Houlin Zhao is the Secretary-General-elect of the International Telecommunications Union, ITU. He will take over from Hamadoun Toure from January 1, 2015. In this exclusive interview with our correspondent, Theresa Igata, in his office at the just-ended ITU TELECOM WORLD 2014 in Doha, Qatar, he outlines his vision for ITU and the entire ICT ecosystem in 2015. Excerpts.

Your vision for the ITU and ICT industry in the next four years

I see that ICT and telecom business over the recent decade has achieved a lot of progress and development and ITU’s mission to connect the people is also gradually progressing. Seeing this kind of achievement the situation today is something we should all be proud of. But however looking at the future we still see a lot of challenges of keeping those successful businesses continuing; How can we connect those people not connected yet, how we can keep our innovations that have been brought to us not only from big companies but everywhere including Africa. So these are issues and as we put our connected 2020 strategy plan into action; inclusiveness, sustainability, growth and innovation are the major topics we’ll have to focus on in order to bring our planet new powerful ICT tools to improve our lives.

The ITU is the oldest UN agency, and will be celebrating 150 years next year. It has contributed to human development so successfully that today they still respect the ITU and still want to strengthen the ITU, but as an organisation we also face our challenges of how we can increase our efficiency, make better use of our very limited financial resources, and also make better use of the very limited human resources and how we can bring organisations with moving target from our members.

As we find ways to keep the ITU still relevant we have to work together with our members. We have 193 member states and 700 sector members from the industry. We have 70-80 academy members already. We are that unique UN system but we’re not that unique when you’re talking about organisations of the future since we also have challenges and opportunities. I’m very pleased that at the ITU we reached a strategic and financial plan at the recent plenipotentiary conference and all have mostly been approved and this shows a good sign that our members will work with ITU to move further.

I’m excited with this kind of opportunity that I’ll be leading the ITU for 4 years and whether I need a second tenure is another thing. But the 4 years is not a short period, we can do a lot and I’m confident that we will contribute to the human society success.

ITU and bridging the capacity gap in Africa

It is true that this capacity gap exists, actually not only in Africa but everywhere. In one country you have the gap between cities and rural communities. Nigeria is not a small country, it is the biggest populated country on the Africa continent with a lot of contributions (financial, education, and creating ideas to harmonise Africa) to the continent. I see that since we have this capacity gap then we have opportunities but how can we use these opportunities to eliminate this gap?

To build a very advanced ICT network to connect people is very critical and we can see that the benefit it offers to the rural areas is good in order to advance education. You cannot take refined teachers to the villages but you can take e-Course online. This will give them the same opportunity to receive the same teaching which gives you very talented qualified teachers.

I see very good development in Africa where they’re not only trying to learn from the others but also trying to offer some kind of approach they discover by themselves; maybe a better approach than the others and they don’t want to miss the opportunity. I like this kind of spirit I very much appreciate it and since these people have very good education, know their national situation and have a very strong will to contribute to the development of the continent I’m sure they will offer even better opportunities to eliminate the capacity gap within the continent.

ITU will be helpful in contributing to this process that we as a UN international agency have some kind of advantages to mobilise international families to create a better platform to help young techpreneurs and villagers to have better contact with the rest of the world so that they get better ideas and opportunities and information about potentials and partnerships which will help them move together better, to eliminate this issue of capacity gap.

Most pressing agenda of the ITU

We’re talking about connecting people and connecting the world and today we’re very proud with the recent statistics that by the end of this year we’ll have almost 7 billion mobile penetration and the planet is 7.3 billion; that’s almost a 100 per cent. I was very pleased today when we were told us that in Nigeria mobile penetration has reached almost a hundred per cent. But on the other hand you may have more than one mobile phone. And I heard again that broadband penetration in Nigeria is less than 10 per cent so we have to first of all find out where people are not connected.

We have to not only talk about this issue of connected or not connected but we really have to see where these people are and then put our agenda to find a way to connect them. Another issue is to offer everyone equal opportunities to enjoy modern ICT technologies like broadband. There’s the potential to quickly develop broadband in Nigeria and also in the continent and then consider that the other continent may be better than you but I think in other countries there’re still some areas not covered by mobile phone signals and broadband is a big challenge to them even in Europe and the United states.

In Africa people talk a lot about m-Banking but in the United States people do not use that technology. In Africa you still have some areas you show your leadership so I’m very sure that in the next decade we’ll see Africa show up at the front line to lead in the development of technology services more often than we see today.

I’m very excited with the opportunity to lead this organisation for the next 4 years. I will continue on what Dr. Toure has done so far; to pay attention to those countries that are still not enjoying the same development as others and also to try to encourage innovative ways to eliminate this gap as quickly as possible. Here, we ask other continents to help and we also encourage others to show some form of good approach and ideas.

During our debate at our conference we talked about sustainability and affordability; how we can offer these services to people so that they can afford to pay. These are issues we’re trying to work with our members on, to bring them together in order to bring price down and potential powers to our equipment close to our people at lower prices. I think we’ll be able to do that because in ICT not like in other eco system, ICT prices are always going down so there’s the opportunity for us to expect this kind of thing to happen.

Gender digital gap

The ITU has already addressed this issue at several IT conferences. We always try to encourage our members to work on these issues of inequality to raise the equality between men and women, boys and girls. ITU since 2010 put the Tuesday of the last week of April every year as ICT for girls day. This is to encourage the ITU family to bring in more girls to the ICT profession. We also at the recent plenipotentiary conference launched this gender equability in the mainstream program and we awarded a group of distinguished ladies including the minister of communication technology, Nigeria. I see that work is in progress but it has not reached a satisfactory point yet. We have to work hard to encourage more girls to join our ICT profession and also to find more ways to get more women to occupy leading senior positions. I see that if everybody pays attention to this issue, I’m very confident that the situation will improve.

Encouraging investments in ICT

I was very pleased when I visited the Nigeria Pavilion and I heard your minister encourage investment in ICT. She offered a lot of words for opportunities for investment and this is great because we need strong investments to keep everyone in a win-win situation in the business, this is the only way you can keep the business going. If you’re thinking of charity donation, you’ll get very limited financial and human resources and the benefits will be limited in certain areas.

This kind of donation can have some immediate benefits but cannot be sustained. You really have to change people’s mind. I so much appreciate the opportunity to join your minister and Nigeria at the pavilion and the message is very clear; that Africa and indeed Nigeria encourage investment and try to make sure that the investment is put in good hands and with that I can see our business going forward.

Including the physically challenged in ITU agenda

ITU has put this in the agenda for many years. When I was Director for Telecom Standardisation Bureau, I participated in the WSIS 2005 process in Tunisia; I participated in so many sessions with people with disability and even as early as 2003 I used our limited fund to support to have these kinds of messages to help people better understand discussions. But then again I see that we’ve not done enough.

I was very pleased at the end of ITU world 2012, where we concluded and agreed in the regulation’s provision talking about communications to help people with disabilities, because the population of these people are getting bigger and bigger.

We need some tools to help not only those who already have this physical disability but also for people to be able to catch up with their local environment, talking about the future where we’ll have internet of things, trying to have everything connected. You have new challenge when you find yourself in an environment you cannot manage; all these are things we have to manage. I’m very happy that the ITU family has set this as part of its agenda.

Internet of things and invasion of privacy

Just like the internet, today people enjoy internet services but they’re worried about their privacy. They don’t have the confidence to put everything on the web; not just the web but even your mobile phone, you’re worried that your personal data will be taken by someone else.

Now in Africa we’re proud of the m-Banking, but it seems to me that Africa people have more confidence to use this as a commercial business than in very developed countries. Definitely this will be the issue but I see that this will be addressed and if we all put this on the table I think solutions could be found. I’m very confident that we’ll protect users’ privacy and also balance the nations’ security with individual privacy.

ITU’S expectation on Africa ICT

I believe that people really appreciate the Chinese market and the ICT market is developing so rapidly but people also get a lot of ICT products from the Indian market and these two are very big markets in the world, as far as international market is concerned and this is because they have about more than 1 billion population each and also Africa has more than 1 billion population put together and therefore Africa will be the next focus in the world in terms of development.

Of course today, you find that although the telecoms business already achieved a lot of result in terms of development but still other services and equipment are offered from other continents. In China in the 70s and 80s, all their equipment and services were provided by foreign companies but now they can offer these things themselves and they can even offer the rest of the world their products. But in Africa I see that the time will come, it’s a potential that is waiting to be unleashed, and I’ve already heard this kind of call from our Africa members to have their own industries, but this does not mean that you just assemble the products from China, India or America market where they just give you technology and then you just assemble. At the earlier time you can do that but I’m sure that after some time you’ll try to develop your own products and services.

Africa’s IT product manufacturing potential

I shared this message with some of my friends in Kenya in 2003 when I attended a meeting organised by KCC. They invited some entrepreneurs with me at the table and they were talking about new technologies and they told me that if they use ITU standard they can produce some equipment but unfortunately the product wasn’t good enough.

Producing the equipment yourself and using the international standard works. This will create room for efficiency and improvement in your production. You should also come to the market with something that your people will be able to buy.

The most important thing to me is that have the capacity to use ITU standards to develop your own products. In 2013, I saw products from these countries and I couldn’t tell the difference from that made in the developed nations.

Your minister offered me the Z-pad and I couldn’t see the difference in the technology with that from developed nations. I think that in the next decade we’ll see Africa moving faster than in the last decade and a lot of potentials will be fully exposed and Africa will show its own way to the world that they can be the development of technology in the world.

Beyond prize awards for young innovators schemes in the ITU

That is the point I stand to discuss with many ministers by June this year. In Uganda for example I met with their minister and he said they have not got any high tech parks yet but they have a lot of innovators and tech start-ups but they have not put them together in a place, like the high tech park, but they have a lot of projects to support them. So I would like to create a new environment to invite our member states and industry members to come together with their work on SMEs start-ups, innovation centre members to come together to share their ideas of development to perhaps look for opportunities of partnership and to try to encourage the others to come invest in their products and I firmly believe that in some countries the young guys have ideas and they come to the government for support at the beginning and then continue on their own. If we create this kind of environment to bring them together, governments are very susceptible to support young people to come to this platform. But of course there are some start-ups that have a strong finance to travel abroad; if they have money they do their business but how can we create such environment to help those who cannot help themselves? That is one of the priorities I’ll like to focus on next year and I’ve gotten a very good support from ministers of various countries and they’re very kin to move with me on this initiative.

Tech Hub for tech start-ups

In the world now there’s this cross point that innovation may not come from the big guys only but something big can come in the future from those you never heard of because the internet is providing opportunities for young people to get access to various technologies relatively easily. If they see these various opportunities they will try to use these to contribute to market development.

Opportunities in the broadband space in Africa and cross border integration

I know that in Africa you have the various regional sub-groups and the Central America states seem to be a little bit individual. But I see that Nigeria has a very large population with a lot of territories and neighbours; you can use all tactics to get your neighbours to work with you.

Connecting Africa through the ITU

Yes we have our regional office in Addis Ababa and we also have some area offices in a few countries on the African continent. We also want to focus on this type of co-ordinated development for our continent, trying to find opportunities to raise development. Guinea Bissau and some others for example are late as far as market economy is concerned and they need others to help them with regulation.

To have a very powerful Africa compared to the others, you need interconnection among our capitals, towns and cities and these kinds of things will be very difficult if everyone just looks at their territory. We need to have a regular connection and I’m really pleased to see that the Smart Africa have four countries sharing the same pavilion and the minister of Uganda told me that they have five priorities and each of the priorities is taken by one of the members so that there is sharing. This is very good if you ask me and ITU can be part of the initiative if they ask us to. And I agree with you that the ITU can play an active role here to facilitate the interconnection among members of the same continent.

Your priority at the end of your four-year tenure

My priority will be to have this connection gap reduced substantially. We still have a huge gap here and according to our statistics we have about 450 million people who are not connected yet and the number may be higher and also those technologies should be offered to everybody to enjoy not only for those in the urban area. Not everybody perhaps, but everywhere people are moving about they should have a space to use modern technologies.

My first term is four years and it seems long but very short. For many things at the global level you do not expect that in four years you can change it all, but if at the end of my term we see some new progress we’ll be very happy. I’ll also like to see Africa come up with their own industries that are fully developed at the end of my four-year term.

Minimising Cyber Security risks

This is already part of our agenda at the ITU. We have the global cyber security agenda we did in 2007 and we have our technical expert groups that look at cyber security related standards and that’s in the National Telecommunication Regulation where we put security issues high on the agenda.

As long as security is concerned, it is not only technical approach that we need to solve this matter but we have a lot of laws, moral commitments and law enforcement. You have to agree with some principles and if you come to this kind of agreement it’s not only through technical issues that you solve such issues and ITU cannot do that alone. ITU only contributes to technical considerations development. But we have to work with others to really establish a better environment with some kind of accepted principles to see that our cyber space is peaceful, reliable, accountable and affordable.

ITU standard in ICT technologies

ITU standard is international standard and should cover Africa as well. However, there are particular issues; talking about electromagnetic effects to our health. I heard that 10 years ago there was a criteria set by international families to be based on studies in Europe and you know our borders are not the same as Europe, so they want to have some specific attention to our Africa people. But I checked with some medical doctors and experts they said that as far as the human body is concerned there is no much difference. A particular group may have a particular interest but we encourage our members to bring these concerns and suggestions to the ITU family because if you do not do this people will not attend to your issues. When you raise your voice you encourage the others to work with you to find solutions.

Africa and TV digital migration

I was in Guinea in March 2012 and I was very pleased that as early as March 2012, Guinea government tried to put this in their agenda to make sure that in June 2015 they can join the others to have the digital transition. I was pleased with this commitment and I think it’s necessary for us to come together for a successful transition. It may not be the same case everywhere because I was in Central America and I saw that there’s no coordinated approach, each have their own target year. So Africa’s effort to try to work together as one family should be appreciated. The date is very important to us and we encourage everyone to try to meet up. Those who will not meet up will suffer because others have moved on with the digital age and you’ve lost the opportunity for them to enjoy the digital age. There are some transition measures that should help from the ITU but again we encourage everyone to meet the deadline.