Kagame made the remarks on Monday as he attended the meeting on Digital Transformation in Africa on the second day of the 32nd Ordinary Session of the African Union.<\/p>\n
Kagame said: \u201cYesterday at the opening ceremony, I mentioned that \u201cthe future of the global economy is digital\u201d. I should have added: \u201cand government\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cE-government is a powerful tool for improving both the quality and accessibility of government services,\u201d he explained. <\/p>\n
\u201cDigital identity is the start of a long and valuable chain of capabilities that make citizens better able to participate productively in the regional and global economy,\u201d Kagame said.<\/p>\n
For the digital use in delivering government services, Kagame shared the story of Irembo, the online platform where Rwandan citizens access government services online.
\n\u201cIn Rwanda, we have used the Irembo platform to make many public records available online, such as land titles, birth certificates, visas, driver\u2019s licenses, national ID, and even mountain gorilla trekking permits,\u201d Kagame said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut digital systems can only function well when they are trusted,\u201d Kagame said, advising that \u201cInformation must be protected from unauthorised access. It should be clear who owns the data that people generate and how it will be used.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDifferent digital platforms must also be able to communicate with each other seamlessly. Otherwise, we are merely rebuilding the same fragmentation in the cloud that we have been working to transcend here on the ground in the African Union,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n
The meeting on Digital Transformation was, among other dignitaries, attended by Kersti Kaljulaid, the President of Estonia, whose country Kagame said \u201cis among the most advanced in terms of e-government and digitalization.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEstonia is a leading country in IT and in technology generally which they have used for the development of their country, and we can have a few lessons to learn from them,\u201d Kagame said.<\/p>\n
Kagame also revealed the Smart Africa Alliance implementing technology-based initiatives on a regional basis has now grown to 24 member states with a total market of over 600 million people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Paul Kagame has said for Africa to achieve the digital transformation it aspires, information must be protected from unauthorized access which would make digital systems be trusted by users.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[69],"byline":[180],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-38857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homehighlights","byline-samson-iradukunda"],"bylines":[{"id":180,"name":"Samson Iradukunda","slug":"samson-iradukunda","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":24}],"contributors":[{"id":180,"name":"Samson Iradukunda","slug":"samson-iradukunda","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":24}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38857"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=38857"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=38857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}