WSIS Action Line C7: E-business and the Global Digital Compact

Experts Discuss Global Digital Compact’s Impact on eBusiness at WSIS +20 Summit

During the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) +20 event, a panel of experts convened to discuss the implications of the Global Digital Compact (GDC) on eBusiness, focusing on Action Line C7. The session, moderated by James Howe, aimed to examine the alignment between the GDC’s zero draft objectives and the goals of Action Line C7, which supports access to digital tools and services for businesses. The panelists considered how the GDC could enhance the digital economy and address broader digital issues.

Torbjörn Fredriksson provided an overview of the GDC, highlighting its objectives to close digital divides, expand inclusion in the digital economy, focus on human rights, govern international data, and address emerging technologies like AI. He emphasized the importance of inclusivity, development orientation, gender equality, environmental sustainability, equitable market structures, innovation friendliness, and forward-looking approaches. However, Fredriksson pointed out the GDC’s lack of emphasis on digital trade, small businesses, and governance of digital platforms, which could ensure a more equitable distribution of digital economy benefits.

Juan Moroni from the Universal Postal Union (UPU) discussed the postal network’s role in bridging digital divides, particularly in rural and remote areas, and its potential as a vehicle for digital, financial, and social inclusion. He suggested that the GDC should commit to connecting all post offices to support widespread inclusion.

Allison St. Brice from Trinidad and Tobago shared insights from her country’s experience with e-trade readiness assessments conducted by UNCTAD and the development of an e-commerce strategy. She highlighted the importance of such assessments in identifying gaps and challenges and called for greater inclusivity in the provision of technical assistance to support developing countries in leveraging e-commerce for economic diversification and digital transformation.

Bernard Banda, representing Zambia, spoke about the challenges MSMEs face in participating in e-commerce, such as building trust with customers and competing with larger entities. He underscored the GDC’s potential to unlock opportunities for MSMEs through access to resources, training, and policy advocacy. Banda emphasized the need for deliberate actions to achieve the GDC’s anticipated results and address challenges such as the digital divide, data protection, and capacity building among MSMEs.

Hilda Moraa, an E-Trade for Women advocate, discussed the empowerment of female digital entrepreneurs and the need for a collaborative approach to address financial inclusion for underserved women. She highlighted the role of mobile money transactions and digital credit history in enabling women to build their financial future and wealth creation. Moraa called for practicality in GDC discussions to ensure sustainability and success.

The session concluded with a consensus on the GDC’s potential to significantly impact the digital economy and e-business, provided it addresses identified gaps and involves a broad range of stakeholders in its implementation. There was a call for deliberate actions to realize the GDC’s goals, with a particular focus on the human right to earn an online living as a potential new area for human rights consideration. The discussion underscored the importance of recognizing challenges such as the digital divide, data protection, and capacity building among MSMEs, and the need for a collaborative approach to drive gender equality and financial inclusion.

James Howe:
Well, thank you for being on time. As you may have heard me say, it’s a bit spooky, this whole 45 minutes without PowerPoint on our side. We have an interesting but short discussion, 45 minutes, which should take us to quarter past two. And you’re finding yourself in the room with the Action Line C7 eBusiness. So this is an annual event for us now in the WSIS plus 20. What this particular Action Line is about, under with the abbreviation eBusiness, is about supporting access to the digital tools and services in the support, like it says, of doing business. But it’s interesting looking back at some of the objectives of the Action Line C7 and seeing its scope as a function of what we’re really there to talk about, which is the Global Digital Compact, of course. Now, the Global Digital Compact was launched in its zero draft in this same month, still in the month of May. And the beginning of the month was launched the zero draft, which is the fruit already of a lot of consultation with various policy. And what we thought it would be interesting in the build up to the summit in September, the summit of the future, is a little bit to take a the prism of Action Line C7 and ask what are the relevant parts of that GDC and what does this mean for us? So helping us have this short debate, we’re probably not going to resolve that in this time, but we hope to spark some side discussions. We have a few people helping me and the team. Of course, with any of these Action Line meetings, it wouldn’t be the same without our friends from UNCTAD, namely, in this case, Torbjörn, who many of you well know, heading up the e-commerce and digital economy branch. I’m also joined by UPU. We should mention that ITC and UPU and UNCTAD are jointly coordinating this particular Action Line. Here we have Juan Moroni, who’s the Digital Transformation and Policy Expert. Between us, we have some even more knowledgeable speakers. In the person of Alison St. Brice, who’s the First Secretary of the Permanent Mission of Trinidad and Tobago, and thank you for being with us. And online, we have Bernard Banda, a good friend from the Zambia Information and Communication Technology Authority. He’s out in Lusaka, and he’s the Director of Economic Regulation. And we also have online Hilda Mora, who’s an E-Trade for Women Advocate, and perhaps even more so, a CEO and founder of Pazesha, and we’ll find out possibly a little bit more about that. As I say, we don’t have a huge amount of time, but with this, what we want to do is focus on the Global Digital Compact, and if you notice, I won’t do it now because I’m giving a brief introduction, is that a lot of our mandate covers the same ground. in these areas. So we would have to look, I think this is a good topic, what is different, what expands the focus of what we want to achieve between WSIS and those action lines and what’s already in this zero draft. How is that different? Certainly it seems to have ambitions beyond what is naturally in WSIS. And we might look at some of the ambitions towards global standards and regulations, the inclusiveness of the policy, although that’s always been a part, at least of the announced objectives of WSIS, but very much a human rights focus. So I won’t doing more, we have a short session I’ll hand directly over to Torbjörn and there really give Torbjörn the opportunity to explore that question, the intersection between this text that we see and the e-business action line.

Torbjörn Fredriksson:
Thanks James, and I have five minutes so I’m going to go straight into the issue and say hello to everyone online. A special welcome to Hilda, of course, our E-Trade for Women advocate. We had the pleasure of seeing her in Geneva only a few weeks ago, so great to have you with us. E-business is of course about creating opportunities for businesses and through the businesses also create opportunities for development. And what I would like to do now is just to give you a little bit of background. I don’t know if how many of you have actually looked at the Global Digital Compact REV1 draft that we are actually looking at right now. That will be discussed with member states at the end of next week in New York, where all the different member states will come together and suggest changes in this text and ultimately it should be agreed upon in the best of worlds by the Summit of the Future in September. This Global Digital Compact covers five objectives. The first one is to close digital divides, etc. The second is to expand inclusion in and benefits from the digital economy. digital economy is of course very relevant for the business action line. The third one is focusing very much on human rights. The fourth is about international data governance and as you know data and platforms is what we consider to be the drivers right now of the digital economy. And the fifth area is about new emerging technologies and this very particular focus on artificial intelligence. Secondly the GDC talks about 12 principles and I would say that six or seven of them are particularly relevant from the e-business perspective. First that it should be inclusive so it should include all the parts of the world but also within countries all the different segments of society. It should be development oriented and particular emphasis given to the least developed countries the landlocked countries and the SIDS small island development states. And then there’s a strong emphasis on gender equality and empowerment women leadership which is not least important in view of Ilda’s participation here as a business leader in the developing countries in the digital space. It should be environmentally sustainable, equitable so there it talks about the market concentration market power which is a very strong feature of the digital economy where a few huge corporations control a lot of what’s happening around the world. It should be innovation friendly very important from a digital economy perspective and it should be forward-looking. So in these areas I will say a few words about the objective one where we can see that the current text is pointing out that the whole life cycle of digital technologies from the creation of new products and infrastructure to the use and the end of life should be environmentally sustainable. That means that one needs to consider designing digital devices and infrastructure with sustainability in mind. It stresses the need to develop open source software platforms and standards. When it comes to the second objective, it highlights the importance of undertaking proper assessments in developing countries to re-identify what needs to be done to improve the performance in the digital economy. It calls for more technical assistance to support countries that are trailing behind and to pool knowledge and research on digital enterprise and innovation. Particular emphasis is given to digital innovation and entrepreneurship, not least among women and youth. Objective four is about data governance, talks about privacy. It talks about the need to improve data governance and to improve skills in countries to make use of data access. And the fifth one is of course focusing on AI, which has relevance to all parts of the digital economy. In terms of the follow-up activities to the global digital compact text, it refers to a lot of existing entities that grew out of the world summit on the information society, the WSIS. And we have the IGF, we have the WSIS action line facilitators, such as the ones we are for the action line on e-business. And we have also the commission on science, technology for development that is currently responsible for following up on all the things that were agreed upon at the world summit on the information society. A relatively newcomer in this infrastructure is the office of the special envoy of technology in New York, which is directly under the UN secretary general and is supporting the process of developing the global digital compact, which is a process that is led by two co-facilitators, the ambassadors of Sweden and Zambia in New York. So if I look upon what’s already in the text, And what do I see is missing from the e-business side? Well, one is that there is hardly anything that refers to trade or digital trade. And today, you go into the digital economy and it is a global exercise. So it’s important that the Global Digital Contact talks about how to make sure that that digital trade process is inclusive. Second, there’s very little on small businesses. And it does talk about entrepreneurship, but there are lots of small businesses, including the informal sector that are really not visible in the text right now. There’s not much on the governance of the digital platforms. It’s currently drafted in a way that suggests that we should call on the platforms to behave. We may need more than that than just asking for them to be kind. And there is also a need for more emphasis on ensuring that whatever benefits come out from the digital economy are distributed in an equitable way, so that it doesn’t lead to only benefits for the few, but for the many. So with that as a background, I will hand back over to you, James.

James Howe:
Well, it won’t stay with me long. I would like to introduce Alston St. Brice to you again and point out some things that are going on, particularly in relation to Trinidad and Tobago. I understand that you’re undergoing one of the famous E-Trade readiness assessments with UNCTAD, and also there’s a link with the work that UPU is doing under the request of the Minister of Public Facilities. So perhaps these are some things that you would like to reference in your response to us. Why are these particular initiatives important? What has Trinidad and Tobago been, what’s your experience been so far in these digital areas, and how do you consider the future, particularly in this context? Global Digital Compact.

Allison St. Brice:
So, thank you. Thank you very much for having me. And it’s a pleasure to be part of what I’m sure will be a useful exchange. On E-Trade for All and on support for digital readiness from multilateral organisations more broadly, I’d like to first mention that our Ministry of Digital Transformation conducted a digital readiness assessment for 2011 to be in January 2022. And that was through the valuable support of UNDP. And on e-commerce in particular. We have been very keen for some time now to have an e-trade readiness assessment done. And also to have assistance, technical assistance from UNCTAD with respect to the development of an e-commerce strategy. And so I’m very, very pleased that that work has gotten rolling, gotten going this year. Earlier this year, Mr. Fredrickson and a tiny team of just two people, I believe from UNCTAD, travelled to my beautiful country to engage in multi-stakeholder consultations relating to preparation of our e-trade readiness assessment. And since then, we have continued to work closely with UNCTAD. Earlier this month, we had capital based participation in the IGE, the Intergovernmental Group of Experts on e-commerce and the digital economy, as well as the capacity building workshop that followed that. I understand that our e-trade readiness strategy is ready at this point and exchanges will continue in the period ahead. The intent is to finalise the strategy by the end of this year and we really look forward to that. We attribute great importance to having this assessment done. And why? Because it’s really difficult to treat with something that you have not diagnosed, right? And ultimately, that’s what the assessment does. It helps countries like ours, Trinidad and Tobago, to have a clear sense of where the gaps lie in terms of our ability to better leverage the benefits of e-commerce as we push for economic diversification and for digital transformation. And the gaps that we were aware of, but we’ve identified more clearly through the assessment related to ICT infrastructure, legal and regulatory frameworks, digital skills, treatment facilitation and logistics, e-payment solutions and access to finance. And so from where I sit, I see UNCTAD’s e-trade readiness assessment as a critical and sought after tool because it allows us to identify gaps, challenges and opportunities. And these diagnostics, they’re really critical for putting us on a pathway towards meaningful inclusion into the global digital economy. And so we welcome the inclusion in the global digital compact of the call for, and I’m going to quote here, multilateral organizations as well as governments to support national digital readiness assessments and where requested and as appropriate to provide technical assistance to national authorities. For us, this is an important inclusion because as trade is becoming increasingly digital, support for countries such as mine from multilateral organizations and from those countries that sits on the more favorable end of the digital divide, that support is really critical. I want to use this platform to highlight that for a number of developing countries like mine that are categorized as high income and upper middle income, access to support for the conduct of e-readiness, e-trade readiness assessment is, access is very difficult. In fact, many of us would say that there is a ring fencing phenomenon where such support is really only available to LDCs and it’s difficult for us to access. In our case, our government was able to mobilise the resources to have our assessment done, but for a number of similarly situated developing countries, for example, in our region, the Caribbean region, they’re not in a position to do so. So I think this gives me pause. This is a point of reflection as we think through what we’re looking to achieve with the global digital compact. And while my last comment will be on the importance of support for all parts of the e-trade readiness process, that is assessment, strategy formulation, and then of course, effective implementation. We would welcome support, including financial support for implementation of projects under the national e-commerce strategy when it is finalised. We see value in the IGE mechanisms. But we would also welcome e-commerce related capacity building support in capital, including for private and public sectors. And we suggest, and this is linked to what I’ve seen earlier about access, we suggest that for greater efficiency and access, such support could be rendered through regional approaches. And finally, we would also welcome assistance to collect data on e-commerce and digital.

James Howe:
Thank you. Thank you for this testimony, Alison. So I can pass without further ado to Juan Moroni from the UPU. Juan, so we see the first objective of the zero draft that we mentioned. for the Global Digital Compact is to close digital divides and accelerate the progress of the SDGs. In what sense can the post offices contribute to this?

Juan Moroni:
Thank you so much, James. So to give the short answer, I would say that the postal network is quite an extensive network and it can be a key vehicle for inclusion specifically for MSMEs. So the postal network is a very extensive network which in a lot of the cases is the only, let’s say a public sector entity specifically in rural and remote areas. So it can be a key vehicle for not only digital inclusion but also for reaching the financial and social gaps. And social gaps. So we were also related to some of the specific elements mentioned at the first draft of the GDC is called for the need for assessments. We were recently in Trinidad and I can attest it is indeed a very beautiful country. So, and it is actually very interesting to see concrete cases in which the post can indeed be a key vehicle to advance not only the deployment of the digital infrastructure but also the uptake of digital services specifically e-government services and act as a vehicle to facilitate the inclusion of MSMEs into the digital economy. So I do not want to extend them very long but so I would just say that when we go through. the draft of the GDC, we can see that there is a specific commitment to connect all schools, which is indicated that it could be done through this GIGA initiative being driven by the ITU and UNICEF. So at the UPU we have a very similar initiative in which the UPU has committed to connect all post offices to utilize the postal network as a key vehicle to drive digital financial and social inclusion. So I think it will be quite important if this element can actually be also included into the GDC draft. Again, because we have this existing infrastructure which can be leveraged to actually have an inclusive and going to the other very important point, sustainable digital future. So with that, thank you so much.

James Howe:
Okay, well, Juan, thank you for making the point so clearly and succinctly. So with that, I think we can turn our attention online. And there we should have Bernard Banda, who I briefly introduced earlier on, if you’re still there. So we mentioned that Zambia is currently one of the co-facilitators with Sweden, it’s all being reminders, on the Global Digital Compact. But as a regulator, as a regulator, we wanted to ask you about how does it look from a country, and in particular an African country such as Zambia. Do you think from what you’re reading so far in the Zero Draft that it would impact the connectivity of small businesses in Zambia? And does it have a potential to affect their participation in e-commerce? Bernard, over to you, hopefully.

Bernard Banda:
Thank you. Thank you very much and good afternoon and really pleased to join all of you on the panel. I’ve really been following the very useful and insightful contributions from the other panelists and really it gives a very good context in terms of what are some of the expectations from this initiative. Now, looking at the Zambia initiative, as you may recall, we did do some assessment with the International Trade Center just about two years ago, where we assessed basically the extent to which MSMEs are participating in e-commerce, but also assessed what are some of the key challenges that perhaps could be inhibiting their participation in e-commerce. Now, obviously what we did find at the time is that while broadly adoption to ICT services, as well as we’ve recorded some significant progress with regards to infrastructure deployments within the country relating to connectivity, we also saw that the actual adoption or usage of e-commerce by the MSMEs was relatively low. Now, reading what we are seeing in this initiative, I think there is some prospects for unlocking some of the rigidities, I think that may be associated with adoption of e-commerce, especially among the MSMEs. I say so because some of the opportunities that we see include number one, the availability of resources, resources relating to obviously the tools to connect and leverage on e-commerce, but also issues like training that would then be able to assist most of these MSMEs either develop platforms or perhaps. even just be able to navigate these e-commerce platforms. We also see opportunities from this initiative that border on market reach. Obviously, we know that the basic advantage of e-commerce is that you extend your reach in terms of the customer base and this obviously would enhance the survival as well as the growth of most of these MSMEs. There are also other advantages that may be linked to access such as policy advocacy. We see this as an initiative that MSMEs can drive an agenda where certain key aspects that are required to unlock access to most of these e-commerce platforms would perhaps be pushed through. Initiatives such as the constraints to connectivity, constraints related maybe to taxation or even access to platforms could easily be brought to the fore as key actors, including policy makers are part of this conversation. So we see that there are obviously quite a number of important aspects to this particular initiative and we feel that it would certainly go a long way in enhancing the participation of MSMEs in e-commerce activities. Thank you.

James Howe:
Thank you, Bernard. So, okay, a positive vote for the potential of what this could do at that level in terms of e-business, which is our positioning. We should make it clear, of course, there are obviously lots of other implications, but a reminder, of course, we’re talking about the business and the e-business once here. But there, I would like to pass on to our next speaker who’s also available online, Hilda Mora, who I briefly introduced earlier on. Here, we talk about the global digital compact in this first draft, sets the ambition of fostering digital entrepreneurship among women. And what I wanted to ask in your role as one of the E-Trade for Women advocates is how do you see an opportunity to translate what the GDC is saying towards female digital entrepreneurship into action? Could something like our Action Line help? Hilda, over to you.

Hilda Moraa:
Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here. I will definitely contextualize the answer to that question to the work that we do at Possessia, which is really a Pan-African fintech that allows us to address the issues of working capital for the underserved small and medium businesses. And majority of these businesses are informal businesses. According to the IFC, this is a $340 billion financing gap. 50% of those who are excluded are women across sub-Saharan Africa. And that’s a problem we’re trying to address in Possessia and really providing that enabler platform to allow more women, especially in the marginalized communities, to be included. The interesting part is, of course, some of the areas and the actions that are being addressed in the first draft of the GDC are really in line with the challenges that we have also faced as a business while we are trying to scale up our solutions of working capital, where we start to see limited infrastructure, cultural norms that continue to restrict these informal women with access and mobility and autonomy. And basically, with these inequalities and barriers, it definitely reduces our opportunity to drive scale. But that said, there is hope at the end of the day. day. Because if you look at the mobile penetration and the mobile money accounts that are in the hands of these women, it brings hope that it is possible to address financial inclusion at a much more deeper level and start mitigating these inequalities. And just to give an example of how we do it at Pazesha is we take these mobile money transactions over time and build this alternative data while allowing and educating these informal women to transact more digitally in a safer way and secure way. And in that regard, allowing them to build their digital credit history for the first time ever using our platform. And that means now they can start having control over their credit history and really start building their financial future and wealth creation. And then lowering the way we disburse and the way we monitor our loans and provide affordable credit. So I think for us as a commitment that we have made in the work we do at Pazesha, but also as an advocate, is really to see how do we continue to bring this holistic approach in the work that we do to drive more digital financial inclusion for these underserved women? And I think the answer is threefold. How do we cut down the cultural issues and barriers? How do we drive down the discriminatory policies that prevent women to access credit, affordable credit? And of course, financial education that we have seen in our world of fintech, that the more you educate women, it drives their confidence to join the financial market and start transacting to build their credit history. So I think that for us is what we see as the focus. the opportunity in this GDC conversation. And if we can bring more practicality into these conversations, I think it will definitely drive success and sustainability. Thank you.

James Howe:
Okay, Hilda, thank you very much. So somewhat spookily, we’re almost on time. I don’t know how that happened, you know, but well done, everybody. So we do have 10 minutes or so left, the possibility of questions. I’ll make a few points to just provoke you or check that you’re still with us. I think we heard from Torbjörn a nice synthetic overview of what was in the GDC, if you haven’t had a chance to look at it. Torbjörn pulled out a couple of points about our trade being somewhat absent in there and trade being a big thing because lots of other things depend on it and the involvement of SMEs. So I think Torbjörn made a few points that we might like to look at, particularly Zambia there, and we’ve probably got indirectly Sweden there. We can make this point to people who are facilitating this in New York. We heard the very positive impression that Alison gave us of the need to do e-trade readiness reviews and the importance of that and the fact that things are not equal among countries in terms of their access or ability to do this. And I think there was a reminder there, while we’re talking about inclusivity, there’s an inclusivity of countries, as well as sometimes we tend to jump on the inclusivity of individuals, but there’s an inclusivity of access to these supporting services and to put in place the implications of things like the GDC. So I think there’s something else. So in our helicopter jumping around, admittedly, a lot of the big issues that there are here in the half hour that we’ve spoken, Juan reminded us about an important player, which is, of course, the host offices, which remind us of the sort of support infrastructure that we can have. What I mentioned about schools and the Giga initiative reminded us that there are other similar things that post office can also contribute to. Bernard was making a point about at the enterprise level, which was quite nice, about having access to things like training, platforms, solutions, and making sure that the implied market reach, so the impacts of this economic impact of this, can actually be enjoyed by countries such as Zambia, developing countries. And that links to other things which are not part of our discussion, of course, about Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement and other things which are going on in the world, which the GDC is not alone in trying to make major change happen. And then, of course, we heard from Hilda about an important point of inclusivity, about a very important group to us, which is women. And I think the financing gap and the fact that it’s digital opens up new possibilities for in data, which is what’s the value of data? Well, a very important application of data here is having a credit history, opening up the possibility of financing, and all the innovation, which is definitely taking place behind there. I think in the LDCs, the highest performing, most valuable companies are typically associated with finance that we see. So that offers a great hope if it can be effectively leveraged for public policy. So thank you. So this is a big helicopter talk. Any questions, any chat, anything that would you like to come back to any of our knowledgeable panelists? Maybe we should see some people in the room. Or comments from the room. Maybe there are strong objections. What have they said? That they all agree. Of course, that’s the feeling. Well, it’s a very big agenda. The digital compact itself has a big. gender and then you think you’ve narrowed it down by focusing on the biggest business, but that is also itself a big agenda, as we’ve heard. Yes, Bernard wants to come in, I think.

Bernard Banda:
Yes, yes, thank you very much, yes. I just wanted to maybe just amplify two important points as well. So what we find as well in most developing countries is that most SMEs who attempt to participate in e-commerce, especially beyond the borders of their country, face the challenge of managing confidence and trust from their particular possible customers. So I think this initiative also, given that it basically has an embedded system to build credibility for the MSMEs, it provides some very good scope in terms of trying to address such particular challenge where perhaps potential customers that may want to access certain commodities using e-commerce platforms may have challenges with trust. I think that the fact that most of these digital platforms basically would be under very credible and authenticated platforms, it is obviously likely to enhance actually the returns from participation from e-commerce. The other important point of course, which again is aspects most MSMEs, is that most MSMEs actually struggle to compete with bigger entities or bigger firms or bigger conglomerates. I think that this initiative takes a very deliberate step to try and also ensure that even MSMEs that compete with most of these bigger entities. actually are competitive. So the fact that most of these MSMEs would deliberately be prepared to compete with most of these bigger firms, I think would also assist with enhancing their likelihood of success through participating in e-commerce. I thought that I perhaps just amplify that as I underscore the importance of this particular initiative. I don’t know if you did mention in the preamble as well that I know that Zambia Together with Sweden are co-chairing part of the engagements on this particular initiative. Thank you.

James Howe:
So, Toby.

Torbjörn Fredriksson:
No, I’d like to build on what Bernard was saying here. And I think if the world embarks on such a big effort like the Global Digital Compact is, we need to be clear on what are we happy with so far in the development of the digitalization in the world and what are we not so happy about. And here is, I think, very much well said by Bernard here that we can see that we have seen tremendous opportunities developed by digitalization, but we also see that so far it has, much of the real value has been captured by a small number of very large players and it’s not easy for small businesses to compete. So that raises the question, how can we deal with that? What do we need to improve that situation for the future? How do we ensure that smaller businesses have a fairer chance to participate in such a fast moving environment that the digital economy is? And that’s why we are saying that it would be good if the text eventually emphasizes a bit more what challenges we need to address in terms of governance, maybe competition policies, maybe taxation policies, other policies that are not purely digital in nature, but they are needed to frame the digital economy. And I think that’s why it’s so important, for instance, to have Hilda here representing the private sector in this dialogue. And you’re not the traditional private sector representative in multi-stakeholder discussions in the WSIS, because they are typically represented by big platforms or big corporations. The smaller businesses, the new businesses that are coming here need to have a stronger presence in this dialogue. And that is also something that the GDC should recognize moving forward.

James Howe:
Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to working with you in the future. Thank you very much. Anybody online? Hilda, I don’t know whether you want to respond to that from Colvia?

Hilda Moraa:
No, absolutely. I think at the end of the day, this is going to be a collaborative effort. It’s going to take a lot of partnerships to really make it work. You know, we’re talking about solving sustainably. And it’s not going just to be driving policy at the level of, you know, let’s lower down the tax. Let’s make it fair for small businesses to compete. Let’s build trust ecosystem. But then what we are also seeing from our world is constantly, you know, from one country to another, the changes that are happening from an infrastructure level, access to internet connectivity. You know, when you go to the marginalized communities, where majority of these informal businesses are, there’s no electricity. So how do we talk about internet? So we first need to solve the electricity problem. When we go to these marginalized communities, we’re finding there’s no ownership of the mobile phone. So how do we then build credit histories and drive financial inclusion to women when we have a problem? of cultural norms that are actually blocking us from moving ahead. And so for me, from where I sit and the way we look at it from the world of possession and SME side is really to say, we’re gonna have to take a collaborative approach of building an ecosystem. And it really is going to be a lot of partnerships with local communities, industry players, you know, providers of finance, providers of technology and policy as well. But at the end of the day, it’s only this broader efforts that are going to drive, you know, ultimately the gender equality that we are looking for in financial inclusion. And so basically what I’m saying is it’s gonna have to take an entire village to solving this problem once and for all.

James Howe:
Thank you, Hilda and…

Audience:
I think the previous speaker has broadly touched upon. So I’m Amrita, I’m with the Center for Internet and Society in India. We’re doing a project on sort of digital financial services and women’s exclusions. So one of the points that we’re seeing is, of course, there’s a digital divide, but there’s also multiple other layers of divide, right? Like I think it was spoken about like, socially conditioned to not have financial awareness for women and to that the layer of multiple languages in India that, you know, even if you get financial awareness, you get digital access, even if it is shared access, it can have like the question of language. So I’m just wondering if the sort of GDC and when we think about even like micro businesses, especially these informal businesses, even in India, we have a lot of women led businesses, but when we add the layer of digitization or digitalization, does it respond to a lot of these challenges? Because also what ends up happening is that, you know, once you have a digital financial system that you’re operating in, it is very possible that the men in your family actually have ownership or control of your, sort of like business actually accounts and things like that. So I just wanted to get a sense of that.

James Howe:
Perfect, great questions. I think, you know, building on these observations, I think this takes us closer to, I think the sense of the global digital compact. Therefore, what’s been missing, which has made me think, because there is obviously a very heavy human rights component in the GDC reflections, and probably quite rightly in a macro sense, because we see the big picture thing about digital. And if you mix in AI as a hot topic in that, about what does that mean for human rights? Now, there are lots of domains outside of e-business in that, which are very important. But again, we’ve taken this narrower prism on what’s happening here. And the question I would have, and this begins to touch on this, is the human right to earn an online living. Is that a human right? You know, it’s not a human right expressed anywhere. There are human rights about security and things that we, you know, Torbjörn, I think, and his team have explored very well about data and who owns the data and the power of this, and your individual data. And we hear from Hilda, the value of that about having a credit history. I think what we’re hearing here, India can digital overcome some of these barriers, cultural, linguistic, and so on. The human rights lens on this, obviously, that’s super important, but is there a human rights thing here about your right to earn a living online? If that’s where business is done, there isn’t another place to do business. How can we ensure that there’s a right of access in these areas to take it to its ultimate limits about what is happening here? Sorry, but Bernard’s got his hand up as well. Okay, sorry, I can’t see this. Time is up, apparently. Yeah. Please help us say something profound.

Bernard Banda:
Okay. All right, I’ll try to be really brief. And I think I’d like to really thank Hilda and the others that have spoken. I think really what we need to do is to zero in first on the very useful and good intentions of the GDC. And I think that was really what we heard from most of the speakers that spoke. But certainly there are some limitations and challenges as others have said. Of course, I think Hilda did touch on the issue of the digital divide. Even when you look at the differentiation across countries, there are issues around data protection, data privacy, even issues around capacity among MSMEs to really get the full value on this. But I think really what is also interesting and it’s good that we are discussing this on the sidelines of the WSIS Action Lines and Progress is that we really need to focus a lot more on ensuring that this GDC does give us the anticipated results and be very deliberate in terms of what the actions that we are going to take to give us these results. We certainly should recognize the weaknesses, the limitations, the risk, all the challenges. But the idea is that we must not again fall short of the very good intentions that the GDC intends to achieve. And so I agree with colleagues that yes, there are these gaps, there are these variations, there are these observed challenges or risks, but what we really need to do is to ensure that we are very deliberate on ensuring that we implement what we need to implement and obviously have a very clear focus on achieving the results that are embedded in the aspirations of the GDC. I’ll stop here, particularly in the interest of time. Thank you.

James Howe:
Thank you, Bernard Reminding us about the famous implementation gap. The next challenge. So thanks everybody for your patience and attention and bon appetit.