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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>> MODERATOR: Good afternoon, good morning, everyone, and where you are and welcome to this session. Focus on the presentation of the South‑South Report on Harnessing Digitization. This report was prepared with UN Economic Commission and South‑South Cooperation. And why we have this report? Why we prepare together this report for several reasons. First, digitalization for a new frontier for Africa in standardization.
It can provide new form for verification in the continent. We have seen a lot of progress on digitization, development of startup tech, also the development of a new technology in the continent. I can give you some example.
For example, between 2020 and 2021, the number of FinTech startups has tripled to 5,200 startup in 2022.
Also, according to the several studies, such as the study produced by Google, Africa Internet economy has the potential to reach 5.2% of the GDP in 2025, estimated on $180 billion. And this projection also by 2050 it will represent 8.5% of the continent GDP.
This will reach around $712 billion. In this context, we need as a UN key flavor in the continent to provide guidance or to have a diagnostic on the continent where we are and how we can take opportunity of this novel technology to digitize the continent to get profit off of this new excellent new contribution to the GDP.
And while we collaboratively UN Economic Commission for Africa and United Nations office for South‑South cooperation conducted this study. I will give the floor to my colleague Ane for United Nations office for South‑South cooperation to present the report before we open the panel to discuss with our distinguished panelists today.
We have five distinguished panelists, two online, and three in person. On line we have Mr. Marvala Director of United Nations University. He will be joining us by, I will be online.
I think Dr. Marvals aonline and civil society is yes or no line.
I have on my left my brother and friend a long time ago since Rwanda, and it will be one of the key panelists Senior Advisor of digital transformation. You are based now in Japan, I think. You come back home. On my left, honorable Susan Dusy member of Parliament of Malawi, and last but not least, Dr. Nekesh University of North Carolina in Japan.
It will be very nice because I'm going to moderate my brother, my sister, and I will not ask you question, just we are going to discuss. Now, to start, let's have the video of Hany because it's too late where it is now. And for 15 minutes to have a presentation of the report before we go through to the discussion. Thank you.
>> HANY BESEDA: Dear distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I am Dr. Hany, senior program advisor for the UN office for South‑South cooperation in New York City. It is my sincere pleasure to be speaking on the forth coming UN office for South‑South commission, initiative and report on the subject of South‑South cooperation for harnessing digitization for Africa's industrialization. I'm sorry I cannot be with you in person, but I have prepared a short presentation on the subject on today's session and deliberations.
Industrialization Africa and the South‑South cooperation, Africa's structure transformation has long been advocated with industrialization as the key strategy to increase productivity, improve economic efficiency across different sectors, revenue generation, employment creation and value chain development. Digitization has the potential to change the narrative, soft and hard infrastructure deficits, human capital skills constraints and a poor business enabling environment that can be addressed.
Digitization Africa has the current challenges of poor implementation of industrial policies, lack of investments in technological upgrades, inadequate willingness to engage in industrial experimentation and lack of feedback system.
Nonetheless, recent decades have seen significant improve wills in aspects of Governments such as in Ethiopia and Ghana. South‑South cooperation office supports knowledge exchange as well as policy development strategies.
In addition, the cooperative dreams provide opportunities for technology to advance, such as the initiative or the initiative by China'saway.
Through the adoption of technology a fourth industrial revolution is possible in calf R Africa despite challenges. We need digital technologies there will be opportunity to build new industries, deliver better health and education, improve markets and in general enhance people's lives.
What determines the success or failure of digital technology is not only the itself but rather how prepared countries are for technological change and how they use technology. Therefore Government should make investments in digital infrastructure and soft investments in people including exploiting South‑South opportunities. Other investments include physical infrastructures like electricity and Internet access, foundational disability systems like digital ID and finance.
Making policies, laws, regulations for digital inclusion a law which covers improving affordability, adopting services for overcoming gender norms, setting up relevant stakeholders and collaborations with other Governments in the Global South. New technological interoperability, technical information between information and communication technology applications, political interoperability that is in line with ministries talking to and working together with other ministries both domestically and in other developing countries and Governments engaging with relevant stakeholders including the private sector and society to ensure that the maximum benefits can be delivered across the whole of the economy and society.
Looking at the state of digitization Africa and Africa's own digital innovations, as of 2018, Africa was the world's second largest mobile phone market. Penetration across the continent has increased ten fold since early 2000s contemplated to a twofold increase in the rest of the world.
Money transactions are roughly 25% compared to just 5% in the rest of the world. E‑commerce sales in the fast live years have grown from $160 million to $570 million while the expert professional and IT services delivered electronically rose from $16.7 million to $21.1 million in 2018 according to the OACD.
IT has heightened the need for digital work products and services as this has become the main stay for businesses, educational industries and families. In terms of digital innovation there is a proliferation of ICT such as the ihop in Kenya, active spaces in Cameroon, infidel labs in South Africa. It's proof of the new collaboration training application, content development and preincubation of firms taking place. There are 643 active tech labs.
South‑South cooperation has important impact on African digitization through partnerships where countries and other emerging groups, groups such as ITSA are immensely important in this respect. To South‑South Cooperation China's whattia yea and ZT have engaged principles of win have win. Digitization requires appropriate policy and institutional framework and expectation to contribute to the human capital development. In the context of Africa China relation, digitization does not address, however, Africa's deepening structure dependency in the informationized global economy.
Thus African governance must address market structure failures as part of a new policy and institutional agenda to maximize digitization opportunities. Let's look deeper into terms of digitization for industrialization from a sector specific. On looking at Agri process and co‑marketplace value chain, agriculture in the continent is subsistence driven, inappropriate use of adequate technologies ‑‑ the content is battling climate change impacts amounting to loss of 2 to 7% of GDP. Other challenges are climate risks. Agri industry is plagues by numerous challenges most of which are country or sector specific including lack of access to infrastructure, roads, railroad, lack of access to finance, lack of enabling environments, access to provisional markets due to interAfrica trade.
Data for agriculture moves away abling the power of datas and businesses to transform agriculture. Opportunities for harnessing digitization in South‑South cooperation for digitization in Africa remains immense. Industry 4.0 is can considered a chance to improve farm activity.
The transport and logistics sector, so among the key sectors on the continent have relatively large amounts of data. Most of the railroad networks are outdated and poorly maintained due to historical legacies. The 64 seaports are poorly economics and uneconomically operating taking long processing time and poor shipping and handle willing measures. The African content Nat free trade area has the potential for unlocking logistics in transport sector.
Digitization on the logistics sector has made significant impact like enhancing custom and border management clearances, creation of single window systems like Rwanda, Senegal, implementation of a one‑stop border post in East Africa community to facilitate intraAfrica and regional trade. Creation of Uber app where over 10,000 drivers are using the app without international funding as well as $10 million from commercial banks in Nigeria. The transport policy program have created networks of specialists and broad together decision makers and stakeholders,ville transport policy. This policy addresses administrative procedures for facilitating clearances of goods as well as trade finance mechanisms.
Dispute the challenges faced in Africa, the continent has achieved a lot through leveraging South‑South cooperation through policy frameworks and strengthening governance. Let's look at country specifics here in terms of digitization or industrialization. Taking into example the second most populous country on the continent. The country has initiated the Asian model of transformation by building industrial parks which are transforming the industrialization agenda. The country has made significant progress on Internet connectivity.
Mobile coverage, 95% across where population is living with broadband subscription. AI developments in Ethiopia have taken a different route. AI started by small startup companies working privately which resulted in various AI‑focused startups in Ethiopia. The most prominent includings many South‑South Cooperation and the digital sector has improved broadband technologies over the last ten years with the participation investment of donor countries and donor partners including Chinese multi‑ national corporations such as Huawei and ZTE for investing more than $6.1 billion in the country's infrastructure.
Policy maker in the business environment shouldy whether the environment is ready to be shaped by technological innovation, consider if the digital infrastructures are in place, this includes the development and readiness of both human capital, skilled man power, physical infrastructure and understanding the consequences such as unemployment challenges, and opportunities that arise for disruptive technologies, such as AI.
Brazil has developed itself as a key global power in agriculture technology, Agri‑tech. Farmers need improved real time recommendations regarding seeds, fertilizers and other actions taken to maximize productivity. So Lif tech was used to monitor equipment. While Mexico's new FinTech law on regulatory and supervisory requirements apply to banks and other financial institutions so some of the other examples that could be looked at in terms of recommendations on how to improve digitization on the continent.
Despite successes, the Global South economy has faced challenges.
The area of gender gap where the majority of women do not have access to Internet, low quality infrastructure that makes it difficult to deploy digital solutions.
A large proportion of the population in the Global South live in rural areas which make it difficult and costly to build infrastructure, particularly 5G networks, AI talent such as machine learning engineers, lack of man power needed in designing software, services and other complex systems required for industrialization.
There is a need for adequate policies for digitization and industrialization initiatives, African economies can take a letter from successful economists in developing local solutions that could stimulate industrialization by encouraging research and development spending. Digitization calls for comprehensive policy frameworks at both national and regional levels, address complex issues that accompany digital transformation.
Digital technologies are being used to increase social, health, humanitarian problems facing the country and other economies. Among the post important lessons the African countries cannot completely rely on northern technologies and must develop their own digital solutions collectively. This is because most of the technologies employed from northern economies have a low degree of usefulness and high cost in African context, thus intensifying research and development activities and developing local digital man power is key as well as promoting South‑South cooperation, which was immense opportunities for African states in terms of sharing appropriate technologies and human capital.
Thank you very much for listening and wish you all a fruitful deliberation.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Hani. For this comprehension of the report following his presentation the focus on key area like the impetus and limitation of industrialization in the continent. We have we need to overcome the capacity and resource who play a significant role to improve, to increase the industrialization in the continent. We highlight the role of digitization, as digitization offer a new frontier for Africa, a lot of statistics in the.
Commerce and industry sector and also highlight the financing and infrastructure because without financing and adequate effort, industrialization in Africa will be not possible or will be limited. And following that, I think we can say this report, it is a robust resource for p.m.s and other stakeholders ‑‑ policy makers is interested in the nexus between digitization and industrialization in South South Cooperation. I think it is something we can have our distinguished panelists to discuss today to give their idea, and the way forward for Africa to be ready in this fourth industrial revolution.
I'll one question to my brother and friend, Dr. Nir, how do you assess the historical approach to industrialization in Africa especially in the context of import substitution and strict adjustment program? What were the most significant?
>> NIR KSHETRI: Thank you very much. So I think you were talking about some of the shortcomings, probably, yes, they have written a lot about export promotion. I don't have to talk about that. Some of the key shortcomings I found was that in that process, the Government became one of the main players and the developments were more state centric and the role of private sector was minimum to the governement trying to minimize the things, that is one of the biggest shortcomings. The second one is although Africa has a lot of talent in all areas, but the investors, especially the outside investors viewed Africa as a continent which has, which is good only in agriculture and mining and those types of primary things.
So the development focused more on the traditional sector and ignored a lot of these things like the AI and ICT and all of those things, those were pretty much ignored.
Those are the two main shortcomings and we will come back to that later.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very good. Now, let me, government has a role to play, I want to talk about Government and apartment airy also have parliamentary have a role to play. Honorable, you are a member of the African part limit network for Internet Governance and also a member of Parliament of Malawi. Can, considering the context of Africa historical and modern including economic dependence, civil conflict, how does Government plan to foster a stable environment for industrialization, and could we highlight the case of Malawi, I think Malawi is starting I program on industrialization through digitization. Could you highlight a little bit the case of Malawi as a use case we can make replicate it or lesson learned as African country.
>> SUSAN DOSSI: Thank you very much, moderator. We will start by saying Africa, we acknowledge that the challenges that civil conflict may bring about, especially in issues of prices, food and security and other.
For Malawi Government, it is taking several steps to create a conducive environment for industrialization. Malawi is working on reducing reliance on foreign financial aid by diversifying the economy, and attracting more domestic and foreign investment. Efforts are being met to address civil conflicts through peace building initiatives and promoting stability in the region.
Maybe just to give an example whereby for Malawi, we value peace and unity, and we had to pass this act today has relevant dialogue policy on unity and peace. As Malawi Government we came up with a vision in its national plan 2063 pillar number 2 where industrialization is the centre of that national plan. We are also in the process of consolidating the special economic zones and industrial parks.
We will state that this is like a mechanism for attracting foreign direct investment and also accelerating the industrialization and creating jobs for economic transformation. The special economic zones and the industrial parks will spar technology and the Government. In Malawi also we encourage cooperatives to process and sell with participation in viable value chains. Just to also mention that we also have some one border posts, especially with border post at mall law by bordering Zambia where we feel like the coming up of this border post has really helped us, especially on the issue of businesses where business people are able to transact at one place and that quickens the processes of making sure that the time taken at the border is minimized.
I think I can say that for now especially on the perspective of Malawi. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. I think it's very interesting to highlight this issue of special economic zone. I think it is something very new and relevant for Africa and some countries now try to put in place this special zone to act more like the investor and innovator in this place.
Thank you very much for this clarification, honorable.
Now, when we talk about industrialization is linked to the skills. Do we have the right skills to make this industrialization possible? Why I'm going to ask Professor Marwala Rector of United Nations effort United Nations effort. How how important is for Africa especially because there is youth built. Do you focus on other sectors of similar or better outcome?
>> TSHILIDZI MARWALA: Thank you for inviting me to come. The skills are absolutely, very, very important, and, of course, when we talk about skills we need to understand that the nature of industrialization is changing, and coming from South Africa where our deputy Chairman of the Fourth Street revolution commission deputy advertising the President ‑‑ fourth industrial revolution, we have seen deindustrialization because of lack of investment into infrastructure, new types of infrastructure, and also new types of education.
Now, what sort of education do we need? It is clear that the ability to handle automation is something that cannot be ignored. What we have seen in South Africa is that even industries that we thought were competitive and we did not sufficiently invest into the know‑how of automation and the technologies of automation, we lost them simply because we can be able to impour those goods from elsewhere where productivity is actually quite high.
Now, the other thing I would like to add especially when we deal with employment. We need to incentivize investment, we need to incentivize investment into infrastructure. We need to incentivize investment into technology, but we also need to incentivize investment into education, because the education that you need today requires people to understand both the academic wealth and the industrial wealth.
And one of the things that I did when I was vice Chancellor of industry of Johannesburg is to introduce the concept of a sabbatical for people in industry to come and spend time at universities and also for people in universities to go and spend time in industry so that the education they give is much, much more attuned to the economy that we see today. Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Professor for this. I think the sabbatical university program is very, very important. Now, how is going to the sabbatical program until you left the country.
>> Well, it's going very well, and the Johannesburg was left in very, very good shape. It's one of the top investors in Africa. What we have seen is that in addition to that, there are a number of literacy courses that you need to make sure that people have. Johannesburg, for example, with over 50,000 students, we made it compulsory for everybody to study artificial intelligence, and this is not teaching you how to program in Python.
This is literacy that allows you to know what this technology is about, what it can do, what it cannot be able to do, because the people who are making decisions in industry, in Government, you know, they don't necessarily need to know how to program, but they need to know what this technology is all about, and, of course, as in the fourth industrial revolution commission in South Africa we actually made sure that those things are in Namibia where us a member so we can be able to invest much, much more seriously.
In short, it is going very well, thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for this. Knowing this technology, using this technology is a very important, but pushing industrialization come with social and environment impacts. Why I'm going to ask Dr.Go olla how should African country balance the social and environmental impact with the push of industrialization, particularly in the rich economy.
>> TEFSI GOLLA: I think the capacity of African countries to lift people out of poverty and create jobs and generate or integrate into the global economy is very strongly linked to the industrialization, and the development of manufacturing, Agro processing and value added sectors in the service.
So I think it's really important that the climate change is really taken into consideration in this process. In terms of linking sustainable development agendas to industrialization, the global response really needs to embrace the continent's industrialization potential in the various forms that it comes in while also supporting the continent's low carbon transition as much as possible. Maximizing the green pact, industrialization could really provide certain benefits for various African countries, and it's an opportunity toent great themselves in the global green economy and I think it's really significant and sort of the room that we have now to align domestic agendas as well as regional agendas to the global green agenda as well. It's essential to have, to engage with innovative processes and productivity, and it's important for African countries to explore the potential in investments in green sustainable manufacturing and to look at balancing the viable industrialization paths while maximizing green industries.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, we needed to explore green industrialization. Well noted. I will ask my brother and friend who has a lot of long experience on the digitization of the ICT sector in Africa. I remember we start the ICT journey in 15 years ago. My question is from your perspective, what are the primary bottlenecks in scaling manufacturing in Africa? You can give the example Rwanda and as I country you know very well.
>> I don't particularly look African since my genealogy, our family left 20,000 years ago but last 15 years I have been blessed to go back to the roots, and I have been working mostly in Africa, especially in Rwanda. So even though I don't particularly look African, but please consider me to be your brother.
So that's a very good question, manufacturing. When you look at Asian manufacturing journeys in the 06's, 70's, 80's, it's true, it started with like Government industries, and then industrial injuries, so there are stages to it. When you look at the continent of Africa, should we follow the same actual stage? Perhaps not. We actually do not need to actually go into the stage where the Asian have been through it.
I think we are much better than that. With new digital technologies I think we can go really leapfrog or even moon shot the industries and the high value, you know, based industries can be created without actually having to think about the traditionally having roles and other infrastructures which are required when you really think about manufacturing.
Now, that does not mean that manufacturing is not important. Does not, however, I think the balanced approach and taking advantage of these technologies I think it critical, because that is a way really to leapfrog it in African continent. Now, if you want to do that, I think when you look at it, it's already happening in Africa.
Dr. Hany was mentioning about the financial inclusion, the transactions in Africa is about 25%, where as in the rest of the world it's 5%. Now, that is real innovation. That is actually really contextually changing the whole world actually. So heavy investing into digital sectors with youth and reassuring what South Africa was saying the risk ‑‑ reskilling the people and trying to capitalize AI and the reskilling and advantage of it and creating innovations, I think that's the key for the African continent.
I don't like the word reverse innovations, but the innovative service coming from the continent has the potential of really reaching to the north. That is going to be next export for Africa.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for this comprehensive response to that. Now, in the first round of our discussion we hear a lot of good news, interesting things about key shortcomings, about the role of Government through the development of industrial park and special economic zone, also the importance of education as well as the views of the green technology.
I think it is some key step very important to put in place this industrialization of Africa through digital technology. But I want to come back to my another, Nir.
You talk about some significant shortcomings, but I would like if you can elaborate a little bit more the role of states as development of state amplified by Japan and the eastern economy? We can learn about the rapid industrialization of this country from African perspective such as we are in the implementation of the African free trade area.
>> NIR KSHETRI: (Speaking off microphone). So basically talking about the Government, the number one thing that many people pointed out, the speakers pointed out and Hany pointed out is there is the shortage of skill, and if you look at the entire continent of Africa, the continent has about the name number of software developers as the State of California and the U.S. which has about 40 million people and after cause 1.3 billion people. So technical man power. If we are talking about Generative AI which is becoming popular now and that is mainly developed in English language because most of the engines they have trained from the Internet, that is basically the ChatGPT type of things.
But Africa has written more than 2000 languages and they have to evolve AI applications in local language. That requires a lot of R and D, but R and D in general is lacking in Africa. So basically the Government should play an important role in research and development. In the report, I contributed chapter 12, and chapter 12 mentioned that Africa's R and D as a proportion of GDP is 0.47 percentage which is the lowest across the regions, even south Asia where I come from at 0.65%, and if you look at countries like Israel that have more than 4%.
So maybe the private sectors alone cannot spend a lot of money on R and D, and the Governments can play an important role. Also training people, and the international financial cooperation says that African countries have to basically provide information technology to 230 million people. Maybe private sectors can't do that. You pointed out FinTech. Apparently Africa is doing really good and out of $6.4 billion venture capital that Africa received, maybe 30% is going to FinTech.
But a lot of those FinTech are coming from Silicon Valley and China. O.ing a lot of are be ‑‑ a lot are being developed locally. They are exploiting poor people without financial education. They are giving loans and they are their credit rating is going bad, people are committing suicide so Governments have to develop policy units to make sure that the technologies by the foreign companies are utilized to benefit the people not the companies that are developing that.
Also the importance of data privacy and other types of laws are important.
>> MODERATOR: I don't want you to stop you, because you are my friend. Thank you very much. We learned a lot about your intervention, Government has a key role to play by emphasizing infrastructure, education, also put in place a environmental track and also to open the market for the local. It is something that is very important. We have to take into consideration, if you want to take benefits of this industrialization of the continent through digital technology.
Honorable, what specific policy measures are in place in your country or being used to leverage digital technology as tools for industrialization and transformation of Malawi if you have also some recommendation for as African country because you are now putting in place a model in Malawi, and the model I think can be replicated in the Southern Africa and as African country, because I invited your country. I have seen what are you doing now in the development of the industrialization through digital technology.
>> SUSAN DOSSI: As Malawi, the cabinet just pass the national digitization policy.
The policy is a comprehensive strategy that will address critical issues, technologies in digital space, and also it will align with Malawi national development targets. Some of the strategies that maybe I can talk about African countries that they can do would recommend that Governments should have new mechanisms to industrialize such as new financing opportunities, partnerships with various stakeholders will be key. As well as in Malawi what we are normally doing is that through the national digitization policy which we just passed, we want to make sure that we improve education and skills development programmes so that we can equip the workforce with necessary knowledge, and expertise in the issues of industrialization.
We also are collaborating with education institutions and vocational training centers to provide relevant training by nurturing a skilled workforce, we believe we will enhance productivity and attract more industries to the country. Additionally, the Government of Malawi is implementing policies to support research as well as development and encouraging innovation and technological advancement in various stakeholders.
This comprehensive efforts are aimed at creating a thriving industrial area in Malawi. They want the sector to grow. So these are some of the issues that as Malawi we are also doing. And almost all of our policies like the youth policy, agriculture policy, it encourages the utilization of digitization. All social protection and economic programmes we are using the E‑framework that encourages integrated information system platforms and this is done through our Ministry of Planning and development as well as Ministry of Information.
I think I can stop here. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. This shows also the emphasis on the skills at the Government level and also at all sector levels. And professor, Marwala you high lit well the impetus to build capacity to have the nation become key actor in this industrial revolution. I would like your stance about the sabbatical program, but we have, as you know, we have a lot of opportunity, in the implementation of this African free trade area for the continent. They can boost to the industrial sector as well aas all other sectors because we are going to work as a single digital market and when we talk about single digital park, digital technology, it becomes a key driver of the single digital market.
In light with the new opportunity presented by this African free trade area, how should African country improve their trade and industrial sector, Professor.
>> TSHILIDZI MARWALA: The an calf free trade agreement a huge opportunity, but it is going to be a missed opportunity unless we do certain things. I think firstly, we need to increase connectivity into the calf can continent. We know how well how gift it is to travel in the African continent.
I suppose the airport in Rwanda which is at the centre probably is going to go a long way towards addressing some of these issues. Secondly, we need people to understand the African continent, the Africans must understand one another. When we were adding industry to Johannesburg before I moved to the United Nations University, we introduced a course called, which was also compulsory for all of the 50,000 students, Africa inside modules, and this would teach Africa's economy, history and politics, and, of course, coming from South Africa I have seen some South Africa countries in Nigeria, shop rite in Central Africa failing because they did not understand the Africa's political economy.
And the other thing that we introduced was Africa innovation by bus, because we believe that moving people by plane does not get you to land where we took over 17,000 students by bus to Namibia, to Zambia, to Kigali by bus, and we say to students, you need to identify the problems and write a one‑page essay on how you are going to address that problem.
This is really the necessary conditions for innovation. And, of course, going back to the issue of the African continental free trade, we have 54 countries with 54 different currencies. I think one of the things, one of the policies that we need to start thinking about quite seriously is how do we start having a dominant African currency to be able to ease the trade, to ease the trade so that people can be able to trade much, much easily and travel much more and so on, so forth.
And, of course, this obviously will work if we understand that Africa is diverse, and, therefore we need to invest into ways of bridging that diversity, making sure that we understand each other much more so that we can be able to take advantage of the free trade agreement. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for the free trade area having a common currency, it is something very key and crucial for the success of this African free trade area. I think we can also touch base on how we can have a one cryptocurrency also in the continent as we talk about digital single market and we talk about industrialization of the continent.
You highlight also the importance of the digital skills., your inside modules, it is important to know what we have in Africa, to understand the needs of Africa. It is something I think we can think about to try to educate our youth generation to know what are our needs in the continent, and given that they can develop a solution to respond to the African need.
And this also I want to ask one question to Mrs. Golla, how can academia and think tanks support the development and implementation of the industrialization of Africa?
>> TEFSI GOLLA: Thank you. In this sense I would like to highlight the importance of South‑South Cooperation, and the platforms that it generates. We see a huge gap in sort of leveraging cooperation platforms, and frameworks to learn from shared experiences of other southern economies.
You see that Latin American countries face similar challenges when it comes to things like climate change, digital dissemination and the monitoring and evaluation processes, and we will also keep seeing this with risks and limitations, with technological leapfrogging such as data privacy issues, governance restraints and the existing digital divide that continues to grow.
So in this sense I think South‑South Cooperation really creates great platforms to be able to share experiences and learn from one another in the sense academia as well as think tanks can come in by providing knowledge sharing platforms such as the South‑South galaxy by the UN OSSC.
Think thinks really been highlighted in this report and other reports by the UN office for South‑South Cooperation that South‑South digital cooperation can really be important to industrialization across the continent.
It creates opportunities to build digital infrastructure, like a data economy, cloud computing and broadband infrastructure as well as regional E‑commerce agendas and I think all of these things can really be furthered and enhanced through knowledge sharing platforms and through providing academia and academics from the Global South with platforms to share their knowledge and experiences.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. You highlight the importance to build infrastructure of broadband, and we need private sector also to play an important role in this industrialization.
Could you highlight quickly the role of private sector in the industrialization of the continent? We have only three minutes to close this?
>> Thank you, yes. So it's actually three, so connectivity in the continent as Professor said very, very important and in order for Africa works, the financial transactions need to be actually smooth along the continental, from the countries within the continent, and honorable Susan and professor mentioned education, and Professor as well reflected the importance of actually knowledge sharing.
Now, reflecting on that, private sectors, I think is going to be critical. 20 years ago during the WSIS process I was the at Secretariat looking at the financing mechanism for ICT for the Government at UNDP and over there we were emphasizing either private sector investment is critical component for the bridging the gap as well as ICT for development.
And then over there, so over there we said, yes, we need actually to have the conducive Government regulations and the environment to promote the investment investment in the infrastructure sectors. Now, I think I have to emphasize two things. If you want to do this, I think we need to actually have data transactions within the continent and beyond the continent. So you need the Government actually needs to understand the regulations, conducive regulations to support the private sectors to actually transact data freely with trust, of course. And also security as well.
But you need, if you don't do that, I don't think we can actually create the conducive infrastructures within the continent as well as this financial transaction mechanisms because that's all about data.
So I think these two things, the Government really need to make sure the private sector is doing good so the private sector can really invest in this area.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, my brother. I think we can summarize quickly this session. It was very interesting session, and we learned a lot from our distinguished panelists. I think the industrialization of the African continent through leveraging digital technology the Government has an important role to play by putting in place a conducive environment attracting the private sector and also provide opportunity to the private sector to access to the national market as well as we need to build the capacity of our young generation and vesting in research and development I think is a key if you wanted to take opportunity of this digital industrialization.
We don't forget when we digitize, we need to focus on green technology. It is very important as the impact, the environmental impact has a negative effect also. The digital technology has negative effect on the environmental sector.
We need to make sure we can get the right technology, the green technologies, the green data centre to save our planet. It is very important as Africa now we are contribute to 4% of the greenhouse evision and we can use this digital technology to rid the greenhouse emissions because according to several studies by 2030 ICT can reduce 20% the greenhouse emissions.
I think it is also important to highlight the role Parliament can play also to boost this digital industrialization of the continent in the implementation of the FCTA or as a role important to play in the industrialization of the continent. I would like to stop there to thank you all my distinguished panelists. We are running out of time because we are in Japan.
Thank you.
(Applause).
Thank, Hany for his brilliant presentation and thank you all for all colleagues working around to make sure this panel becomes successful. Thank you very much.
(Applause).