digital payment in our regulatory society. That's now something up in several countries. When you look at African countries only Kenya and South Africa are some provision on the e-commerce side for the development of the FinTech. The other side, only 33% access to internet. And there is a gap, digital agenda gap in the continent. We have to put more effort in the development by evolving the private sector of the telco. The capacity building, there is a lot. And also e-application. Due to COVID we have 5,000 e-applications in the continent last year. We did very good progress on that.
Access to affirmation. Need improvement. Also Mayor, have a role to play, we have several with the digital side. And in the collaboration is going well.
We can say by the end of WSIS 2025, we have a lot of progress made but we have also a long way for 2030. Thank you so much. Let me rush to give the floor to Gitanjali Sah. Because this report will be present to the WSIS 2030 before we open the session.
[ Applause ]
>> GITANJALI SAH: Thank you so much, Maktar, thank you for this invitation. It's so nice to see familiar faces all around. I hope we will get a chance to meet and attract and discuss our future plans. So Maktar, I have a presentation if it could be showcased so we can go through it really quickly.
So while they are putting up the presentation, just to give you good news that there's great collaboration between UNECA, ITU, UNESCO, the agencies implementing action lines. Maktar spoke about e-business and e-commerce. The regional offices and again very passionate leaders. I can see excellency Neema Lugangira here, thank you for following so closely, excellency. And so many stakeholders, Bazur, nice to see you also. So there's great collaboration and a spirit of partnership in the African region. And we will move very quickly. Next slide, please.
So I wanted to start by saying the partnerships and participation in the African region has been growing. Could you please move to the next slide?
Next slide. We have been working with stakeholders and trying to engage them also with the WSIS forum. [GIT (?)]
we are trying to see how we can participate through different processes like the one initiated by the UNECA but also hybrid models. Our Chairman minister of Nigeria, he has done an incredible, incredible job to be a great ambassador of the WSIS process. He initiated yearlong chairmanship of the WSIS process. We do hope this will be able to give us most at the highest level.
Parties that had participated in Geneva. Next slide, please.
So, there are several prize winners. I would like to please remind you we have coveted, I can see many of you have already won the prize while sitting in the room. Many come from Africa, South Africa, Uganda, Ghana, Rwanda, Ethiopia is also one. Prize winners and champions. These are coveted contests. The nominations are open now. Please open so we can see some prize winners coming from the region. Next slide, please.
Of course in collaboration with the UN we have started special tracks and initiatives for these developing countries. And we usually hope we can have some more collaboration on these tracks. We did some e-resilience and digital transformation workshops for developing economies. Roles of ICT digital finance and digital inclusion. We are hoping not only can we create awareness through the workshops but also strong partnerships which you can take forward. Next slide, please.
So now moving to the WSIS process timeline. Many of you are familiar with this. We started in 1998 during the ITU Plenipotentiary should be something like a WSIS which provides framework to information societies. Then we had the summit to the general assembly resolution in 2021, 2023 and 2025.
We have 11 WSIS action lines like the sustainable development goals. And our mandate was renewed in 2015. And now our mandate is to 2025, we await discussions at the regional level, at the national level, international level and NGA for the process. Next slide, please.
Like I said, since 2015, we have been aligning the WSIS action lines with the sustainable development goals to ensure that each and every action line has an impact on the SDG's. With the U.N. action line facilitators, FAO, UNESCO, WHO there's a matrix online since 2015, which shows a link between the SDG's and these. Next slide, please.
We are aligning the global processes coming up in New York, the UN SG's common agenda, and so on and so forth. Next slide, please.
Now at the ITU Plenipotentiary, Ms. Doreen Bogdan will be here from tomorrow and on wards for the region and processes. So the Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, he reiterated the importance, renewed resolution 114 on WSIS and of course our Chairman Ibrahim was Chairman. Next slide, please.
So one very important thing that the WSIS does is with 32 UN agencies we have a group called the UNGIS, United Nations group on information society. We work at the senior level. And top management level. And of course at the working level. And I'm sure Maktar you are somewhere there. To ensure it's good collaboration within the UN frameworks to implement the WSIS process. Next slide, please.
We do various kinds of joint contributions, joint statements. We do side events together. And for example, the most recent one was to the commission on the status of women. Where we have given a joint contribution to showcase how technologies are very important and instill gender inclusion, which Maktar said was so important.
These are our partners, we always need money. Next slide, please.
This is forum, 2023. Please mark these dates on your calendar, 13-17 March, 2023. We will continue the workshops in April and May. Next slide, please.
We build the agenda through an open consultative process. Phase one is done, phase II will happen in November, join from 12:00-1:00. And we hope to collect ideas from all of you to input into the agenda and program of the WSIS forum. Next slide, please.
It's a very simple way to input your ideas. Just log on to the online form, create a profile and submit your ideas, this is important, this topic is important, this format should be used. We really look forward to your ideas to be able to build the agenda in the program. Next slide, please.
Of course we will have a high level track which is open and inclusive. So it's open to civil society, private sector, technical community, governments. So technically we get ministers, head of regulative bodies, academia heads and so on and so forth. Another component is the Mayor's roundtable and with excellency and others we are looking at the parliamentary component of the forum as well. Next slide, please. Next slide.
So WSIS prizes, of course all of you like this a lot. Remember the deadline, 7th of December. And it's an online voting exercise. It's like a popularity contest. Please submit your project, have this popularity contest and we hope the best wins. Next slide, please. We have a stock taking database. If you are looking for projects it's sorted out . There are 15,000 projects now. Or if you want to popularize your projects submit them and they will appear in our repository. We have a photo contest. These are free to be used. Go to our website and use these photos. We get beautiful photos from all over the world every year and they are sorted by action lines and SDG's. Next slide, please.
These are some of the tracks stakeholders identified for the African region some may be more important for the regions like ICT's and mainstreaming, emerging technologies for sustainable development. Well-being and happiness, we initiated this during COVID. Accessibilities, older persons, this is something getting really important for countries. Cybersecurity. With UNESCO we are doing Indigenous peoples and cultures. Of course with the UN tech bank developing countries and LDC's. ICT's for clean technologies and climate change. There's a huge momentum for clean technologies. We do open that more ideas come through this. Digital citizenship and public services. A new track we have added this year. Next slide, please. And many, many more things that we will be working on. Especially important things like digital marketing of harmful products to children. We will be creating awareness of this with WHO, UNESCO and ITU. Next slide, please.
Those of you who are not aware of this, our hack-a-thon is ongoing right now. We are doing it this year with Saudi Arabia, please apply, there's no age limit. Those of you interested in policy and coding and leadership, please apply for the hack-a-thon. There's a very good prize of $5,000. So we are partnering with Saudi and they have been very kind. We do hope that we get some excellent projects out of this. Excellent prototypes which we can use. Next slide, please.
WSIS and SDG talks. Many of you have been attending these. We are aligning with the UN days. And these are all virtual, please feel free to join them whenever possible. Next slide, please. Next slide.
So I will quicken up because Maktar is giving me the hint. We have women in technology repository. We do many trainings out here. Many speaking opportunities and capacity building workshops. Please sign up. Next slide, please.
Agenda trend setters, next slide, please.
Initiatives on ICT's and older persons. Next slide.
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Youth campaigners. Next slide.
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Okay. So I think you will talk about the review later also, Maktar so I will leave this and I would like to thank all of you for your attention and hopefully we can work together for the next edition of the WSIS forum. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much for this presentation. I think WSIS 2023 is very important now for the world. Because we are preparing the WSIS 2030.
We decide to expend the task force for IGF to activity on WSIS forum and also to preparation of the digital global compact. Now as the chair of the task force, Mr. (?) you can meet with him to see how -- in the next process of the WSIS.
Now we are running out of time. I want to open the floor for ten minutes to get questions from you on WSIS or open consultation forum. If you have any questions or any clarifications about this WSIS implementation presented by Yamura (?) and the WSIS presentation presented by Gitanjali. Yes?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, Maktar and colleague Gitanjali. How do we access those presentations?
>> MODERATOR: How would we? We can share all the presentations, huh.
>> AUDIENCE: The last one is, I think there's a lot of, I think need to connect everyone. Connectivity and access are very important. And I think we need to look at all the stakeholders. Because if we look at the current -- we are leaving connectivity to the sales providers, we have many stakeholders, municipalities, development agencies, I think they must be brought on board, where ever we live. I think we need to look at how can we achieve that goal connecting everyone. We cannot leave that agenda only to the service providers. Because at times the funding also plays a part. Because they borrow money from whatever institutions, from the banks and they want mostly, they want to go with quick returns. Also need to look at, how is funding being channeled to connectivity and access. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: [speaking non-English language]
>> Sorry, I hope I'm not too close. Thank you very much. My name is Catherine Adair, Director of research at the web foundation, though I'm leaving my job in two days. I was very impressed right from the panel session, to all this and there's so much that I unpacked and I said I wish we had even more opportunity to unpack to look at more areas, but maybe I will just pick one. Looking at the fact I was involved from WSIS from the very beginning and disappeared somehow and it's now 20 years later. Even in talking about the various progress that's been made by the Africa nations like implementation of agenda 2063 flagship project. When they talk about digital economy and digital transformation, so much in terms of signed documents, as a Director of research globally I see this, but there's little challenge, we should have -- there's little what happens in terms of ratification and implementation of these documents. Because there's enough evidence to show we could actually accelerate affordable internet, gadgets, connectivity, all these terms we are talking about. But people are at different levels. Even when you look at something like Africa -- after, there are 54 countries signed. But I think the real opportunity lies once these are deposited in the countries, they should begin removing the tariff and non-tariff barriers to facilitate trade. This is where I'm seeing the linkage, there's a lot that needs amendment at the country level and Harmonization. My book was almost half filled, I wish I was a discussant, I was itching, wanting to unpack this. The opportunities are there, there needs to be speaking with one voice. Otherwise we will keep looking at this and saying what progress, where is the implementation. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Another on the other side?
>> AUDIENCE: Hi, my name is (?) from Ghana.
>> MODERATOR: Sorry, please, on this side.
>> AUDIENCE: Good morning, my name is Naza Nicklas Gama (?), I'm the project manager for Tanzania. What we is done on the ground is provide meaningful connectivity to five schools. The smallest units of government that have never been connected and we have been able to connect around 120 community members to the broadband internet. And we aim to create about 200 community network innovation hubs. So my question is, for people who are doing it, implementing action lines and the digital cooperation like us, how can WSIS and ITU help people like us? Because we have the potential to connect people to broadband internet, what is available. The technology that is available. The fiber connection. So my question will go to the WSIS and ITU. How do you actualize us who are doing the work on the ground? Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, we are going to stop there because we have another panel. Now let me -- Gitanjali, you want to answer?
>> GITANJALI SAH: Thank you for the question. There are various ways to contribute. So one is through processes like WSIS which are multistakeholder, we have several event, several possibilities to work together in consultative processes. Others are study groups. We have our own regional office hereinafter in -- here in Africa. We can sit together sir and discuss this further as well. I will be here, I can speak with you on a bilateral basis as well.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. There was one question related to the parliamentary to the regulation.
[speaking non-English language]
To discuss and find a solution and to integrate all framework we have in the continent. We have several frameworks from Africa and beyond. We have framework from Africa, framework, we have to organize all. Because our mission is very important. We aren't going to work singular. We have to work together to harmonize everything. We talk about single digital market. We are working to put in place this framework for the single market. Thank you.
Let me rush to the next presentation.
Amal, I'm going to give you, where is Amal?
Let me give the floor to Daniel from AIC. I want you to highlight the key activity of east Africa community during post-COVID in terms of capacity building and as collaboration between the Member States. I will give you five or four minutes, quick.
>> Yes. Yeah, good morning. My name is (?) I'm the (?) for the east African community. Thank you.
I think you have known I came from Far East Africa is hard to put --
Thank you, Maktar for the time you have given me as people are setting up, in the interest of time, colleagues who don't know the east African community, people were asking me, so for the east African communities, Harmonization towards the digital integration, we have established a center of excellence for ICT in mobile technology and embedded systems to support the capacity building from the presentation so there's need for capacity building and organize. We have already established digital center of excellence in e-health in one of our partner state for mobile technology so we can provide the capacity building.
During the post COVID and COVID time, I think you saw it's the east African community we never crossed our borders for movement of cargo, goods and services. This was due to Harmonization, we have come up with our digital strategy. So we do have digital strategy that is starting within all sectors. Health sector, financial sectors, customs and trade and through this, this is the only way we managed to control the pandemic using the technology. You saw that we are the first if not to the whole world to come up with digital certificate for COVID that would allow you to move within the region without double testing. Because of the limited time we are given, we have domesticated our policy and strategy from the continental river and digital river and now we are ensuring east African community states are in line with implementation with continental strategy and regional strategy. And in this, we have now established different sector communities that are supporting our implementation. Thank you for giving me time.
>> Thank you very much. Let me go quickly to Amel. The woman start up. Just highlight how we can -- woman startup.
>> Thank you. Fantastic. We are going to use a few slides to share with you actually an overview of tech African women as initiative to bring ideas to action. And thank you Maktar for bringing up the topic of startups for the component of this conversation. Start Ups are problem solvers. They advance the society through solving problems that no classical sectors are addressing today. And they are also a tool for recovery from COVID since they enable enterprise and SME's in terms of tools and solutions to activate their digital transformation. But before we dive in TAW, I would like to bring things into perspective. Maybe I will just stand here.
Bringing things into perspective in terms of where we stand today as a continent. We tend to celebrate actually that we have over 5 billion in investment we are attracted to the continent last year. But we need to bring things in perspective when we think about according to the world economic forum, $600 billion of this investment were invested last year in startups. Doing the math is easy, we are less than 1% of global investment. But the question is why is this?
There is no random occurrence when it comes to investing, when it comes to development of start Up ecosystems. There's an intention, strategy, a statement to move, to multiply the start up ecosystem from ten to 2030. These are the decisions we need to take as a continent. Multiplying it by ten means it will reach over $800 billion of size of the start up market by 2030. Which means, so again it doesn't happen randomly. The not a random occurrence, it's an intention. This means over $100 million of investment in startups per day. So if we look at what's gone on in the continent, maybe there's a lot we need to catch up with. Take African women presence entrepreneur, even though I act also as president of the start Up association, policy makers and government help things moving for the start up environment. However we started by looking at the reality of Africa here. And we have seen that only 16% of this investment went to startups that are led and co-founded by women. If you look at startups that are led by women, the sea level is all women, it's less than 2% of investments. This is something we wanted to combine -- next, please.
In order to make things work on that front, we thought we need to bring in skills but not only. We want to support these women-led startups to turn their dreams into reality. This only happens if they have access to investment in early days. Enough funds, money, to develop their products, enough skilled experts to develop these. They need to be hands on support for them to be able to translate these ideas into reality.
So this combination of action was actually a pan-African program we imagined now part of the easy A strategy, in order to reinforce the capacity of young entrepreneurs and transform project ideas into investment-ready projects.
While doing that, we want also to bridge one of the challenges of African continent. Which is what we have called earlier probably a diverse continent. It brings with it economic reality that is rather called fragmented continent. In order to bridge this gap of fragmentation we are building a community of connected startups on the whole African continent. Next, please. So this -- no, no, the one before, please. It's just about telling you what our intention is with this African women. This TAW wants to become a whole African movement. So we want to reach by 2025 a platform that connects all African countries and allows women-led startups, still diverse startups but still women-led to move from zero to one, which means a product that has validated small market fit and is ready to raise funds and with that we will create a community of partners of investors, of access to market around our startups. Next, next.
So this is actually a project that connects African women initiative that exists already, that is already implemented by ECA. Moving it to the next level. Not stopping the next level of skill and turning this into reality. Next.
What we want to do is empower women founders, validated business models because startups are there to solve problems. They love solving problems and we are blessed on this continent to have enough interesting problems to solve. This isn't just sarcasm. The reality. The bigger the problem, the more interesting for entrepreneurs. This means a big enough market to address. They will be solving our problems and still through this initiative connecting African women. Next.
So, next, next.
This was tech African women 1.0. Now we are preparing 2.0 starting early 2023. So the tech African women 1.0 was a combination of boot camps. It's a hybrid thing. Online boot camps, local boot camps in the countries and venture building program that is done remotely to support startups actually go from the idea stage and move from just the theoretical skills to something that is working that is validated. Next.
Okay, so we are also supporting these women with grants. Besides availing access to developers, to marketeers, financial experts we give them grants so we could have enough funds to sustain existence to the next step. This is something to scale up the next level. Cultural exchange workshops, webinars, exchange, etc.. Next, next.
Okay, so key numbers we have so far with this pilot phase which was this year a number of applicants of over 300. Number of participants that is 74 led to 8 supported startups. And now we are moving to the next level. By the way, the winning teams that have been supported are startups solving problems in agriculture, supporting greeters of cows, startups supporting women, these are startups solving water scarcity problems and challenges in AI, sexual reproductive health, etc., etc.
So this is an example of what type of problems we are trying to solve through this. Now we are closing, this is the ecosystem we are building around our startup. It's not only about the startups, it's all about activating the startup organizations around them and connecting them in one single platform that happens to be on the whole continent. You see amazing energy happening in these boot camps in these programs. Next.
Now, we are talking about yes, we are tacking about tech African women 2.0, happening this year, every year we have been growing exponentially like it should be for startups. So now we have started with four countries this year. We have started with Senegal, -- now to 16 countries, 12 new on top. Every year new countries will come on top of --
Also final prizes and incubation for the winning team to move to the next level. Next year is going to be more countries coming on top of these countries and the acceleration of these startups that have been supported from idea to a minimum viable product. We aren't leaving them alone, we are going to support them to move to the next level to be even more investment-ready. This is our way to practically solve the challenge of these are investors who tell us actually yes we would love to invest in women but we couldn't find them, they are nowhere. This is a way to say come and join us, you will find them. Tech African women is looking for partners. Please connect to us. Talk to us if you are interested to come on board. We are going to be in 2025, the biggest platform connecting startups led by women, so come on board.
>> Thank you, Amel. The objective is by 2025 we have all African country on this platform. This project is focused on woman, not on man. Thank you. Let me go to AUC. There are several initiative at the AUC level. Like this strategy, the governance framework, the e-education framework. We are working on the digital single market and artificial intelligence. How can this improve the digital transformation in the continent and also bridge the digital gap in the continent. Briefly.
>> Thank you, distinguished participants, thank you for the opportunity to be part of this panel. To respond to the question, I would say that, I would start by highlighting the strong partnership between the African union and --
(Inaudible)
on the website which is -- African union. Agenda 2030, ICT is not explicitly highlighted as a goal. But from our side in the first ten years implementation plan it was reflected as contributing to improving high standard living people and also to the GDP but now that we are preparing the second ten years implementation plan we aim to reflect it in different goals and aspirations as the driver and also as an enabler for change and progress.
My colleagues this morning, Mr. Moses, and (?) highlighted the activities ongoing within the African union. I would say we are fully aligned with what the priorities that has been presented by the U.N. Secretary-General and by UNECA and we can work together for the benefit for our countries and people.
We have started the implementation of the digital transformation strategy. We have developed this year an implementation plan and monitoring evaluation system with a dashboard we aim to put in place in the next year. To enable countries to monitor their own progress at the national level and also as an organization it will help us to have a picture on what is across the continent.
So the strategy is in line with WSIS action line one on promoting ICT for development. But inside the strategy we will reflect the whole action lines like for the four pillars we have enabling environment, which speaks to action line #6. Digital infrastructure speaks to action line 2. Digital skills action line 4 and also topics -- by digital transformation strategy we have reflected action line 1 and 3. On the key sectors we have identified key sectors and for us, like action line on 7, application we move towards developing a strategies, I think work is in progress and it was mentioned there was already strategy for education that was validated by, endorsed by committee on science, technology and education. And there is an e-commerce strategy validated by the member state and will be examined next year. We have developed the digital framework which is key for development of the digital single market in Africa and enabling African business access to e-services. We started also the work on implementation of the AU policy framework to enable our countries to develop their data systems. Data capabilities and also to facilitate the cross border flows in Africa, which is a precondition for development of the digital economy in Africa. In summary I would say for us we understand the main challenge for digitalization in Africa is to secure funding and our work in all our partnerships with other regions and also we are in the process of developing professional mechanism and also to establish digital -- to support countries and also we do understand that we really need to implement the principles of the act of the African union and digital strategy to establish collaboration and also solidarity. African countries they are progressing at different levels and we need to bring them together to avoid the digital divide.
We value the cooperation with the UN and already this year we aligned the digital priorities for Africa in the WTTC with DTS and UNECA and we really aim to strengthen this cooperation to build the capacities of our countries to allow them to be part of this discussion and shape this global digital space. I would like to say that it is an opportunity for all of us to work together and to bring our countries together and to enable them to be active participation in the upcoming world summit on digital future.
>> Thank you very much, we are running out of time. The other track started. I am going to give the floor quickly to Erika to talk about (?)
But you can continue the discussion with the team of the digital center. All the people are there and Ibrahim. You can continue to discuss with them and to discuss on several programs we have discussed. We have also -- for the task force, (?) is there he can discuss with you to expand WSIS and also to the global digital compact as well as summit. I will give the floor -- we have established a digital center of national intelligence in Congo. How this center can help to make progress in the digital era in the continent in skilled development.
>> [speaking non-English language]
>> Thank you very much, everyone for attending this session. It was a real pleasure having you all here. And let me say thanks to our panelists. Please a round of applause to them. So thank you very much, it was a pleasure to hear the initiative taking place in the continent. And we are all looking forward (inaudible)
With that, thank you very much. And as you are going out, please make sure you register your attendance. My colleague will be there, so please make sure you register, that will help us make sure we send the presentation and everything to you. Once more, thank you very much. It was a pleasure having you here. Thank you very much to our panelists.