Global Digital Summit 2025 – Digital Pathways for All

[Sangbu Kim]
I’m proud to see such a distinguished group of leaders, innovators, and change makers in this atrium, including over 60 ministerial-level government representatives, alongside private sector, pioneers, academics, and nonprofit leaders, shaping digital future. This year marks a new face in our work at the World Bank, harnessing digital technology for innovation and impact. As we set the stage for the discussions ahead, I want to highlight a few key initiatives that will accelerate our collective efforts. The first one, the Accelerating Digital Global Challenge program we have, brings together policy reforms, financing, and private sector mobilizations under one umbrella. Helping countries expand digital markets and scale impact. We are strongly focusing on building digital public infrastructure, so billions of people without access to digital ID, digital payments, and secure data sharing can fully participate in the digital economy. We are also expanding connectivity and digital skills for women as part of our new program with Digital Partnership program. We are working very hard to close the digital gender gap. This is in line with our wider corporate target of connecting 300 million more women to broadband by 2030.

The World Bank Group has long been a global leader in digital development, but the challenges ahead require us to move faster and think bigger. That’s why we are here, and what the Digital Summit is about. Over the next two days, you will explore AI’s role in development, scaling digital transformation for all, and expanding our connectivities to those people still left behind. You will hear from leaders across government, industry, and civil society, including World Bank leadership, on how we can build more inclusive, secure, and innovative digital future. Beyond these sessions, we’ll dive into critical topics such as satellite power connectivity, scaling public sector digital services, addressing cybersecurity risks, and striking the right balance between innovation and regulation. These discussions aren’t just conversation. They are a call to action. The World Bank Group is committed to driving progress and realizing your digital vision by working and partnering with all of you. I hope you enjoy the discussions today and tomorrow. Thank you again for joining us.

[Applause]

[Moderator] That’s Sangbu, thank you. Let’s please now welcome our first panel discussion for the next half an hour or so. Our moderator is Axel van Trotsenburg, who is the Senior Management Director of the World Bank. Please, would you give them a warm welcome and join us on stage. Thank you. [Applause]

[Axel van Trotsenburg] Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to the Global Digital Summit 2025. It’s exciting that you’re here, but also around the world. It is really important for us. Digital is key for development. The transformation could be that consequential. Therefore, we also created last year a digital vice presidency just to put the point how important digital transformation will be for the world, and that it cannot just be an afterthought, but it has to be central. I think it’s always important when we are, as a development institution, talking about it, we need always to keep in mind that still 2.6 billion people, or about a third of the world population, are not connected. And that is a problem. That’s a problem because what we could actually risk is a digital divide. It creates more inequality, less opportunity, and more marginalization. So therefore, what digital transformation has to be when we discuss that in the World Bank or other fora, is that we have a sharp focus on development and its impact. The great thing is digital transformation can help, namely create markets, expand markets, create jobs, create welfare. That is actually the beauty of this, what we need to do. We need to think during this Summit, how we can expand connectivity, how we can build a digital infrastructure that serves all, particularly also people in remote areas in developing countries, that they are not left out. Ensuring that AI can be used in this context to the best of its potential, but that we also need to be mindful of maybe some of the pitfalls and risks. The good news is that we are super active these days already in the World Bank. We have been expanding very rapidly, not only our portfolio, but also our analytical work and our engagement work, and this summit is just another example of this. What we hope, certainly, in the discussion is how we can get a good understanding on how can we make digital transformation as inclusive, but also as sustainable as possible, and that it really avoids the pitfall of exclusion, and that we can actually have more sustainable equitable development of this. As Ajay often is mentioning, it cannot be an end in itself. We need to see how also the digital transformation can help us in really creating jobs and creating new opportunities for the many people that still can’t find jobs and the job challenge is enormous. We need to look through all angles how that can be addressed.

To open this Summit, I have two very distinguished speakers. First, Madame Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni. She is the new Minister Delegate to Head of Government in charge of Digital Transition and Administrative Reform in Morocco. Welcome. Also, Madame is a recognized expert in AI. She brings a sharp focus on ensuring that digital transformation is not just about technology, but importantly, about people. We will to hear a bit more how the Moroccan experience could be interesting also for us, the countries, to learn from, but maybe also how we could adapt some of their practices. Then I’m delighted to have Doreen Bogdan-Martin. She’s the Secretary General of the ITU. That is the International Telecommunications Union. Now, what I didn’t know was that she is heading the oldest international organization. Here, at the World Bank, we are just young kids with 80 years. Her organization, just think how old it is, 160 years. When I got it in my brief, I thought there was a typo. I googled this. Anyways, now they changed a bit the name, they were the “International Telegraph Union.” What is clear in this is this has been around. What is actually interesting with the Institution is how these whole communication technologies are changing over time, but how you need to keep abreast, but also highlight what the potential is in terms of really making change to people’s lives, but also be mindful of regulatory and also challenges. I’m delighted that Doreen joins us. Thank you. Let me kick off, maybe to both of you a question. What I meant is 2.6 billion people remain offline. What in your mind are some of the bold actions that we need to do? Because that will put focus that we want to have access to these people. What do we need to think about? Let me start with the Minister.

[Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni] Thank you very much. Very happy to be here and to give some insights on Moroccan strategy to deal with transformation and digital transition. As the name digital transition means that it will take some time. It’s not an instantaneous change. This is why we talk about transition and not transformation. Yes, you are right. We have 2.6 billion people that remain offline over the world, but the divide is… Maybe in the first question, we will address the question of connection. Of course, to have everybody on board, we need to tackle some other problems, at least as important as connection, like skills, jobs, transformation, etc. While global internet penetration stands at 68%, according to International Telecommunication Union, only 38% in Africa are connected. This number varies from one country to another one. Only 7% of people remain offline in high-income nations versus 78% per cent in low-income countries. Morocco’s experience shows closing this gap is not just an aspiration, it’s an achievable goal with a very clear strategy, which is Morocco 2030 Digital. In our country, we made digital access as a national priority. One of the main priorities of the country is to get people over the country connected. We have achieved an impressive number of connectivity rate, which is 90% over Morocco. Of course, this connectivity will vary from rural to non-rural areas. This progress is the result of proactive public policies, including the National High Speed Broadband Plan, NHD, which has brought 2G, 3G, and 4G services to over 10,000 more than 10,000 rural areas between 2018 and 2024. What we target is to cover 1,800 localities by 2026. As you know, Morocco has some deadlines like the World Cup, football, and the African one, etcetera. It’s not in the spirit of Moroccans to not see the football. To reach the most remote communities, Morocco has also adopted diversified ways for connections. We have connectivity through terrestrial networks, but we also invest in satellite approach, in particular, VSAT satellites. Finally, this initiative of using satellites allow Morocco to target populations in the countryside or in very specific regions of Morocco. Looking ahead, Morocco is preparing for the 5G era with the ambition to have 25% population coverage by 2026 and 70% by 2030. To support this transition, the government is working on modernizing the telecommunication infrastructure. There is a huge call for innovation in this area, expanding network capacity, and deploying new antennas, particularly in cities that will host a major global event such as the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations and the ‘30 FIFA World Cup. Beyond infrastructure, we recognize that digital inclusion also depends on the governance and accessibility. Morocco has made significant progress in digital rights, with the right to information law called 31-13, enacted in 2018. This law is aligned with international frameworks like the Open Government Partnership. This law enhances transparency by requiring public institutions to digitize and proactively share information, ensuring that access to digital services is both, right and reality. Finally, Morocco’s journey demonstrates that bridging the digital divide requires a bold and holistic approach, one that combines investment and regulatory reform. We stand ready to work to ensure that no one and no region in Morocco is left behind in this digital transformation and also in the AI revolution. We are also working on other divides, like technical ones, because there are divides in algorithmics, in models, etc., when it comes to talk about AI. We have, as you know, in Morocco, we have the biggest data center in Africa, and Morocco aspires to become a hub in Africa. I can maybe…

[Axel van Trotsenburg] Okay, thank you very much, but what’s important here is the message. This is doable in countries. You will need the policy, you need to have a vision, and as well as that you will need to have the regulatory framework place as well as the complementary investments. Let me turn to Doreen.

[Doreen Bogdan-Martin] Thank you. Axel, you are well-informed. We are 160 years old this year, and we started with the telegraph, and of course, connectivity was at the core, and I think it remains at the core today. Picking up on the Minister’s point, I do think we need to be bold, and we need to also, as you said, Minister, be holistic. We have 2.6 billion people that have never, ever connected to the internet. To close that gap, our latest estimate shows that we’re going to need about 1.6 trillion US dollars. That’s a big number. Governments can’t do that alone. We need partnerships, and we’re happy that we have such a strong partnership with you at the World Bank, but it also goes beyond infrastructure. As the Minister also mentioned, we have this skilling piece. We need to invest in skilling. We also have challenges linked to affordability. We might get the network there, but the device is still far too expensive. I look out there, I see Vivek [Badrinath] from GSMA. We work closely with GSMA, with yourselves at the Bank. We have our Device Affordability Coalition, and we have to do more to bring the cost of those devices down. We have to tackle challenges around data packages, the cost of data packages, taxation is a big challenge. So, we got to get to those issues. Of course, at the same time, governments need to be putting in place enabling frameworks. We need to push those enabling policy and regulatory frameworks. Then, I guess, coming back to my first point, I think it is about partnerships. It’s about things like our Partner to Connect. We’re targeting 100 billion by next year. We’re at 73 billion now, so we got a ways to go. It’s also things like “Giga,” which is out being demonstrated here. That’s about school connectivity, connecting every school on the planet to the Internet. We’re doing some pretty cool things on infrastructure modeling, on mapping. I think we can also do much, much more. I think it’s also about closing specific gaps. You mentioned the gender gap. We have our EQUALS Global Partnership. We need to double down and close that gap as well. I think the last piece coming to partnerships, we have our Digital Infrastructure Investment Initiative. That’s something we’ve been advancing with the development banks, and I think we also have to do much more in that investment space.

[Axel van Trotsenburg] What you’re seeing is we need ultimately the partnerships from the private sector, public sector, international organizations. I think also civil society will be important on this. Let me now unpack a little bit the issues on the digital public infrastructures. I wanted to ask the Minister about what are, in your mind, the biggest roadblocks and what are some of the lessons you would draw from the Moroccan experience that could potentially be interesting also for the broader debate for other countries. Now, what I will say is the world is very unfair because they have here a digital clock, so we have 14 minutes. What I will have to ask you is we cannot double the time. So, we’ll need two, three minutes answers, and then I will turn to Doreen, but the Minister first.

[Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni] Okay. I think the digitalization of public administration is one of the key pillars of our strategy. Our commitment to build more efficient, transparent, and citizen-centric government is something that is very important in our strategy, and we are happy to announce that we have made progress in AGDI. We moved up by 11 positions last year in 2024. Our hope is to become one of the best countries, at least in Africa, with this indicator. However, we know that digital transformation is not just about adopting new technologies. It requires regulation. Regulation is very important, and regulation is something central, and we would like to be compliant, if possible, with the whole regulations in the world, but we know that it’s like [speaking in French]. Change management in the public sector, and we would like also to focus and to improve user experience with the administration. If I can answer the question of blocks that we started with in Moroccan strategy, the first one is about something very sensitive and critical. It is about national ID, digital ID, how to access services, how to access platforms, etc. You know that over the world, there are many initiatives working on this national IDs. We have our proposal as Moroccans, how to deal with this, and there is huge ongoing work in Morocco. The second building block is to provide citizens with a national one-stop portal. They can navigate easily, both citizens and also enterprises, in the huge number of services. Today, we have 2,700 services. When it comes to people, normal people, they need help to navigate. This is why this portal is very important, and it provides a good entry for each event of life, not for services. Also, there is some attention made to national digital locker. This means that Morocco is developing an interoperable and secure e-wallet that will ensure compliance with international security and data protection standards. I think the main takeaway from Moroccan experience is first, leveraging public-private partnership by capitalizing on private sector expertise and fostering collaboration between the technology providers and the public sector. This helps us to accelerate the rollout of innovative solutions, in particular in administration. Also, the second important thing is how to adapt and adopt international best practices to local realities. We have specificities, we have constraints, we have regulations. How to take benefit from all these available opportunities over the world. The third point, and the last one, is how to ensure that citizens will engage, and also to get their feedback to improve our services. Digital transformation is not just a technical process. It must be inclusive and responsive. Morocco is actively working on engaging with the public. It must be inclusive with the public, including the Moroccan diaspora. We have a lot of Moroccan people all over the world, and we also, the King of Morocco, God assist him, pushed to work with this diaspora. Morocco is also able to ensure digital services to meet the needs of all communities. If I have time, I can develop because we have, for example, the Amazigh, we have people that use some dialects, etc. We try to provide innovation innovative solutions, thanks to generative AI, for example, to include all this population.

[Axel van Trotsenburg] Okay. Just to go to Doreen, we have been working a lot together between the Bank and ITU also on regulatory issues. What do you see are right now the emerging trends in regulations, and where do you see some emerging best practices?

[Doreen Bogdan-Martin] Yeah. Thank you. I mean, maybe just to go back a little bit. In the year 2000, we started with the Bank this famous, I think I can say Telecommunication Regulation Handbook. Back in the year 2000, countries were starting to privatize. Competition was starting. We worked with the Bank to launch this first Telecommunication Regulation Handbook. It was intended to help countries put in place separate, effective, independent regulatory institutions to help pave the way for investment and growth in the sector. We moved from there, from telecom to ICT regulation. At that point, we started to look at things deeper, in terms of interconnection, universal access, a little bit of spectrum. We moved from there to digital regulation, looking at how telecom, ICT, and digital platforms all come together. I think the big focus, I guess, consumers were always at the core. The need for effective regulation was also always at the core. The importance of fostering competitive environments, managing well scarce resources like spectrum, like orbital slots. Of course, with digital platforms, I think we started to focus more on issues linked to trust, cybersecurity, privacy. I would say, now, in our big focus, the shift is looking more at artificial intelligence, looking more at green and digital, so the whole sustainability angle being critical, and picking up, I think also on the Minister’s points linked to digital ID, the focus on digital public infrastructure. That collaboration, that platform has enabled us to both gather good practices and try to ensure those good practices are replicated.

[Axel van Trotsenburg] What I would try to hear a lot about the digital infrastructure regulations, and sometimes you say, “Well, how is this all adding up?” I want to come back to the 2.6 billion people. In your experience, when you are looking at this, how long will it take to close that gap? Can we expect that we cut this 2.6 billion in half in the next five to ten years, or does it take 15 years, looking what you know, looking in Morocco, at France, what could you see happening on 2030, 2035? What is your view on that? Then I ask this also to Doreen. We have to keep it short because of the time.

[Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni] Me first? Okay. For 2030, I think we can solve many problems. The first one is to be agile, how to deal with different categories of the population. In Morocco, we launched a program for kids and bigger, from 8 to 18. Eight today, in 2030, will be at the university. Our target is kids and teens in particular. The program in the sense of the framework is to provide this new generation with the necessary skills to be able to enter in the workforce, in the market. This is one thing. The second thing is to target the population that suffer from literacy, for example, old people. And these old people cannot be left behind. So, we provide solutions made on generative AI, so we can deal with apps that use text and speech, and we can navigate between text and speech. Generative AI will provide very accurate solutions in this area. Also, you can have translation, you can write, you can read, need, etc. We also know that innovation will be necessary to be competitive. Being competitive means that we develop research. A very accurate research to accompany this transformation of the market, of the jobs, of everything. We have many, many initiatives in that sense. If it’s time, I can stop up here.

[Axel van Trotsenburg] Doreen, your take.

[Doreen Bogdan-Martin] I mean, technologically, it can be done. Our goal is that we connect everyone by 2030. I mentioned the 1.6 trillion is a big number. But if governments prioritize digital, if investors prioritize digital, and if we have solid, sound partnerships, I firmly believe it can be done. We have terrestrial solutions. We have submarine cables. I look to His Excellency, the Minister of Nigeria, who co-shares our Submarine Cable Resilience Group. We have amazing things happening in space with new low Earth orbiting satellites. We have some interesting opportunities with direct to device. The opportunities are huge. The challenges are also big. We have to have the right policies. We have to build in that skilling. We have to tackle the affordability challenges. I think we also have to keep sustainability at the core. As we further advance digital, let’s remember, sustainability, circular economies are also critical.

[Axel van Trotsenburg] Thank you very much. This brings us to the end. I think what is important for the Summit, we need to keep in mind, in sharp focus, the 2.6 billion people that have no access. You mentioned that this is costing maybe 1.6 trillion dollars over the next five, six years. That’s about 0.25% of GDP per year that is doable with private sector support. I think what we need to have agility focus, but also to see how this links back into the labor force. Actually, what I think is important is that this doesn’t remain an elusive target, but that it is doable. I think this is the idea also why we have a vertical is not to do the study, but actually get going with the private sector, with other partners to actually make it happen. It’s good to hear that it can be done. Hopefully, the discussion will be also focused in the next two days on how to do it and how we actually partner with the private sector, with governments and also, our power partners to make it happen. Let me thank the Minister as well as Doreen for joining me. Looking forward to a great two days. Thank you.

[Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni] Thank you.

[Applause]

[Niala Boodhoo]
We hear so many superlatives when it comes to AI, and I mean that in every way, both positive and negative. What’s clear is that artificial intelligence has the potential to revolutionize our world, especially when it comes to development; but the big question is how do we not repeat the mistakes that led to the current digital divide, especially when it comes to AI? I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t run this intro through Gemini to see what I missed. Gemini reminded me to say that we’re moving beyond the theoretical into the deeply practical when it comes to generative AI adoption. Also, added this, “With this rapid advancement comes crucial questions about governance, risk, and ethical implications of this technology.” As the World Bank itself has said in its inaugural Digital Trends and Progress Report, this calls for a new playbook and a new level of cooperation between stakeholders, like policymakers, and the private sector, which is why I’m so delighted to have this conversation with the President of the World Bank, Ajay Banga, and Google’s Senior Vice President of Research, Labs, Technology, and Society, James Manyika. Welcome.

[James Manyika] Thank you for having us.

[Ajay Banga] Thank you.

[Niala Boodhoo] Ajay, let’s start with last year, the World Bank announced the launch of a new digital vertical. Can you just give us an update on where you all are with that and how this fits into the Bank’s overall mission and vision?

[Ajay Banga] Yeah, sure. First of all, I’m glad you’re all here. This is our second effort to get a summit like this going. I hope it gets better and better. Sangbu, who’s sitting right here, whom you probably saw in the first session of the opening, is head of that digital vertical. The idea of creating a separate digital vertical was to not say that digital is not an important part of human capital, or prosperity, or development of infrastructure, it is. But if it gets lost in each of those, it doesn’t get to be seen in this quality and attention that it deserves, given the outsized implications it has for each and every aspect of development. That’s the reason to pull it out separately. We’re beginning to make progress on what it should be doing for us. Not only should it focus on the creation of digital public infrastructure in countries so that they can use that to use the private sector and allow it to build on that DPI to enable the reach of digital services into the system. As we know, digital is the one that breaks down barriers to entry. It’s the one that takes away the advantage of incumbency. It does a lot of good stuff to enable things to spread. The idea is to use that DPI and then allow the private sector to build on it to make things possible. That’s one part of what he’s trying to do. The other part of what he’s trying to do is more germane to today’s discussion, which is how do we help get AI to become embedded in countries in the emerging markets? How do we help them meet the challenges of using it, of not getting left behind, of creating the right governance and the right rules and the right systems around it. Those are the two main work streams that Sangbu and his team are focused on. The thing at the back of all this, and I’ve known James for a few years, so he can speak to this more eloquently than I can, but where I’m coming from, this is not about how we use it internally. That’s important, but it’s all about how this gets used in our clients. I guess on the positive side of that, I see enormous pluses with this in health and agriculture. You saw the video. We’re all here because we believe in the pluses. So, repeating those is not going to be value-added to you guys. The issue really is, do we have the right skills in infrastructure in these countries to enable that to happen? Then on the other side, there is the issue of governance and transparency and data protection and regulations. A friend of mine once said to me that this thing is so important that not regulating it would be a big error, but also not regulating it in the best possible way would be an even bigger error. I get that, and I’m trying to figure out what’s the best way of dealing with this as we go forward. The difference between this and prior innovations and systems is the speed at which it’s happening. I don’t think you have the luxury of saying, “We’ve got a decade to figure this out,” because a decade in AI terms is the equivalent of 50 years or whatever in normal terms. That’s the issue that we’re trying to figure our way through.

[Niala Boodhoo] Yeah. Can you want to comment on the speed a little bit, James, and also just what you have seen and what you want this crowd to know about the advancements that you’ve seen with AI?

[James Manyika] Yeah. Thank you for the question. I did my PhD in AI and robotics almost 30 years ago, and I never could have imagined the progress that we’ve seen in the last decade, especially. You mentioned Gemini. Maybe in terms to illustrate the pace and the progress, I’ll mention a few things. First, the models are much better. They’re more capable, they’re more natively multimodal, which means they can work with any content of any kind, not just text and so forth. They’re starting to be able to reason and think these thinking models that allow to do deep research. They’re also becoming what’s called a GenTech, which means it’s more than just inputting things and getting outputs out. They can actually take actions on your behalf. They can be connected to other tools. So, the models are getting extraordinary better. It’s also worth mentioning on the models that we’ve seen, especially recently, that open models are also becoming increasingly capable, which is extraordinary, which opens up a whole set of other opportunities that I’m sure we’ll come back to. The second thing I’d also highlight about the pace of progress is because AI is a general-purpose technology, it’s starting to impact other adjacent technologies. Take, for example, robotics. Robotics is going to have massive acceleration. We’re already seeing that today in our models. I live in San Francisco, and as Google, we introduced our Waymo, driverless cars. If you live in San Francisco or LA or Phoenix, you’re probably riding these cars. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, we reached a milestone where in those three cities, we’re doing something like 200,000 paid rides in those cities, people using driverless cars safely in the city. This is becoming every day, 200,000 rides a week. So, if you come to San Francisco next time, Ajay, we’ll have to take you on a ride. I’m sure those of you who’ve been in San Francisco have been on this Waymo driverless cars. So, the pace is--

[Ajay Banga] I went around in a Waymo car inside your campus years ago, and I must confess it was the early days, and I was scared out of my mind. But that was a long time ago.

[James Manyika] Well, so it’s taken It’s been a very long time. So, the driverless car project at Google has been going for almost 15 years.

[Niala Boodhoo] I was going to say, when were you…? When did you take that ride?

[Ajay Banga] When I was still at MasterCard. It’s got to be pre-COVID, so 2019 or something with Sundar [Pichai]. When we went into this car, and both of us looked petrified out of our minds, and it was fine after that.

[James Manyika] Well, actually, Sundar tells the story of how he took his parents on a driver’s car ride last year. So, these have become quite real. Let me mention one other thing on pace of progress. I think one of the things that’s underappreciated is how in the last couple of years, especially, these models have become a lot more efficient, both in terms of the computer required or even the energy requirements. We’re starting to see huge gains in efficiency. I think all of this is fundamentally important. But I think where it matters, certainly for the purpose of this conversation here, is where we see the potential impacts and benefits. Here, I think we’re going to see those benefits in, I would say, three or four areas. First, how this actually benefits individuals who want access to information, be able to use these tools to help themselves with their own productivity and activities and so forth. That’s one. The second is how this technology could actually power economies everywhere. As we said, in economic terms, this is one of those once in a long time a general-purpose technology where every part of economic activity from small and medium-sized businesses to large companies to the public sector, and all of that will start to use this technology.

The economic potential is significant. The third area where we’re going to see the impact, and we’re already seeing it, is how this technology is already advancing scientific progress. I’ll say something about that. Then, of course, this technology is starting to help us address some large global pressing challenges in society. But let me say one more quick thing about the scientific progress, because recently my colleagues won a Nobel Prize for some of their work using AI to actually advance some long-standing, almost like a 70-year grand challenge in biology, which is how to understand the structure of proteins, which was an incredible challenge because proteins are the workhorses of all of biology, all of it. If you want to understand diseases, discover drug therapies, vaccines, you have to understand how proteins work. What they were able to do was, before they did what they did, I think we only understood this structure of something like over just over 100,000 proteins through extraordinary painful lab work that scientists have been doing for decades with techniques like X-ray crystallography and so forth. But the AI algorithm, AlphaFold, was able to discover the structure and predict the structure of all the proteins known to science, all 200 million of them. We actually made that data set openly available. So, today we’ve had something close to about just over two and a half million biologists around the world in 190 countries accessing these data sets to be able to do their work and research, which allows you to tackle neglected diseases and so on. And you can go on to other areas of science, whether it’s in in physics, material science, and so forth, and even helping to tackle challenges like floods and wildfires. In fact, one of the things we’re very proud of is that we now are able to use AI techniques to predict floods with enough advanced notice. Because what you need to be able to predict floods with something like five or six or seven days.

[Niala Boodhoo] And wildfires as well.

[James Manyika] I’ll come back to wildfires. But the flood forecast, the reason why the flood forecast and the wildfires are important is they become quite real. So, what began as an initial experiment we did in Bangladesh, and it worked. We now cover something like over 100 countries with more than 700 million people in those countries with flood predictions. You mentioned wildfires. We’re now covering about 27 countries with wildfire predictions for boundaries. In fact, just two days ago, I don’t know if you saw this, we launched the next part of that project, which is these new satellites that we launched two days ago. It’s the first of a constellation of what will be 53 satellites that will allow us to observe, if you like, before these satellites, what you could only observe was something like areas of about 25-by-25 meters and make predictions about that. With these new FireSat satellites that we launched the first ones a couple of days ago, we’ll be able to observe about five-by-five meters and make wildfire predictions. This is going to be quite transformational. You can see all these areas where this technology is starting to be extraordinary helpful.

[Niala Boodhoo] Mm-hmm. I want to get back to some of those technologies, and Ajay, you also talked about skills. But before we get to the job skills, can I just go back to the idea of this AI divide and ask you how the Bank is equipping countries to help overcome this?

[Ajay Banga] Look, I think that what AI needs to work well for a country are four things, and four principal things, a very basic level. The first is computing power, lots of it. The second is electricity, lots of it, although more efficient now than earlier, but it's still a heck of a lot more than we currently had planned for. Third is data, more of it, better than less of it, because it improves the predictive power of that data and to adapt it to your circumstances; but also, that data needs to be kept in its simplest form because that enables the most manipulation off the data, and then you need that data to be kept safe and secure in a way that protects privacy. There’s a lot of ifs and buts inside that data. Then, the fourth element of this is the people who understand how to use that. That’s the skills part I was referring to. None of this works without the right kind of access to the internet as well, because otherwise, people using it for their own purposes, as James was just describing, doesn’t happen without access to the internet. And internet doesn’t happen without access to electricity. So, there’s a bunch of things we can do. We’ve launched this thing of reaching 300 million people in Africa with electricity. I’m not talking about two solar lanterns in a room. I’m talking about the productive use of electricity at tier three levels, so they can get computers and televisions and the access to the internet and a chance to be a productive part of their society. That kind of effort, to me, is foundational to enable this infrastructure and skills to begin to get built. I worry about it because I think of two things that happen if you don’t do it well. One is a lot of the emerging markets are subscale in their absolute size. Unless they are willing to collaborate across a number of markets, they will never get to the right scale or size that allow companies or others to get them to be the right cost-value dynamic. The second is because data, it goes through cycles of being viewed as a national security resource. You got to be careful where that data goes and who’s touching it. I think that makes people like Google and others very careful about how they deal with that data. They put enormous rules in place to try and ensure it’s managed well, but this stuff is evolving very quickly. I think being ahead of this game is very important. Then the third thing I’d say, which is more worrisome to me in a different form, is that the economics of development over the last 30, 40 years of creating jobs have been to move through global trade to really move manufacturing to a different location. In the old days, trade was about who had the minerals, or gold, or spices, and then who could manage the logistics of getting ships to come and go safely on the high seas. Then, it became that plus the arbitrage of labor cost. Logistics, resources, plus the arbitrage of labor. Then, resources were moved around in some production cycles 10 times to complete a product. The thing is now with AI, I’m not sure that labor arbitrage will remain as much of a positive in the trading systems. I think you’re going to get a change in the way trade works, aside from the global trade versus more and more bilateral and regional deals that you are seeing happen already. Aside from the geopolitics, I think there is this fundamental economic underlying factor which is going to change, which is the arbitrage that labor cost brought, because AI will change that. I think there’s three or four things going on here, not all of which we have the answers to. We’re finding our way through it as well, but I know I’m very focused on, can we help build the infrastructure and the skills for these countries? Second, can we be a good impartial convener of the ability to come to conclusions on the right guardrails around regulations and ethics and data privacy and the like. I don’t know that yet either. It’s early days for us in that space, but those are the two things we think we can be helpful with.

[James Manyika] Yeah, I would agree with that, Ajay. Let me elaborate at least the way we see it. I think because this technology represents such extraordinary opportunities of the different kinds that I was describing earlier, it’s also important to make sure that everybody can benefit from it. So that’s why you want to tackle these divides that we’re talking about. In our minds, at least, while there’s extraordinary opportunities for development, all countries, both developed and developing. I see a few particular challenges for developing countries.

[Niala Boodhoo] That’s what I wanted to ask you about, particularly. What do you want this crowd to know about the challenges you’re seeing in the difference between developed and developing economies?

[James Manyika] Well, first of all, it’s worth keeping in mind that, as I said, the opportunities are economic, scientific, pressing societal challenges, healthcare, education. Think about transforming sectors that matter. Think about the delivery of public services by governments to their citizens. All of these are areas that can be transformed by this technology, but none of those gains or opportunities are automatic or even guaranteed. That’s as true for developed as it is for developing countries, but the particular challenges that I see, for example, in developing countries, I think of several kinds. Let me try to enumerate them. First, as Ajay just pointed out, there’s access to what I think of the ingredients for AI. That’s access to compute, access to data, creating data, but even access to the models themselves. That’s fundamentally important. You’ve got those challenges. Then you’ve got some of the basic infrastructure challenges. As Ajay pointed out, that’s both digital infrastructure, but even basic electricity and connectivity is also an important challenge. That’s why I was glad Doreen was highlighting some of the connectivity and broadband challenges in the earlier discussion. Third, I think there’s an enormous amount of talent, skill challenges that are going to be very important. Those are both the people who’ve got the training experience, expertise to be able to capitalize on this technology. Then, also skilling that’s required for workers who are going to work alongside this technology. That’s an important challenge. There’s also a fourth challenge that often gets left out, which is the creation of vibrant ecosystems. I think what’s going to be very important in developing countries is that there are entrepreneurs, innovators, researchers who are developing applications for their communities and their countries in order to transform and create both, business and societal opportunities. The emergence of vibrant ecosystems, I think, is a real challenge. That’s also, by the way, that’s a challenge both for developed economies, but also especially for developing countries. We’ve been glad that we’ve been involved in helping to create some of these ecosystems in places like Ghana and Nigeria, but also places like Brazil and other places. That’s important. Let me mention one final thing. I think this came up in the previous discussion. I think it’s going to be quite important to have what I think of as enabling policy, policy that is focused not just on addressing the complexities and risks, but also enabling the innovation that’s needed to fully capitalize on this technology, because the opportunities, especially many of them that are in the public interest are not going to happen by themselves. Unless policymakers are also focusing on enabling policy, I think Ajay’s comment was correct, which is policy should also enable the kinds of opportunities and innovation that are going to benefit societies. I think developing countries in particular have faced these particular challenges.

[Ajay Banga] I think there’s an important point there, which is, if you get ahead of yourself with the policies, you could stifle the growth of this innovation. If you’re too far behind, you will end up with enormous challenges in reining in what could have then left the stable. But if you’re able to follow quickly, meaning your innovation follows, or rather policies or regulations follow innovation quickly, nimbly, then I think we’re in the right place. Enabling regulatory sandboxes to experiment with these ideas, things like that are going to be very important for private sector and development and public institutions to work together, to get the guardrails to work well for this thing.

[James Manyika] I would also add that because these challenges are so enormous, it’s the reason we’ve been making investments to try to partner with countries both in the developed world here in the US, but also in developing countries. For example, we’re spending an enormous amount of time investing and trying to improve access to languages, for example, because this technology enables that, in fact--

[Niala Boodhoo] We need the data.

[James Manyika] We need the data, but already we’re making progress. Today, for example, Google Translate now can translate 250 languages. We added 110 just in the last year. In fact, our goal is to get to a thousand languages. When it comes to infrastructure, we’ve been building data center infrastructure in a variety of countries, whether it’s in Latin America, or in Africa, or in Asia. We’ve also tried investing in cable and broadband connectivity in different countries. When it comes to skills, for example, just in the last several years, we’ve now trained over 100 million people in digital skills. In fact, last year, we announced, for example, a new additional commitment to spend another 120 million dollars in skilling. We’re trying to do our part, but I think there’s an enormous challenge and things that are going to need to happen if developing countries are going to fully benefit from this.

[Niala Boodhoo] Let’s talk about those skills because you mentioned that at the beginning, Ajay, it was your principles. I was struck by this one data point. 60% of employment in the United States in 2018 was attributed to job titles that did not exist in 1940. I just want to ask you, I know in your upcoming Spring Meetings, jobs is going to be a huge priority and point of discussion. How does, as we’re seeing economy slow down, as we’re worrying about jobs, how does that fit into what we’re talking about here?

[Ajay Banga] Look, there’s a whole other angle here, which is if you take the steps back, why am I focusing on jobs? The reason I’m focusing on jobs as the outcome of development as compared to the input of schools and healthcare clinics being what we are focused on, trying to move from the input to the output, is because I think all our eyes need to be focused on the opportunity of the demographic bulge that’s coming through the emerging economies in the coming 15 years. In the emerging markets, 1.2 billion young people are going to become eligible for a job in terms of their age in the coming 12 to 15 years. Current forecasts are that the same countries will produce about 400 million jobs. Now, those forecasts are by economists like me, and we could be notoriously wrong, but we would not be wrong by 500% or 300%. Instead of 400, it might be 600 million jobs or 200 million. The problem is there’s 1.2 billion young people coming through that pipe. If young people do get a job, whether it’s as an entrepreneur, or working for a small business, or working on a small farm, or for a medium-sized business, or whatever, then they are productive, they have hope, they have optimism, and that creates markets for people like Google, but if they don’t get a job, then the downsides are quite severe. We know about local social unrest, but the biggest problem to me is irregular illegal migration, which puts the people at risk but also damages all the societies where that illegal migration ends up. I think if you’re not careful, we run a very severe risk in the coming 15 to 20 years of allowing this demographic bulge to go from a dividend to a liability. To do that well, we need to start thinking about these people. The way we are focused on it is there are five areas where jobs will get created in a place like Africa, for example. The first one is in infrastructure. We talked a little bit about electricity and digital, but I’m talking about bridges, roads, airports, agricultural warehouses, railways, that. The second is in making agriculture, smallholder farmers viable and a business in themselves so that every young child of a smallholder farmer does not feel that their future is better in an urban area trying to find a job, which today is the model in a lot of countries. We’ve got to change that to enable these smallholder farmers to feel that this is somewhere they can be. That’s why we made a commitment to spend 9 billion a year on getting smallholder farmers through cooperatives, and technology, and AI, and better fertilizer, better farming techniques. Again, he can talk about this better than I can.

[Niala Boodhoo] Which would change migration patterns as you’re talking about as well.

[Ajay Banga] Also, internally as well as to other places. Third is delivery of primary health care, not just because people will become healthier. Of course, that’s important, but because you will employ nurses and medical diagnostic technicians and PPE manufacturers, not just doctors. When you do that, you create the kind of ladder of jobs that every country and every society needs. We’ve committed to reach 1.5 billion people with primary health care by 2030. You can begin to see a method to our madness of commitment, reach for electricity, reach for agri-business, reach for primary health care. The fourth category where things will be very important will be in manufacturing for local consumption for these bilateral and regional trade deals, but manufacturing with jobs being created where the model is not outsourcing a Western job to this country, but locally relevant manufacturing. Minerals and metals. Africa has more minerals and metals for the energy transition, which we will all need, but if all we do is extract the mineral and bring it to our country and process it here, we don’t create enough jobs there. That’s a different model of job creation. The fifth one is tourism. Tourism enabled by skilled institutes as part of the infrastructure. Whether you do this through companies or entrepreneurs, you’re going to need these five. If you look at these five, they will all be impacted by AI over the coming decade, but they will not only be impacted negatively, they will also be impacted positively. Tourism can improve with AI by generating the right ideas and methods of targeting and creating individualized itineraries for the right people. Just one example, and so on and so forth. His healthcare example. I could keep going, but that’s the idea.

[Niala Boodhoo] Yeah. Can I ask you about that? Because there is experimental evidence that generative AI can actually boost labor productivity and expand job opportunities, especially for lower-skilled or less experienced workers. Can you talk about how you’re seeing that, especially as we were just mentioning different agriculture or other programs you wanted to highlight?

[James Manyika] Yes, absolutely. There’s now a lot of recent empirical experimental evidence coming out of studies that has been now been done by several economists. I think actually one of them, David Otter is going to be here later today speaking about this. It basically shows that in many occupation types, when workers are using generative AI technologies assistively, it actually lowers the barriers through of expertise and experience. In fact, less skilled workers are actually able to perform at a high level of productivity. I think that actually reduces barriers, not just to jobs and opportunities, but for those workers. But it also increases their productive output in ways that contributes to productivity. I think this is fundamentally important. Now, these are still early studies. We should keep watching and doing the research on this, but I want to bring it back also to what Ajay was talking about, which is areas like healthcare and agriculture. It’s actually quite striking that in many places in the developing world, often there’s not enough primary care. In fact, the use of these technologies assistively can expand the number of people who can actually provide primary care. We’ve seen this in a few examples. For example, in maternal health. We’re using AI technologies in East Africa, for example, that assist less skilled people to be able to provide primary care. It turns out, by the way, that something like 30% to 40% of people in the developing world with TB go undiagnosed. We just done a year-long study in Zambia and also in India, where AI tools were able to do TB diagnostic as well as an expert doctor would. Imagine the technology in the hands of somebody who’s less skilled, still able to provide that primary care. I think that’s extraordinary. The same thing is happening in breast cancer, for example, in areas like diabetic retinopathy, where we’ve now tested something like 600,000 people in the last couple of years. We’ve now partnered with an organization in India, and the goal there is to try to take that primary assistance up to about 6 million people. So, this assistive use of technology, not only A, delivers primary health care as an example, but also provides employment for those people with less skills who are now able to perform those functions, especially in places where the availability of primary care physicians is severely limited, but I want to say something else about the question of jobs.

I think whether we’re talking about developed economies or developing economies, much of the research now suggests that what we will see are three effects. One is, I think it is important to say this, that there will be some occupations that will decline over time because the constituent activities and tasks are going to decline. But at the same time, we are going to see some jobs grow because demand for them is going to go up. But then the larger effect is this idea of jobs changing and being assisted in the ways that we just talked about. I think last year, the International Labor Organization did this enormous study where they looked at something like, I think they covered 140 countries, looking at about 400 occupations. One of the conclusions in that research was that the assistive effect of these technologies was going to be six times the displacement effect. I think that’s important to keep in mind, but they did also highlight something that we all know, which is if the assistive effect is going to be that large, an enormous amount of skilling and capability building is going to be fundamentally important. I think that’s a big part of the work we all have to do.

[Niala Boodhoo] You all have talked about so many things here. I just wanted to highlight three things you said before I ask you both the last question. Ajay, you started by saying it’s all about how AI gets viewed by clients, and that the pace of this, being ahead of the game is important, but that we need policies that are enabling. It sounds like both of you are saying that, but we also need developing countries have particularly a need for the creation of vibrant ecosystems. As we think about all of that, I just wanted to end by asking both of you what you’re most excited about when you’re thinking about the potentials for AI. James, let’s start with you. Ajay, I’ll let you have the last word.

[James Manyika] Oh, there’s so much.

[Niala Boodhoo] There are so many things. Anything we haven’t talked about.

[James Manyika] Well, I’m excited about the societal impacts, both through the advances in science, which are going to benefit everybody, but then also this idea of tackling our most pressing challenges, whether it’s in food shortages, food security, the effects of climate change. I think this technology is going to help us address those things in a huge way, but I’m also excited about how this will actually enable people have access to things. Think about the world’s knowledge. Think about access for education, being able to learn in your own language, being able to get customized training, being able to get personalized contextual learning that’s now possible. I think that’s going to be extraordinary. I’m still amazed by the number of people who come to tools like Google Search or YouTube to learn. Think about how much better that will be when it’s personalized and assisted through AI. To me, I’m a child of... I grew up in Southern Africa. The access to information and education, things that I didn’t have access to, I think is game-changing and it’s life-changing for people. That’s what I’m excited about. But I should say this, Niala, that as excited I am about these possibilities for people, the economy, and science, and all of these things, I don’t think those gains are automatic. I think it’s going to take a lot of investment and focus by not just us, but countries and policymakers to invest to make all of that possible. That’s why I think it’s important to highlight the critical challenges that exist. None of this is going to be automatic. That’s something we all have to work on to make it happen.

[Niala Boodhoo] Ajay?

[Ajay Banga] The only thing I’d add to that is two things. First is I’m really excited about learning how to use ChatGPT to plan my next holiday.

[Niala Boodhoo] That’s good. You asked my fun question. That’s pretty cool. How you’re using AI.

[Ajay Banga] But to the serious part of this, what he just said, think of all that from the lens of young people and this demographic bulge coming through the emerging markets, and think of what he just said can do for those young people. To me, young people are our future. That’s my optimism. That’s what I come to work for, and that’s what I care about. I’ve got grandchildren. I can’t even begin to imagine how their lives will be helped by people like this guy. So, thank you very much. Thank you.

[James Manyika] Thank you for having me. [

Niala Boodhoo] Oh, well, thank you so much. Does there anything... It sounded like you wanted to add something.

[Ajay Banga] Yeah, go ahead. I’ll try to end before you finish.

[James Manyika] No, I guess the other thing I would also just encourage everybody with a lot of these amazing technologies, there’s nothing like personally experiencing them and using them to do useful things for you. So, there are products that I use all the time I’d encourage you just to try these.

[Niala Boodhoo] What do you use all the time?

[James Manyika] Oh, what do I use?

[Niala Boodhoo] Yeah.

[James Manyika] Actually, one of my favorite things is something called NotebookLM that we created. And the reason I find that very useful, it’s actually, quite frankly, a useful way for me to learn. I don’t know if any of you tried it. You can throw in papers you’re trying to read and understand, and I read a lot of technical papers, and then I can engage with those papers with that technology. If I want, I can actually create an audio podcast that I can listen to in my car that summarizes those materials. I can engage with it. It’s accurate. So that’s actually personally very useful.

[Ajay Banga] Oh, man, I got a great idea. I want to take all the papers I get given in the World Bank and put them into that thing and produce English language back to me.

[James Manyika] Yeah, so you can actually—

[Ajay Banga] Perfect.

[Niala Boodhoo] You have endless podcast for you to listen to.

[James Manyika] You can actually put in things in any language. So NotebookLM can actually handle—

[Ajay Banga] No, I’m just kidding.

[James Manyika] No, seriously. It can actually handle about 200 languages. It’s personally very helpful for me.

[Niala Boodhoo] All right. Well, thank you so much, James, Ajay. Thank you for being with us.

[James Manyika] Thank you.

[Applause]

[Vivek Badrinath] Thank you, Makhtar. Thank you for welcoming me here and very honored to be at this great event.

[Makhtar Diop] Thank you very much, Vivek. It’s a pleasure having you here and thank you for coming. Let me just kick off the conversation by asking you, you just had your Congress and you are newly elected Director General of GSMA. Do you want to tell to the audience what happened there? What other challenge that you are facing currently?

[Vivek Badrinath] Yes, thank you very much, Makhtar. Indeed, we’re just out of our biggest event in the year, which is the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. I’ll be taking my new role on the first of April, but my predecessor has put the bar very high because it was a great success. 109,000 people attended. We had a big ministerial conference with 148 countries represented. We had close to 70 ministers on stage. I’d say the dialog around digitalization, around the needs for connectivity has been very intense. Well, as you can expect, the number of subjects were quite reversal. One thing to note is that GSMA organizes or convenes the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but really more than half of the attendees are not telecom operators. They’re from all sectors of the industries, manufacturing, education, all domains, because they have an interest in what connectivity can bring. They were talking about what? They were talking about AI, of course. That’s one of the big subjects, the rollout of 5G and the challenges around rolling out more connectivity and more high bandwidth connectivity across the world. They were talking about one of our key subjects, which is the usage gap. By usage gap, I’m talking about the close to 3 billion people who have coverage and who are not connected to the mobile internet, in particular, women. Big subjects on the table during this conversation.

[Makhtar Diop] No, thank you. On our side, the way last time I was at the GSMA, it was a couple of years ago, a few years ago. The conversation was around the new technologies, IoT, 5G+, and there were a lot of innovations going, and AI was starting to pick up in term of usage. When we look at these and we put IFC, we are investing a lot in digital, 2.7 billion dollars, and we are mobilizing a lot of resources in it. What we are seeing in reality is that countries at the bottom of the pyramid are still underserved. As you heard, the strategy of the World Bank Group is to focus on jobs. Jobs require infrastructure. In infrastructure we include digital infrastructure. If you want to reach the bottom of the pyramid, what do you think you should do differently?

[Vivek Badrinath] I think it’s both a supply and a demand side question. There is still a big investment gap, and there’s about 1.3 trillion still to invest by the end of 2030, by the end of the decade, in order to put in place the infrastructure that would be required to serve everyone. For that, favorable policies that enable operators to invest. Operators invest 85% of the cost of this infrastructure, so it’s really where the action is. Helping operators to build those investment cases, I think it’s essential. The other side of it is the question of lifting the usage gap. You have people, 3 billion people, who actually have a network on top of their heads and we’re not connected. The main reasons are quite well known. The first one is affordability of handsets. It’s great that we’re with the World Bank, with the IFC, as part, and with ITU, and Doreen mentioned it this morning, in the Affordable Handset Coalition. We care a lot about this initiative because I think that has a big impact. That means working on taxation, working on devices, working on the cost of distribution and financing of these devices. I think these are super important programs. Then you have things like skills. We’ve reached 70 million people with our internet skills training programs because it’s also about the fear of what is this device? What does it bring? Is it really useful? Is it safe? Will it get me connected to the wrong people? There are lots of soft aspects to it that really need to be addressed. It’s really about lifting these blockages one by one.

[Makhtar Diop] When a few years ago, the focus was on IoT and things like that, since then, the technology is focusing more and more things like satellite internet providers, and also now direct from satellite to devices. These are technologies which are developing, which are maturing now. What was the conversation around this new technology during the GSMA?

[Vivek Badrinath] It was very intense. It is a big subject, and it’s a very exciting subject because, frankly, the science that goes behind having a satellite 350 to 500 kilometers in the sky, communicating directly with your handheld device is quite impressive. However, we should place it in the right context. It is a very useful technology to ensure that you are able to bring coverage and security, when I’m talking about direct to device, in remote areas, because it is, at the end, limited in terms of the volumes that it can cover, but it is a very good way to reach those very difficult to reach regions. It will not solve our usage gap question. Why? Because if you don’t have a phone, you don’t have a phone that can communicate with direct to device, whereas you already have coverage on the ground. The other thing is a matter of spectrum. Some of these solutions use mobile operator spectrum, and obviously, mobile operators are having a dialog with satellite providers because it can be a part of their offering. But of course, it also should be managed in a good way, in the proper way, following the ITU rules to ensure that this spectrum is properly used, doesn’t interfere with mobile signals, which, after all, are used in countries within the regulatory framework. There’s a bit of work for regulation around the spectrum aspects of these solutions as well.

[Makhtar Diop] In a previous slide, I was looking a lot on these issues of license. The incentive that was given to countries and ministries of finance was to have as many license issues so you can maximize the revenue for government. But it seems that the conversation has evolved over time, and in fact, that certain level of slicing the spectrum can be counterproductive over the long run because it doesn’t allow you to have some applications which are running with the necessary spectrum. How do you see the evolution? We are together involved in a previous life in an important project in Ethiopia, and the Ethiopians, for instance, at that time, made the choice of giving much larger spectrum to be able to have application on education and health, so by not possible if they had a smaller spectrum. How do you see the conversation of spectrum going on right now?

[Vivek Badrinath] No, I think you’re spot on. There are two reasons. One of them, when you slice too much or if you give too many licenses, your market structure is weaker. If there is duplication, triplication of investment, that’s not how you achieve the greatest outcome. So, that’s on the basic level. Too many licenses mean very often subcritical players. You’re seeing that swing, if I take the Indian market, it fixed itself in this respect. On the other hand, with the new technologies, since 4G and even more with 5G, when you give a lot of spectrum, it is much more interesting than giving small proportions of spectrum. And it’s not linear. It’s not that you get twice more effect out of 100 megahertz than out of 50. You actually get much more because the way the systems work allows you to do more interesting things. You can dedicate spectrum to applications, you can dedicate them to IoT, you can dedicate them to industrial applications and to safety networks, for instance. There is more to be taken out of broader allocations of spectrum, but also, I think there is an evolution in the thinking on the regulatory side around the cost of spectrum because a Euro can only be spent once. You can either spend it on your buying the spectrum or you’re going to be spending it on investing to roll out and use the spectrum for the benefit of people.

[Makhtar Diop] Let me come back now to something, Vivek, because when you talk about the lowest part of things, particularly the African continent, when you talk about broadband access is basically 4G+ on a mobile device. A few years ago, we have seen a trend of slowing down investment in base stations with antennas, which can carry a 4G signal. The reason why is that mobile operators, telecoms, were saying that the level of taxation was too high and didn’t allow them to invest in a base station and increased access of broadband. That’s what we’re talking with Doreen in ITU and among other fora. What is your take on this taxation? My feeling and my experience is that there is a confidence building exercise which is needed between the minister of finance and the telco. If you go in a typical country in Africa, for instance, the minister for finance, we think that the telcos are making huge profits and they are not making it public; and therefore, they are not paying the right level of taxation. When you talk to the telco, they tell you, “No, in fact, our books are open. We are really not making the cash that you think that we are making. The current level of taxation will not allow us to invest more in a 4G type of base station that will allow broadband access in a remote area.” How to solve that tension?

[Vivek Badrinath] Trust is a gift, is what I was taught when I was young, that you need to give the trust in order to launch that dialog. I think that the mobile industry is very intent on growing mobile coverage for its own benefit. It is, as you often say, a J-curve. If you’re able to put in the investment, and that requires lower taxation because at this point, indeed, in certain countries, the telecom sector has been subjected to sector-specific taxation, which really damages its economics. There is another aspect, which is the availability of handsets, which I come back to regularly, which is there’s no point rolling out 4G networks if nobody has a 4G phone, so that balance also needs to be struck. But by reducing taxation, for instance, South Africa this year is planning to remove a sector-specific tax on smartphones. They were applying a luxury tax on smartphones. They’re going to remove the luxury tax on low-end smartphones. They don’t plan to remove it on very expensive, super sophisticated devices, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s a reasonable balance. But at least for entry-level smartphones, remove that taxation because you recognize that for people to have a phone is more important than the 8% tax that you’re going to levy from it. I think by demonstrating the GDP impact of more people being connected, being part of the digital economy, starting their own company, using mobile money for their transactions, I think we can rebuild that trust, and we should have that dialog.

[Makhtar Diop] Now, we’ll be happy to share with you some of the work. Actually, my colleague, Germán [Cufré], and my former colleague at the World Bank, we had, at that time, issued a report. We’re talking about the economic impact of access to broadband of Internet in countries, and it was quite telling of the economic impact. But let me continue on that conversation on taxation. When we talk about taxation, we have to talk about IMF, because at the end of the day, they are the ones who are talking about the macroeconomic framework, we’re talking about the fiscal situation, about the budget. Don’t you think that it will be important to bring them into the conversation so that they are part of the solution and understand the long-term impact that it can have? Because currently, if you read any paper of IMF, they will tell you that the digital sector is one of the sectors that we take, but that will be growth-enhancing, and we need to develop that sector. I know the side you hear, the telecom saying that they are overtaxed. I think that it would be maybe useful to bring the IMF in the conversation and for all of us to see how we can take it forward.

[Vivek Badrinath] I think your insight, you obviously have an insight into how this thinking works. Look, it’s that schizophrenia that I’ve seen in various geographies where indeed everybody... Let’s say the head recognizes that digital is going to improve the economy, that if you invest a euro or a dollar in digital, you will get that dollar back in multiple ways through the enhancement and growth of the digital economy, which pulls the whole physical economy as well. At the same time, when you have to balance the books, the mind is shut down and you think, “Well, who can I tax when I have to manage to manage the fiscal deficit?” In that case, an industry which actually has a computer behind every production unit, and that’s telecoms, everything we do is measured through billing systems, through all the systems that we have. We are eminently taxable, so it’s just the path of least resistance to tax this industry. I think, indeed, I’d welcome this debate to have it in a holistic way to put back the formula that shows the GDP impact of investment in digital, because I think we’re not the center of the digital universe anymore as the telecom industry, but we are the necessary enabler. If we can roll out and empower people to have phones, then we can make a difference.

[Makhtar Diop] We see the phone and the mobile technology as being an important way of creating jobs, really. I’ve seen it from my own eyes. I’m from Senegal. I mean, 15 years ago, when you land in Dakar, it’s the Ramadan, so we talk about food, but it’s not because I’m hungry that I’m saying that. But I want to say, 15 years ago, you would go and when you land in Senegal, they said, “Why can’t I get food?” Because you land late at night and then fridge is empty when you get home or something like that. Today, right in Dakar, you get home, you push your phone, and someone delivers food at home. But it’s interesting to see now, this is creating new models because when you look at the model in the US or in Europe, you pay before the service. You pay on Amazon and you are delivered. In our country, you pay after the service. People were asking the question, how can this model work? Actually, we have exactly the same recovery rate. What I want to say by that is that experience in developing countries can inform a lot the rest of the world how to do things. It was interesting because the conversation started with a Nigerian who was working at Silicon Valley and said, “I will do some e-commerce in Africa.” In his mind, the model would replicate exactly what Amazon was doing. You pay before receiving the product. He went back home in Lagos and they told him, “No way, we will not pay you if you don’t see the good.” It was nervous and I think that we have application. In the health sector also, we are seeing more and more applications. Let me turn a little bit to something also which is important, is creating the ecosystem for startups to develop applications which are using that new ecosystem. What is the role of telco in building the ecosystem for startups and support the initial investment?

[Vivek Badrinath] Now, I think telcos have, over the years, done quite a few activities, studios, incubation houses, providing seed funding in some cases. The GSMA Foundation has a number of innovation projects that we fund across the continent. To enable young entrepreneurs to go and test new technologies. Because indeed, as you said, in emerging markets, there are certain opportunities to leapfrog because of the way people use technology, because of their appetite for it. I was in charge of the digital transformation of a large group in the past, a hotel group, and that transformation was a very big project. One of the things we had to do was a project called Mobile First. Well, in Africa, you don’t do mobile first. You would have to do a mobile-first project. You are mobile first by definition, because 95% of your customers, at least, will be consuming your service through mobile. So, these mobile technology technologies for development activities that lots of startups are picking up are indeed a big area of progress.

[Makhtar Diop] For us, it’s very important. I think that the President of the World Bank, Ajay Banga, was in a previous panel, and he must have told you that his strategy for the World Bank Group is to focus on jobs. As I say, the foundation is infrastructure, with digital infrastructure, but the applications are in a lot of sectors. One of them is the hotel industry, the tourism industry, which is creating jobs. Then one is agriculture, then one is health sector. All these are sectors which requires a lot of applications on IT. One of the things that we would like to work also with the telecom in terms of applications is to be able to create a supply chain in countries, where a small farmer in a country can use the technology to be able to be part of the supply chain for the hospitality industry in the country so that people don’t always import from abroad the vegetables or things that they need to use for their industry, but be able to use the farmers’. We would like to be able to do more. This is in an area where IFC is investing a lot. A big part of our disruptive technology is in FinTech, and we are extending it to the e-health, e-ed, and other sectors which require more as it says. What about skills?

[Vivek Badrinath] No, I think indeed… On skills, if you start at the bottom of the pyramid, the first thing is basic internet skills. We’ve got an internet skills toolkit that’s reached 70 million people already and that we continue to deploy across the continent. But also, indeed, there are a few enablers. You were mentioning the agricultural sector. There’s another dimension to it, which is along the supply chain, which is empowered by mobile money. Operators have been very active on mobile money. We just issued our State of the Industry report this year. We’re about to bring it out, but what it shows is a double-digit growth of this sector again with Africa very much in the lead at a worldwide level, and with, I would say, about 1.7 trillion dollars flowing through this. What we see as success factors is that operators who have expanded into fintech by providing working capital loans to day laborers typically, short-term loans, working capital that allows you to fund your crops and then go and sell them on the market and pay back your loan. This whole microfinance cycle can be empowered by mobile. I think that’s one way to bring people in. Teaching this, teaching the use of mobile money, giving kids little videos, it’s sometimes very simple things that give training to people so that they can get onto the economic space. I think it’s important.

[Makhtar Diop] Our role, IFC, has been to be the disruptors. We want to finance and support the disruptors. Let me give you an example of what you have done, supporting a disruptor. They were on Fintech, on a e-payment. At some point, there were rates in one country, as an incumbent of 3% for every single transaction, including you had to pay a tax when you withdraw money. We finance a fintech disruptor startup, which lowered that cost to 1%. Because of competition, now that country is 0.7% for each transaction. When we enter also the fintech is innovation, but it’s also disruption because we like to bring competition because at the end of the day, our role is to lower the cost for the users and to increase the competitiveness of the economy so that we can create as many jobs as we can. I think that it was a very interesting experience because as you can guess, incumbent was not surprised and was not expecting it. But at the end, they realized that it was a good way, and I saw that incumbent now diversifying their offer of products and moving to a different type of product, including providing loans and credit to small holders and things like that. I just wanted to illustrate a little bit the dynamics of what we are doing. The second thing that we have been doing a lot at IFC is to invest in a fiber optic, mainly terrestrial fiber optic because the submarine cables have been taken by, are already being invested by big players, and to invest also in data centers. We have seen a nice link between energy and telecom because we can provide renewable energy, cheap energy to support this data center. But at the same time, we would like to use any opportunities that we have to bring electricity somewhere, to bring also digital. We are using these two elements of infrastructure, jointly.

[Vivek Badrinath] Now, I think we have a lot to do together on the energy side. We are a productive user of energy. So indeed, we can help to justify an investment because we will be consuming that energy for our antennas, for our data centers, for our infrastructure. We can also enable through mobile payment, the collection of the payment for the retail energy. We’re an industry that has committed to net zero by 2050. We do need to keep removing those diesel generators across the continent. We can be, I would say, loyal partners to the efforts of the Bank as the World Bank Group invests in the development of green energy across Europe.

[Makhtar Diop] Now, we see it also as one of the cheapest. I mean, if it was not cheap, we would not move in that direction because in fact, the diesel run, you know that, are very expensive. We have seen a lot of telco companies now starting to look at energy provision as a way of diversifying and complementing a little bit their investment. I think we have five minutes left. What do you want to leave the audience with?

[Vivek Badrinath] Now, I think we need to mobilize around the usage gap. That’s been very clear from the early sessions this morning. We’re committed to it. I think number of initiatives that we’re invested on. Once again, the Handset Coalition, I think it’s been tried a lot, but it requires... I think the word coalition is very strong. It’s a coalition of those who want to make it move to get those devices into the hands of these 3 billion people who could benefit from it with an additional dimension, which is the gender gap that’s within it. There’s a 15% gender gap on the usage of phones. That would be worth one and a half trillion dollars’ worth of GDP. It’s good business to equip people because it will help them to be part of a broader economy coming out into new opportunities for their work. I would say that would be my biggest focus and something I’m very passionate about for this year.

[Makhtar Diop] Thank you very much, Vivek. On our side, we are really looking for strengthening our collaboration. For us supporting the assembly of mobile phones in Africa and to continue working on other parts of the world to increase broadband access is our priority. We have been one of the largest, if not the largest investor on terrestrial fiber optic in Africa. We are mobilizing a lot of capital beyond our own resources to be able to do that, but I think that the way forward is to continue investing on skills, create an ecosystem for startups, create more competition, and let’s start the dialog on taxation because I think it will help us to move forward.

[Vivek Badrinath] Thank you. Thank you so much.

[Makhtar Diop] Thank you.

[Applause]

[Anna Bjerde]
First of all, good morning, everyone. Hope the second day of this wonderful Global Digital Summit 2025 is off to a great start. It was wonderful to follow the events of yesterday. Congratulations to all of you for kicking off what is creating a lot of buzz and excitement all around the institution. I’m very excited to be here this morning, and I’m particularly excited to delve into a part of digital that is close to my heart, something I see as I travel across a lot of the countries we work in, a lot of the clients we work with, which is the topic of resilience in digital technology, a very interesting intersection. I’m going to start by recalling an example that I think put the resilience at the center of digital. Do you remember last July, there was a minor software update, minor one, but it actually triggered what some people call the worst cyber event in history? Crippling over 8 million computers and disrupting industries worldwide. It impacted hospitals, financial institutions, air travel, and news networks. Let’s just bring that a bit closer to home where our clients are. Telemedicine programs serving rural patients in Morocco came to a halt. Merchants in Senegal couldn’t process payments, and a major hospital in Abuja, in fact, was left scrambling without access to patient files and unable to schedule surgeries. In other words, lives and businesses were turned upside down across the world by what seemed to be a harmless, minor software update. I think this single incident highlights so well how reliant we have become on digital technologies in almost every impact of our lives, and why the resilience of our digital ecosystems has become as important as our ability to prepare for and recover from things like natural disasters and earthquakes and floods. But what do we really mean when we talk about digital resilience? And how do we get it? In this context, we mean, of course, both, resilience of digital infrastructure and ecosystems, which means keeping it available, secure, and reliable, and we mean resilience through digital tech. By that, we mean using it to strengthen resilience across economies and communities. And that’s really the dual approach of our digital work here at the Bank.

To delve deeper into this, I’m delighted to be joined by two real trailblazers in this field, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Mr. Bosun Tijani. Thank you for being here with us, and Mr. Lance Pierce, who’s the CEO for NetHope, who brings first-hand experience in navigating digital resilience and uncertainty. Minister, I’m going to start with you. This is going to be just a good exchange with some Q&A among us, but I think it will illustrate the issues of resilience. You’re leading Nigeria’s efforts to expand digital connectivity and innovation. Could you share with us what are some of the government of Nigeria’s recent measures to ensure the resilience of digital infrastructure, and how are you involving the private sector to make sure that the resilience of the overall ecosystem is ensured?

[Bosun Tijani] Thank you so much, Anna. Good morning, everyone. I think, allow me to start by painting a picture of why we now think resilience is absolutely important in everything we do when it comes to digital. I was appointed in August 2023 to supervise a sector that contributes anywhere between 16% to 18% to the economy of Nigeria. That’s quite significant. If you follow the story of digital in Nigeria as well, since the full liberalization of the sector in 1999, it became a sector that is actually probably the largest on the African continent when it comes to investments into the digital sector. So, when I came in, we decided that for a country that is growing significantly, the average age is is 17.9, that there’s absolutely no way we can achieve our objective if we don’t continue to invest in digital infrastructure. So, we started a program with your colleagues at the Bank to put together an investment that is what? 2 billion dollars into 90,000 kilometers of fiber optic network in the country because the country already has eight submarine cables. We see an opportunity to truly drive our meaningful connectivity in the country. We also started investing in a technology talent accelerator because we see the need to train people to help us power the use of technology locally, but also to become a net exporter of talent. Then, came March 2024. There was a submarine cable caught in West Africa, for those who follow. Quite a number of countries in West Africa actually had significant downtime. As a young minister, I was faced with a question of banking apps not working, government platforms not working, businesses being it down, how do you manage this kind of situation? If we want to keep investing in getting more people online and getting more of our services online, then a day of submarine cuts can actually put down the entire economy because we’re shifting everything it into digital. So, it became an important issue for me, which was what I then picked up, engaged the International Telecommunications Union. Today we now have an international advisory body which is responsible for subsea cable resilience in the world, where we’re coming up with standards and helping countries to understand how to manage redundancy when you face this issue. Immediately, the other thing we decided to do was to declare all telecommunications infrastructure in Nigeria as national critical infrastructure, which means they are now protected to the same level as military infrastructure. Because we understand that if anything happens to this infrastructure, then our whole economy will be down. If you fast forward to today, I think we’ve probably seen four or five new subsea cable cuts in the world, even in Europe, causing disruptions to economies. It’s clear that as we talk about the future of the world where digital is at the middle, we have to be thinking sustainability, which is also why today in Nigeria, we’re looking at how do we start to power over 40,000 telecoms’ towers that we have in the country with a cleaner form of energy because it’s also not sustainable to use diesel to power these telecommunications infrastructures. And without finding sustainable and affordable ways to power them, then the future is also not guaranteed. And lastly, for a country that is extremely ambitious about artificial intelligence, energy is an issue. On one hand, we have to be able to make a case for countries who are manufacturing GPUs to be able to allow us to procure this important equipment; but on the other hand, we have to find a better form of energy to also power them as well, which is why the country today is also now prioritizing local manufacturing of batteries because we have a significant stock of lithium in Nigeria. So, the President is putting a lot of attention to ensuring that we can manufacture lithium locally and we have the batteries to actually power ambition.

[Anna Bjerde] That’s wonderful. I like the focus on really protection of the asset, recognizing the huge implications if it goes down. I also like your link to energy, and I’m going to come back on that. But Lance, let me turn I’ll hand it over to you. We often in our development discussions, recognize that digital has a huge role to play. Sometimes I fear that we look at it as almost like a magic bullet. “If only digital was there, we could solve almost any problem.” But you work in some of the most difficult parts of the world. What have you seen be some of the most effective measures or interventions or solutions when it comes to addressing a humanitarian situation?

[Lance Pierce] Thank you, Anna. Thank you, Minister. Thank you all for being here today as well. NetHope is a membership organization of 65 of the world’s leading relief development and conservation groups. Collectively, our membership works in over 190 countries and serves on the order of 1.6 billion people. I was pleased to hear what the Minister was saying about the push to make the case for critical infrastructure and critical protections for that. In our programming, we’ve been trying to make the case for a number of years that the humanitarian sector, the development sector, and civil society as a whole, at least it’s represented through our network, if we are serving 1.6 billion people across the full spectrum of our member organizations, then that should be categorized as critical infrastructure. There are people whose lives and livelihoods depend upon that level of service every day. As many of you, of course, know, coming from your ministries, and coming from government, civil society is increasingly the indispensable partner that you need to help deliver that last kilometer of services, that last mile of services to folks in those communities. We’re working across our global membership and in partnership with the tech sector to really try and invest in that resiliency at the local level, that resiliency throughout the full delivery chain of aid, of development, and local empowerment, because the future, as we’re all seeing, is increasingly going to be that governments are going to be working more closely with civil society partners, going to be working more closely with small and medium enterprises and private technology interests to really help drive their development goals and drive their resiliency goals. So, if we’re not thinking upfront about how to invest in that chain to make it more resilient, then we’re going to miss something important here because these things are often very hard to retroactively engineer into the system. And so, the work that we’ve been doing in… And for example, we have a program that we’ve been working on in emergency response and connectivity for many, many years now. We’re migrating that program away from connectivity and more towards skills building because in our organization, we work on the people process and technology scale; but we probably spend more energy on the people in process, and the technology comes through our technology partners, the big Silicon Valley companies, as well as the incredible innovation that’s happening in civil society to try to understand how we can do better service delivery, use the tools more effectively. So, this question of resilience is not an afterthought. It’s not something that we can hope for the best and retroactively hope that it will all work out. We’ve really got to be thinking thoughtfully about how you can bounce back after downtime. And of course, we’ve got a lot of organizations that have been working in this space to really try to make sure that people are prepared because infrastructure sometimes operates by itself, but often does not. There needs to be humans in the loop. And also, making sure that once you’ve got the infrastructure protected, that the services delivered over that infrastructure can also be there and get to people. And that’s the space where many of the international organizations we work with, which include the International Red Cross and names like Care and Oxfam and Save the Children and other groups that you know of, that’s the space where they’re working often in close partnership with governments to really help make sure that citizens get served no matter what circumstances, and partnering with government to make sure that services come back online in the event of an outage or downtime.

[Anna Bjerde] Thank you so much, Lance. Maybe Minister, building on Lance’s comments, is there any particular use case or innovation that comes to your mind where government, civil society, private sector has partnered in order to address a group in Nigeria to help them build their resilience in the digital technology space?

[Bosun Tijani] Absolutely. I think what we’ve done really well, which I still believe is actually still producing results for us, is investment in and foundational digital infrastructure. I think the government painstakingly delivered an interbank settlement system, which is an open system that gives the opportunity for the financial service sector to be able to be extremely innovative. So, when most people talk about the fact that Nigeria has the highest number of unicorns on the African continent, people don’t understand what actually led to that wave of innovation. It’s not just the population. It’s the fact that the foundation is there for people to build digital financial services. So, you now see today where young entrepreneurs are building solutions to help people across the country bank better or perhaps being able to access credit. You have a company that came into Nigeria, I think, under five years, and they were able to start banking most people in the rural area is called OPEC, because they could now provide financial services more efficiently, but it wasn’t just the interbank settlement system that led to that. I think the digital ID system that the World Bank and EU supported in Nigeria also opened up an opportunity for us to be a lot more innovative in the digital space because today in Nigeria, we can now digitally ID over 120 million adults. By being able to digitally ID them, it means that we can create new solutions to serve these people regardless of where they find themselves. So, when you take those two and you bundle them together, our digital ID, an interbank settlement system, you have an economy with a platform for innovation. The only thing that is still missing; however, is our data exchange system. The ability to be able to seamlessly exchange data across different government functions, government departments, which would then allow businesses to be able to ID citizens better, which means they can better provide services to them. We’ve seen the impact of this in the agricultural ecosystem, for instance, where people came up with innovative ideas around crowdfunding to support farmers, to be able to raise resources, to be able to cultivate and till their ground. These innovations, as simple as they are, weren’t that easy and possible before the interbank settlement system. Because once you can ID these people, you can seamlessly transfer money to them. Then you have an ecosystem that allows us to be able to do much more in society. So, I think for me, government’s role is truly building that enabling environment. When we talk about enabling environment, I think sometimes we’re limited to policy. It’s actually not all the time that it’s about policy. It’s about using policy to deliver the foundational infrastructure, which is also why I think DPI is extremely important. DPI, in my mind, is a new way of reimagining the way we use technology in government. It’s not different from the e-government, but it offers us a framework that can allow us to think more foundationally about how we use technology, because you find silos in most governments in terms of how technologies are used, which doesn’t empower the government, but it also doesn’t empower the economy as well. This is the kind of success that I think we’ve seen in Nigeria that we would like to build on to ensure that technology can continue to serve our people.

[Anna Bjerde] I think it’s really interesting how you lay out the ecosystem, but also link it in many ways to an operating model that works for government that goes beyond what we think about is government’s role.

[Bosun Tijani] Absolutely.

[Anna Bjerde] I also like that you’re able to identify what do you need to now focus on the digital exchange part in order to complete the process. Lance, I want to turn to you, thinking about ecosystem and operating model. What do you see as the main strength of NetHope’s ecosystem operating model, and what is the next horizon, if you will, for you to take it to the next level?

[Lance Pierce] NetHope has, since its founding 24 years ago, as a partnership between the tech sector and civil society, has always focused on peer learning, upskilling, the idea that a community that comes together in shared problem solving will learn faster across the full community if there’s transparency, there’s trust in information, mission sharing. So, we’ve always been this space where you can focus on trying to move a broad agenda quickly. That’s been quite effective for international civil society, their digital transformation, the NetHope organizations score notably higher up the curve of digital maturity than many other organizations do. We believe that that’s because of their participation, their knowledge sharing. So we’d like to take that and open it up. There’s a whole ecosystem of organizations working around the world that would benefit from knowledge sharing. We’re increasingly doing more with governments. We’ve had a number of interesting meetings with ministries and others to really talk about how do we widen this space for collaboration? Because as you say, government is finding itself pulled into new roles. Sometimes it’s appropriate for government to stretch there, and sometimes government’s not the best tool. Sometimes it’s best for the private sector or it’s best for civil society. Often a partnership is going to be the way you’re going to discover what that modality is. The operating model that we’ve always pursued as a network organization is really to try to surface those learning things, try to create a space so that innovation can be used appropriately and not indiscriminately. People tend to idolize innovation as a monolithic universal good, and we like to think sometimes it is, if it’s applied well and appropriately, and sometimes if you don’t take that step, you might find yourself in trouble later because you’ve just applied things in circumstances where they don’t always fit. That idea of local, localization, local data, local knowledge, informing those systems, that’s an area where we’re continuing to work, and we want to try to do more of that because we think more of that’s going to be needed as these new roles get defined for our institutions as well as for the other actors, civil society and the private sector.

[Anna Bjerde] Also very interesting, the changing definition of roles as we step into this space. I like that you also emphasized it. Minister, I want to finish off with you on something that you mentioned before, which was the important link between digital and energy. Here, we know that many people around the world, the billions, and in fact, millions in Nigeria, still lack access to digital and even energy. We also know that digital and energy go hand in hand, and there’s a lot of technology advances that we’re also trying to promote now as we have stepped up under what we call Mission 300, which is to increase the access to electricity on the continent, but also digital while we’re doing so. What is Nigeria doing? One of the largest countries, of course, in the continent, to try to close the gap when it comes to access. Again, maybe just what is the one biggest innovation you see as you pursue access in digital for the energy. I liked your focus on renewable, sustainable solutions, but also the investment in battery. Anything else that you want to highlight?

[Bosun Tijani] I think talking about access, definitely energy is also foundational. But beyond just energy being foundational, I think what we’ve established in Nigeria that I’d like to challenge everyone on, especially for Africa, is that the narrative Africa is mobile-fast needs to change, because that’s not a narrative that we can sustain. When you look at the fact that in a country like Nigeria, 17.9 is the average age. The workforce of the future will come from many of these countries. There’s absolutely no way where we limit these young people to mobile. We have to be able to create an opportunity for them where the sort of connectivity they have access to should allow them to be able to participate in artificial intelligence, to be able to explore robotics, and to be able to create innovations that will require high-speed connectivity, but also significant computers as well. Which is why for us, the project we’re working on with the Bank is extremely important, investing in 90,000 kilometers of fiber optic network to ensure that we can reach all of our people wherever they are with quality and meaningful connectivity. Meaningful being the keyword. There’s absolutely no way where we can also secure our borders, there’s no way where Nigeria can do well in mining if we’re based just on mobile because connectivity is required for mining. Most African countries can do much more in agriculture. We need to be able to feed ourselves without precision agriculture or smart agriculture, there’s absolutely no way we can compete, and you’re not going to be able to do all of that without a robust connectivity infrastructure. So, we’re very aggressive about this. And beyond that, we’re also investing in 7,000 towers to ensure that the remote places can be reached. We’re leveraging satellites to reach them. But we understand that in all of this, without energy, we’re going to struggle, which is why we’re extremely fortunate to have the President we have today, because one of the first things it did was to prioritize compressed natural gas. Of course, this is not clean enough, but Nigeria has significant stock of it, and we believe that that can be used as a transition form of energy. And whilst we’re doing exploring solar and so many other things, we have one of the best quality of lithium in the world. This has been established. There’s absolutely no way we should struggle with batteries. So, we need to start local manufacturing of batteries, which is a critical part of a cleaner form of energy that will power most of our digital infrastructure in the future. It’s also the only way we can create the sort of jobs that we need for our teenage, young population. We have to find ways to create that opportunity. I’m extremely excited that a lot of what we’re doing at the minute in the country led by the President may not be popular, whether it’s the reforms that are put in place, which is going extremely well, but also the focus on foundational infrastructure. We think if we can stay on this for the next three to five years, our economy is going to go to where we truly believe it should be, which is on the other side of being a trillion-dollar economy. It’s already about, I think, 400 million dollars or so. We think it can be much more than that. And that’s what we’re working towards in the country.

[Anna Bjerde] Wonderful, Minister. Thank you so much. I love your connection to jobs. I love your connection of infrastructure to jobs as well as agriculture, because we believe both are very, very important and critical for being able to create the number of jobs that need to be created in the future. Thank you so much. Thank you to both of you. And I hope you enjoyed this. Two very important topics that we touched upon. One is how does the World Bank help countries when they need us the most, whether it’s in a crisis or whether it’s to step up to the next step. And how do we do it by building resilience when it comes to digital technology? I want to sum up by three priorities that we see as we try to also step into this space. First and foremost, and we talked about it, enhance the resilience by design. This means ensuring networks and the systems are resilient because when they collapse or when they are impacted, the impacts are huge. The second is to deal with the availability and confidentiality by investing in things like cybersecurity. That’s number one priority. Number two priority that we see is using it as an enhancement for resilience of sectors, communities, and livelihoods. Lance, you really spoke to this. We saw it also during the pandemic. Those countries that had digital registries, for example, and payment systems, were able to reach three times more beneficiaries than those that didn’t. So, recognizing that investing in digital resilience also protects you when you need it the most. The job creation model, shifting really towards the job creation model of the future, because at the end of the day, resilience and livelihoods are best met through job creation. And then finally, driving the digital inclusion. Here we know that we still have too many people who are offline who need to come online. The youth of today are looking for opportunities where digital will play a huge role. So, we need to continue to focus on that. One way we’re trying to do it is to really focus on setting bold goals, but also bold targets. One of the targets that I’m personally very excited about is that we’re trying to make sure through our efforts, we can connect an additional 300 million women to digital connectivity by 2030, because we think that enhances female labor force participation, which improves the economic empowerment and creates also the economic stimulus that we need in the future. Thank you so very much. Thank you for sharing your insights. Both of you brought so much interesting light to this discussion this morning, bringing out ideas and examples of how you’re working and moving an incredible powerhouse like Nigeria using digital and the very good work through the network lands that you’re doing in some of the most difficult places in the world, but made easier thanks to digital technology and resilience. Thank you, and thank you for tuning in, and have a great second day of your Summit. Thank you.

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