The Minister of Youth and ICT, Jean Philbert Nsengimana, Thursday joined other global experts in Washington for a live-streamed conversation about the role of technology in a “smarter future”.The event was part of the World Bank’s ICT Solutions Day, which engaged decision-makers and experts in an open, collaborative process of developing ICT-enabled approaches to development challenges. Nsengimana pointed out that Rwanda moved from 2 per cent to 59 per cent phone penetration. He further said that ICT for development agenda must show job creation across the country.“There’s a limit to the number of jobs we can create as a government...there’s no limit to the jobs other people can create in the right environment,” Nsengimana stressed while highlighting what Rwanda is doing in promoting entrepreneurship and innovation.While explaining more about Smart Village, Nsengimana said that Rwanda should start from Smart Villages and then scale up to the whole country and continent. He added that Rwanda has all preconditions to benefit from Smart Development solutions.Nsengimana also told ICT experts that Rwanda has adopted ICT literacy and awareness campaign led by the private sector with entertainment, where citizens provide feedback on services they got.At the event, ICT global experts discussed the crowd-sourcing solutions for a smarter future using technology and open innovation.Other participants at the event were Todd Park, Chief Technology Officer of the United States; Rachel Kyte, Vice President of Sustainable Development at the World Bank; Edward Omane Boamah, Ghana’s minister of communications; Bikesh Kurmangaliyeva, Deputy Board Chairperson at Zerde National ICT Holding, Kazakhstan; Shantayanan Devarajan, Chief Economist, Africa region, World Bank; Vinzon Manansala, Chief of Systems Development and Maintenance Division, Department of Budget and Management, Government of Phillipines; Eddy Ampié, of UCP TELCOR, Nicaragua; and Andrew Stott, former CTO and Deputy CIO in the UK government.
