One thousand villages will have high-quality internet within the framework of World Bank Digital Transformation project for Georgia. The Executive Council of the WB allocated 35.7 million Euros (USD 40 million) for Log-In Georgia on use of digital services and access to the internet by locals of the Georgian villages.

About 500 000 locals living in the rural areas and highly elevated settlements will have speedy internet. According to Sebastian-A Molineus, World Bank Regional Director for the South Caucasus, the World Bank supports Georgia’s objective to improve its economic competitiveness through use of digital technologies and create job places and better opportunities for its citizens.

I’m incredibly excited to present to you a new project called Log-in Georgia today, which is jointly being designed and implemented by the Government of Georgia, in particular the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development, as well as the Ministry of Finance, jointly with the World Bank.

And the reason why I am so excited to present this project to you is because we aim to connect up to 1000 villages and 500,000 people, in particular in rural and mountainous villages to affordable broadband internet.

Now, I believe that this presents two important opportunities:

Number one – it will help overcome a very important challenge that we have here in Georgia, which is the economic dualism that exists in this country. So for example, just like I am able to surf and to browse, and to work in the park in the open here in Tbilisi, I want to make sure that every citizen, even in the mountainous and rural villages is able to have that same opportunity as I have her in Tbilisi.

Number two – I believe that there’s some very important economic opportunities that can come from this as well. Think of the entrepreneurship that this can promote, the artisan worker who can sell and purchase goods online; think of an individual tourist company that wishes to rent out their home or to market their services to people wishing to go into tourism.

And overall I believe that ‘internetization’ can bring important economic benefits and economic competitiveness to Georgia overall, providing important job opportunities for all of its people.

Now to very briefly present the project to you, the project essentially has 3 components:

Number one – is to support the building of the affordable broadband internet which means focusing on the digital infrastructure, building the middle-mile connectivity and encouraging internet service providers, private internet service providers to provide their services at an affordable rate to the people, and there will be an important policy and regulatory component as well, to make sure that the affordability of the internet is assured.

The second component – has to do with the use cases, something that is very dear to me. And I  particularly think this is important in terms of the current COVID-19 crisis. Think about the ability to provide remote and e-learning opportunities to all people in Georgia; think about the opportunity that tele-medicine brings to the people, in particular in the rural areas; you can think of other use cases such as digital financial services that will play a very important role moving forward.

Third and finally, we will be providing implementation support to the Open Net initiative, making sure that there is strong monitoring valuation training and capacity-building,” Sebastian-A Molineus said.

The project will be carried out by Open Net, a non-profit legal entity with support of Communications Commission and under coordination of Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development.