Press Release

SAMENA Council Draws Attention to Light-Touch Regulation and Policy Enablement for the Private Sector during Global Symposium for Regulators-2021

The Meeting of the Industry Advisory Group on Development Issues and the Private Sector Chief Regulatory Officers (IAGDI-CRO), was held back-to-back with GSR 2021 last week, with SAMENA Council, represented by its CEO Bocar BA, chairing the the virtual meeting.

Attended by various private sector leaders, the virtual diversity of industry participants in the Meeting highlighted the critical importance of multi-stakeholder participation and, because societal and industry dynamics have dramatically changed over the last year and pace of digitization has sped up, it is now necessary to review and reset various policy and regulatory approaches within the Industry. Bocar BA presented the outcome statement of the IAGDI/CRO.

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The statement emphasized on the need to ensure light-touch regulation, for example in view of the need for cross-border data flows and the role of connected platforms, or to address cumbersome administrative processes and procedures; a challenge common in many developing digital economies across the regions. The statement also acknowledge the timely reactive measures taken by the regulatory authorities to mitigate the challenges last year, which saw direct collaboration between regulators and telecom operators and helped ensure access to needed resources (such as spectrum), and temporarily eased regulation on certain fronts, and recommended that these steps should be kept and not reversed. Participants maintained that the lessons and the emergency requirements from the last year should suffice as impetus to continue the forward momentum on policy and regulatory transformation. The statement also acknowledged that businesses and the ICT Industry must continue serving as the engine of progress-making on unique regional and national priorities as well as on globally-agreed sustainable development goals. However, the enablement of such engine requires re-calibrating regulatory approaches, adopting agility and evidence-based regulation to suit the prevailing and emerging trends within the digital ecosystem, which now increasingly houses a highly diversified group of digital inhabitants.

As the Chairman of the IAGDI-CRO, Bocar BA expressed IAGDI/CRO's important role with continued readiness toward working closely with governments to fulfill expressed, common goals, and to help materialize the fifth-generation of collaborative approaches necessary for the sustainability of investment and the growth of the 5G ecosystem.

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