We expect several of them will be African countries. We will wrap up with a discussion of e-commerce policies. Before we begin, I would like to say a few words about this last subject, appropriate policies are as necessary to the development of e-commerce as infrastructure and training. Perhaps more so. Appropriate policies foster investment in equipment and people.
Inappropriate policies can ground e-commerce before it ever has the chance to take off.
In the United States, we have promoted e-commerce by trying not to interfere with it. The results have been impressive. The rapid development of the Internet and e-commerce makes most regulation obsolete as soon as it is written. We could have started in 1997 by establishing mandatory rules for authentication, security or electronic payments. Fortunately, we didn't.