 My name's Jennifer Cook, I'm Director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C., and I want to say a big welcome to all of you for making it through on this very rainy day to this event. I think it's a real testament to our panel and the topics that we're going to be discussing today. I also want to say a major thanks to the One Campaign for partnering with us in this effort, enduring the ups and downs of a government shutdown and busy schedules, but it's definitely been worthwhile since we really have a fabulous panel this morning. I want to say a special thanks to Miriamu Aminu at One for helping out with this, and particularly to Riva Levinson at KRL for all her energy and really helping make this happen, and to our CSIS team as well. As you all know, and as I say as the audience attests, there's lots of energy around this town and I think around the world on the big new opportunities in Africa that over a decade of strong growth rates have opened up. High commodity prices have driven this in large part, but in many cases there's much more than that at play. Greater macroeconomic management by African governments, new sectors, telecommunications, banking, construction that are really, we're seeing a beginning of diversification there. We have a growing consumer class in Africa that's driving internal markets and you've got a virtuous cycle of growth and demand that's building. The opportunities are there, but there are big questions I think in many cases on whether African governments, the private sector, and their partners are really going to take advantage of this momentous opportunity to drive growth into the future, sustained growth and economic transformation down the line. A few key elements of that, at the heart of that are infrastructure and we're here to talk about that today, power generation, a huge obstacle to investment and to growth. I would also say education and training a workforce, an African workforce that's going to be ready and prepared for the opportunities ahead and then obviously the question of governance. The U.S. is waking up to these opportunities. The President's trip was a powerful signal that things are changing. The mindset is changing here in Washington. There's a lot of congressional action on Electrify Africa, the President's Initiative on Power Africa. These things are getting the kind of attention I think that's maybe a little belated, but it's happening. Let me just say, though, that growth over time, it's not guaranteed, Africa is a hugely diverse place. Some of the countries are not blessed with the demographics or the natural resources of others or the strong governments. One of the big questions is how do we ensure that the big opportunities and the growth stories pull those countries, pull the most vulnerable countries, the most vulnerable communities and the most vulnerable people along with them. We have a panel here today that's really been at the cutting edge of those big questions, how to drive the growth, but also ensure that we pull the most vulnerable along. We're featured and we're so pleased today to have Tony Elumelo here today, who is one of the people who, as I say, has been at the forefront of these questions. He's an entrepreneur, done very well in that, but also a philanthropist. He's a former CEO of one of Africa's leading pan-African banks. He is now chairman of Heirs Holding, which is an investment company that builds sustainable African businesses. Heirs Holding is a major partner in the Power Africa initiative and has been one of the early proponents and drivers of that. When you talk about kind of this handful of new kind of entrepreneur in Africa that's really thinking big, thinking ahead, doing things above board, doing things differently, Tony Elumelo is in that handful. And he's front of the line and often mentioned first in that. We're also going to welcome very shortly Donald Kerberuka, president of the African Development Bank. Again, someone who's been at the cutting edge of this change, transforming the African Development Bank into something much more efficient, much more forward-looking, big emphasis on infrastructure, on the private sector, on regional integration. And at the same time, pulling those fragile states along and how do you bridge the growth opportunities, and here he is, with those multi-fundable. Michael Elliott, president and CEO of the One Campaign, a very nimble, growing, powerful advocacy organization with millions of people and network worldwide that's focusing, began focusing really on debt and aids and the trade agenda. But is really moving into the power and infrastructure debate in a very important way and doing important work here in Washington, but also expanding that network across the world. And finally, Darius Manns, head of president and CEO of Africaer, which is a really vulnerable U.S. institution that has been doing a lot of work in Africa for many years before everyone was so focused on Africa, working again with communities and with governments to reach the most vulnerable. Africaer too, and we're going to hear a little bit about this, how they're playing in this new kind of narrative on the Africa rising, on the opportunities, on infrastructure and power. Each of our speakers is going to speak briefly from the podium. We're then going to have a little bit of a conversation and we'll turn to the audience, and I'm sure there's lots of questions and comments, and we'll try to end promptly at 11 o'clock. Dr. Cabarruca is going to need to leave us a little early, but we look forward to his comments and to the discussion that ensues. Thanks again, and Tony, welcome and thank you so much for joining us here today. So good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thanks to the organizers of this event. Thanks to CSIS for the opportunity of sharing my thoughts with you on something that we in Africa see as being very, very significant, catalytic and transformative for the development of Africa. The development of Africa in a sustainable fashion, and that is power. Power is the same everywhere, same thing. And so I'm not going to bore you with the benefits of power. I'm not going to educate you on why there should be electricity, or what electricity means to our lives, because electricity in America has the same benefits and impact as electricity in Africa. The only thing that is different is a fact that why electricity is a constant in a place like America and other developing parts of the world. In Africa, it's a very scarce commodity. It's very difficult to have access to electricity. We have just about 20% of Africans that have access to electricity. The National Energy Agency tells us that we need to do a lot in terms of investment to create access to electricity in Africa in 2030. This is 2017. We're told we need $300 billion of investment. So the question is, and what we should be discussing as friends of Africa, as Africans, how can we make this possible? How do we create access to electricity in Africa? Realizing the benefits of electricity to mankind everywhere. And so I thought I should share with you from my own background and experience what I believe can help to make this possible. I speak as a private sector person in Africa. I speak also as an investor in power in Africa. And I speak as the chairman of a group that has invested, or that has committed to investing $2.5 billion under the Power Africa initiative. I know why we are investing in power and I know why we want to continue to invest in power. And I believe that others know this to help us to begin to address the power deficiency we have in Africa. I know that the investment opportunities in Africa as it relates to power is changing. The operating environment is fast improving from what it used to be before. I know that there's market in Africa and that the market will keep growing because we need to do a lot more to move the consumption from 20% to even 80%. And so for us as a group investing in Africa, we are investing in Africa because we know that market is not an issue. We are investing in power in Africa because we know that the sector has been significantly de-risked by most Afghan countries. Because we know that development organizations like the World Bank and the ADV have taken a role to de-risk power sector risks in Africa. We are investing in Africa, power in Africa because we know that the returns are quite high. We know that if you invest in power in Africa you can make up to 67% return on investment. That is why we are investing in power in Africa. And we know also that beyond why we are investing in power in Africa, there are other reasons, other things that have happened in Africa and the power sector that can help significantly for new investment to come into that space. We believe that power in Africa should be seen as an investment. We believe that development partners have a role to play as the African private sector investors. We would like to see more African private investors and billionaires, successful business people, come into the power space to invest in. We believe that there are certain initiatives that are external to Africa that can help to improve access to electricity in Africa. The Power Africa initiative of the current administration is one and that is why we support it. The Electrify Africa Act is another one and we believe that it should be supported because it can help to significantly unlock access to long-term investment in power in Africa. We know there could be different challenges but we should keep in view the ultimate objective of access to electricity in Africa. And we should also remember where Africa is at this point in time. Africa needs electricity. Africans have the role to play making this happen. Friends of Africa also have to play a key role in making this happen. We know about the opportunities in power in Africa because we have access to information. Because we know what is actually happening on ground in Africa because we know the truth. So we cannot begin to address the power issue in Africa if we do not make sure that the right information is put out there. About one, the investment opportunities in Africa in the power space. Two, the fact that Africa of today is not about 20, 30 years ago. And the fact that the population of Africa is growing and so is the income per capita also growing. The fact that you can't invest in Africa and no one or policy will affect your investment in Africa. The fact that you can invest in Africa and the macroeconomic policies are stable and you can easily remit or repatriate your funds or your returns out of Africa. We believe that people need to know the truth about what is happening in Africa, today's Africa. We believe that people know what is happening in Africa to attract investment. Remember we have to invest $300 billion in Africa between now and 2030 if we most significantly improve access to electricity in Africa. This cannot happen if we don't change the way we do things. So I'd like to see this opportunity to call on first the African government and political leadership to continue what has started. This is a call to sustainability, sustain what has started by worth consistent government policies that encourage investment in the power sector. We need to also get the African private sector leaders to demonstrate confidence in Africa by investing in this sector that is very important for the true transformation of the continent. I'd like to call on the development partners to help to further the risk key sectors that can help change or transform the African society. And equally important we'd like to call on those who have the heart of Africa, those who like to give to begin to rethink how we give in Africa. To begin to change how we give in Africa. To see giving as a way of helping to eradicate poverty in a sustainable fashion. To see giving as a way of discouraging and ending dependency. To see giving as a way of encouraging self-sufficiency. And how can this happen? I believe that if you look at the amount of aid that goes into Africa every year, it's huge billions of dollars. If we were to secretize this influence into Africa. Two years or three years influence Africa. And further leverage these ten times. And use it to provide risk guarantee for people who want to invest in key sectors like power. These will have a lot of positive implications for the continent. Remember as an investor in the power sector in Africa, one of the reasons I gave for investing power is because the sector was largely the risk. And so if we have interventions or initiatives that can help to the risk both power and other catalytic sectors of the African economy. Then we will be truly transforming Africa in a manner that is sustainable and lasting. This is what I call African capitalism. And this is in my viewpoint a new way to engage with Africa. This is a new philosophy, socio-economic philosophy that we should adopt as a growth approach in Africa. So that collectively we can not just address the issue of access to electricity. But beyond electricity, deal with other issues that we consider extremely important for the true and sustainable transformation of Africa. I'll pause here and I'll take comments because of our discussion. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. President Kebabaga, wonderful. You know being asked to speak after Tony Elumel is like being asked to sing after Pavarotti. Not long ago in Johannesburg I was moderating a session. So that was Tony Elumel of course. That was Mo Ibrahim. That was Patrick Motepe. That was John Rupert's four of Africa's billionaires. I don't have to tell you that I feel very poor. And now thank you very much for inviting me. I think Power Africa is a turning point. It is not a turning point because of 20 million people it will connect or the 7,000 megawatts it will provide. It's a turning point in how the world should relate to Africa. It's a turning point to say together we can achieve things not necessarily by the traditional instrument of ODA of aid. We can achieve things if Afghan governments reform the power sector. Do the right things in terms of regulation. And if business people look at this as an opportunity. I don't have to tell you the story of the Batashu Company in the late, I think about 1894. So Batashu Company was sent two people to West Africa to sell shoes of course. And then the first person landed in what is now Sierra Leone. And sent back a couple to say no, no, no. These poor don't wear shoes. There's no market here. Send the ticket on the boats. I'm coming back. Another one landed in what is now Nigeria. And he sent a cable saying bring the shoes. There is a market here. I think for a long time people have looked at Africa as a place where you go to do good. Not a place where you have an opportunity. And to tell you right now in Ethiopia because Ethiopian power is very competitive, 3 cents per kilowatt hour. Many international companies are relocating from China to Addis Ababa. They are looking at the opportunity provided by Ampo Power in Ethiopia. Competive labor conditions. And the nearby Port of Djibouti. And they are relocating in footwear. The latest is the world's second largest textile manufacturer, the Swedish company. They are setting up shop in Ethiopia. And of course this will have multipliers for all concern. When we met yesterday at Brookings for those who are there, I didn't mention something which I want to repeat here. We're all celebrating this average growth in Africa of 5%. But actually if Africa is to transform, it is not 5% we need. It is 7% at the minimum. Now lack of power is a shaving of 2% every year. So if we could close the gap of infrastructure, not completely but at least enough, that means we go from 5% to 7% and that is the beginning of real transformation. So whether it is a small garage owner in Kaduna who found that he opened the garage in the morning and after him there's no power. Or a kidney cotton doing his or her exams and has to sit in the streets in the evening to study. Or a doctor trying to keep the vaccines or to operating the patients and suddenly there's no power. Whether it is education, it is health, it is business. As Tony was saying, power is absolutely vital. Now the example I'd like to give you is in Liberia, which is a country well known in the United States. I was there just a month ago, who are trying to do things in Liberia with many people here. Liberia has totally installed a capacity of 58 MW of electricity. Now engineers in the bank tell me you can run a small factory, a very small factory. By the way, of that 58 MW, only 25 MW are available on a continuous basis. And Liberians pay the highest price in the world. 54 cents per kilowatt hour. There's not much you can do. Liberia has a lot of iron ore, plenty of other minerals, so companies who are coming are setting up their own ways of producing electricity. But I'm sure once you have connected Liberia and the power Africa with the West African power pool, it will make a huge difference for families and business people. Now, I want to say that it is actually possible because we are the biggest investor in power in Africa. We do at least every year close to $2 billion of power investments on the continent, whether it is clean or fossil fuels. Everything's there. Hydro, geothermal, solar, wind. You want it, it's there. Interconnections, connecting different parts of Africa. Now, the 20 million people will be connected and the 7,000 MW provided. Actually, it's very important, but it's still a drop in the ocean. Because here in the US, people take for granted that each one of us sitting in this room consumes, what, 15,000 kilowatt hours of power per year. Every Nigerian on average is about 120. So I've got a long way to go. So we need the power Africa and more. Now, I said yesterday at the meeting at the MF with American officials and African governments from the five countries where power Africa is taking place, I was amazed at the reforms taking place to make power investment possible. From the courageous decision in Nigeria to cut subsidies and focus them on the poor. From the courageous decision in Tanzania to reform the utility company Tanesco and many other reforms in Ghana and in Liberia. And so in very soon to be possible, to go into country, sign power patches agreements, you'll have independent regulators who can set tariffs. You'll have a framework which enables you to feel comfortable. You can have a 30, 40 arrangements with the governments. And then we in the international organizations, we are now able to put in place a little structured products to provide risk guarantees while you feel uncomfortable. Just two and I'll stop here. In Kenya, we have done Africa's largest wind installation in Turkana. Not in Kenya. It provides about 500 megawatt electricity. Now, for the sponsors, they are concerned that the governments will not build the transmission line on time. But the government too was concerned that the sponsor will not finish the products on time. So what you have done is to stand between the two and provide a partial risk guarantee to the government in case the sponsor defaults and to the sponsor in case the government defaults. And that has made this project possible. We'll be providing in Nigeria, I think next month, about 372 million dollars to help provide these guarantees to this bulk company to enable the privatization to continue animated. So it is possible, it is doable, and I think together we can do it. And I think Power Africa is a very, very good start. And like 20, I'm happy to answer your questions if you have any. Thank you. We will turn to Michael Elliott of the One Campaign. Thank you very much. And I'd like to offer our thanks from the One Campaign to all our friends at CSIS for putting this event together. It's pretty extraordinary that we have in this room during an extraordinarily busy week in Washington with all the World Bank and IMF meetings that are going on and all the kind of opportunities that you have. We've got a standing room only crowd in one of the biggest rooms in the Willard Hotel for a topic that two and a half years ago when a few of us started talking about it would have got five or ten people at a seminar. So I mean we've come an extraordinarily long way in talking about a topic that I believe and that we believe in the One Campaign is of the first importance. And I'm absolutely delighted to be on a panel with Tony and with Donald, who's been such a leader on this and with Darius. If Tony is the Pavarotti then I suppose Donald is the Placido Domingo and Darius, I'll give you Jose Carreras, how's that? And I'm sort of somewhere down in the chorus with a kind of, a not very convincing tenor. So as the president of a global advocacy organization focusing on extreme poverty and preventable disease, I feel as if I kind of have to comment right at the kind of start of my remarks that were 20 or 30 minutes into this event and no one has yet talked about hunger or AIDS or disease or despair. An indication that this event and this topic is producing an opportunity for us to talk about a new paradigm when we think about Africa, to talk about Africa as an opportunity to talk about Africa as a rising economic powerhouse, to talk about Africa as a place that we're going to hear more about in many, many, many positive ways throughout the rest of the century. But also to recognize that the opportunity that Africa presents to all of us will be lost if we don't address a critical issue and that is energy poverty. In sub-Saharan Africa, as you've heard from Tony and Donald, lack of infrastructure is not an inconvenience. It's a daily hardship that stunts economic growth and hinders efforts of poverty reduction. I truly believe, as many of us do, that we can work to see the end of extreme poverty in our lifetimes but we can only do that if we work with African leaders, businesses and civil society to increase access to electricity. Power, as we constantly hear when we make trips to Africa, talk to our African friends and African leaders, is essential to issues of health. You've heard already about the importance of keeping vaccines cold, about kind of providing safe and clean clinics where women can give birth in a secure environment. It's crucial to education, not simply so that schools are well-equipped but so that kids can do what we take as a birthright, that is to say, do their homework after 6.30. It's crucial and we need to make this point because it sometimes gets lost when we concentrate on social services. It's crucial to job creation and as you look at the exercises that we and the One Campaign, but more particularly the UNDP, the UN Development Program have done as they've gone out to talk to people in the last year about what people want from a new development agenda. What you hear over and over and over and over again is economic security that comes from jobs and it is so essential to kind of have the degree of power and electricity without which we will not get that economic growth and millions and millions of jobs that are needed in a young and growing continent. You've had some of the figures from Tony. His figure was 300 billion needed by 2030, the figure that we often use and this is just for basic access without kind of thinking about economic growth. 19 billion in finance needed each year. And I think we all recognize that we can't possibly get that from the public sector. Private sector sources are necessary to bridge a gap and to ensure sustainability of projects in the long term. No country has dramatically increased energy access without significant public and private finance and without significant public policy support to address risk and make projects economically viable. And if you want proof, the United States, this great country, is the proof. One of the reasons that this kind of issue resonates when I kind of go around the country and kind of give speeches on energy poverty is that people can remember things like the the Tennessee Valley Authority. People can remember Lyndon Johnson kind of bringing electricity to the Hill Country of Texas. And it didn't happen by accident. It happened by a kind of sustained exercise of public policy to bring power to the powerless. The same has been true in other countries that have increased energy access substantially in the last 20 or 30 years such as Thailand. And it will remain true in Africa today. And while there are plenty of companies, as we know, who are increasing considering investing in Africa's energy sector, so far actual investment is nowhere near the scale needed to address demand. Currently one of the reasons is high perceived political and emerging new market risk. In addition to high capital costs, which means the traditional funding sources often remain inadequate to scale up the energy sector. But things are changing as we know. We're looking at a set of solutions about the national and international level that are both realistic and transformable. The UN Security Energy for All initiative, the Power Africa initiative that as you've heard, President Obama unveiled in Tanzania earlier this year and the Electrify Africa Act now up on Capitol Hill. And increasingly you're seeing African governments buy into these initiatives. I think 26 have now signed up to Sustainable Energy for All working with Donald and the African Development Bank and other international lending authorities to really scale this up. And here we've got legislation kind of moving on the hill. The Electrify Africa Act which had no cost to taxpayers due to its leveraging of the private sector aims to provide access to 50 million people in both rural and urban settings. And one of the kind of key issues over the next few months will be to kind of move forward on that. The Bill and the President's initiative called for OPIC, the Obviously Private Investment Corporation, to mobilise private capital to help solve the critical challenge of energy poverty on an international basis. The African Development Bank and others will be involved too. It seems to be important that when one looks forward to international and to legislative proposals, we do so in a holistic way. We stress both the importance of access for the poorest so that they can have the very, very, very basic human needs satisfied that power helps and also to create inclusive economic growth. The Electrify Africa Act tries to do that by having three important objectives including access to 50 million people, promoting institutional platforms that provide service to both rural and underserved areas so that access isn't just a question of providing access to cities and seeking to increase installed power capacity by 20,000 megawatts. I've been giving speeches on energy poverty for the last two and a half years since I took over at the one campaign because it was a topic that interested me before I got into this business. I always say at this point in my presentation, it is vital to understand that if we're going to do something like power up Africa, the continent that in so many ways is going to shape our century, we do it in a different way from the way that we powered up North America and Western Europe. That we do it in a way that is more sustainable, which is why sustainability is a theme that we keep hearing, that is cleaner and that satisfies two claims of justice, two claims of justice that are honest at all times and both of which I believe can be satisfied. The first claim of justice is to people right now, is to 1.3 billion people in the world right now who do not have access to the sort of life enhancing services that we regard as just normal, as normal as walking into our house and flipping on a light switch. There is a severe and pressing claim of justice that those of us who are more fortunate to have on us to help those 1.3 billion people get the sort of facilities that we have. And note, I said and not but, there is a claim of justice to those generations who are going to come after us. I'm a dad. No one has to kind of tell me about intergenerational justice. I've got kind of children in my 20s. I'm just about old enough to, young enough perhaps, to imagine that I'll have grandchildren one day so I kind of understand that we have to provide power in the continent of the century in a sustainable way that is going to provide justice to generations yet to come. But I kind of absolutely firmly believe that we can do that if we unlock the floodgates of innovation and creativity and technological wizardry so that we bring to the market all sorts of innovations and dreams that scale up power in a sustainable way. While recognizing, while never forgetting, as Jim Kim said in his remarks at the World Bank just this week, while never forgetting that we have claims to people right now. There are claims of justice to people right now that we have to satisfy. There are 1.3 billion people in the world who do not have what we regard as a birthright every time we kind of get up in the morning and kind of switch on electric light and we have to satisfy claims to justice to people right now as well as to those who are coming after us. Thankfully, those of us at Advocacy Organizations, like Juan, are privileged to work with incredible leaders in Africa who have brilliant ideas, who have kind of real determination, who are putting together their own energy plans. Our job in Washington in organizations like ours is not to say, you know, here's what we think we should do, it's to kind of listen to people on the ground to hear the plans that they think are most tailored to their own circumstances. They are the experts, not us. And to try and, where we can, put a bit of wind at their back. So we're kind of thrilled to work with people like President Johnson-Serle, who I saw and spoke to about this just not long ago, to people like Donald, President Cabruca, to private sector leaders like Tony. This is an inspiring and a hopeful moment in which I firmly believe that loads of us from many, many different interests from the environmental groups, from the anti-poverty groups, from the private sector, from the technology groups, from the international organizations and national legislators can all get behind a set of solutions that truly should address one of the great injustices of our time and also one of the great opportunities of our century. Thank you very much. Michael, thank you so much. Arius, yes. Good morning, everybody. What I'd like to talk about is how do you bring power to people? I represent an organization called Africaer. We've been working now for more than four decades in empowering communities, providing opportunities. And so I think these initiatives that are under way that you've heard this morning are a tremendous opportunity. But I think we really stand on as a verge of an energy revolution in Africa, much as we are seeing it here in the United States. I mean, think about it. We're finding oil and gas everywhere in Africa. Tanzania, Mozambique, I mean, it virtually stands on its second independence. Domestic energy security, financial security, the ability to develop energy intensive industries and generate jobs and opportunities. You've heard this morning about the many initiatives that are underway, the extraordinary work the African Development Bank is doing, power Africa, what the private sector is doing, and the reforms that are gathering steam across Africa. This moment where we have this wonderful convergence of countries prioritizing energy, donors lining up behind it and the private sector stepping up. So a very big push to bring power to people, to build national grids and create regional energy solutions. It's finally here. But I think at the same time we have to recognize that this is going to take billions of dollars and decades for national and regional grids to be built out. It's very important that this gets done, that it gets done well, especially with regard to environmental safeguards and doing resettlement well, the business that Africa is in. We've resettled more than 17,000 people in Tanzania for its power transmission and distribution build-out. But I believe strongly that you cannot walk on just one leg waiting for these big grid investments to bring power to people. And the poor should not have to wait decades when new technologies provide many opportunities for leapfrogging in rural Africa to dramatically improve access to clean energy, much as mobile technology did in communications. Today there are great off-grid, mini-grid solutions, which I believe are going to be a very important part of the energy future in this country, in our creaking electricity grid that's highly centralized. You heard Mr. Kabaruka talk about some of the extraordinary things that are happening on the renewables front. I can tell you just from our own experience as a small nonprofit, bioenergy, tremendous opportunities, agriculture for energy, which we are doing in Mozambique using Brazilian technology. Small-scale biomass energy from biofuel cook stoves from to animal dung, the extraordinary things that can be done, zero emissions technologies that provide power. Solar voltaic, think about the dramatic decline in the cost of solar. Prices have fallen now to be very competitive with oil and diesel. Tremendous option, which we are utilizing for institutional purposes in rural Africa, for schools, for health clinics. Solar thermal, the work that we and many others are doing on solar water heaters and cookers, in addition to wind. And as I discussed with a couple of the panelists earlier today, one of the things that we are very excited about is compressed natural gas in gas-rich countries like Nigeria, which are an enormous opportunity. The challenge is how do you get these technologies out into the field? And I think there are some very creative ways that we certainly have been doing to do it. So my main focus today is really, I think, here in the United States, as several speakers have said, tremendous opportunity for the private sector to engage. I think it's in our direct interest, U.S. companies, to think about what can be done to strengthen energy security in Africa. I think it's a big opportunity, frankly, for the U.S. to learn how to knit all of these new technologies together to overhaul our own system here in the U.S. So in conclusion, again, I think it's very important we walk on both legs, the big investments in building out the national power grid. This big push is finally here to strengthen national and regional power systems in energy trade in Africa. But it's also very important that we make a big push on renewables in Africa. Thank you. Thank you so much, Darius. And thank you to the panel for such a powerful set of presentations that I think were very complementary in many ways and kind of really emphasize kind of the turning point in both the opportunity but the mindset that needs to happen here in the United States. And Power Africa is kind of the front edge of that, as you said, and finding new ways of transforming assistance down the line and what that means. And I think that's something we're going to be grappling with for the next few years. I know that Dr. Kerberuca is going to need to leave shortly, so I'm going to ask a question of him and of Tony. We talked at the outset that the rise is not going to be uniform and some countries are likely going to be left behind or either not getting it right, don't have the big resources, natural gas and so forth. And I wonder if you mentioned power pooling and kind of the regional aspect of it. That can be particularly challenging, kind of building big regional infrastructures on power and agreements. I wonder if you might say a little bit about the opportunities and the challenges of that and what you're seeing in terms of regional resource sharing and so forth. And then on the big new producers, as Darius said, big new opportunities in natural gas and Mozambique and Tanzania. Maybe a tough question, but are they going to get it right? And what can we do to ensure that kind of the resource curse doesn't go along with those resources? And then I wanted to ask if Tony, you talked about kind of the de-risking that you've seen by African governments. And I wonder first, every Nigerian government that has come to power has said that resolving the power issue is going to be their number one priority. Now they're beginning to make progress. And I wonder if you might say, what are the priority steps in de-risking the sector? And perhaps to our panel generally, what is accounting for this change and how do you get maybe some of the more laggard countries to come along with that change? If you don't mind, I'll start with Donald and then turn to Tony and the panel on the region. Thank you so much. Thank you for allowing me to leave early. And accepting that I can blitz. I did apologies. It's very difficult to give time in this place at this time. First of all, we are 54 countries. Some are more endowed than others. And so we consider, what I've just said, extremely important. Liberia has ILO and many other minerals, but does not have gas. So we're building a connection in West Africa so that Liberia can purchase power from Nigeria, Ghana, and others. In East Africa, as you know, Ethiopia is almost the center of hardware electricity. So we have just concluded a power connection with Kenya so they can import power from Ethiopia. So those kind of connections for us are critical. Energy security for every country on its own, on the basis of its own resources, is not possible. But energy markets is what we're trying to develop. And I'm happy to tell you that governments are very, very keen on this. Where we're having a challenge, I have to be honest with you, is that for independent power producers, the absence of regional power purchase agreements is the big elephant in the room. And that is the one we're trying to resolve. That is why, for example, this big dam in the Congo has not been done because putting turbines in the water genetically free-stays in vanilla. But you have to figure out regional arrangements for buying and selling that power. But we are on it. We spend about 20% of all our energy investments on this kind of connections. Now, on a second question, will the new oil-rich, gas-rich countries get it right? My own feeling is the people demand that they get it right. Because the people have seen the difference. They have seen countries with nothing like a bird becoming middle-income countries. And next door, there's a country which has oil, exports maybe what, a million barrels of oil per day, and 60% of the people are living below the poverty line. Now they know the difference. They know why it is happening. So I think people will demand that governments get it right. Management models are well-known. It's not rocket science. We don't all have to copy the Norwegian model. There are so many models to copy. So we have set up in the bank an Africa Natural Resource Center. And what we intend to do is help countries, first of all, get their contracts right. Because some countries have got into very unfair and balanced deals. It's not morally right and it's economically unsustainable. So first thing, know what you have, get contracts right, get a fair deal from your resources. Second thing, spend wisely. Know white elephants. Invest in infrastructure, invest in people. Because oil and gas are finite resources. They inherit them from God, from Allah. And then one day they'll be over. So you have to translate them quickly into human capital and into infrastructure. Now beyond spending wisely, think of the future generations as well. So we'll be helping governments along the value chain, along the contracts to ensure they get it right. There would be a few accidents of those who get it wrong because of many reasons. But I think the people will not accept it. Thank you very much. Why do I, are you, can you stay a bit more or are you on your way? I'm told I have to go. Next time, next time. Okay, well thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Kerbruka. Please join me. And let me just say thank you. Let me just say we're joined today by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson. And I wonder if she's in the audience, is she here? I wonder if she might, she's a little late. Tony, we talked about de-risking. What have you seen as kind of the priority, priority steps that governments have taken, given you a chance to take a new look and say, look, there are actually opportunities here versus maybe in decades of the past when the power sector was probably not a safe commercial bet? I'd like to say that, can I hear me? Yeah. I'd like to say that the risk in the power sector or EDC sector is not the job of government alone. And I'd like to, so it's a concerted global effort actually that we need to de-risk the power sector. And I will explain why. My explanation will come from my experience because they say experience is the best teacher. So when we decided to, we have a power plant in Nigeria which has capacity for 1,000 megawatt of electricity and would pay $300 million to acquire the plant. And so why did we make that investment? Because we are rational investors. We made the investment because we, as I said, some questions I call the investment huddle of race. First, policies. If we make this investment today, power sector is a long-term sector in terms of investment. And you need five, seven to ten years to begin to see significant outcomes. So if we make this investment today, we want the investment, we want to make sure that there's no policy reversals. And so that was the concern. The second concern was have a technical capacity. We are an investment management company. We don't invest, we're not electrical engineers or mechanical engineers. So how easily can we find or have access to technical capability and competency? So that was key for us. The third point was, so if we generate electricity, who is going to buy it? And how we show that the pricing mechanism and tariff and gym structure is good and consistent so that we can plan long-term? So these were the risks as investors that we saw. How did we, one man made us make the decision after looking at these risks? So let's start with policy. We realize that the countries, a couple of countries in Africa have embarked on very significant power sector reform program. Nigeria is one of those countries. And even legislating policies in place to make sure no reversals. And so it gives you confidence that this is here to stay. So based on that, we said, okay, we have to invest in this space. In terms of technical competency, we were able to easily find technical partners. We need technical partners like in, we have two from America, the Symbion and Georgia Electric. Then in terms of the purchase agreement, which is the key one, they threw the World Bank and the ADB. ADB is coming in now, as you said, but World Bank came first. There was partial risk guarantee. And so that helped us. Now, why was World Bank forthcoming providing that because Nigerian government gave a sovereign guarantee to the World Bank upon which World Bank gave this guarantee to us? But not every country in Africa that has the kind of resources that others have to provide this kind of sovereign guarantee. So we need, in dealing with the issue of power in Africa, have to find how to deal with the issue of this kind of guarantee that helps to de-risk investments in the power sector. And that is one of the reasons I am thinking that we should begin to think new ways of making this happen. New ways that can, like this, your secretization of aid in flowing to Africa will take you to leveraging it many times over so that you can use it to provide the kind of awesome guarantee so that across the continent, there will be a guarantee to make $300 billion investment in power between 2030. We need to do things in manners that we have not tested before. So that's one more point to begin here. And that's why I say it's not just about Nigerian government because there are things, or African government, there are things that they don't control. If you look at BAL2 and BAL3, capital adequacy competition for banks, you see a situation where geography rather than asset classes become eligibility criteria for deciding the kind of risk waiting if you are tied to a portfolio. Then banks are very rational economic agents so they respond appropriately. If you do that and say investment in Africa is this amount of risk and it takes this kind of charge on your capital, automatically, you don't need a rocket science to tell you that you're not making investment in that space. So we also need people who set global rules and policies to look at this and see how, if the intent is to help create access to electricity in Africa, every hand must be on deck to make sure that it is achieved and we can talk about this and apply it to other sectors where you have certain feelings. Yes, Michael. Jennifer, you had an interesting colloquy with President Kavaruga before he left on the resources curse and I can't resist saying something quite important on that, fighting the resources curse in Africa and all over the world, in other words, making sure that... Is this still on? In other words, making sure the natural resources, the wealth that can be derived from natural resources goes to those who live above the ground under which they are found. We all know it's going to be a highly complex issue. We all know there are lots of actors. We all know that there is great complexity in fighting the resource curse. But the stuff that we can do here, the stuff that we can do in the global north, the stuff that we can do in Washington, that really makes sure that the resource curse is minimized. And the key thing we can do, and Donald was... President Kavaruga was talking about this when he got on the contract, is make sure that there is absolutely transparency in terms of what people are paying for the natural resources that they are extracting from poorer countries in the world. The United States was a true leader on this, was a true leader on this by putting legislation as part of Dodd-Frank, the famous Cardinal Luga amendment which required extractive companies to publish what they pay. I think everyone in this room knows that the SEC did an excellent rule putting Cardinal Luga into effect, that there was unfortunately a lawsuit brought by the American Petroleum Institute, and that right now Cardinal Luga and the SEC rule is back in the hands of the SEC. We can really do something here in the rich world, in the rich world, in the global north to reduce the resource curse. And the key thing that we can do is to make sure that the transparency of who pays what to who is an absolute bedrock principle. So we have many, many other organisations are really calling on the SEC to come up with another strong rule implementing Cardinal Luga as fast as we possibly can. People always talk about the resource curse as if it's something that happens in the global south. Not so, not so. As Paul Collier at Oxford University always says, it takes free to tango when it comes to corruption. It takes the guy who's paying the bribe, it takes the guy who's accepting it, and it takes the facilitators, the lawyers and the accountants in London and New York who are setting up phantom firms so that money can be diverted out of Africa. We can do something about it and we absolutely should. Thank you very much for that. And Kofi Annan's report, equity and extract is... It will turn your stomach to read the deals that are made, the shady front company to speak, the tax havens and so on. I just want to come back to a very important point that Donald made which is within Africa the power that I think people pressure from citizens has. You look at a country like Mozambique which has going to get 20, 30 billion dollars of investment in the next 10 years in gas driven by liquefied natural gas to go to Asia. But it's an enormous opportunity in this country where electricity access is so low to bring, to build a domestic gas system to have a trans-Mozambican pipeline. And many of the elements are there and I think politically for them the pressure will be let us use these resources for Mozambique's own development not just simply for exports of liquefied natural gas. So I think this pressure from citizens I think is an important part of it. And then second, the capacity piece I think that's central in all of this. And I think for many governments this is the challenge to really deliver on transparency, much better management of natural resources and turning this natural resource boom into a development boom that works for people. And there are simple things that we in this country can do. You think about these power utility companies that desperately need in Africa that need to upgrade their capacity. We have a whole generation of retired engineers working that have worked in utilities ready to go. You have people get on the ground who can I think get to know Africa better provide technical assistance. And I think that too helps to bring investment as people get more comfortable and understand the opportunities. Thank you. Just to follow on that I think as we focus on kind of building the capacities of governments and so forth the question of building strong and informed constituencies for reform is critical and we tend to forget that. We think private sector needs to be talking to government but there's another segment and maybe it's me coming from a think tank that you need a strong, constructive, informed, educated civil society that can also play into those debates. It actually expands the capacity of government thinking and strategy and it can be something of a bridge between private sector and government as well. And I think all of the speakers mentioned that. Jennifer, that's exactly why transparency is so important. That's exactly why transparency is so important in African country after African country. One of the most exciting things that's happening is this rapid growth of really fantastic civil society organizations armed with cell phones, armed with new technology and kind of really doing the Lord's work. Give them the data. Give them the data. Give them the information and they will get the job done. We are nearing time. We want to take a round of questions at least and so if you can raise your hand and we'll call on you. Please identify yourself. If you want to direct it to a specific person please say so otherwise we'll turn to the panel generally. We'll start with the gentleman here. And Mike, and please wait for the mic. Thank you. Weon. Don Lauren, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. Thank you all for a wonderful presentation and thank you all for what you have done. You are all the example of these opportunities that lie ahead in Africa for all of us. One of the things that seems to be absent from your discussion this morning has been the S-word, security. With the exception of tangential comments from Michael here in his previous intervention the fact of the matter is we really haven't talked about that and I don't mean the stereotypic militaristic armed force type security but I do mean the proper combination of diplomacy, development and defense that is critical to provide the economic stability the environment for investment people are going to be hesitant to spend 300 billion dollars in Africa if it is not a stable environment. So I'd be interested in your thoughts on how there can be a structure or an approach to whether it be individual African nation regional of Africa approaches or continental approach in Africa to provide the stable environment that approaches the challenges of drug trafficking, terrorism, warlordism, human trafficking poaching and all the thing and civil war of course and so I'd be interested in your thoughts on that. Great, thank you. Yes, the lady there I'm sorry I don't have my glasses on so it's a little tricky for me. Hello, I'm Courtney Vaughn and thank you for your presentation. The next thing is for Tony. Tony as an investment banker investing in the power infrastructure in Nigeria. What is your concern for Nigeria as you look at more of the longer term risk given that Nigeria is a federation of states just like the United States which is a little unique relative to other African economies and in the United States power seem to be in terms of the development is more of a state driven initiative meaning the policies that are in place and the rules to support some of probably what we would call our de-risking thinking as we investors, long term investors and in comparing that to Nigeria everything seems to be driven at the federal level and you're making infrastructure investment that is crossing states do you see that as a potential downside as you know that could actually discourage job investors if it's not taken into consideration now and I know that the partial risk guarantee does not cover that sort of thing for example and just to put it on the table I'm the person who developed a five year strategic business plan to institute the West Africa electricity power pool that's a 2006 through 11 so I have lots of knowledge in West Africa in particular. Thank you. Let's take two more. Yes, there. Good morning Adrian Kacinski with Structuring Strategic Capital a question that really I guess can go across the panel but I'd like to hear an elaboration on the needs of rural versus urban power from both financing perspective what are some of the challenges and then from an operational design and implementation perspective and then from the needs of the population some of the challenges of getting them engaged in particular from the perspective of promoting consumer demand. And let's take... Okay, would you take one more, one last one and then we're going to wrap up, yes. Good morning my name is Eric Michel Soussouglou from Cedar Street Capital an investment bank based out in New York that specializes in raising capital in emerging markets I'm almost tempted to say and maybe Tony as an investment banker can confirm that the risk in Africa can be the risk by associating all contracts with derivative that are available on the financial markets. The second the real question that I have is what do you find much more efficient in terms of providing large investment in the energy sector public-private partnership purely private ventures or government led or parasitol type of companies for the energy sector thank you. Great, let's turn to Tony for the first then we'll go to Michael and Gary. So I think sorry, can you hear me? Yes. But sorry, some of us are mono. Can I have a microphone please? Okay, so for me all four comments are kind of related. So I would like to just speak generally and I hope that addresses all the issues. Today we preach a new kind of investment approach in Africa. We preach and believe and practice Africa capitalism which is private sector commitment or call on private sector to lead the development of Africa by making one long-term investments two in key and strategic sectors and economy three investments that create economic prosperity for social wealth. So if you put all of this together security is a derivative of a symptom of certain things that we experience in Africa today. Poverty is a threat to mankind and threat to mankind anywhere is a threat to mankind so if we therefore follow that logic and if we go further to what Michael said and what we all know about the significance of power in alleviating poverty and so if we have poverty we continue to bridge security challenges in the world nothing is going to stop it and if we need to deal with poverty in Africa and that poverty or threat anywhere is a threat to mankind everywhere then we need to fix I call it forcing first let's fix the basic things so it's embedded the security challenge it's embedded in all this conversation we've been having here today in fact it's equal to security to this conversation and that first everyone everywhere the second point about also the issue of nation states and especially the fragility of some federation like Nigeria in particular if we create economic prosperity through private sectors active engagement and in the process we give hope to people people will not go to the level of extremism that we're all scared of and it is therefore it builds everyone of us in the sector foreign friends, partners etc to make sure that the development we see and preach in Africa is one that actually touches the generality of the masses in Africa so that poverty can be addressed and the poverty is addressed to a large extent people won't want to kill themselves or talk about cessation where there's prosperity people don't care much about what's happening in the center is where there's poverty they begin to ascribe all kinds of reasons to why people are poor or certain geographies in a certain entity see more poverty so prosperity and social wealth can help to address this level of concern the issue of the right approach to power sector investment for instance in Africa private sector public private sector government led in this concept of African capitalism it is believed that the private sector should lead government should focus on regulation, key policies and let private sector do what they know how to do let government just be involved in concern themselves with creating the enabling environment that will prosper the private sector realizing that private sector prosper then the economy and society would be better through again the social wealth and poverty they generate I think that's it there was the question of rural urban and reaching let me, can I just start by endorsing absolutely everything that Tony's just said in relation to the question from our friend the Department of Defense formally from the Department of Defense I mean when Tony said poverty is a threat to mankind and a threat to mankind anywhere is a threat to mankind everywhere that is so right one of the things that we find in the work that we do in advocating about extreme poverty and preventable disease so you won't be surprised to hear this is that often the people who get it fastest and best are people who have security experience because they understand as Tony's just said that there is a real link between extreme poverty and instability there's a real link between assuming that you have a completely emissarated future without hope and picking up a gun and so these matters are intimately linked and you're right to raise them I was absolutely fascinated on the question about urban and rural I don't claim to be an expert about how you how you bring power to fields rather than cities and I was nodding with agreement that Darius's comments about the the hope that one can find leapfriking technologies to bring mini-grids to rural areas and so on and so forth I'd only say this there are very good reasons why when we think about access to poverty we think about the rural poor when we think about poor people particularly in Washington we often think about poor people in rural areas Africa is urbanizing at an incredible rate and it is increasingly important that when we think about access to health and education and jobs and power we think about it in terms of the mega cities that are cropping up all over the continent as well as well as, I'm not saying instead of, I'm saying as well as underserved rural areas there was a terrific article last week in Time Magazine a publication that I once had something to do with on energy poverty in Karachi, Pakistan demonstrating the lack of sustainable and reliable sources of energy in that city of what 15, 18 million, something like that is just as damaging to the human spirit and incidentally to kind of bring things full circle, you can see I used to be a journalist and incidentally just as dangerous in terms of creating conditions in which insecurity and extremism is bred as it would be in rural areas maybe I'll just two, two quick things about it I think there are two issues one is technology the other is the challenge of implementation, which I think is I heard in her question and there are two things I can just share with you from my own experience rural urban but a big focus what Africa does is we go historically our mantra has been we go where the tarmac ends in the 21st century we go where the network ends that's not just rural Africa but it's peri-urban Africa hugely important and hugely neglected without access to network services and so working with some technology partners Coca-Cola company and some engineering firms the ability to put essentially public utilities in a 20 foot container to generate power using crop waste using garbage using diesel fuel any source to generate power which can in turn drive a water purification system and provide a communications link essentially public utilities in a box as you could put in a peri-urban area or in a more dense rural area second is in rural areas where the population density isn't there one of the things that we have been working on is how do you take advantage of existing distribution networks community health workers agriculture extension services as a delivery mechanism the challenge is finding a financing mechanism that can make this affordable for the poor a solvable problem but at the core of it is something as close to our hearts is the challenge of helping people adopt these technologies behavior change is that something that Africa has more than 40 years of experience in knowing how to do it sorry, no we can talk perhaps after yeah we're just at time and I want to say a big thank you to our panelists for a really rich and thoughtful and inspiring presentations I want to turn to Tony to say just a couple of wrap up words Tony do you want to say just a couple of closing words what I'd like to thank on behalf of my fellow panelists the CSIS for this opportunity and to say that Africa appreciates this level of interest for this interest should not end or die here we should spread it beyond this all we should let people know that there's a new crop of a new way of doing things in Africa there are opportunities in Africa Africa should be seen as an investment destination not as an aid destination and indeed that we as Africans are receptive to foreign investment and we as Africans are also investing in Africa demonstrating confidence in the African continent and that we want to fix power in Africa together we want to create access to electricity in Africa together so there will be security and peace to everyone thank you