The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Hello, everyone. Can you hear me? Okay. Thank you.
You're most welcome to this session. It's NRI Collaborative Session, Sustainable Models for Community‑based Connectivity.
I am very privileged to be your host today. My name is Peace Oliver Amuge, African IGF. I work for the Office of Telecommunications. We're on channel 5. I will right away go to just give you a brief introduction on the session.
We have the distinguished panellists that I will give a moment to introduce themselves shortly.
This session is talking about local connectivity or community networks. As we're all aware, even if we know that access to Internet is a fundamental human right, we still know and have witnessed in different spaces where we work or live that there are still very many people who are not connected to the Internet, people in rural communities, very urban areas, Indigenous communities, they're still not connected.
So it's vital for us to have this kind of engagement and discuss alternative ways that we can have or close this gap.
And so you should look forward to our engagement. We will be looking out for some of the challenges. We will share our experiences in the different communities, different projects or initiatives that we have done towards closing this gap, and we will also talk about some of the existing policy frameworks or challenges that we have witnessed.
So without wasting any time, I will already invite you, Chafic, to start off this discussion.
My question to you is: How can inclusive policies and strong regulations framework close the digital divide?
Can you hear me? Sorry. I cannot hear myself at all. It feels as though I'm speaking to myself.
Thank you.
So Chafic, I'm coming to you. Before you answer these questions, can you introduce yourself briefly? Thank you.
>> CHAFIC CHAYA: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Chafic Chaya, Regional Manager for Public Policy and Government Affairs in the Middle East for RIPE NCC, Lebanon IGF Chair.
It's a pleasure to be here with you today. Thanks for the invitation.
Just to answer a question, addressing this question in today's context is not about improving infrastructure or updating regulation. It's about recognising that accessibility and connectivity to the Internet is a right and not a luxury.
So when we talk about connectivity, about the cost of the Internet, about policy and regulation, we are really talking about the people, people who are in rural areas, remote areas, in refugee camps, that they don't have the chance to connect. They cannot get online.
So I just have one question here for the audience. How many of you come from a country where the connectivity in rural or remote areas is still a challenge? Yeah.
So, yes, and you are not alone.
In many parts of my region, the list and beyond, this is a challenge, but this challenge is not about technology. It's not about we don't have the connectivity. It's about a policy failure. Let's put it in this dimension.
So I want to share with you something that's very simple, a powerful story about this community initiatives and community network and how it works. In one of the small mountain village in Lebanon, we had a young woman. She had skills, and she was selling handicrafts, crochets for table and chairs. But she did not have a way to reach customers. So one of our initiatives was led by the ‑‑ and some academics, et cetera. It was to have a mobile bus to visit this village twice a week. So we met this young lady, and now this young lady, after she gets online and digital literacy, now she's a young entrepreneur and offers jobs to other young ladies, and she's selling her handicrafts and her products online.
So the main message here is we do not need to wait for government development plans to go to this rural areas.
When community works together, we can get the connectivity. This connectivity can give the opportunity to these people like this young lady.
To the second part of your question about the strategic alliances and how we can do this together, the first thing I wanted to say here, I believe we need to stop talking about the stakeholders' group, the civil society, technical community, academics are just supported partners. No. We need to be active partners.
So government cannot solve and bridge everything alone. We need to work with governments. So my message here is more all my colleagues, please, when you talk to government, don't just sit down and talk and listen to them. You need to be a partner. You need to collaborate because inclusive policies, based on my experience ‑‑ I have been working for the last 20 years with governments ‑‑ it is not written in the ministries or at the regulatory authorities. These inclusive policies should be involved with the stakeholders, with communities, and should be based on trust and locally on the ground. We need these policies as needed and not just theoretically written on a piece of paper.
So community has an important role to play in connecting people with partners with governments.
Thank you.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you very much, Chafic, for really pulling out and bringing out some of these things, especially that we should all be active partners, not pointing fingers to the other stakeholders, but we should all be active partners.
We need to understand the role that the community plays.
Right away, I will come to you, Lillian. Before you speak, just briefly introduce yourself to the Austin‑Bergstrom.
How should national regulations be adopted to support the legal establishment and operations of community networks?
Thank you.
>> LILLIAN CHAMORRO: Thank you, Peace, and all of my partners.
I'm Lillian Chamorro, LACIGF Secretariat Coordinator, Colnodo, Colombia IGF.
We in Colnodo have experienced communities in the creation and maintenance of community networks. We think it's necessary to recognise that the diversity of connection possibilities should be recognised because the actual enterprises don't respond to the needs of the communities because they don't have enough people, and the communities don't respond to the need of the large operators. Therefore, other connectivity models are needed, diversified models that is operated by the principle of openness, sharing, and community.
These community models cannot have the same requirements as traditional models. They must have reduced fees and have requirements simplified to the conditions of these networks. On the other hand, these models should have access to the universal access of funds. In Colombia, we have the universal fund, which is intended to bring connectivity to communities that are usually in remote areas and do not have the possibility of accessing these type of resources.
The initiatives are financed by universities or by international funds. So ISOC or also the programme from APC, but they are not resources ‑‑ of community networks.
There needs to be alternative resources different from the commercial models.
The high cost does not allow communities to access and facilitate access which means the possibility to access means the cost is important and more opportunities for the community network sustainability.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you. Thank you, Lillian.
I do agree that exploring the different models that exist, openness, addressing the needs of the community. And when you bring that with what Chafic started talking about, with the different stakeholders, I want to bring in Julius now.
Julius, my question is what strategic alliances between government and civil society can boost community network development?
>> JULIUS ZUBE: Thank you very much. Just to briefly introduce, my name is Julius Zube, Head of International Partnerships, NRD Companies (Lithuania). We closely work with the Lithuania government sharing our digital transformation experience, including the field of broadband connectivity, which is one of the key pillars in ensuring digital transformation.
I really appreciate this question because, in Lithuania, when we first became independent in the 1990s, we had a unique decision to bridge the rural and urban gap, in terms of digital divide, and one thing that was proposed, actually, for Lithuanian government by the academia to provide ‑‑ to make it financially viable for companies to provide.
Private sector provision can be in underserved areas.
The next very interesting initiative was called Window to the Future, which started in 2000 and was issued by telecommunication companies and private banks.
The NGO was to establish centres in rural areas where people can get Wi‑Fi access, digital skills, and everything that they need to use the connectivity that they would be provided.
The idea was that telecommunications wanted more people using digital services or digital connectivity so it impressive their base. The banks wanted more people using digital banking services, so that simplifies the other process. They don't need to serve as many people in their offices. In terms, then, the government jumped in and said, that's great. Let's do that.
The largest Internet points in all of Europe that is provided to public libraries. And we believe this is a great collaboration between a critical service points in any community, which, in Lithuania case is public libraries ‑‑ and the government providing the mandate you need to initiate these things. We believe this model is adaptable to other contexts.
We had a project in Kenya. Instead of public libraries, we were working with the ‑‑ in Kenya and how the infrastructure of the postal networks would be brought to provide other similar networks.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you, Julius. That's a good example of how when all stakeholders come together, it's stronger with Window to the Future.
I would like to announce that we have online participants. Judith is our moderator. We'll be sure when we open the floor, that we give you the opportunity to engage.
I will come to you, Henry. Please introduce yourself briefly, and then my question to you is: How can rural and Indigenous communities effectively participate ‑‑
I'm sorry. I was asked to moderate the session last‑minute. I was not aware. This is my Julius. Excuse me for that.
So my question is, Henry, how can rural and indigenous communities participate in connectivity policy making, and what strategies are needed to build their capacity to manage and sustain their own network structure?
>> HENRY WANG: Very good questions.
Hello, everyone. My name is Henry Wang, Founder of World Web3 Alliance, Singapore IGF.
So today's topic is community and driving network. This is very important, and it aligns with IGF. IGF is bottom‑up. A community network is also bottom‑up. But when we talk about community network, sometimes we don't have enough tools to build the community network. But now time is shifting, and this empowered blockchain protocol can actually help the community to build their own network based on mesh network, which is a peer‑to‑peer connection.
So with peer‑to‑peer connections, people can build a network. With one node, we call it mesh box. You can collect it to the low‑earth satellites. Then you can immediately form a space‑to‑ground network.
This decentralised infrastructure network, we call it decentralised physical network. This DP is going to revolutionise our infrastructure within the next decade, 10 years.
So within 10 years, I believe the whole of humanity can be connected with this space‑to‑ground integration network because it's bottom‑up so everybody can participate.
So there's a protocol to guarantee the contributors and users and validators to organise a fair network for everyone. So we call it People's Network.
I invested into one of the companies in Chicago who are building the mesh box with solar panel and also with a battery. So it can work without power. So in those remote areas, rural areas, as mentioned by several of our panellists, in those areas, we can immediately build a network for people.
So the low‑earth satellites is not only starting. There are so many constellations under construction. So within three to five years, all of them will be put into operation. So space‑to‑ground integration network will be the future of our community network.
So, we're talking about policies in every country. How do you encourage people to build a network together? It's not centralised. It's not decided by the centralised carriers to build the network. They can work together to build a community‑based network. So it's cost effective and also with a broadband and bandwidth, people can earn.
Under this, we have the layer that decentralised the ownership. It means for emerging countries, they don't have to turn over their data. They can preserve their data, their language, and their cultures. So with the community network and the W30 layer that's being done for all the language and cultures, I believe the emerging countries can gradually become wealthy and gather their own data and protect their languages and culture.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you, Henry, for mentioning the bottom‑up approach, the decentralisation of the networks, and the cost effectiveness.
I will bring it to you, Claude, to talk about the funding mechanism and incentives that can support sustainable community networks.
Please introduce yourself briefly.
>> CLAUDE DORION: Yes. Hello. My name is Claude Dorion, General Director at MCE Conseils. I'm an economist. Conseils specialises in ‑‑ for projects. Financing connectivity is a complex question. So trying to offer a four‑minute answer is kind of countercultural for a guy that's paid by the hour usually.
Connectivity is different things depending on who you are asking.
For some people, it's a market. For other people, it's a right. We may argue that in between, it's a social service supplied by an economic activity with a technical solution.
But this right has to be supplied and financed from private sector, public sector, or social‑civil society with the limited resources that the sector has and the important wave of diminishing resources coming from international cooperations, it seems we're blended to find solutions to a large scale.
I mainly bring the experience of social economy to this debate. Social economy is constituted of collectively owned enterprises who have a social mission managed through collective democratic governance representing the community that they serve.
It is a way of undertaking collectively for the common good.
Social economy has developed a culture of mixed financing where grants finance impact, loan finances assets, and specialised financing feed working capital through long‑term flexible loans without guarantee or supported by external or public guarantee scheme.
We believe that this is a constructive path to use philanthropy as leverage and with the aim of multiplying the impact for community connectivity.
And because I'm an economist, I kind of have the tendency to see things as a supply‑and‑demand situation. On the supply side, we have to build a network of a few complementary financial actors that work together with mutually supportive projects in the same way to share analysis, share risk and insight, in order to raise the financial supply and lower its cost.
I also believe that connectivity initiatives may need management and technical support services in order to identify the best solution and to deliver the kind of business case because we are, in fact, social businesses, business plans that will be closer in content and in format to what social financial actors may expect or wish for.
It is really a dialogue between digital divide and financial divide.
And I believe this dialogue can be constructive, leading to a fair financing solution to collective projects, bringing positive social impact and economic impact as fair trade brought higher selling price for growers, fair financing could bring fairer prices for users of connectivity emerging from community‑based projects.
Thank you.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you very much, Claude, for those elaborate points. I think these are really good strategies we need to take if we want to ensure that the financing mechanism works for our goal to ensure that we close the gap, and we have many people connected as we are, in this room, connected.
I will come to Aicha Jerid.
Introduce yourself before you take the question.
The question to you is: How can policies strengthen digital skills and community‑led technology.
>> AICHA JERID: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Aicha Jerid, Senior Director of Digital Marketing and Innovation, Honoris Casablanca, North Africa IGF, Arab IGF. I'm the vice chair. I'm here to represent the northern part of the continent.
It's very relevant, in this context, to say that community network is not only about connectivity and infrastructure. It is also more about empowerment, empowerment of the less‑privileged ones, including women, youth, and also people with disabilities.
So policies, in this context, play a vital role in ensuring that the global community are not only passive users of Internet but also active in connecting the other communities and in shaping the realities of the disconnected.
So talking about the digital skills, there are not only four but four main areas where policies can support digital skills.
The first area, policy can invest in inclusive or more inclusive digital education and training. This is by creating a policy. Government should create policies that ensure everyone has access to digital literacy, either in schools or in adult literacy.
Second, policy should include skill and communication with more and more areas and include rural areas as well as urban areas in digital skills.
Third, policy should support training in rural areas. This is in cooperation with civil society. Maybe it's important, in this context, related to the digital skills, especially to mention the efforts done by the School of Internet Governance and the regional initiatives of Internet governance, whether it's north, south, west ‑‑ and the initiatives and the schools and the trainings they do on a yearly basis and the students, women and people with disabilities. Last year, for instance, in our School of Internet Governance, in North Africa, we have included people with disabilities. We've trained them. We've had their participate in our school and certify.
This has helped people build their local communities.
The next area is to enable communities to design their own infrastructure. This is also by reducing the dependencies on large corporations, ISP corporations because we know, for instance, in North Africa, we don't all have community‑based networks. We don't have it because of the monopoly of the giant ISPs, and we cannot build that.
So it is maybe time to call for community for people who have been trained, for people who are skilled together and to create community networks in Africa and North Africa especially.
And the third area that policies can promote is accessible, affordable Internet. This is reducing the taxes on digital devices and by supporting more and more use of public Internet access, such as in schools, in libraries, and we are talking about both rural and more rural areas and also urban areas.
Policies can also recognise local communities and recognise the efforts of local communities by offering them small grants, by encouraging and offering very, very small grants or even loans with low interest that can help them create their own community network.
Fourth and finally, it is the most important one because it includes more than one stakeholder because all stakeholders should participate to create policy. Policy is not the creation of government only. It's a collective effort because civil society, for instance, in terms of skills and capacity building, there's more experience in that regard. So I invite more participation of civil society invests to forge a partnership with government and these local networks.
Why not create a digital inclusion council or ambassadors who will promote the community‑based networks and work with multistakeholders to improve connectivity in rural areas.
This is all from my side. Thank you for not cut my word.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: I didn't because you talked about the School of Internet Governance. I couldn't cut you off. I was agreeing to what you were saying.
We'll open up in a bit. I think we will use the mics there.
I think you can take the floor. As you go in the queue, we have Roberto, who is online.
>> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Yes.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: If we can have Roberto ‑‑
>> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Okay. Roberto, I think you can go. We'll have AV people unlock your mic and video. Thanks.
>> Roberto: Thank you. I want to share very quickly how we're working in Bolivia. I will say five years ago, a key element was the way we have the coordination with the government, not only the head of the ‑‑ Communications Minister but also the Regulator's Office and last year ‑‑ I would say the last two years, we started to work with capacities in communities because the community network, we understand that is a fantastic solution for bridging the gap we have regarding all the people.
I will say more than 40% of the Bolivian population that don't have access to Internet.
And another important fact that I would like to share ‑‑ because I'm also working with the Internet Society Foundation ‑‑ it's from the organisation we work with, capacity building, especially in a course we have where there's a ready assessment. This allows people to work solutions from the very beginning. It's very important because usually these kind of projects, these kind of initiatives comes directly bringing the solutions without even, in some cases, consulting the communities, consulting the beneficiaries.
And the correct approach, I would say, is to build the concept from the beginning, understanding the nature of the needs, and working together with them again from the beginning to define what kind of solutions will actually fit their particular needs, in terms of connectivity.
Of course, the solutions that we call community‑based are one of the best examples of working together with the communities from the beginning and thinking about the specific solutions that are related with technology, with approaches, with how the leaders of the communities can embrace these kind of solutions, of course working together with the rest to have not only a successful community network but especially a community network that is going to be sustainable in the future because that's the other aspect that we need to think from the beginning and to define the different strategies to work with that goal.
So that's what I wanted to very quickly contribute. Once again, thank you for the opportunity to do it.
Thank you very much, Judith and Peace.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you, Roberto.
We have a hand there. You?
>> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: We also have a question online.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Online, okay. So we take ‑‑ yes. You can go.
>> FLOOR: Thank you so much. I'm from the African Community Network (phonetic) programme. I just like the contributions from ‑‑ I think it was from the financier as well as ‑‑ is it Malis ‑‑
>> Singapore.
>> FLOOR: Singapore. All I see is collaboration, collaboration, collaboration going up. The theme is community‑based. In terms of financing, I think one of the issues we have is about the buy‑in of those we are trying to provide a solution for. What am I talking about?
I come from Africa. In Africa, it's very different. We're talking about community networks for people in grass roots. Are we talking about implementing community networks for them or with them? In the programme that evolved from programmes in Costa Rica and Africa, you see the community people are involved in the data or they're involved in the ownership. How do we transcend the funding into community ownership where they see that they have the shares in which they are able to invest? Because most of the communities we're talking about most times don't have the funds.
For the last speaker online, about sustainability, I think we're at the point here where we need some of this. Some of us are doing this and know the challenges. So I'm just asking so we can be able to join ourselves and see how we're able to solve this and move the community networks. Because without community networks, all that we're talking about is never going to be achieved. Connecting everybody is never going to be top‑down. It's going to be bottom‑up, and it's going to be more meaningful and impactful.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you. Judith, you can take the question online, and then we can go with the hand we have.
>> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: We have a question from Zayna (phonetic) from Lebanon.
The question to all the speakers is: In their opinion, what roles can NRIs play in fostering community networks?
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you.
Is your mic on?
>> FLOOR: Hello?
>> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Yes.
>> FLOOR: Hello. I'm from Bangladesh, Bangladesh Internet Governance Forum. I have some observation. Twenty years ago, we're talking about digital divide. After 20 years, we're same talking about digital divide. The problem is the community network. Community network is facilitated only for rural area. Rural area living is the poor people and below‑income people, but they are not facilitated in the community supported fund. If we are starting the community project, the community project is okay, network is okay. When community project ends, network ends because changes that are technological. The technical person is not living in the rural area. They're thinking if I'm a technical person, I'm going to rural area because there's a better job. I'm not living in the rural area.
The other problem is the technical device. Device is very much higher price. If Uriel area want technical devices, problem. If you change these device, it's so expensive. They are not affordable. So the challenge is affordable and the other challenge is technical knowledge. This is my observation from Bangladesh Internet Governance Forum.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you. Yes. Do we have someone online?
>> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: I don't think the question was answered. She asked a question about how can NRIs play a role in fostering community networks?
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Yes. We've taken the note. We're have all the questions and then circle around and answer.
>> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Okay.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Yes. You can go on. Yes, please.
>> FLOOR: Okay. Sorry for my voice. I'm a bit sick.
I'm from ‑‑ and newly elected policy chair from NPAC (phonetic). We have the satellites connectivity and connecting the user. My question is: Have you tried to implement such a solution in very low‑income community? What was the outcome of making those devices available to them, in terms of pricing? Like return on investment, we're talking about connecting the non‑connected and local communities, but, in the end, it's about the company investing. We want it to be sustainable and be able to replicate those solutions made available.
So how are you able to manage that?
My second question to all the panellists is on the policy fronts. How do you see, in terms of policy implementation or harmonisation, what could be the involvement of the NRIs? We're talking about the NRIs here. What could be their involvement? So pushing for a recommendation of contribution into policy suggestion to the legislation at the national level so that adoptions of community networks actually become more of a reality.
Like we're using social network today, for example, so the community network will not be something just of a dream. Giving power to the government to make sure they put efforts in place for the initiatives so they can get support when support is needed.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you.
>> JULIUS ZUBE: We have one online.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Okay. So you can take the floor, and then we can have the online question.
>> FLOOR: Thank you. I'm Lee McKnight, Syracuse University, also working with ‑‑ and others in the African Community Programme. I beg to differ with some of our speakers here. Assuming it's complicated, that it's too complicated for rural community residents to operate themselves, there's one right here in the room that if anyone can operate a smartphone can operate their own community network and create services for themselves and their neighbourhoods.
So I think we have to think about the current generations of technology that can radically simplify, automate, and enable communities to support themselves.
Thank you.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you.
Let's have the online question.
>> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Sure. So we also have a comment here. I'm going to have it read out so that it can be put in the captions so other people can see it.
Our question comes from Mark ‑‑ who says: When the digital divide is overcome, then different complaints are generated in a quest for perfection instead of results.
He was commenting on that people, when there are many different access points, people are commenting on the quality of the provider or whether they like the provider or not.
I just wanted to make sure his comment was represented in the chat.
Also, to Tijani Ben Jemma online, I think there's already authority to open the mic.
>> TIJANI Ben Jemma: Thank you. Henry, I heard you. And the solution you are proposing, World Web3, it's very interesting. Decentralised the distributed solution that really makes the end user have the ownership of their data.
But my big concern is about the power consumption of this technology because it is based on blockchain technology. I don't know if this solution can be visible because of this issue of power conception.
Thank you.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you very much.
We have 14 minutes, so let’s just be pretty fast. We'll have that. And then we can have you, and then we can come back to the speakers so that we can have feedback on your comments and questions.
Yes, you can go ahead. Let's just make it very quick so we can all have a chance.
>> FLOOR: Thank you. I will try. I'm ‑‑ from RISE ‑‑ also with the community networks, let's say.
You know, our experience says that the governments the territories are quite different from each other. So business models and strategies for connectivity can be very different. What can be different from the Internet governance perspective is these platforms of regional and Internet governance forums, it can be discussed a national strategy or the regional strategies, regional strategies on accessing the areas so everybody can be in there, and they can discuss how to manage this.
In some cases, in some countries, they have the state subsidies to reach the farthest regions. In some countries, it is the stage grants. In some, it is the donations that are providing this money. So it is really different, but all these issues can be discussed at Internet Governance Forums.
Another thing that might be done by participants of the IGF is capacity building. Different organisations can overtake a part of that capacity building. We have mentioned here that these people from communities, they don't have enough experience. They don't have enough expertise and knowledge. So we can provide them the skills on networking. Others can provide them the skills on management and all this other stuff that is needed to run community‑based organisations.
So I would call just to diversify the approach and discuss it at the different levels.
Thank you very much.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: We come to you.
>> FLOOR: Thank you, Carlos ‑‑ from the Internet Society Ecuadoran chapter.
We passed that ‑‑ we work to implement this. That's one way. We have this from several years ago, but we don't know where the money goes at the end because it is more or less $25 million each year, 1% of the net income of the telecommunications providers.
So if the government put attention, we could try to have some news for the community in the next IGF or whatever is in.
Thank you very much.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you.
>> FLOOR: Thank you. My name is Wisdom Donkor, IT Manager Ghana National Information Technology Agency and Ghana Coordinator. There's a company that I think we are living out. They're going to do the alignment of the community network to the needs of the ‑‑ we need to look at this critically because you have a rural farmer who has the produce and wants to look for markets for this produce. This farmer needs a network to be able to locate a buyer.
So if we want to build this network, we need to be able to convince the government to bring in its support. Then we have to work to align the need. A rural dweller would like a national passport. In Africa, they have to travel to the city before they can get a passport. So we're solving the problem.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you.
Thank you to all of you who had comments and questions.
We come back to the panellists. If you have any response to whatever comment or question that came, you can just take the floor, and you can use a minute or two to just say your final words.
You have nine minutes. So let's summarise our thoughts.
>> CHAFIC CHAYA: So the first question I would like the answer is about the role of NRIs in network community. NRIs play an important role in network community. For one simple reason because NRIs discuss the challenges and opportunities of each country.
As my friend said, each country has its own challenges, its own environment. So when we discuss the needs of each country at the NRIs, NRIs, based on our experience, we discuss these topics at the NRIs, and then we put our report and raise it to the decision makers. So the decision makers know exactly what are the challenges that the country is facing in infrastructure, development, and policy.
Second thing that NRIs can do is capacity building, awareness. We do this during the Lebanon IGF. We do capacity building and organise our workshops to end users to the community so we give them the awareness and technical expertise and how they should approach these challenges.
I'm talking as a member of the Lebanon IGF. I will talk now from the other perspective, as a RIPE NCC, one of the global industries with network numbers for communities. So from a RIPE NCC perspective, what we do is support very closely and engage with the NRIs and with all multistakeholder platforms. These platforms are technical platforms that can complement the NRIs' discussion, which is the policy platforms. So giving the community, the end users the expertise needed and giving the resources ‑‑ not only the expertise, but we fund this on the ground. Doing this, we engage with the end users, with the individuals, with the communities to build their own community.
A part of our engagement is building communities.
So happy that my colleague is there. I'm happy to help answer any questions on how we can support you in building your own community.
Thank you.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you, Chafic.
>> AICHA JERID: As just an example, we represent the North Africa NIR. We have reached out to the Ministry of ICT. We had a meeting with the Minister and suggested a couple of regular online and on‑site capacity‑building sessions, especially for women, in rural and ‑‑ for instance. So we had the initiative. We took the initiative to go to ICT, and we were welcome. The message I want to convey is the policies are not only for governments. Government may not have all the information or the capabilities to be everywhere and to respond to all the people's needs.
So civil society organisations, schools or people who are working in Internet governance also have the responsibility to reach out to ISPs as well as to governments and participate in shaping policies.
Another point I wanted to react to was the comment said by a fellow from Bangladesh who underlined that community network is not only connectivity. And this is how I started my intervention. I said it's about empowerment. Yeah. When I speak about empowerment, it means giving the necessary skills to those people in rural areas or not even in rural areas. I spoke about people with disabilities, which we do not mention much here. It can be people living in urban areas, but they do not have the necessary skills to be connected.
So here comes the importance of the digital skills. To my point of view, community network is a full project that encompasses many steps. It starts with connectivity and then, second of all, with capacity building that includes digital literacy and digital marketing for entrepreneurs who are in the rural areas and who do not know, first of all, how to use their smartphone or mobile phone.
The latest ICT research has said that more than ‑‑ I think, if I'm not mistaken, 40% in the Global South Africa do not have smartphones because of the price of the smartphones and connectivity and all the other issues.
Just to cut the story short, digital literacy skills is part and parcel of the community‑based networks.
Thank you.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you, Aicha.
Lillian, thank you. You can go.
>> LILLIAN CHAMORRO: Well, to finish, I would like to say that it's important to recognise that to build and maintain a community network is a process. It's not just a project with a beginning and a finish. It's all a process. We need policy aligned with sustainability. That means phones. That means diversity of models. That means training. Local governance, communities, access to spectrum, access to create a strong ecosystem where multiple actors are involved. That is important also to the role of the NRIs because we need not only civil society or only governments. We need to discuss and bring different viewpoints about how to strengthen the community network ecosystem.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you.
Claude, do you want to go?
>> CLAUDE DORION: Yes. We just conducted a survey with the Association For Progressive Communication where we had information from roughly 80 connectivity centres and initiatives. And the basic conclusion was the large diversity of those projects, they all share the fact that they emerge from a local initiative where the group of future users get together and build a network connected to another or totally autonomous.
And they are scaled by the size, the number of users. They may be rural. They may be urban, in poor neighbours of large cities. The cases are really multiples, and what we try to do is have strategies where we bring external resources at the lowest cost possible in order to complement the internal resources of the communities and materialise and implement their project.
So it's all in total respect of the local initiative, and it's at the service of those communities that a financial ecosystem has to be built and adapted for each different project because the challenges are different from one project to the other.
I think that when we see the example of Ecuador, with its 1% tax, I could say on the profit of the private sector, the example that Julius presented, about how the private sector is working with the public sector in order to bring some accessibility to communities. They're all an example of mixing a public decision, some private resources with local regulation and local initiative in order to attract what we need, human resources, technical resources, and financial resources in order to increase the number of people having access and lower the price that they have to support in order to pay for it.
>> PEACE OLIVER AMUGE: Thank you. Thank you very much, Claude.
And they showed the sign. I don't know if we can take ‑‑ just ‑‑ no. (Laughter). It is a big know.
I just want to thank you all for your time, for coming to this session, for your efforts.
A big thank you to the panellists for sharing the engagements, projects, and Nii Quaynor, for what you have been doing on this, thank you.
(Applause)
