The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the virtual Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), from 2 to 17 November 2020. 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 to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> LEE TUTHILL: I have a ‑‑ let's see. Share screen. Can you see that?
>> SPEAKER: Yes, we can. To there we are.
>> LEE TUTHILL: So there we are. Nobody has slides.
>> SPEAKER: I have slides.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Good. Somebody has slides. That makes for a variety. You want to share? We haven't started yet, right, or have we? I think it's:33. I just wanted to know.
>> SPEAKER: We are live on YouTube running.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Well, let me start and introduce our panel. I want to welcome everybody to the panel on our other session, workshop session on governance and business models for inclusive development.
Clearly, from the title, you can see that we have two themes. We have a theme of inclusiveness, and here I'm looking at it in the sense being from the world trade organization of doing business by populations and communities that we would like to see more included in the digital economy and governance. I'm taking governance for this panel in the broadest possible sense.
I mean, there is probably a narrower sense of Internet governance specifically in terms of how the Internet functions. I'm looking at it more in terms of all the different actors of governance, and we would then be looking at the national level of government activities, measures that relate to the digital economy.
Obviously, we have myself from the WTO, and we have a small part in what people refer to as Internet governance at the multilateral level in all the forms and we have somebody from UNCTAD as well as well doing interesting work we'll hear about.
We try to take these intertwined topics to work together. We want to come up with what is it that the private sector is accomplishing? At the same time what are the challenges of doing more business and gaining for value from the digital economy and what are, in fact, some of the government and other kinds of governance issues that can make it easier for, say, small and medium enterprises to participate in the digital economy productively.
I think that we have a very interesting panel here. I would like to sort of introduce them as I give them the floor, because you can see from the website who we have. I'll also say we have Agatha and Kian Cassehgari together as fascinating and we worked together to organize this panel.
They will be helping us out and collecting the questions that any participants wish to put in the Q&A section. Feel free.
People who are attending can use the Q&A to pose questions. If we have time at the end, we'll take some actual physical questions, virtual physical questions so that you can participate. And I will be asking at the very end my panelists to mention if they have any recommendations of what might be done by the private sector or the public sector or any other stakeholders to improve the situation for inclusiveness in the digital economy and if you have ideas on recommendations, we would also take those.
Let me start. We have one panelist who we're looking for. So let me start. We would talk about the business perspective on having to do both with connectivity and business models in terms of digital participation, and I'll start with Claire Sibthorpe, who is the head of connected women of the ‑‑ What's your subdivision?
>> CLAIRE SIBTHORPE: Connects women at GSMA.
>> LEE TUTHILL: You have another division there. So I would like to give you the floor to talk about the very interesting work that GSMA has been doing in this area.
Thank you.
>> CLAIRE SIBTHORPE: Great to be here. You need to look at what's connects, if you look at digital business models, if you reach people they need to be connected and also for entrepreneurs and businesses who are using online, COVID highlighted the importance of digital inclusion. If you think of women entrepreneurs and other people that rely on the Internet for livelihood.
I'm talking about mobile specifically because it's a primary way to access the Internet and so it's important when we talk about inclusive digital models. Obviously, there's a lot of work and strides to get people connected, but and driving that inclusion, but, you know, half the world's population use mobile Internet. There's still a gap.
If we talk about inclusive business models, we need to read them online and to understand that issue we think about it in two ways at GSMA. We think about the coverage gap. So those who don't have the basic connectivity who are living outside of areas covered mobile broadband networks, and that's just under 6 million people.
They're predominantly in a rural area where infrastructure can be twice as expensive and revenues ten times lower. We look at the usage gap in thinks about people who live within coverage areas want using it. That's a lot bigger where a lot of work can be done to address inclusive business models. There's probably 3.4 billion people who live within areas covered by mobile brand baud network but aren't using it.
They're not able to use it. The usage gap is six times higher. Those not connected and included are female, illiterate, older and persons with disabilities. And you think about gender and specifically for example there's a gender gap, women are 20% less likely than men to use the Internet. That's a huge portion of the population, despite the fact that so many women entrepreneurs and media microenterprises are very female dominated, and then simply don't have the ability to access and use digital services.
So if we think about how to reach these and enable these on this segment, we need to think about what's causing ‑‑ what are the barriers that these groups are facing?
So as I mentioned, one is around access. So there's at coverage gap, but it's other access issues at play. People lack access to formal IDs. They might struggle with the usability of the services and handsets. I maintain the usage gap is times as big so affordability is a key barrier. If you look at the data to understand why people are not accessing and using digital services hence, the affordability comes as the key barrier to own a mobile phone and particularly spark phone, which is critical in the business space.
Then even those who have a handset and are aware of the opportunities and the Internet, digital skills among that population, it's the biggest barrier.
These are the ability to use these services and get online. Other key issues that need to be considers are around safety and security. That has emerged in recent years as a barrier includes harassment, data privacy, and also ensures relevant content services that are relevant and meet the needs. If you think about things, also, other factors outside the barriers, it's important not to forget social norms and social inequalities.
Things between men and women, for example. We looked at whether women in low and middle income countries had the save levels of education, income, literacy and employment as men, there would be a gender gap. It shows issues much harder to measure are at play, which is causing key barriers for women to be able to participate.
So I guess to achieve the business models and inclusive approaches, we need to ‑‑ that improve the livelihood of all communities we need to address these barriers. If we don't, they have the potential to reinforce or exaggerate the inequalities. That's what you need to look at in the digit space with the business models.
What we also know is some of these issues vary a lot depends on where you are. Any approach needs to be grounded in an understanding of the local context to understand the specific needs and barriers of that context and the groups that you're looking at.
It needs to explicitly consider inclusion in the policy and strategies that are being developed without a specific explicit focus, for example, on gender or inclusive issues, it doesn't happen by default. In needs a targeted action.
Then you need to take targeted action to try and ensure that inclusion we want and achieve. Those are the comments I wanted to make on this. I'll hand it back to you, Lee.
>> KIAN CASSEHGARI: Lee, you're muted.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Yeah, I'm clicking everything. Thank you very much, Claire. I think that that's incredibly important work because the work we're doing at the WTO on small and medium enterprises, our understanding is the majority of them are actually women‑run.
So they can't be forgotten if we want people to be more engaged in the economy. So let me move now to Daniel Annerose and the CEO of Manobi Africa in Senegal. He's working extremely hard for a very long time with microenterprises, I would often say.
I think he has some very interesting stories to share with us. So Daniel, I will give you the floor now.
>> DANIEL ANNEROSE: Thank you very much. I don't know if I can speak French or English. We're in a very particular situation, probably everybody knows that. We have to look at the opportunity that we can have thanks to the extension of the region with the population here in Africa. On other side we focus to two major areas in Africa (?) population in sub Saharan Africa depends, and it's not so good today.
Africa continues to make products, which we had to talk with some people working on the (?) and we were talking about almost 5 billion imported ever year with rice. Probably in the next 20 years the African bank mentioned we would import about $150 billion by Africa. They have the potential to produce.
So we do see the second sector which is the (?) in which we are involved too. We use technology to provide drinking water access to people that decent have access to water currently in Africa.
The point is that during many years we thought that it is important to develop the channels to extend the Internet capacity to everyone and then we can access to the services we're looking for. We have to look at this for Africa and we're doing actions that way.
That's to say base odd what we have all right, a variety technology we have, the communication channels are available in what you live. Which kind of solution and business services that can be provided particularly to the small players or the small actors in the enterprise into any single value change.
The interests point is that when we go through this specific value chain, it's much more easier to develop proper business models, which combine with a significance event on the well‑being of the population. Currently in seven Cal and also in other countries where we're involved, we are combining the expertise of the value chains with digital technology as an observation and mobile Internet, IoT to organize and develop inclusive systems that involve smaller ones contracted with larger agribusiness players.
We did that in 24 banks, so that's all the founders currently don't have access to credit. They don't have access to credit today. Almost 80% of them. We make them attractive for banks and insurance companies and attractive for inputs of wires.
You can understand that the people that live in the areas to which small farmers are connecting into a contracted base for the issuance, and we look at the technology and the ability on channels. It could be on this.
It could go 3G or 4G or whatever you want. The most important thing is can we develop this which will improve the productivity of the farmers? Can we improve the quality of the product that these families would be the industry or process to transform this product, could we optimize a distribution channel of the suppliers and the certified suppliers to these farmers?
Can we provide insurance companies solutions which are exempt and their insured risk and covered risks regarding the risks due to malpractice, for instance? Could we optimize the extension service qualities so that every farmer can have the best practices?
Those the kind of questions that you're able to respond to using the Internet is important to do that. If you can do that and create an added value, figure out what would be the new business that we sustain the development of the infrastructure.
So my point is that right now when we conclude on that and I can give you the example in the sector as well, currently we guide a $600 million project, and then we decided that every single household must have access to water in the house connected to the water pipe system. We decided we can bore holes in this, and then we have water systems with large tanks and if we do that we need to up monitor the system and be sure that every single system is working efficiently.
So engaging into structuring or orchestrating these value chains, I would say it creates added value, and you can define a business model that you can implement for us to support the development of Internet and to create at the same time a value for the beneficiaries.
So that's my point, and I think it's important that you ‑‑ that it pushed past to consider, we have to be part of the solution. We have to supply chains. We have to involve our population and not only the top players but the small ones into the chain. We have a chain where we have transparency and transactions in an inclusive situation. We reduce friction between the players.
I think that the opportunity we have today, and that's a way for which we can raise the issue of connectivity and also the issue of affordability of this technology and of this Internet particularly.
Thank you very much. I'll give it back to you, Lee.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thank you very much, Daniel. I had a question for you. I know you engaged a lot of people and small holders with technologies. What are some of the kind of technologies you have worked with people on in particular? When I first met you ‑‑
>> DANIEL ANNEROSE: You can see this. These are what we just developed a few months ago. It's a (?) costing $50, which can be installed by any farmer. It's very small compared to the cost of product of other ones.
With this we connected it to ‑‑ we use the information, which is collected by this truncated to the platform to provide advice to farmers optimal, which is particularly important to know in our areas ‑‑ in sub Saharan areas where we only have three months of rain and we have to optimize it. That's one of the things we recently developed for the farmers.
Another one is test observation, so we have ‑‑ we just completed a program with the European commission, it's a 2020 program, which is called Madeira. We're using that to optimize the advice to the farmers and optimize the practices on the ground.
The good thing is that the things we develop in Africa right now, we have complaints in Europe. It's funny to see that. The technologies like this one we're using right now we developed in Africa for Africa. We found clients in Europe using these technologies, and we have hundreds in France using our platform.
Again, the point is not too much technology but more as added values that you will bring to your customer using this solution combining this. I'll say it's expertise and digital and also set ‑‑ set a proximal which is very important in Africa particularly where most of the farmers and small and businesses don't have the background of the digital environment in Africa like in Europe.
These are some examples of what we're using. We're using agents to do that for farmers. We have a combination of technologies here.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thank you, Daniel. I've known you for a long time, and your work is always fascinating.
I'd like to introduce Sissi De La Pena. He's a manager for regional digital trade in an organization called Ali. I think ‑‑ I'm really looking forward to hearing from her as well. Let me give you the floor now, Sisi.
>> SISSI DE LA PENA: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here with you discussing how we can encourage the development of business in this digital environment.
Something I would like to remark on, I will say what we have said. It's about connectivity and what are the key components that may be able to promote the development and inclusiveness of business for all the small enterprises.
Claire mentioned something about connectivity. All the components that need to be improved or put forward in order to have more inclusiveness within the business. From our point of view and I would like to emphasis that we're the Latin‑American association that puts together digital companies such as Amazon, Twitter, all the major digital company that is work in the Latin‑American region.
Obviously, we are encouraging to have more digital companies to be involved in Ali. We basically promote and talk to governments and to relevant actors to promote a public policy for Internet in order for to promote digital economy across the region.
We have had a more inclusive digital economy in the Latin‑American region, we highlight a connectivity and all the issues that Claire identified, they haven't really been resolved in the Latin‑American region, and that's a major barrier.
After that we find out that the skills represent the basic or a major challenge for people in the news in the region. And apart from that, we also see these challenging regulatory framework. We know that digital economies about an economy that doesn't geographical barriers, and therefore we have seen in the region a breakdown of unilateral framework that the only thing that they're promoting is this pressure and breakdown of how businesses can work across countries and can interact and things like take the flow or thinking like this Internet service provider and responsibilities or things like location of data centers that sometimes some governments which are not really having these basic principles home generalized or across basic principles across the whole region. There are basically facing or putting a very high barrier for the small entrepreneurs.
This is particularly important because all or most of the regulations are always focused or developed for these big companies, but the ones who really suffer in the regulatory frameworks are the small entrepreneurs. That's basically stopping them from getting into the digital economy and the inclusiveness within the digital sector.
In this we also see a lack of a national digital strategy point of view for many countries in the Latin‑American region. It's things that countries have not really focused on how to identify where they want to go in terms of digital development in their countries, and apart from that, as I said before, the digital economy is not any more a geographical barrier or is not limit would by the geographic barriers. So it should be also in accordance with what across the region wants to achieve.
So this digital vision of the region and vision at a national level, it really represents a barrier for small enterprises and small businesses, and that was something I wanted to emphasis from what our previous panelist said.
These are really big challenges we need to put across to develop the digital economy across the Latin‑American region. We need to identify how we can put this discussion forward not only with the people that are always in the discussion, which are the people in the technology and information sector, will need to bring up to the conversation to all sectors in the finance sector, health sector, education sector, which sometime are not really involved on what are the challenges of implementing regulatory frameworks that are not really HOMO generalized or really in accordance to what a national level and regional level want to achieve in a digital environment.
That's basically what I wanted to highlight. I think I may have exceeded my time, but I will like to see that connectivity, digital skills and a set of principles across the region and regulatory framework and a national digital and regional digital strategy is essential to develop these business enterprises.
>> LEE TUTHILL: In fact, you were exactly on time. We move on to our two panelists from the public sector for any comments they have about the business landscape and what they say from their perspective. Thank you very much. It sound like quite a challenge.
Let me call on Mercy Wanjau, who is the director general on the communications authority of Kenya. She has a lot of experience working on all aspects of ICT, which we keep changing our terminology. Now we would say that Mercy deals with a digital world, and so from that percentage, I'd like to hear more about what she's seeing as a regulator in terms of the business activity that related to her world.
>> MERCY WANJAU: Thank you very much, Lee, and to the presenters in the business panel on the issues that they have raised. Yesterday I spent about six hours from that robe by the capital city to launch some base stations that opened up communities to the experience of voice and data at the same time. It was a heart‑warming activity to see the things they had already started to do within three months of receiving this signal.
It really brings home the point that Sissi is making by policy and regulatory requirements and the question of what are the barriers that these requirements present? From our regulator's perspective, the comment I would wish to make to this situation is that the need to be open‑minded to the possible development of new business models that are likely to thrive within this kind of new and emerging situation, and the need to ensure the policy and regulatory frameworks do not present a barrier.
Indeed, when you talk about communities like women, small and medium enterprises, the models are for business that we have been used to before might not be applicable or might need to be redone in this new environment and the need for policy and regulatory structures to be supportive, enabling, to be sensitive and perhaps even sensible to accommodate the new and emerging opportunities that are arising. Thank you.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Great. Thank you, Mercy. That was a perfect story about combining the businesses and the technology and what people can do.
Let me turn now to Rishab Raturi. He's an expert on eCommerce and trade working with the ITC policy section of UNTAG.
>> RISHAB RATURI: Good afternoon. The other panelists have raised points on this particular issue. There are three things I will speak about which is eCommerce skills.
It's noted that the lack of eCommerce business skills is identified as a major constraint to the sector's development, and although there are businesses and incubators that exist to address this issue, the awareness of their existence appears to be limited across many countries.
Now, business incubators can be established to do start‑ups for two things. The first is to ensure the right skills are provided for success and viability of the company, and the second is to ensure that funding is appropriately there to develop the business.
This could be done by channeling funds through perhaps start‑up things like done in Myanmar, that's a good model to look at it.
Affordability is grate challenge for MSNEs and also women entrepreneurs. For example, the price of Internet and telecommunication services are unaffordable in many developing economies. There's a need for better infrastructure as well as development of business models to lower the service delivery of costs so that they can be aligned in an affordable matter.
Another challenge with regard to affordability is the price of IT and electricity supplies, and of course, the access to electricity itself.
The third issue with regard to regulation. From the point of view of regulation, it would be important to appropriately and clearly disseminate rules and regulations on eCommerce but also the Internet. Also, these regulations should be dropped in the manner that are clear, concise and easy to understand.
The regulations should also aim to provide legal coverage to innovative ways of business interactions. This may, for example, is this it done tension by influencing regulation stand boxes. Lawmakers should ensure the manners are not harmful to third parties or in contrary to public interest.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thank you, and that concludes round 1. We have one question from the question box.
There haven't been too many, but I had promised to give Kian the floor to go over these. Kian.
>> KIAN CASSEHGARI: Thank you. We have a question for Daniel. The question is related to the power supply and the use of electric digital devices in remote rural places.
It seems that the power supply is an issue to use those electronic devices, and they're asking you, Daniel, if you can give your views on how to deal with the power supply issues in Africa to fascinate the use of electric digital divisions in remote, rural areas.
>> DANIEL ANNEROSE: Thank you for the question. I observe that there's a tremendous effort right now connected to trying to fill the gap about the electricity concerning access to electricity for people in Africa. We're far, far away from the objective, but we see similar technologies with companies looking for small and major companies developing the energy access to rural populations.
I think this is a value chain that certainly requires some development and which offers without any doubt opportunities to develop and appropriate good business models and efficient business models.
Particularly and I should suspect that the question was asking because they probably have an idea of what he wants to offer to this particular sector. Yes, this is a big issue.
I think it's important. Even we see a lot of development. We see that in the sector, and I think that this is a one that is causing a lot of problems in terms of developing the connectivity in Africa. We need this developed more accurately on our continent for sure.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thank you, Daniel.
We'll start part 2 of our panel now with the public sector people. As I said, Internet governance has many different levels and actors. I start with the national level with Mercy Wanjau again that I introduced. We talk much more about her regulatory work since we're finished with the private sector part. Thank you, Mercy.
>> MERCY WANJAU: Thank you very much, Lee, and thank you for this opportunity to put in some words for policy and regulatory initiatives to promote inclusion and we want to look at regulatory tools. First, the national brand strategy. We have a strategy captured from 2018 to 2023 setting a road map on how broadband could be applied for opportunity and for economic growth.
As part of that strategy, it did identify there would be a need for special initiatives to provide digital access and access for devices for persons living with disabilities, initiatives for women and affirmative action programs. This is because we do recognize the need for affordable and quality broadband services and platforms that would exist to businesses, exploit digital technology. Whether this be big businesses or small or medium enterprises, an economy like Kenya is powered through small and medium enterprises and a lot are run by women.
So there was then a forecast that in the operations, in the strategy, in the marketing that there would be encouragement for local businesses particularly in rural areas and other areas to adopt the use of ICTs.
This, obviously, leads to a growing focus on inclusiveness, and the COVID pandemic has just been the chief technology that we're all waiting for, because you don't need to explain too much today about the enabling role of the Internet in driving business, in driving commerce, education, and so many other services that are now writing on the ICT platforms.
The national broadband strategy seeks to ensure equitable and sustainable development, because we do recognize now that in order to bridge the gap of exclusion, you have to look broadly across special groups like youth, women, persons with disabilities, minorities and even people who live in marginalized areas.
One of the initiatives we have developed to ensure this is to put in initiatives for STEM, the science and technology programs, and also capacity‑building programs for we can to acquire digital skills in collaboration with other stakeholders so that it would afford women equal opportunities. That's the national broadband strategy for Kenya 2018 to 2023.
This is complemented by the digital economy blueprint, which is yet another broad policy framework that seeks to improve ability to leapfrog economic growth for Kenya and for Africa. This strategy is applicable across the African continent, and it recognizes that the digital economy does offer new and unique job opportunities for youth, women, maul and medium enterprises. SMEs are recognized that they will exist at the center of the digital transformation process.
As a result of that, there are a lot of digital entrepreneurial programs that exist and campaigns to promote this new eco‑system for SMEs including the issue of financial inclusion, which has been used to really broaden the issue of digital finance across the board to enable growth enterprises. I'll stop there from a strategy perspective and go into the regulatory tools that we have put in place to break down or unpack the policy aspirations for benefit of SMEs and women and indicate that the universal service fund is an initiative which seeks to bridge the gap to ensure that connectivity, Internet access is not only available, it's accessible and it's affordable.
This is what people experience happening when they have Internet for the first time because I was surprised, you know, women have come together in small groups. They're showing you about ‑‑ they're showing you the boxes they have opened on Facebook, and they were posting it. In this area they sell HAMI, so we bought it on Facebook while standing there, and this was absolutely beautiful.
I'm looking forward to see what this will mean as the months roll by. The other initiative we have to put in is to make sure we revise the ICT‑related law in order to promote trust and confidence online.
Through this we have a very robust cyber security program that seeks to ensure that the Internet space is safe and to deal with detention and deterrents for offenses that would be committed online. In November last year the data protection account was enacted, which we step in to safeguard data and the privacy issue that is come with that.
We are also in the advanced stages of rolling out a national address system, which will solve very many purposes, one of them being the promotion of eCommerce, because without a proper, robust system, the eCommerce is limited. It's very, very constrained, so we're very excited by the rolling out of the national addressing system to boost eCommerce and security and to make people and properties and residences identifiable.
We also are working towards a launch of national public infrastructure, which will allow for digital transactions and really streamline authentication on an online contract. I believe that the biggest beneficiaries of this will be the small or medium enterprises because it then allows a cheaper platform that is an equalizer, which businesses can access and be able to do business across the world.
I believe my colleague will speak to it in a bit more detail to evaluate how responsive is the platform in Kenya? The result for this is because we recognize, well, it is okay to have policy and regulatory reform as an anchor for development of businesses and indeed the first panel's spoke to that. We recognize it's a balancing act and the need to stop and pause and reflect and ask how relevant are the policy and regulatory requirements we put in? How sensitive are these regulatory requirements across the board?
For big businesses, for small businesses, for businesses that are run by women, and this way you identify the barriers, and you identify what interventions can be put in place in order to make it happen. I will close there. I believe I'm just about on time and welcome any questions that would arise out of this. Thank you very much.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Mercy, we're doing so well on time. Everybody has been almost perfect to the time. I was not going to stop you at all, because I love to hear you talk about what you're doing.
We won't then cheat Rishab at all. His work for some time is interesting, and what he's doing right now a lot of governments are very excited to have him work on the studies that they do. Let me hand the floor over to him now.
>> RISHAB RATURI: Before I begin, I want to share any screen, and I would need the ‑‑ I would need confirmation that you can see the screen at the moment. Is the screen visible?
>> LEE TUTHILL: I can see it, but you need to do full screen now. How you would normally do the ‑‑ yeah. Perfect.
>> RISHAB RATURI: All right, perfect. Thank you, Mercy, for that enriching presentation about the tapestry of ICT policy in Kenya. My comments are more general and more generally appear cable to eCommerce and infinite governance from the point of regulatory framework.
When choosing a policy governance model, it would be important to keep in mind that such a model needs to fit the requirement of the country. For instance, within the context of a developing economy or an LDC, that would entail being aware of the uneven levels of institutional majority, but also the technical capacity. The idea, therefore, is to establish a conflict approach to developing governance frameworks for the Internet of eCommerce. At present there are a couple of gender challenges that we currently note that have been faced, particularly with regard to LDCs and across the world. The first is lack of trust.
This creates an environment of mistrust and fear of being scammed amongst users. In certain countries lacking laws that are necessary to ensure the correct functions of eCommerce services result in perpetuating this trust deficit that we have. In fact, even in countries where appropriate regulations have actually been introduced, the complementation may be a challenge.
For example, in a study from the assessment, it was noted that Mali economy could not afford digital signatures, so there are various reasons why implementation might be a challenge.
The second issue is data legislation. Lack of up‑to‑date legal frameworks on eCommerce or Internet governance affects the ability of developing in countries to engage with global businesses or, in fact, even attract foreign investors. This would result in a domestic uptick of eCommerce.
Many of the law relating to privacy which is an important aspect of eCommerce and the Internet in general date back to the 1980s which is prior to the Internet. Many laws don't contain the nuance required to deal with the issues pertaining to eCommerce on many occasions.
Another important issue is the lack among policymakers on global developments. It may very well be likely that policymakers are unaware of national agreement, be it perhaps in the deal or digital partnership agreement or, in fact, even the development of norms in Internet governance forums.
This lack of information might percolate into policy, which will do a disservice to that country's policy in general.
The fourth issue is regulatory and institutional coordination remains a challenge. For example, in many countries there's a ministry of technology or a ministry of ICT that wasn't the technical aspects of ICT policy‑making in general, but they require close coordination with other ministries, prominent are the ministry of commerce and ministry of finance.
Often important aspects of regulation developments are diluted due to lack of coordination amongst these ministries and other agencies. Last is the level of awareness by the private sector and communicates who are very important stakeholders in the discussion about the existing legal framework that exists. With that said, there are certain frameworks on trust and equitable solutions. Tools like E documents and e‑signatures it with legal recognition or legal sanctity of sorts. It may require that party to actually physically travel to that place or ship a hard copy to sign only a document.
This results in an increases in time and cost of the transaction and would E documents are an invaluable part of the global value chain and the importance of doing business today.
The second kind of regulation is regulation that enhances trust. Now, consumers typically have no face‑to‑face contact with vendors anymore. This leads to fewer visual cues such as location, facilities, and personalized interactions that generally help the consumer gauge the supplier's sense of professionalism. In this environment when a consumer is also disclosed sensitive personal information to a retailer, to an online intermediary or a digit at platform, a sense of that trust is very likely to depreciate. In that regard it's a greater challenge for countries still in their infancy of using the Internet.
In light of this there are four sets of regulations to are promote consumers' trust. An effective framework has consumers be better informed of the characteristics of goods and services they're purchasing, but also know about the terms of the transaction. In fact, consumer protection rules today are quite broad and included all kinds of transactions and in fact it's the most modern framework of consumer protection that actually addresses specific I object us that relate to immerse and the Internet.
The second issue is with regard to cyber security. Our cyber security framework further improving trust by making sure firms meet certain technical standards. The third is on data governance. As consumers are required to provide personal, sensitive information and financial details, a strong data governance policy is essential to give individuals control over their information.
Lastly, cybercrimes. It's always better to have a situation where a provision is in existence that can determine malicious activity of criminal intent online.
The last kind of regulation is what promotes eCommerce. An enabling environment also entails rules with anything with a set of services or activities essential to the functioning of eCommerce in general where one is E payments and we have creative customs.
Of course, it requires an enabling regulatory framework that has global providers and suppliers across the world. This will mean clear regulations on customs clearance, transport, and conditions for eCommerce for packages. We also have issues with regard to intellectual property.
In particular those focus on intermediary liability as well as the fair use of intellectual property gain traction in the discourse on eCommerce regulations. Now, we have a situation where regulations on eCommerce including data governance and platforms progress in many countries across the world.
More so in countries with the stronger digital sector. We have a cyber law tracker where you have this data available in front of you which goes to show E transaction laws available across the world. With that being said, there are certain points that we must recall irrespective, the first is that comprehensive regulatory frameworks for digital markets still remain in use and are found in developed economies. If you look at domestic regulations across the world, they seem to suggest that it does not necessarily is indicative of the soundness of the country's regulation.
In other words, just having cyber laws increase is not positive of a strong framework. How it's implemented is important.
The third is having an essential aspect of eCommerce regulation such as intermediary liability or data governance. These are still quite new and require trial and error experimentations over the course of the next few years. Lastly, our aspects are by high‑income companies with the skilled institutional barriers. Whether these rules suitable to smaller countries with the developing economies still remains uncertain.
Thousands -- we have a situation where you have rules on eCommerce, how they interact with each other is a very important aspect when we talk about regulatory governance.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thank you very much. Your work is very challenging and the E‑readiness reports identify rather where there's a lot of work to be done, sometimes the report makes it like extremely daunting. Other governments have a matter of tweaking it would seem.
But I think your work is very much in demand and very appreciated. I thought what we would do is turn for comments on the regulatory frameworks to first our private sector people, and then we have a couple of questions from the audience. I have a couple of questions of my own. We'll launch into those as soon as we had our commentary by that.
To this I would like to introduce Daniel first, if he has any comments on what he's heard about the regulatory frameworks.
>> DANIEL ANNEROSE: One of the strategies is we have to propose is also to see what could be the linkages of the specific framework of this sector with one of the other sectors. I'm thinking that if we consider that access to Internet, access to communication is a basic right like access to water and access to sanitation and access to headlight or any other area of this to produce on this land, if we put this question in the regulatory framework within the similar question for other vertical sectors, I think that will be very useful for us to figure out how to push this framework in a direction to create value or certain sectors.
I will pursue that by creating value in these particular sector is a way today to promote and develop the access to the community to finance this access to the cost of infrastructure and to bring this to pushing this more easily is less efficient than we can see today.
That's the part I would like to say. Not to stay in our own environment and try to figure out how we can establish this so that we have a strong content for the way we look at the regulatory framework on this specific sector.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thank you, Daniel. Let me turn now to Sissi for her commentary. We will start questions as soon as she and Claire have made excellent comments.
>> SISSI DE LA PENA: Thank you, Lee. Let me highlight Mercy and Rishab. I want to make a comment regarding something that the two of them mentioned.
One of the questions there from the participants that Internet now is the means of thriving businesses, and then move on to prescribe or provide a very, very good analysis how you look at governance framework should be understood and worked and understood in order to make this happen.
In addition to that, the question from the audience mentioned something about whether the regulatory frameworks include some human rights perspective. In in sense I want to highlight from my experience and I would like to look at the comments from these three individuals. It's very important to make this regulatory framework to happen in the right way. One of the samples I want to put on across to open the debate that it's really ‑‑ if we don't do it right, the regulatory framework, if we don't do it right we can go against human rights and one of the things in America and particularly in Mexico, for example, is that in these hunger to settle back for regulatory framework for the regulatory framework, the government the Mexico has passed a law that says that for those cannot comply framework in the tax VAT compliance. That's very restricted. The digital companies are going to be disconnected from the Internet.
And that framework is where the human rights attempt freedom of speech and another human rights are compromised. So we could understand that the government wanted to have a mean to try to collect more taxes, but in this sense in giving themselves these attributions to connect or disconnect in Internet platforms as they wish, then we have a high risk against human rights and freedom of speech.
This was given the governance of Internet. This is something that we shouldn't happen. We know that the governments of the Internet are on a multisector basis. If governments start doing this because of an argument on the tax framework or education or privacy framework, we are really risking the compromise of human rights.
That's the comment I wanted to highlight. Thank you very much for the opportunity to highlight this and very interesting thoughts on this presentation.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thank you. Let me turn to Claire now.
>> CLAIRE SIBTHORPE: I agree. A very interesting discussion. I think a couple of things I took out of it from the presentations I really agree with is that we need a data‑driven approach and really understand what are the specific barriers that are and challenges in each country. I think it was great to hear when looking at which segment you want to focus on and prioritize, we heard from Kenya for people with disabilities it great.
It came out quite strongly and I completely agree that we need to take a holistic approach. So I think, you know, in Rishab's presentation he talked about tax on businesses and we need to think about the respect to the users, not just the businesses but the individuals creating business or uses of the businesses.
Taxes have a huge impact on affordability by the businesses they're trying to reach and those trying to set up a business. I think it needs to be looked at from a business perspective as well as the impact of issues on users.
As I mentioned earlier when I was talking, I think our data shows it's affordability and digital skills are two critical, critical barriers. Anything that could be done from policy‑making perspectives to address the two barriers is really important. This encourages investment and supports innovation in the barriers. I would agree with what's been said earlier about needing to think about this holistically and across the different sectors and focus on some of these key barriers or key issues we need to address.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thank you, Claire. It's a big interrelationship between these two topics it would seem. We have one outstanding question on human rights that Sissi addressed. Do you have anything about the human rights aspect of digital regulation. I know some of people here have been thinking of it.
Much of the developing countries access Internet over mobile phones, so the question is, you know, there's a lot of talk about 5G coming on. I think it's slower come on in the lesser developed countries. How critical is the 5G for SMEs in the digital world? It might be a more ideal way to access sophisticated Internet services over their phone.
Do we have any takers on that?
>> SPEAKER: From my perspective where I work we focus on low and middle income countries, so really looking at some of those regions, and 5G on that perspective is a bit of a way off.
I think, you know, and we need to enable that development to happen, but at the same time recognize that in the countries where we work and in Africa and Asia, it's really 3G that's it and sometimes 4G people are accessing and increasingly 4G.
So not to forget people have that, but at the same time enable that progression to 5G and to not halt that because also recognizing what is the reality of what people are accessing and the different things to sort of kind of not forget that aspect as well. I'm sure others have some comments as well.
>> LEE TUTHILL: I know I had spoken in a preparatory conversation about Daniel about the question of 5G. Did you want to say anything?
>> DANIEL ANNEROSE: I would be very brief. If we have 5G today ‑‑ I'm talking about Africa and what I see in Africa. When I look at 5G, to invest in 5G or the applications or services, solutions which can provide the well‑being of the economy of our small and medium and I need that, too. So I think we can ‑‑ to tell we have this today is to be able to able to demonstrate the existing communication system we have. In terms of priority, I think this is why you're away you must invest in the technology or something like that.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thank you. Daniel. It's going to be affordable when it becomes available anytime soon.
>> DANIEL ANNEROSE: In terms of privacy, didn't say no. I think ‑‑ I think we have a problem and one week ago we had a program in Senegal where we have that and you try to cross on small boats and we can make this interesting for young people and let them do business ‑‑ and given an opportunity to do business in our country.
If I have to invest again, would I invest in a new technology like 5G, or would I invest to create jobs for this use? Recently we launched an academy to develop a small microenterprises in specializing in providing extension services to farmers, and we could use the community to develop this business or wait on 5G to do it?
Those are the questions that we already have, because in Africa we're not in a continuum of growth and of development that you can see in your Europe. We're doing jumps.
So maybe you will not have the 5G, and we have the other things.
The majority minority is for the environment and different from all the communities in our continent, and I think it requires that we develop application and we develop services and solutions for all these with these communities.
>> MERCY WANJAU: I'd like to look at the 5G as one end and we look at aspects of a business connectivity that we are very much need within populations, because 5G and the capabilities that it brings will power certain niche use cases for which they will support models for small and medium enterprises as well as big businesses, and there's a place for that. This carries on because 5G will not feed that part of the spectrum.
So I want to view this as a complete R complementary service and solving different population segments and different needs. Looking at our national spacious where we're quite big on innovation, there's a space for 5G. At the same time, we also do participate in conversations around universality but we haven't closed the gaps at 100%.
If we could view the two and separate and complementary, perhaps it will give space for both conversations to develop in parallel.
>> LEE TUTHILL: With all three of you, I hear that 5G is sold to the consumer is go where they can see more fancy videos and play games on, but I'm beginning to hear people forget don't forget that 5G will have an incredible number of sophisticated business applications. So you wonder if the goal post is always getting higher with things like that.
So seeing that the capacity is cheap enough that there's actually an alternative in rural yeas.
We have a few minutes left, and I think what is interesting is to has anything to say about the human rights and SDG questions. It's integrated into about everything that is offered sometimes whether we know it or not. So if anybody has comments left on human rights, other than that I'll going to the question and answer section.
One thing that's interesting because we have a grade with IGF and an output is to ask you if you could make one or two recommendations of something that really needs to be done either by governments or other stakeholders or even by the private sector itself, what would your one or two recommendations be?
I know that's limiting you to a very few field of work that needs to be done. But let me go in the order in which we originally were looking at and ask you to come up with what you think might be one or two key recommendations for what needs to be done to improve connectivity and participation by developing countries and their SMEs in the digital economy. I'll start with ‑‑ if we go in the order we are originally planned to go in, I'd start with Daniel.
>> DANIEL ANNEROSE: There is so much to do, but really again I really think that in which you support more efficient innovation in the continent brought by African companies, African technology digital companies service providers.
This is something to work on. I'm coming again to my point is that if we can decrease this connectivity issues within the ‑‑ within our main area of developments for a continent, which are, again, water access, which are access to sanitation if you can take that kind of access, if we can have access to headlight care.
If we can figure out how to use this technology and see what we can do here as we accelerate the transformation of this secretary for this by using this, I think that's something that's an investigation for our countries in particular in Africa. That's bring the solution and creating the environment to help people to take benefit of what we already have would be something which we would support that development solution.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thank you, Daniel. Sissi.
>> SISSI DE LA PENA: Thank you. I'm going to be brief. Regulatory and institutional coordination that consider not only the economic aspect but the human rights aspect of it. How an accessible regulatory environment could either diminish the development of ecommerce and digital economy among small enterprises and also could diminish or hurt freedom and speech and human rights. That's what I'd like to highlight.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thank you. Now I'll go to Claire.
>> CLAIRE SIBTHORPE: There's a lot to be discussed or said. I'm a huge, huge believer in data driven based approaches. If you don't understand want issues and challenges, you can't address them.
I guess to pick one thing, get atop of the data and understand the challenges and issues in specific markets and take concrete, specific measurable action to address them, and then I'll sneak in a second point.
It needs a collective or collaborative effort by all stakeholders. My main point would be to understand and take a data driven evidence based approach. Otherwise, we're going to leave people behind. We're going to, you know, from a human rights or inclusion perspective, it's not going to work.
So we need to have that strong focus and lens into what we're doing.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thanks, Claire. We need AI to regulate?
>> CLAIRE SIBTHORPE: No. I think it's about talking to the ‑‑ the businesses and the individuals. It's about understanding from them not using necessarily supply ideas. We need to speak to those excluded and don't have the challenges and works there for the efforts.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Let me ask mercy to give her recommendation.
>> MERCY WANJAU: This speaks to the need to Fed assessments on the policy and regulatory tools put in place so we can evaluate with a measure of precision on what the user experience is across the board.
Businesses are set up for special youth, women, persons with disabilities so this way we ensure as much as possible the regulatory tools and the regulatory profiles we have, that they are actually achieving the intended purpose for which they were meant for in the first place.
I take the view that we can no longer assume a neutral approach for policy and regulation and assume that it applies the same for all because of that is it need and to evaluate. With the president‑elect Internet has a utility value. What has been referred to on this platform as a human rights perspective and, hence, the need to identify if there are any barrier, any constraints being experienced by certain groups this is a measure for urgency to overcome the barriers for equal participation.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thank you. You're going accolades in the comment section.
Let me turn to Rishab.
>> RISHAB RATURI: It's to look at where things stand and where you want yourself to be in the next five years or so. The second would be to look at eCommerce and how to update relevant things in the information. We can also (?) But lastly need to look at regulations and putting an issue on the tools across MSMEs and also other relevant stakeholders in the eco‑system.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thank you. I think these are all parts of the same thing, and I know it was a difficult question. Let me use my last two minutes to turn to the audience. We have time for one or two people in the audience. If you could make one recommendation, what would it be on these issues we've been talking about?
Anybody from the audience? Is there a hand‑raised function here somewhere? We have Kenya, hold on. I have just turned you on.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much. Can you hear me?
>> LEE TUTHILL: Yes.
>> AUDIENCE: I would really appreciate the fact that you've discussed human rights so much. Thank you for bringing my question into here.
If I could have one second to make a recommendation I would say that the stakeholder engagement is key because whether we talk about human rights discussions we look at capacities that weren't in the private or public sector always in terms of ( indiscernible ). There's a huge security that has no expertise that we're happy to share. The broad stakeholder engagement would be very much appreciated.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Anybody else in the audience? I have turned on Arthur.
You need to unmute yourself.
>> AUDIENCE: Can you hear me?
>> LEE TUTHILL: Yes.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you for giving me ‑‑ okay, the floor. I would like to thank all of the panelists for the presentation. What we have in the is we need more collaboration between people and take this in order to remain with some support (?) For the benefits of our countries. It will be whether all the stakeholders work closely together. That's my final word and recommendation for this session. Thank you very much.
>> LEE TUTHILL: Thank you, Arthur, and I think that's a very appropriate point for us to end, because that's what IGF is really all about, bringing stakeholders together on Internet and digital issues.
I would like to sincerely thank the panelists for being so articulate and so thoughtful on the various topics we've discussed and thank all of the participants as well for sticking with us and being so interactive to let us know how things are going technically and otherwise. I would like to thank my co‑organizers ago that and Kian for keeping us honest.
I look forward to working with all of you in the future. The attendees here, I'm really happy if you have any other questions to get in touch with me or any of the others of us.
I know that we're aware of people who are putting together regulatory impact assessment tools. The WTO within its very small niche does a lot of technical assistance in country and within regions on a lot of digital and eCommerce issues, so I think I can speak for all of us when we would be happy to have this discussion to continue on.
So I'd like to say thank you. It's now two minutes over, but I'd like to say, again, thank you to everyone.