 Well beautiful people as Chris mentioned 16 years ago Senator Obama had the audacity to believe that he could upstage me at my Own graduation only to learn the hard way that that could not be done But the message he shared with the class of 2007 is as relevant today as it was back then because senator Obama told the graduating class of 2007 that we could now take our degrees the piece of paper that we were about to earn and Simply go in pursuit of the mighty dollar, but if we were to reduce our life to the simple pursuit of wealth We would suffer from what he called a poverty of ambition Senator Obama told us that if we really wanted to fulfill our true potential if we really wanted to be all that we could be we had to hitch our wagon for something larger than ourselves and I share that because it's 16 years ago. I thought the biggest wagon I could think of was Africa Here we have the richest continent on earth that is home to some of the poorest people on the planet In 16 years ago as I had a hunch my hunch was that if we could harness the Entrepreneurial potential of Africa's youth we might just be able to help change that reality and so my dear friend 16 years on The hunch has now been backed by a growing number of evidence We now have a book called the prosperity paradox They should co-authored by a Harambian it falls out with Yomo along with professor Clayton Christensen at the Harvard Business School And what this book does is it reminds us that across Africa you have a series of innovators who are developing products and services not just for the 80 million Africans in middle class, but the 800 million who are not currently participating in the global economy What this book reminds us is that if we can figure out a way to serve the underserved A way to deliver health care and education and finance and basic services to people who cannot afford it Well that will enable us to build resilient business models that could be of value not just the people in Kinshasa Lagos and Nairobi with the people in London, Beijing and San Francisco What this book reminds us is that there are global Implications to African innovation. I like to joke before China had Alipay in America had Apple pay Kenya had in Pessa And call us crazy We are bold and crazy enough to believe in this alliance that that's just the tip of the iceberg over the next few years You're going to see a whole host of African bread innovation that is going to simply spread across the world like wildfire Well 16 years on as I mentioned, we don't just have a book We now have over 300 Harambians as we call the innovators who've joined the Harambia Alliance They are a competitive bunch each year. We select 30 out of 5000 applications. They are a diverse bunch As you can see we have Harambians from across the continent in a variety of industries. They are impactful as Chris mentioned They've now raised over two billion dollars and built some of the most iconic unicorns across the length and breadth of Africa But two years ago the Harvard Business School challenged us Professor Sikochee Wrote a case study about our alliance and in this case study He reminds us that while it's great that we have hundreds of Harambians the challenges and opportunities of Africa are so vast That they require us to have not just hundreds of Harambians, but thousands of them. Well, according to our admission process We won't even get to a thousand Harambians till 2060. So obviously that's not the way but imagine a world In which not only we may not have Thousands of Harambians but hundreds of thousands if not millions of Innovators across the continent can learn from the insets of Harambians imagine a world in which The makers of African unicorns can create Masterclasses and share their insights with a growing number of innovators across the world They can help tell us how do you build high-performing teams when you don't have a deep bench of expertise? How do you raise capital when you don't have deep-pocketed investors? How do we transform Africa's challenges into opportunities? How in a sense? How my dear friends can we ensure that the hindsight of Harambians become the foresight of the next generation of bold African innovators how in a sense we can get the Harambians lab off the ground now my dear friends Here we go. I would like to simply invite you my invitation to you is very simple I would like you all to hitch your wagon to the Harambian slab Now dr. Martin Luther King told us years ago If you want to be great Wonderful if you want to be important wonderful or recognized that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant And I believe that as you can see from the selfie Slightly modified it because I feel I believe everybody can be great because everybody has a phone now Do you have a phone with you? Please pull out your phone? Come on take your phones out Everybody got a phone. Yes, we can Take your phone now now. Please take a take a picture of the other QR code and we see oh, there you go Yes people in the back. I can see you the other phone. Oh, there you go now Well people there are four simple steps we can do if you'd like to access the Harambians lab and let the hindsight of Harambians Be your foresight join us if you like to nominate users or communities whether they be accelerators or whether they be portfolio companies in your country in your In your portfolio in your portfolio across Africa join us if you like to sponsor content And maybe mine the insights of Harambians to figure out. How do we measure impact join us? And if you like to join Eric Smith and Jonathan Oppenheimer at the Alan Gray family and help us shape the Harambians lab But being one of the founder partners, please join us now I'd like to believe as I said before that everybody can be great because everybody can serve. Thank you all