 going to sign a memorandum of understanding between the Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development, which is at the Islamic Development Bank, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. And we're going to have the great honor of having with us the Director General of the Islamic Solidarity Fund, Dr. Hiba Ahmed, who is, how are you? Thank you so much. Please give a round of applause. Dr. Hiba Ahmed is the Director General of the Islamic Solidarity Fund. And this is the great development fund for the Islamic Development Bank. And as you know, the Islamic Development Bank is the Multilateral Development Bank for the, I think, 57 countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation of the OIC. And it is based in Jeddah in the Saudi Kingdom. And it's a wonderful institution, absolutely a wonderful, amazing institution. The 57 countries of the OIC are all over the world, in all parts of the world, and very diverse. Many in Africa, many in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Americas, covering the entire world. And the Islamic Development Bank is the great development institution for these 57 countries, but also with a very, very strong commitment of Islamic finance. And Islamic finance is, in my view, very impressive and very important. It is not the dominant financial system of the world today because the dominant financial system of the world today is more the Anglo-Saxon and European system. Maybe it grew up in Venice and Genoa, and then very much then evolved in Britain and in the United States. And it's based on different principles, but Islamic finance first is based on the ethics of Islam and the precepts of ethical finance, which is extremely important. And it's also based on principles of kind of sharing or equity between those who provide the funds and those who use the funds, so it's not straight loans in the way that we're used to. There are many, many dimensions of Islamic finance. Every time I come to the bank, I learn more. And wonderful institutions to create foundations and different forms of financing that have established some of the longest lasting institutions in the world, in the Islamic world, in particular universities and training centers and al-Aqsar and others that were created through very innovative finance over the history of the last 1,400 years. So I enormously admire the bank and I greatly admire the Islamic Solidarity Fund and I greatly admire you because Dr. Hiba Ahmed is a PhD in economics from University of Michigan and is a native of Sudan and has had major teaching and leadership responsibilities throughout the development challenge and throughout the world and you've done a wonderful job and now we're so happy that you're the head of the Islamic Solidarity Fund. So thank you for being here. And we are signing a memorandum of understanding that is based on the work of Dr. Hiba to get kids in school everywhere. Because remember that SDG4, to my mind the single most important of all of the sustainable development goals, is universal quality education, all children having the opportunity to learn in quality education. And yet we have hundreds of millions of kids not in school. And that to my mind is the moral tragedy and the economic mistake because there's no higher return than investing in education. So Dr. Hiba Ahmed has made it a central point of the Islamic Solidarity Fund to get the children in school. And our work, I don't know where my colleague, can you come out please? Dr. Mariam Robbie who heads SDG4, please give her a hand. Who heads SDGs today for the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Works on spatial modeling and big data and the use of new digital analysis and geographic information system data to find out where the schools, where the children are not in schools, how can we help local school administrators and Ministry of Education to understand strategically where to invest, how to invest to achieve universal attendance, enrollment and completion of schools. So we've decided to team up which is extremely exciting for us to help the Islamic Solidarity Fund to do its great work and to bring to bear all of the tools that Dr. Mariam Robbie and her colleagues at SDSN are using including one wonderful program of my schools which is children going out, clicking and geo-referencing where their schools are and getting them on the map and adding in data so that we're building a worldwide knowledge base that's up to date of where the schools are. And this is participatory and the kids learn about GIS data through this exercise and we learn where the schools are and the Ministers of Education are telling us, thank you, keep it up. Keep doing it, we need this information. So here we are to sign the MOU. Good afternoon everybody. Thank you for having us here today. It has been a very hectic day. The ISFD is the poverty reduction arm of the IDB. It's a special fund with resources north of $3 billion and targeted capital of $10 billion. The ISFD has a singular vision of reducing poverty in our Islamic member countries. And the mission of leading innovative poverty reduction programs was a focus on comprehensive human development including health, education, economic empowerment and community development. Predominantly in our least developed member countries. The ISFD is pleased to sign this MOU with the sustainable development solutions network association with an objective of promoting the use of data driven strategies to enhance access to education and alleviate poverty in ISFD member countries. By virtue of this MOU, we intend to promote the use of geospatial data and technology to improve access to inclusive and equitable education. The ISFD is already committed to reducing the number of out of school children in our member countries. By promoting and using this technology involving geospatial data and tools in partnership with SDNS, we aim to tailor better strategies and intervention. Engage our member countries in policy dialogue to promote the use of evidence based and data driven strategies and policies to improve poverty outcomes. And build a better understanding of the factors that contribute to worsening poverty in different countries and access to and quality education in particular. In addition, we will enhance the capabilities of our member countries in using these technologies. Using data to improve our measurement of poverty and social development is crucial to achieving the SDGs. The ISFD is keen to work with the SDSN under the stewardship of Dr. Jeffrey Sacks to contribute towards meeting the SDGs, especially SDG1, no poverty, SDG3, good health and well-being, SDG4, quality education and SDGA decent work and SDG17 on partnership. We thank you for having us here today. We're near the end of our session, but I would like to have a couple of minutes to discuss with you. How do you see this week, this midpoint of the SDGs and from the point of view of the Islamic Development Bank? Sure. Unfortunately, we did the steady progress in poverty reduction, for example, SDG4 for education, until the COVID-19 came and the Eastern Europe war erupted. We see a lot of recess back in terms of achievements. This, of course, affects because in IDB, we have 57 Muslim countries, 29 of them are considered poor and fragile. For us, even having regression back from achievements that we did is really heartbreaking. But moving forward, I think we have to be optimistic because we cannot afford not to be. So we're hoping in the coming seven years, in ISFD in particular, to enhance our usage of data for a number of reasons. The first reason is that we want to allocate funds more effectively. In ISFD, we focus on concessional financing, concessional loans and grants, which are dwindling, unfortunately, despite the increase in the need for them. So we would like to do more effective allocation of resources. Also, we want to do better targeting of social program to those who need them the most. Also, using good data and evidence based intervention will help us monitor progress better and support more coordinated efforts on the ground. I wonder if you've seen in some of the country's innovative use of digital whether this is something that you're seeing because one of my hopes, it's a hypothesis, but one of my hopes is that if we can get devices into the hands of young people, get them connected, we can really enrich education. Maybe some don't have a school nearby right now and others can be enhanced in the quality and interest of what they're doing. So I wonder if you've seen some cases like that that look promising. Definitely. Before joining ISFD, I was the first female minister of finance for Sudan. So my role was very challenging because we had very limited resources and the education sector, unfortunately, to scratch even the surface on SDG4, you need to spend at least 15 to 20% of your general budget on education. Unfortunately, in Sudan, we started with 2% on education and definitely, definitely we didn't have schools everywhere. The problem of access to schools was a big problem. Hence, using technology was not really the fancy things to do, but actually the most necessity. It's a necessity because definitely by using technology, especially when COVID hit, it was really a good chance for us to kind of reach people who are harder to reach before. Teachers themselves could use the technology to enhance their teaching and also we could reach people who were really, we couldn't reach before. And this all was done at a smaller cost, a smaller cost of the budget than if we had to build the school and the teachers go there. So I think using technology is essential. Yesterday, we had a session on financing for education and definitely technology had the first... Can I ask you about when you were finance minister? This was after South Sudan and Sudan separated. South Sudan took all the oil with it. So you lost all the revenues. That's true. That's brutal for a country. Definitely. Yes. So you had an adjustment to manage finance after losing a core of the revenue stream for the government. And actually that was not the only thing. Unfortunately, one month after I took over as a first female minister, I wanted to show a lot of success so that other females can do the job. The second month, we were hit with COVID. So the government revenues were kind of wiped out. So I had to run the country with 40% of the revenue, which was a big, big challenge. Unbelievable. Can you give her a round of applause? No doubt, no doubt you have inspired countless young women of what they should be doing. But boy, they hit you with every incredible thing because honestly, I've never seen a budget like Sudan's because when South Sudan became independent, the oil, which was a big part of the revenues, went with South Sudan and Sudan's revenues just collapsed. And now I'm thinking, okay, as you say COVID, which was the second huge shock. So that's quite an event. But I still believe women make very good ministers of finance. And I have to say, sometimes I'm not so happy with my government in the United States for a lot of reasons, but I'm very happy with our Treasury Secretary, which is the closest we get to a finance minister, our Treasury Secretary. Because exactly 50 years ago, even maybe today, I walked into a classroom as a sophomore in college, and there was this young woman who had just finished her PhD. And she opened the lectures and she was wonderful. And that was Janet Yellen, who is our Treasury Secretary today. So she was my teacher 50 years ago, and we've been friends ever since. And I regard her as the finest finance minister we've ever had, with the possible exception of Alexander Hamilton. So I don't know whether there will be a musical Yellen, but she definitely is a great singer, and she deserves a few songs like that. So I agree with you, women make the best finance ministers, and you're the proof. Thank you very much. Will you thank Dr. Hiba Ahmed? Thank you. And thank you for the MOU. We're completely grateful, and we are excited about the work ahead. We are very excited to do this. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.