My Ministry is determined to harness talented scientists and innovators especially youths whose role will be to culture technology innovations and ideas that will be turned into enterprises for not only employment creation, but overall economic growth. This will be implemented within various systems for youth innovators. We will upskill the citizens in order to have digital friendly citizens through a number of measures that will include the review of curricula, training of trainers, creation of digital hubs among others.” Access and utilisation of internet-based technology is critical if Zambia is to take a leap towards e-governance. E-governance is effective as it lessens the cost of accessing services, reducing instances of corruption as it eliminates unnecessary human contact while increasing efficiency of service delivery as services can easily be tracked for purposes of quality assurance. It is therefore elating that the UPND government created the Ministry Science and Technology to spearhead the integration of such internet-based technology into service delivery. For this to bear fruit, however, there is need to alleviate certain barriers of internet access. It is elating that in the 2022 National Budget as presented in the quarter under review, specific pronouncements were made with a view to increase the number of communication towers in unserved and underserved areas as a way of actualising the digital transformation agenda. Some barriers against digital technology include a gender divide in access and use of the internet. During the quarter under review, the Zambia Information and Communication Technology Authority (ZICTA) released a report on the evaluation of gender gaps in the access and usage of ICTs in Zambia. The report establishes that men and women do not have equal opportunities with regard to access, ownership and usage of mobile phones in Zambia 38, considering that the majority of the population accesses the internet through mobile broadband connection. The evaluation cites the 2018 ZICT Survey, highlighting that 56.9 percent of the males aged above 10 years were reported to have used a mobile phone device while only 50.9 percent of the females indicated that they had used a mobile phone. The disparities are extended to ownership of mobile phones were 49.2 percent of males reported to own a mobile phone compared to 41.1 percent of females. Further, it is estimated that 17.3 percent of males aged above 10 years are active users of the internet compared to only 12 percent of females. This disparity could partly be on account of skills gaps, lack of appreciation of the relevance of internet services, challenges in ownership of devices such as smartphones as well as some cultural misconceptions related to usage of internet services among other factors which include possibly previous bad online experience such as cyber bullying and related online risks. See https://www.zicta.zm/storage/posts/attachments/rlWXeVFLPfUkaIluFK9Sgt57HwURWiE0Si8X31il.pdf 38 31