The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Berlin, Germany, from 25 to 29 November 2019. 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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>> I'm looking, I believe, up here for Su Kahumbu Stephanou. Markus Beeko is not able to come. I do hope Fatoumata Bâ is able to come because she was an outstanding speaker, and there she comes. And Vincent Bagiire. Thank you, Fatoumata. So, we've had a number of very good speakers but, as everyone has heard, we are very behind. We've heard very quickly that each of these panels needs to last 30 minutes so we can all go to the main plenary room so I do want to ask everyone to respect that in our comments.
I'm not going to do any long introduction. I think we all know why we're here. There were some speaking remarks that were planned. Obviously, access to the internet is incredibly important as we've heard so clearly this morning, and as I know, many of you recognize in the room really recognizes one of the most critical tasks we all face. So, with that, I think maybe the fastest way to move through this as well is we have a presentation, first, from Inger.
We'll do the presentation. I'll ask everybody to just give a really brief introduction as your turn actually comes to speak. I think that's the fastest way to make sure the most appropriate information is shared in this cramped time and unfortunately, I think I have to say right now I don't suspect we'll have any time for Q&A but I really appreciate everybody's support here, and of course, all the panelists will be available throughout the course of the week as well.
So, with that, Inger, I turn the floor to you. Inger is actually with the Vodaphone foundation. She’s the CEO. You're very welcome. Thank you.
>> INGER PAUS: All right. Good morning, or let's say, good afternoon. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to talk in this panel about marginalized groups. Actually, I'm not the CEO of the Vodaphone Foundation because that's 27 organizations and as chairwoman of the German Vodaphone Foundation and the managing director of the Vodaphone Institute which is the European think tank of the Vodaphone group.
And when I was asked to participate in this panel, I said, great, that's a good opportunity to talk about one of the largest marginalized groups, which is actually women. So, this doesn't work. Yeah, here we go.
So, also give you a little bit of example of what we are doing at Vodaphone together with our partners to empower women.
So, first of all, if you want to achieve gender equality, which is an SDG in itself, you have to look at several issues which are actually suspecting women at the moment. Ranging from education, up to health and well‑being and up to employment and entrepreneurship. And if you look at the current situation of women worldwide, in particular, also in developing countries, we've got more than 130 million girls who are out of school and thus lack the basic foundation for decent economic opportunities.
If you look into health, there's one particular issue which is a specific focus of today. Also, it's domestic violence. There are 8 million working women which a current study of the Vodaphone Foundation today revealed were experiencing domestic violence.
I'm not just talking about working women. In fact, it's much, much more. This absolutely has an impact of their professional and personal lives.
Furthermore, women are much more likely to do unpaid work compared to 75 percent of men who are in paid employment, it's only 50 percent of women. That goes along with entrepreneurship, it's only a fraction of the start‑up who are run by women, who are founded by women.
So, how do we change that, actually. At Vodaphone, not just talking about the group but also the foundation and its large network and the Vodaphone institute, we address all of these SDGs which I was talking about. Let's start with education and skills. There is a myriad of programs across the globe, not just in developing countries where we try to provide access to education with technology but also technology competencies. For example, the Girl Effect program we run across Africa to address girls and make sure they get all kind of information about their well‑being and career opportunities, it's called, Like a Girl, which basically provides coding competencies, makes sure that girls can have a career in tech.
Or let's take the instant network school program which is providing kids in refugee camps, including a lot of girls with basic education via technology.
If we look at to health and well‑being, which is a particular topic, also for women who are raising kids, we have also created a lot of programs also in Africa, like mom and baby services or And Maa, which is a taxi service for pregnant women which is really trying to decrease the mortality of kids and women who are carrying a baby.
Furthermore on domestic violences, we are put taxes in Bright Sky which is supporting girls and women who experience domestic violence with services to get support by police authorities but also to spread awareness about domestic violence amongst girl communities.
And I'm sure you've heard of Empesa, which has been a game changer which it comes to inclusion in particular in the African continent. A lot of millions of women have benefited from this because they could basically start their own business, run their own family finances and it's definitely increased a lot of situations and families in Africa beyond.
And last but not least and this is what I'm going to talk a little bit more in detail about, it's female entrepreneurship. So, the Vodaphone Institute started an accelerator program, which is called Fast Lane, or F Lane. Female fast line sort of to say in abbreviation.
We did that because we did a research which revealed that only a fraction, depending on the geo, it's three to five percent of the technology start‑ups are owned by women or created by women and also the stem workforce is only, it's still just a quarter of women who are working in this particular sector, which has become so important for the transformation of economy and society.
And along with this, it's even less capital which is going towards ‑‑ venture capital going towards female entrepreneurs really hindering their growth opportunities. Of
Last but not least as effect of that, women are still one of the largest unserved markets in business.
So, and this is why we said, okay, we need to change that. We created a company for social ventures, it means, basically, we support social ventures founded by women in particular impacting the lives of women with the business models and products we create. That means we are not just supporting women but also men who are creating these kind of ventures for the well‑being of women and economic opportunities.
And so far, we've run four batches. The last one just finished last day here in Berlin. We are running this out of Berlin, but it's a global program. We have got 700 or more than 700 applications over the course of the last two and a half years and out of them, we supported 20 ventures in 12 countries. As you can see, a lot on Africa, but also on Asia and Europe. And these social ventures have impacted more than 300 lives already, which is great. And we hope that we can scale this program even more on the global scale because we are looking for partners. So, if you're interested to working with us on F Lane, so, please make sure that we talk today. Thank you.
(applause)
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you very much, Inger. Inger was actually meant to give a longer keynote presentation, so, I really appreciate you moving through it so quickly in the time pressures. I neglected to introduce myself at the beginning because I was trying to organize on the fly here. My name is Lynn St. Amour and I'm actually the Chair of the Internet Governance Forum multi‑stakeholder advisory group or IGF mag. I think at this point, at some point, I need a time check because I this we're supposed to finish in 20 or 22 minutes now maybe Anriette can help me.
I think the only way I can make this work is if I say very little and we ask everybody to move through, say a quick introduction, make sure we've got your title correctly, a very short introduction to the organization so people can place the activity since they're all very important to the topic and then ask if you can move through your speeches quite quickly. With apologies because we didn't have any time to organize or in fact for me to meet with the panelists beforehand.
So, maybe I'll start with Fatoumata and we'll just move through the line.
>> FATOUMATA BÂ: Thank you. I'll try not to be too much on the intellectual side. I think you might have in mind I'm an entrepreneur and capital investor but there is something I want to develop, which is a reason why, when you look basically at the funding space in African, you have a line that is very unfair. Basically, according to IFC at sixth stage you have 49 percent of female and 51 of male getting access to entrepreneur. But then when you go into life access, B, C, money, here you have 90 percent men and 10 percent female. It is acknowledged that women will only need, I don't know, microfinancing. It was actually my own motivation to start my own capital fund.
I felt make reason why a lack of access to funding in Africa is actually 42 billion‑dollar gap in terms of access to gap is because you actually are lacking female managing partners because seeing a young female having a product or fashion in Senegal can be, to an old guy, but it's something exciting to me. It is naturally a positive.
And we've been actually investing in female businesses, we actually have 60 percent female investment team with good results so far.
And one example I wanted to mention in particular is actually from my entrepreneurial investor background is how trying to find ways to increase access, products over my platform in Nigeria, especially rural and ABS. We started a program with 120 women and we equip them with tablets and we said, actually, you don't have to be out of your home. You can sell to your neighbors. Your immediate family or even your church and then when you sell, we give you a cut. A bit like we'll do for Facebook and Google advertising online except here it's offline and start getting women in rural areas. It was a huge pride for my team to have been able to scale the program two and a half years later to 45,000 women.
When you ask them, they don't say, again, skills. They say, hey, I was able to earn an income and become a source of profit and become a sort of recognition in my husband's house. So, it's something that can begin changing and again, it's not only about doing it for the right reasons. It's also economically empowering because what I forgot to mention is that it was actually my most successful sales channel. Thank you.
(applause)
>> INGER PAUS: I'll be very quick and comment on this because I already had my five minutes but there is a structural imbalance in the system. So, a lot of components we need. Kind of let's say, the basic entry, right, equipping the basic skills and teach them along the way what you can do but also getting more women in investments. Also, what investors start to realize in America. This is actually what F Lane is about. It's a prototype, more role models for other entrepreneurs.
>> SU KAHUMBU STEPHANOU: Hi, everybody. My name is Su Kahumbu Stephanou. Many I work is in small farmers, many of whom are rural, but bringing them up to be farmers. Although we're talking about internet here, I almost feel that the majority of small other farmers don't actually have internet. Various reasons, cost of phone, charging of phone. Reach, et cetera.
Many have other phones but it doesn't mean that they should be left out and if they are left out of the bigger picture and discussions around connectivity then we all lose. As was mentioned earlier, we are as strong as our weakest link and in the case of food security on the African continent, we are as small as strong holder farmers.
I built a platform, basically registered from the menu, choose to build what they want. Started out at pain point. Farmers will build with us. We have a very, very close feedback loop. We built content farmers felt were the biggest priority, their pain points, which they can success. We were lucky enough to work with a Telco in the country and are able to deliver the service for free now. Since 2010, we started for the first six years farmers paid.
What we found is that we had farmers that needed the service most fell out because they couldn't afford to pay so we now manage it o roll it out you for a free service and our aim as a country is to do this across Africa. The gains that we've seen are incredible. Just by increasing farmer knowledge, access to experts and access to skills and confidence is resulting in increased wealth and revenue prosperity from the ground up which is then enabling farmers to start purchasing smartphones, purchasing instruments that can help them with solar power and help them, the next scale is to eventually access internet and I honestly believe and the reason that I'm here is that I believe that governments and Telcos need to work together to start looking at policies they can put in place to make this space, the USSD affordable for more scaling so we can actually scale these things across the continent at space.
We can't afford to do. We don't have time to do it slowly. As we know, the population object continent is going to double in the next 40 years. Currently, we're the only continent with increasing levels of stunted childhood under the age of five and currently in a country like Kenya a quarter of the population is already suffering from malnutrition so we need to work at haste, we need a change that is embedded from policy and with like-minded big scalable partners. Thank you.
(applause)
>> JOANA BREIDENBACH: Hi, I'm Joana Breidenbach. I'm from Berlin. I'm from a place called Betterplace.org, a social funding for projects. A think tank which looks at the link between digital technologies and common good and I want to use my two and a half minutes to just highlight some of the key findings which we did especially in our research at the Betterplace lab where we've looked at a lot of inclusion issues, namely, especially with regards to refugees and digital solutions, digital platforms which enable a better integration of refugees. We also did a lot of work in the female space so we published a report bridging the digital gender gap based in five countries where we looked spat digital inclusion of women and also, we are very active in the hate speech area, especially in the German speaking context.
So, when I look at these very different topics, all related to marginalized populations, we definitely see that there is still a huge lack of awareness that people are discriminated against.
And we are so overwhelmed, I feel, in the text space, by a very mass listen on steroid value system from the Silicon Valley, that even at my company, it took us quite some time to realize that on Betterplace.org, we also, of course, have the normal discrimination which we see in the offline world, also being replicated and even maybe increased and strengthened in the offline space because when you look at, for example, who gets most funding because our platform is being used by NGOs so there's always a project manager who asks for funds.
And when you look at, do people of color actually have equal access to funding? No, they don't. Our donors predominantly donate to projects which are headed by white people so what can we as a platform do in order to counter that? That's a really important question. We also see that in many areas where we look at the existing infrastructure to fight discrimination, many of them are analog.
And we see that these kind of crisis centers which look at refugees or after women who are victims of domestic violence, we see that they don't really yet have an awareness of the fact that there is a huge phenomenon in the digital space. So, we feel that really, we need online and offline, this awareness really needs to be strengthened.
And one topic which we find, we see across the board is that there is far too little co‑creation of content. When we look at the German digital refugee situation, we see that loads of German providers have built apps and platforms for refugees but they very rarely did it with refugees but always for refugees.
So, that's really like structural violence if you do something for people and if you don't do it with them. That's, again, a constant pattern which we see everywhere. L in regard to women space. I did field work in India on the digital inclusion of women.
There were many spaces created by men. There was a lot of pink content and not content which was advocate for women in this sphere. And I could go on and on, but I think my last point has to do with the values and again, related to funding, which was already mentioned by all of us, I think.
And, when we do field work in many different countries, we've been in 26 countries at the Betterplace lab and looked at social start‑ups and we see amazing solutions to real problems, you know, on the ground and across the world but we always see such a huge lack of funding because it's not the most valuable in terms of money and profit, it's not, that's where you can squeeze out most profits.
So, when I look at the kind of world I want to create in the internet and digital global space, I really think, I whether or not to look at values. I want to see how can we come up with really the values which we need in order to also save the planet and they have to do with inclusion, they have to do with multiple perspective, taking different points of view into account.
So, this discussion about marginalized populations is not something marginal, but, really, it's at the core of the new world system I hope we all want to create. Thanks
(applause)
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you very much. Now we'll go to Vincent Bagiire who is a permanent Secretariat in guidance for Uganda.
>> VINCENT BAGIIRE: Thank you very much. For a moment, I thought I was going to be marginalized as the only man on the panel but then I got a colleague here.
I come from government. I'll just give a government perspective from Uganda and indeed, it is true. Governments do everything to digitize services, we address infrastructure and access. But, at the same time, when you provide infrastructure, we want to see to it that there's usage of the infrastructure and all the services that come with it. And indeed, as we do the deployments and deliver ICT across the country, we create more divide in one or the other. You want to do digital inclusion but at the end, you find yourself just at the digital divide. In so doing, as policy makers, we find ourselves reinventing policies at all times.
I'll give examples. We have policies in the country where students can be examined for ICT, what you call ordinary level and advanced level. But, unfortunately, the schools in rural areas do not have access to computers. We've tried as much as possible to use what we call universal access funds to create access that the students will be able to, indeed, set of computing and also those who can learn computing and skills and so on. But, the computers provided are, indeed, not enough.
I was in a rural place just two days ago just to get the experience before I traveled here. And the students had to wait, there's a school with around 200 students and they only have 20 computers. And examining computing is practical. You can't just do it without, just as theoretical, and then the students, indeed, have to wait until around midnight for them to finish exams because they do it in shifts.
So, those areas of digital inclusion are real and those are things that we need to do with as African countries.
But, beyond that, as you can imagine, we are talking about studying computing in a school, but, there are people who are disabled. They are deaf or they are blind. And indeed, you find that some of these initial, we do not take care of. So, you've got now to put together policy for ICT for people with disabilities to ensure that we take care of people with disabilities. To ensure that, we provide for people with disabilities as well.
The last but not least is in the country, you find that there are people who cannot read and write in English but they can read and write in their local dialect.
Implying we need to localize the content to ensure that everybody is not left behind, as the saying goes and as many people as possible access the services that government provides. Thank you
(applause)
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you, minister. And then our final speaker is Rossen Jeliazkov from administration in Bulgaria. You have the floor.
>> ROSSEN JELIAZKOV: Thank you very much. It's a great honor and privilege to take part of this panel. It was supposed to be presented in a panel regarding access and infrastructure, but I came not because of gender balance on the left side, but because I think this topic is very important and needs to be promoted as well, not only speaking about ideas, but only, but, to show the best practices and the lessons learned.
So, there's the idea to tell about the Bulgarian approach and our achievements. Now days, the women account for 52 percent of European population. Yet, only 15 percent of ICT‑related jobs.
The entry of more women into the ICT sector would boost the market while labor short annuals are projected. The first edition of the digital woman's school board shows that women's participation in digital technologies is lagging behind in several areas. Only one of the six ICT specialists and only one of the three graduates such as science, technology engineering, and mathematics are women. In 2019, the results of the women in digital economy school board shows that in Bulgaria, women are more active users of the internet and have higher digital skills than men.
Moreover, in Bulgaria, the percentage of female ICT specialists is 26.5 percent, which is higher than the average, 17.2.
Women in digital world has high on the agenda of the Bulgarian presidency of the counsel of EU. We were the first focusing on the topic. The Bulgarian presidency provided a platform of exchange of platform on the services. Some events during the Bulgarian event were international forums, et cetera. So, another forum that took place was a meeting of high level gender equality, cooperation between the European institute of gender equality, which is focused on women in digital world. Organization of event of 60‑second session on commission of status. In 2019, we have signed the EU declaration of commitment in women, digital member states. Until furthermore, we have a national council for gender equality of the council initiatives of
Other national initiatives that show our countries try for more active participation of women in digital world are the digital and national coalition, which, abbreviation in Bulgaria sounds like the English abbreviation DNA.
As a prominent representative of women engaged in digital technology in Bulgaria. Empowering gender, which is especially focused for increasing entrepreneurial skills among women, age 16 to 25, and women in technology, which aim to leadership in the digital industry.
Our concept is the trinity. The trinity, when the well‑promoted national policy with con kens us among the stakeholders and a good face, a good face, good women face, as a national digital champion to promote, articulate with the audience, is the trinity of the success.
So, we are fostering this and the results are obvious. Thank you very much
(applause)
>> LYNN ST. AMOUR: Thank you. So, I just have a couple of quick words. I didn't engage in any because frankly, there's just not time but for over two decades, I've been doing everything I can through various positions to bring this to every corner in the world. And I'm at times overwhelmed by how much more there still is to do and at the same time, so impressed and so energized by the activities that are being undertaken. The IGF is a dialogue for platform on these issues. We're also a place for action. So, in everything we do and everybody we talk to over the course of this week, we really should talk about, concretely, what can we do next to help make a difference? Whether it's a human rights discussion, or it's an access discussion or gender balance, every one of us should be saying, what can we do tomorrow, what can we do next week, this year, to actually improve significantly on these.
And we should be so impressed by the ideas we heard on the panel this morning and there are so many thousands or tens of thousands of more stories out there on the hall so I really hope people do take that forward as we go forward here. I need to wrap this up really quickly. Like to give the panel a round of applause and then we'll all move quickly and the next panel can come up.
(applause)
So, I think we should all move quickly off the little dais here and invite the next panel up, again, with great appreciation for everybody in this rapid pace.
>> RINALIA ABDUL RAHIM: Can I ask the panelists for the next session to take their seats, please? No seating arrangement. Please, come up.
Okay. So, hello, everyone. We are all operating under compressed time and challenging conditions so, please bear with us. With our tightened time constraint, we don't have a lot of time for discussion. Definitely, no exchangers is going to be possible. So, we would only have time for the input from the panel and I think that if we just try to be as concise as possible, and as clear as possible, that would contribute to everyone's understanding in the room.
So, I'll start with just a few words about myself. My name is Rinalia Abdul Rahim. I'm senior Vice President for the Internet Society. In case you don't know, we are a global nonprofit organization that works to strengthen the internet and expand its reach. We believe in an internet that is open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy. Sorry, a lot of movement happening in this room. Please, come up and take a seat.
And I'm pleased to share that today, we've released our action plan for 2020 that basically contains projects that work toward a bigger and stronger internet, which we are quite excited about. Our session today will explore how to equip the 21st century workforce with digital skills and to ensure that no one is left behind. We have a large group of panelists and it is a panel that is focused on digital inclusion and focused on education and skills.
I have asked the panelists to focus on three questions. It's quite broad. And they're free to address any aspect of these questions. The first one is, how do we equip the workforce of the 21st century with the necessary skills to take advantage of new employment opportunities that will result from digital transformation?
The second question is, what kinds of initiatives can stimulate broadband use, digital literacy, and skills development? And finally, what will work to address gender issues as well as the needs of disadvantaged, disabled, or vulnerable people, people living in low socioeconomic conditions and with lower levels of education?
So, to start, I'd like to give the microphone to Ms. Lynette Magasa, who is CEO and founder of Boniswa Corporate Solutions.
>> LYNETTE MAGASA: Good morning, or good afternoon, everyone. Just to address the workforce, it's very important that there should be a shift in changing in such a way that it must start from home. If all the young ones are given internet as part of the culture, they have access to internet and that will work quite well, thank you.
>> RINALIA ABDUL RAHIM: Thank you. Very nice, short and sweet. The next speaker is Frederick Vahos.
>> FREDERICK VAHOS: Thank you so much, UNESCO stands for the 99 ‑‑ coalition. We also collaborate with ideas. I would want to speak briefly about the skills which are needed in the future and how we go about teaching those skills. First, if you think about 20th century skills and which skills learners and people need in the future, this is, found, of course, through a number of developments, including artificial intelligence. And generally, if you speak about skills, people speak about the four Cs. Which are required in the future. First, it is critical thinking. And problem‑solving. The second is creativity and innovation. And the third is communication, and the fourth is collaboration.
These are general skills which are often mentioned. We have developed in view of AI a report and looked into more skills and looked into what is really necessary also in view of artificial intelligence in the future. If you look at that, you will actually see that learners in schools need to learn more about coding and computational thinking.
This is about having the skills to at least understand the principles around how code is created and the basic problem solving around and through algorithms. And secondly, another area is data awareness and the capacity of building, manipulating and visualizing large amounts of data.
And the third aspect is the capacity to think and act across silos, and make interdisciplinary connections because AI, as it currently stands, is particularly strong and specific data‑rich domain but has difficulty to understand and interpret context and make interdisciplinary.
Now do we in UNESCO help with this future? We do policy and capacity development standard setting and facilitating international cooperation in formal and nonformal education. So, in formal education, many developing policies, teacher education and curricula. For example, we have developed a short version of the competency framework for teachers, that is the competency teachers need in the future which includes AI and some of the aspects I just mentioned.
Just in nonformal education, to close, we have different programs specifically for girls, we have a mobile application which is used training to develop applications which address local sustainable development challenges and we have particular training also for girls. And we work particularly with Africa code week to teach coding.
These are examples how we move forward, how we assess the new and future skills but also how we work on formal and nonformal application.
>> RINALIA ABDUL RAHIM: Thank you, Cedric. Next is Nikolai Astrup, minister from Norway.
>> NIKOLAI ASTRUP: Thank you for inviting me to this panel. I think it's true of any country that digitalization coexists with divides. I think the skill is to maximize the dividends and minimize the divides. I think the educational system is going to be important. We need more experts but yes, we also need more interdisciplinary skills. We need to stop sending our future doctors to medical school without also learning them about AI and big data. Same goes for nurses.
Recently, learned that 98 percent of cow farmers are online. So, even as a familiar, you can't escape technologies.
So, it goes to being interdisciplinary. I also believe that's not going to be enough. Because life-long learning is going to be crucial. We need to invest more in the people who are in work today and that's not the job for governments alone. We need public/private partnerships to make that happen on a large scale and we need to think, I think, outside the box of sort of traditional education programs and more short programs that can ramp up skills fast.
I've also had the pleasure of being a member of the UN high level panel digital cooperation and the UN Secretary‑General has been clear on, we will not reach the sustainable development goals without the use of new technology and digitalization. But, in order to do this, we need more connectivity. So, we need to make sure that the people have access to the internet, but, also, that the internet is relevant to people all over the world and we need to do something about the barriers to entry that exist today.
So, for instance, in the Subsaharan Africa, we know that 54 percent of the population have access to broadband but only 24 percent use it.
So, why is that? I'm very happy that one of the reports on connectivity for all adults and especially access to basic financial and health services is being followed up by ITU and UNICEF launching a common bid for connectivity. That will be helpful, I think. Another important aspect is to develop help desks to help governments on these difficult policy and technical questions that we're all grappling with and that are going to be even more important going forward.
Now, another important recommendation is around digital Republic goods. So, it's about creating an alliance on the platform for digital Republic goods. A go‑to place for discovering, using, adapting, creating and financing digital Republic goods.
Technologies, data sets that are useful for others, open source, and that can be adapted to local circumstance elsewhere.
There are many examples of this. Let me just mention a couple that Norway has been involved in. The global digital library, which is learning material, free for all, now in a hundred languages. We are expanding to 300 languages to make learning material available but also to make sure that it's available in a local language.
Weather data is another example. Health information systems program is now in use by more than a hundred countries with a global footprint of 2.3 billion people. That's an example of a global digital good. Let me also mention the Indian ID system which is open source and is now, the World Bank is now helping in Morocco to make use of this technology and introduce digital IDs to Morocco.
So, this alliance is going to be important. We now cooperate can UNICEF, Sierra Leone, and the Indian think tank, Ice Breaker. I hope that many countries will collaborate to make sure that actors in countries all over the world don't have a to reinvent the wheel to make sure digital technologies that already exist. Thank you.
>> RINALIA ABDUL RAHIM: Thank you. The next speaker is Mr. Lucas Kohlmann, HR director from Henkel AG.
>> LUCAS KOHLMANN: Thank you. I'm working for Henkel and I'm responsible for one of the global HR strategies. When we interact with our employees and talk about digitalization of our workforce, we see it from two angles. The first angle is that we want to digitize our system and processes fully so whenever our employees interact with the company, they should do it in a digital way. Secondly, it's about human digitalization so we need to offer to employees the right program to upscale to get the knowledge they need today but also for tomorrow in order to excel also in the digital area. Here comes the problem we face as any other corporation, the way we tackle it is that Cloud solutions can play a big role. We need to enable them to have access to what we offer to them and Cloud solutions with a possibility to have easy access to systems with profit e‑mail address, not necessarily a corporate e‑mail address or corporate device to enter the systems one way.
That brings me to the second topic because as I said, we're active in one out of 20 countries around the globe. We have from ‑‑ down to blue collars in our country and also able the production workers to enter our system and mere as a corporation we have the responsibility to offer all employees also the possibility to have a device at a fair price, as a cheap price to get access to our systems and especially also to our learning offerings which we targeted them. Thank you.
>> RINALIA ABDUL RAHIM: Thank you. The next person is Mrs. Anna Maria Braun.
>> ANNA MARIA BRAUN: Thank you. Braun is ‑‑ with focus on manufacturing. Firstly, I would like to point out skills that are needed to implement in the education system, the skills are needed now. We need the skills now to work with digital technologies and just as you Sid, across the entire Board. It's not a question of the production line being automized and needing to advantage their skills. It's really near, whether it's finance controlling, the quality level, and this we provide, of course, with platforms, learning platforms and teaching our employees but I want to raise or highlight one point that I think can be a big limiting factor, and that is the human factor. Because the worry of the existing workforce, what will happen to my job. And how can you ask someone to implement digital technologies if they are worried that afterwards, with the new process, their job is gone.
And this is where we try to work on making it very transparent what the process is needed for, and to highlight where they still play a role because this will be key and vital that humans are still needed to analyze the data for example or to manage the exceptions.
And being in the healthcare industry, one key element that links maybe back to the discussion on inclusion or diversity is that we see that the data we collect now can be, of course, very biased.
And this is a danger, and with all the opportunities we have with the data collection and opportunities, especially in health management, we need to ensure that our employees or that everyone is aware of this and we can manage the data well to avoid that prejudice that we have in the analog world is transferred to the digitized world. Thank you.
>> RINALIA ABDUL RAHIM: Thank you. Next is Mrs. Hans Jürgen Bill. Chief resources officer from Nokia.
>> HANS‑JÜRGEN BILL: Thank you. Nokia is probably building the network and base for everything we are talking about here, 5G and mobile networks and fixed networks and IP networks. So, we have 100,000 employees across the world and you might think, okay, we have high tech company and our engineers should know everything.
But, we're hiring 6,000 engineers every year and we need to focus now on artificial intelligence. We need to focus on data science and machine learning. So what we have introduced I just wanted to share is a so‑called learning index for our employees. The question was, how do we make learning a directive for everyone, even for engineers coming from Universities thinking we know everything.
They don't know anything and our environment is changing so fast that there is a constant lifelong learning needed.
We have introduced this learning index as a digital tool which shows employees in a score system how much learning they have done in the last time. What we have seen is that after we have introduced it, a year later we saw almost 50 percent increase in Greece in learning for employees. We have learning you can do from everywhere. It's augmented reality, virtual reality, you can do it from everywhere and you have a scoring system. So, definitely how you improve.
It led to a situation that we have today, 77 percent of our employees really using this system, almost on a weekly basis.
And this is absolutely necessary in order to get them. Of course, now the challenge is, how do we get the 20 percent, the remaining 20 percent into this direction.
So, this is one, at least one example how you can make learning a directive, which we think is absolutely necessary.
>> RINALIA ABDUL RAHIM: Thank you very much. Next is Undersecretariat Miriela Ludsi. She comes from the Italian Secretariat of economic development and she will speak in the Italian language and there is an interpreter, yes?
>> Thank you.
(speaking Italian)
(no English translation available for the captioner)
>> So, hello, everybody. To answer to the question, I would like, regarding the initiatives that we're planning, I'd like to draw your attention to, you know, to draw your attention to two different things that we're doing. The first one is called, Wi‑Fi Italia. This is what we call it in Italy. It's an initiative that is meant to give all Italian citizens the possibility to have free internet access free of cost, free of charge, and this is a way of having the real inclusion we're talking about, inclusion into the internet for everyone.
And the second initiative is what we call Caz technology agenda. It's the centers, the homes of the new technologies. These are centers for technology transfer, and they are going to be put in place where in the cities where we already have the 5G net.
So, we can have this possibility to offer to start ups and SMEs who want to invest in the field blockchain iOT, that is, internet of things and all these important things that they can then use to be present with their activities.
>> RINALIA ABDUL RAHIM: Thank you and finally, Mr. Günther Bräunig.
>> GÜNTHER BRÄUNIG: Thank you. Having listened to the previous panel I should probably have been on the other panel because there was so much talk about the lack of funding in particular in Africa that I wanted to at least say a few words about this because it's one of our prime missions to do development work in 35 countries in Africa and we have a portfolio of about 20 billion euros in there and it's really going to be our mission to increase work.
We're really in the early parts of our project in Africa, it contains, building roads, infrastructure, the additional agenda is something we'll follow up on. We have pilot programs like an e‑learning program in Malawi or a blockchain program, so, we have the first steps there, but, I think as we said in the previous panel, there's still a big demand to fight poverty and inequality in Africa. These are all basic programs where a lot of our programs go to.
Digitization for our company ourselves is a big challenge as banking is going to be fully digitized so it is also our job to upskill our people with these skills that you mentioned in the technological areas, in the software developments, in the ability to run scrum teams in IT development project so there's a lot to do inside the company and also the education is, and the upskilling is different.
We learn today different than we used to learn as we learn content usually through webinars into the whole e‑learning is different from how I learned to get myself developed and so, we try to get the whole company, but, as you said, you have to also overcome skepticism. You have to bring everybody on the agile agenda and so, we are on the same track when this comes to get into the digitized world.
>> RINALIA ABDUL RAHIM: Thank you very much. We were given a very short amount of time to do this session, and again, I apologize. It's something that is out of our control but one thing that I'd like to comment on is that in 2003 and 2005, we had the World Summit on the Information Society.
At that summit, we identified access brimming the digital divide, enabling, the problem of enabling life-long learning. The challenge of having effective public‑private partnerships and multi‑stakeholder partnerships to address all the opportunities that digital technologies have brought forward. And the solutions are many, as you've heard in this panel but the challenge is how do we enable more people and make sure partnerships are really effective. I think IGF is taking a role in enabling and forming partnerships that can bring people to the area where it's needed. I apologize for the time constraint. Thank you very much. I think we're expected in the Main Hall now.