 Good afternoon and welcome to Addis Abiba Next, the launch of the policy briefs and technical reports of the Addis Abiba Urban Age Task Force. This event is organized by the three host, four host organizations of the Task Force, which include the Addis Abiba City Plan and Development Commission, LSE Cities at the London School of Economics, the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft and the German Agency for International Cooperation GIZ. My name is Philip Brode, I'm the accept director of LSE Cities, and I'm also the co-chair of the Task Force jointly with the former Plan Commissioner Atodereche Fikardou. Since September 2019, the Addis Abiba Urban Age Task Force has operated as a temporary think tank to the Plan Commission bringing together 21 local and international urban leaders and experts. Its work focused on urban practice and governance innovation that facilitates the implementation of the Addis Abiba structure plan. And this meant to acknowledge the plan's key ambition of urban intensification and densification, functional and social mix with affordable and adequate housing, the creation of new proximities and the strengthening of non-motorized and public transport, as well as a significant increase in green and blue infrastructure. This also implied to consider questions about governing the strategic spatial development of the city, possibly in some new ways as well. Now working on what we call strategic pilots that aim to support the implementation of the structure plan, the Task Force prepared in total four policy briefs, dedicated to our key themes, and each then supported with a total of 11 commissioned technical papers. And the three key themes which also will structure our event today are first housing and urban retrofitting, second transport and mobility, third green infrastructure and green and blue infrastructure, sorry, and fourth urban governance and strategic planning. We'll introduce the key elements of our work in a moment, but for now I'd like to hand over to the Plan Commission for some welcoming remarks, just checking the colleagues that are now with us. And may I invite Morgas to briefly say hello on behalf of the Plan Commission. Thank you very much, Philip, and also thank you all the participants for inviting me to make, you know, a welcoming address. And my name is Morgas and I would like to welcome you all to this very important event to discuss, you know, policy brief on this hour by next on four important agenda that is transport and mobility urban housing. Green and blue infrastructure and also urban growth and the planning. So with this very short briefing, I would like to say you all welcome, and I wish you a very good deliberation. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Morgas. If I can now invite our members of the task force to all turn on their video as we slowly go around to the interactive part. So we will now proceed with a proceed with a series of short presentations and responses by a task force members on each of the four themes, dedicating up to 15 minutes to each of the subject areas. We will use the Q&A function throughout. So for our participants, please make active use by typing in your questions or comments. We will make use of those, maybe already throughout, but certainly then for a dedicated bit answering your questions as much as possible. Besides being able to pose questions you can also vote up questions, i.e. click on those you think are particularly important which gives us a sense what we would want to focus on. We'll then close the event with a few final perspectives from each of the task force host organizations and a perspective on next steps. But for now, let's come to our first topic area, Housing and Urban Retrofitting, where we will hear from Elias Jitbarek, who is an architect in Addis Ababa and associate professor at EIABC at Addis University, as well as Kecia Rast, who is the director and founder of the Center for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa, and she is based in Johannesburg. We'll do this very quickly and then directly hand over to Ricky Boudette, who is director of LSE Cities and the Urban Age to provide some commentary on what it has been proposed by the task force. Let me move to the screen share as soon as Elias, you have done your quick introduction. So over to Elias and I'll share the second you would like me to. Thank you. Thank you, Philip. My name is Elias Jitbarek. I'm an associate professor at the IBC of the Addis Ababa University. My role as a member of the Urban Age Task Force is particularly engaging in the housing subcontinent, subcontinent of the Urban Age Task Force. So now we can go to the presentation. Thank you. Yes. Well, as briefly mentioned, what you see here is a proposal with regard to what can be done when it comes to having affordable housing and integrating the need of the low income people in the inner city or with what is going on. Well, recognizing that displacement harms the poor. As of recent, the city of Addis Ababa endorsed a new approach which they coined as co-development as opposed to redevelopment. This is to me that instead of relocating the low income people to the outskirts, now more and more there is a tendency to keep the poor where they are, meaning at the inner city. But this is yet to be figured out how to be done. And in our effort to contribute towards, you know, how to do this in the inner city, we came up with a proposal which we have pointed here, the Addis Ababa city block. The main principles of the Addis Ababa city block are to have a mixed use, mixed function development. And then to meet these objectivists, we came up with Addis Ababa perimeter block with a minimal setback from the street. Having narrow vertical units at the ground level to house low income inhabitants where they can do income generation in the form of home-based enterprises. Which usually is connected to the ground and then having at the upper level horizontal conventional apartments. The additional element of the Addis Ababa city block is the element of density. As you know, in the inner city, more and more there is this requirement for vertical growth, high density. In our proposal, we are proposing the perimeter block as opposed to or as an alternative to the standalone vertical buildings. Arging that we can still achieve the same density requirements but with less height. So that's one element. Then the other thing is flexibility. We may not achieve always, you know, we may not have big plots where we can have the perimeter block. So as needed, whenever we have small plots, we can also have pieces or parts of the perimeter block according to the situation or according to the context. So more and more you can observe in the street, you know, blue plastic small shops in the main streets. In fact, to the extent of coining the city as a blue city. This shows that there is a requirement or a need of the low income people to have some income generation on the street level. So that's actually one of the driving motives for the Ardisaba perimeter block to have vertical duplexes at the ground level where the low income people can generate income while you have other developments at the upper level where We lost you for a moment. Let's see whether sound is coming back. I'll just give this subsidized now. Now it's working. Thank you. Okay, great. Sorry for that. So I was just mentioning about this integration of the vertical duplex and horizontal elements. Which we have also articulated our concept as H above V horizontal above vertical. I think these are the main thing in short, the main principles of the Arisaba perimeter block is to have income generation or livelihood continuity, income mix, functional mix, liveable density and flexibility. As needed. And then we also had some exercise to come up with alternative building materials to have, you know, innovative low cost affordable housing. And then the other element main element is a cross subsidy element where the developers or the high income can subsidize the low income people. But this should still be really more detailed study, feasibility study to establish what we are claiming, depending on specific site and specific stakeholders. So these are actually the main things. So I stop here. And then I will come back. If there are questions with my colleague cashier trust cashier us. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Over to you. Thank you very much. Just just to comment very briefly on on the overview that that is prepared. We're very excited about the ways in which finance the financing requirement required for the development of the unit is not coming from a single place. So it's not entirely subsidized by the state it's also not entirely needed to be paid for by by the consumer so there's an element of subsidization that comes from the state. And then an intention of cross subsidization that comes from the use of units for for commercial purposes and higher income units that will then improve the affordability and accessibility of the units targeted at low income households. What's really important to understand in that context, however, and something that really requires engagement in terms of how the market is moving in in in Addis is how those ratios match up. And that's something that's worth exploring exploring further now. Stop there. Thank you. Thank you very much and Ricky over to you. I hope you can hear me. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I mean, first of all, I want to start by saying that you know the housing crisis is not just an Addis crisis. Most cities around the world growing cities around the world are dealing with this issue in fact even shrinking cities are dealing with issues of housing what you do with it. And therefore I think that any attempt like the one produced by the team over the last two years looking at Addis has actually, I would say, important consequences more internationally more globally which are very significant. What all of you know and I think anyone who's participating in this event realizes that as, and Casey knows this even better than anyone else, as we try and deal with numbers and build housing we sometimes ruin cities. We can build stuff out there, often out there, and we sort of ruin the fabric the social fabric of what makes a city a city and lies, and his team, recognize that in their design and I'll come to that in a moment. I think the fact that this approach as a collective of the Addis Task Force has looked at design as part of the solution, but a solution which encompasses the economics, the social and the environmental is extremely interesting. And I have to say, unfortunately, the more work I do in this area, it's still very rare, you know, many housing agencies just think about numbers and where you can put them and don't think about for example, how you can maintain economic activity. How do you keep people close to jobs, which sometimes means in the poorer and more difficult areas. The actually very big allied point I want to make and I think Philip this comes to the whole approach. The task force has taken is to recognize the DNA of the city as a whole, not just to separate elements out so just turning to the project itself. I think this notion of a perimeter block. It's not the first time allies that it's been looked at, but I think there's nothing wrong with copying things that have worked incredibly well over time and if we think of cities like Berlin or Barcelona for that matter. What does the perimeter block actually do and you've added to it. It actually allows you to be dense because it puts stuff on the street 345 eight stories high. It allows you to have a high quality public space for the residents or the occupiers and I think most importantly and in the case of Addis this for me is essential is actually continue is the DNA of of Addis you know it's a city which lives itself out onto the street. So I think what is extremely important about the, the horizontal above vertical concept that that allows not only the social mixity, which is essential is, you know, raising that but also allies at the design point of view, but also because it keeps over time, could keep the, the, the sittiness as sasca sassan, one of our colleagues at the LSE sometime ago used to say the sittiness of DNA without sort of losing that. So I think this fact that it's the way it's been designed and conceived for me, it's pragmatic. It's realistic. Very importantly, alias, you made the point that it's adaptable. It's not just a cookie cutter stuff that we got in most of Europe in the 50s and 60s, which feels sort of soulless and the same wherever you are. It addresses the need for diversity on plan and in section to use the sort of architectural term. That's why it has a sort of a vibrancy potentially about it. And of course, as said, but let's repeat it. This perimeter block takes up less space than if you were to actually build a series of tower blocks out in the fringes of the city and of course we've seen several of those models there. So I think there's a lot to learn from this project. I hope the authorities and the master planning team who are co sponsors of this idea will really take it extremely seriously. There's nothing like taking a prototype and owning it, developing it over time so that it can become more affordable as you build more of them. I think clearly there's a whole other dimension about sustainability of the materials themselves. You know, the world is changing in terms of an awareness of what concrete means and what instead more sustainable structures like timber might mean and I think all of those could work with the prototype that has been proposed by the team. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ricky. We have three comments already. We have also the time to quickly take them. Elias, they are all for you. First, is this a makeover or a takeover? Just your quick assessment. Second, what about the middle class? It's clear that maybe on the more extreme ends of society, the block speaks to housing provision, but are we talking enough about the middle class? And finally, in terms of also what Ricky just mentioned, the alternative building materials, which ones are maybe the ones that are most promising? Elias, back to you. Thanks, Philip, again, and just to respond to some of the questions raised. Well, this, as we have said, is a mix of all income groups. So it's not only for high income or middle income or low income. In fact, I'll wait for a moment to see whether you come back at the moment. It's flexible as it is, depending on how about now. Thank you. Yeah, my connection is not that stable. I'm struggling, but let me try now. I was just mentioning that it accommodates all the income groups depending on specific context. We are trying to say it is possible, highly possible, that we can accommodate the need of the low income people, the need of the developers, and the need of the government. In another, we can put it this way, that we can have a win-win situation for all the stakeholders. As far as we make a very good feasibility study and try to accommodate all the requirements. So that's one point. In terms of materials, well, there are some attempts, like agrostone, for example, is one possibility for partition walls. Other alternative materials also can be attempted. But again, this is dependent on specific sites and specific needs. But there are some promising materials that can be tried. Thank you. Thank you very much. There are more questions coming up. We'll try to accommodate them later on in our dedicated Q&A session. But do use also the voting button. We want to hear which ones are particularly important to take. For now, we'll move to the second theme on transport and mobility services supported by digital van provision. And I'm delighted to introduce Samira Jalalou, who is the Deputy General Director of the Addis Abiba City Traffic Management Agency. And in that, and Addis Abiba in that function supported the task force as one of our members. I will share the presentation, the moment you have started to speak. Samira, let me know when you want me to advance the slides, but maybe open it up first so colleagues can see you. And halfway through, I will finish with this presentation as well. Samira, over to you. Thank you, everyone. Hello, how are you? I am Samira Jalalou, former Deputy General Director of Traffic Management Agency. Now I'm working at World Resource Institute as a transport planner. So I'm very delighted to work with this task force. We can continue with the presentation. Okay, thank you. So, Addis Abiba City, the vast majority of transportation is made using walking and public transport, as you have, as you can see on the screen, around 54% of the trips are made using this motorized means. And among the public transport, around 80%, more than 80% of the trips are made using mini buses. These are observed when we try to study the transport share of the city. The city tries to cover the transport need by providing various public transport infrastructure and services, but still our survey found out that considerable dissatisfaction with the existing public and private options. And there is a demand for reliable, eco-friendly and flexible, as well as acoustic effective alternatives. People are still looking for having some other options. There is Ambasabas service, Shagir bus service, mini buses, and also the light railway is giving service, but still our assessment shows that there is some dissatisfaction. And there is a room to accommodate a new type of service we can use. So, and as colleagues in Addis will be acutely aware, car growth is considerable in Addis and those that can afford to drive that will ultimately do so. In our preliminary survey, we were able to identify some of the key reasons, mostly quite sort of logical and logistical reasons around travelling to areas that are not that accessible by public transport and also travelling with family members where a larger personal vehicle may be advantageous. Now, our proposal to address some of those concerns add to the flexibility and quite openly also acknowledge that in countries like Ethiopia and cities like Addis, it's also with a very good public transport system, hard to get people that drive out of driving and use alternatives. And that's where the idea of digital van service was an important focus of our exploration, the degree to which more upscale, more comfortable, reliable, safe service, which is a bit like a taxi, still requires you to walk to maybe the end of your block to be picked up, but then through flexible routing be driven to your destination with vehicles like the one you can see here in Cairo, which carry in between five to maximum of 20 passengers. There is quite a bit of interest according to our survey. Again, provisional survey of these are people that are either car owning or aspiring to own vehicles to what degree they are interested in digital van service. And what you can see here is that there's a considerable amount of people would certainly say, yes, I would try this way more than half. And if you add also those that responded with maybe we are well above 95%. So that's very promising and the figure isn't that different for those that are aspiring car users. So at least when it comes to piloting this kind of offer, we seem to have a great potential on the ground. There is good news also in terms of experience with those services in other parts of the world, as well as initial tests in artists itself what you can see here are the different precedents which we analyzed on an axis on the horizontal where they are either sort of public transport embedded or towards the right more driven by the private sector and the vertical you then have the use on the bottom of static routes predefined routes versus more demand responsive technologically enabled approaches. It's fair to say that there are quite different experiences in developing from developed world context, broadly speaking the demand responsive approach at the moment is still more popular in higher income countries. But it's important to recognize that there's a considerable contribution by the private sector in particular in India and in Egypt to trialing those kind of services. In most instances as you can see here with static routes still to date. When it comes to artists, what we very much advised with our knowledge partner itdp the Institute of for transportation and development policy is to start really with very specific connections and operate in neighborhoods that may have a greater affinity to this kind of maybe middle higher income areas where the main target is indeed those people that would otherwise drive there are other options of optimizing the route to design and incentives of maybe using certain dedicated bus lanes. That's of course all up for negotiation but essentially the big message here is this is something that could be trialed and explored. And maybe also be linked to what we have seen before the perimeter block when it comes to the requirement for parking standards. So the idea here is instead of providing additional parking facilities underground quite expensive. Why do developers not subsidize this kind of new mobility service. So I'll pause here and in this instance really invite our task force colleagues as well as of course our participants to come in with questions about this particular idea. And at the moment, I don't see any signs yet. So I'll go to Abird Kusha who wrote in the chat. I would like to agree with Sid Ricky that sometimes we focus on the numbers without finding connectivity with socio economic requirements. I was an artist a few weeks ago and I've seen that there's a great need to manage transport networks and the inclusion of non motorized transport. There's a lot of people who walk very little space to do so. With current rains it is even worse when it gets muddy. So I want to maybe ask Samira again how he would respond to this of course recognition of the importance of walking and how we connected it to the van service or more general point I can then also get back to that point. Thank you Philip. I think this is a critical point that that's raised. Yes, there are a lot of people who usually use walking to to commute their daily activities and recognizing this the city has endorsed it. And then transport and then motorized transport strategy. Three years ago and this strategy implementation has started but it needs more effort so that we can have a better facility for those who walk and provide also infrastructure for cycling and this can also support our proposal of digital ones because, you know, short distances can be covered comfortably using non motorized transport and then for the long distance then people will have will have option of digital bands and we can also answer the question that that is raised by most of our respondents about the accessibility issues. I mean the last mile should be comfortably accessed with non motorized options. That's what I can say thank you Philip. Thank you Samira and let me just add to this. It's true that of course this very proposal is about motorized public transport or taxi service. But it's actually an enabler for walking and cycling and other forms of green mobility for the simple fact that it tries to address the biggest stress point. We currently have in transport systems in the world, whether it's the developing or developing developed context, and that is current and future car use. The more we are able to provide for alternatives and again particular alternatives for those that can afford to drive the more we open up spaces for walking and non motorized transport. And I think it's that particular issue which often is still not considered enough we have seen very few real success stories where you have seen a major shift of higher income groups in sort of developmental context, no longer using private cars. So car growth is in some ways what this particular proposition tries to address to then enable what also colleagues here in the chat refer to as much better quality for walking and other forms of non motorized transport. There's a second question, Samira again this may be for you, whether this proposal which we have around digital vans could be integrated with ride, which already exists in Addis Ababa as a taxi app. So over to you and your assessment. Yes, Philip, I think the main limitation of the current ride services it's almost most of the time that the number of riders is very limited, maybe one or two so it's almost equivalent to private vehicle and the congestion and all the problems that we are concerned with the private cars is still existing with the current ride in the future if we can pull people's together and use the same vehicle, then that will improve the current traffic flow and unnecessary trips using separate vehicles will be minimized so this way I think it can be integrated that's my point over to you Philip. Thank you and a final question on this point for now by Abiot Gusha, referring to earhailing services of course already exists in in Addis, but there are problems in newer areas because there are no formal roadways. Now, again, in our case with the idea is to focus on an alternative for car use. And if we're talking about areas where maybe access by normal vehicles isn't possible. Obviously the digital van couldn't go there. But the moment you think you can drive the kind of buses we're thinking about would equally be able to access these roads as well. So in some ways we do see less of a problem there, acknowledging of course that overall the nonexistence of formal roadways is a problem. Again, we'll come back to some of those questions later on but for now let's move to theme three which is on green and blue infrastructure. In this case, we have a presentation by Cecilia of Acca Jones who supported this effort as the former exec director of the burnout from Leah foundation foundation dedicated to early childhood development as we'll see in a moment. This is of course a really important entry point into a conversation and maybe a new conversation about what green and blue spaces in cities can do. So Cecilia again I'll wait with a screen share for a few seconds. First over to you let me know when you want me to screen share. Thank you Philip and it's a great pleasure to be here and finally share some of the findings and thoughts and main take the ways of what doing this consultancy work with two great architects and urban planners, David had come and Santiago delierro, and also another architect from Marisa Viva that supported the whole work her name is Tis Casa who and I must say Philip for me it was a learning process because of course coming from the social policy development field. And as you were saying working a lot on early childhood policy, really trying to understand and find which are the different cases of green and blue infrastructure that can improve the life of babies toddlers but in general people is what makes sense when I'm thinking about planning and designing cities. So maybe if you can share the presentation what I would like to do today is briefly share with you some relevant thoughts on which were some of the findings of the review of 22 cases. As you can see in this picture what I what I love about bringing this idea or this holistic approach of green and blue infrastructure and the social benefits of investing in green and blue infrastructure is actually seeing what's happening in this picture is all this positive connections among people but also the positive connections with nature. So that's exactly how I would actually define green and blue infrastructure and nature based solutions as the opportunity of creating safer and healthier cities. And I do want to emphasize on that because I think that's the whole point of taking the opportunity of such a rapid urban development in Addis Ababa. In the next slide, you can see all the different cases I was referring to we did this great review of all this different cities around the world. And what I did in order to plan this seven minutes interventions was just trying to get the main highlights of what have been my main learnings from reviewing the different cases. The next slide please. So what was really interesting about doing the review of the cases that we were trying to keep this holistic approach. So basically what we tried to do is try to highlight which were some of the environmental benefits of investing in some of this projects, but also trying to understand which were the social co benefits that you can get by investing in environmental projects. And of course, trying to understand which were the governance systems that could be applied in the context of Addis Ababa. I would say it's been really interesting to put all of this topics together because of course we constantly talk about working from a systemic perspective, but actually doing it is completely different. So what we tried to do through the case studies is really try to find different examples that could really inspire and inform action in Addis Ababa. Next slide. As I was saying before and I do want to emphasize on this. I think one of the main take the ways of investing in green and blue infrastructure is really creating this opportunity of bringing healthy connections into the city. And this is not just about ensuring that good social housing or having a good transport system is actually about enabling public spaces that can really create and promote this healthy connections and this healthy relationships between people but between people and the environment that surrounds people. And the next slide. I think I was making my first main takeaway that it relates to this nature leads the way in all the different case studies that we saw but this is the example of South Korean in Seoul which basically they recover the river which is also one of the challenges and objectives that the city of Addis Ababa has in their new plan. As you can see here, I think one of the main takeaways is that of course bringing green infrastructure into the city can also create this inclusive way of bringing people back to the city. A lot of the case studies also refer to the use of waste as a resource and I think this is a very important thing to think of because sometimes we're not evaluating how sewage sludge can be clean energy or biosolids can be fertilizers. So many of the concrete case studies that we refer in this review are actually highlighting the benefits of this. And finally but not least and when talking about nature leads the way is talking about how working with nature can actually cost less. So there's this common sense of like investing in green and blue infrastructure can basically involve a higher cost in investing but there are all of the different case studies we review can actually show how in the long term the return and the economic return is a lot higher but I also want to emphasize on the social return that you can get by investing in green infrastructure. On the next slide we actually also see the possibilities and opportunities of taking advantage of the existing resources. This is the example and the picture of medicine and how they use some of the water facilities that were infrastructure that was quite abandoned and was not accessible for people. And how in a city like Medellin actually being able to recuperate the sites but also engaging people in redesigning and participating in the way they want to design the sites has been quite impressive in recovering some green spaces. In the next picture you can actually see another picture of the same site. And just to say that these sites are also an opportunity to learn and educate the society about for example in this case the importance of the use of water as a main resource for survival. In the next picture you also see another example of how sometimes recuperating some of the built infrastructure that's already there is so important. This is the case of Paris and they have like this project that we detailed in the review, which is around the school yards projects and there are many other cities that are doing that another familiar city that is doing this is Tirana and what I want to say here also having the data of all the different school yards that you can open and have like the benefits of having this open space of green infrastructure in the city also represents a lot of other benefits for the families and people living in different neighborhoods around the city. If we go to the next slide. A lot of the case studies also refer to small interventions and I do want to emphasize on this because sometimes we're thinking about green and blue infrastructure as huge interventions and sometimes it's also about doing little tactical interventions that can use fewer resources but can actually engage neighborhoods and families into doing something different. Another great example in the review that we did about the butterfly project of Toronto. Again, a huge opportunity not only to improve the green infrastructure in at a neighborhood level, but it's actually a huge opportunity to learn and to educate in this case children. In the next slide we have another example of one of my favorite projects in the review is the Mapocho River, which is a 42 kilometers recovery of the river Mapocho. What I love about this case study is that it actually mentions how difficult it actually is to put all the different stakeholders to agree on something that involves very different points of view. At the beginning, Santiago Achille was actually dealing or the big challenge that they had is that in order to bring this connection to the river they had to overcome many problems among the different neighborhoods that the 42 kilometers of recovering this river would actually involve. So what I want to say here, it's actually very interesting to say that when you want to approach this from a participatory perspective, it can also bring a lot of challenges and bring in the different stakeholders together. But if you're able to manage the right data, if you're able to bring into the table to the different stakeholders that need to be there that need to be part of the decisions, then the result is actually quite good. Finally, but not least on the next slide, you see one picture of an example of another case study that we review is therefore I think what I like the best about this case study is that it really refers to the importance of having people involved in designing their projects and having people own the projects. And again, this is one of the main learnings and takeaways and I think this is applicable to Aris Aveva's context is this possibility of really thinking on designing for people and buy people and really using the different participatory approaches to try to have people own their projects. And of course this has to be done together with the different government parts that need to be part of the decision making, considering all the needs that people need to consider in order to own their own spaces. I think that was my last slide Philip. So let me stop there just to see if there are any questions or reactions. Thank you very much and while we're waiting for questions in the chat and also again around this virtual table please do come forward if you want to ask for clarification or add to what we have just seen from Cecilia. In the meantime, Cecilia if we now going to Aris and look at these really inspiring examples. We also then acknowledging the efforts that are currently being made in Aris Aveva. They've just recently opened a new park, which was a major investment also by the national government. What are moving forward maybe into the second phase. The very specific opportunities you see out of the selection of cases you presented. Is there one thing that sticks out where you think this may feel like the most relevant or broadly there's a sort of paradigm which is most suited for the Aris context at this particular moment. I think there are many things that can pick from the different case studies but one that comes up to my mind is the possibility of linking the green corridors of streets in Aris with the park. So really making sure that this comes together so it also facilitates this connections that I was speaking before between people between different generations. And I think that's quite feasible understanding the complex system of Aris as a city, but also understanding that there's a huge possibility of creating this green corridors. So for me, this is one of the main possibilities that Aris has is really activating this possibility of having green corridors. So if you have like the development of this park, ensuring that it's not only about the park, but it's about connecting the park to the green streets of Aris Aveva and just keeping this idea of greenery around the city. Thank you Cecilia and Timnit I mean we had spoken quite a bit about the green strategy for Aris Aveva. A few years ago you were also a bit more involved in the thinking. Just listening to Cecilia, would you share her broad assessment or are there other bits and elements you would want to highlight where there are opportunities moving forward. Thank you Philip. I share some of Cecilia's ideas but the issue with our green infrastructures and parks, especially with the ones which are open recently are the issue of context and priority on the government side. So, of course, we do need parks, we do need this whole green infrastructures to avoid also to have a breathing space for our city because we're having this concrete forest everywhere. But the issue with the city dwellers is other priorities and odd, but I do share some ideas so far. Thank you. Thank you very much. I don't see any further immediate questions again. We'll keep all of this open also for the end and we now come to our last theme which is no longer on substance. It's more about process and governance so urban governance and strategic planning, where we will hear briefly from Mark Steinlin who is the managing director of complexity limited based in Helsinki and in Basel. And then also again from Timnit who used to be the CEO of construction enterprise at Addis Ababa city administration. So let's begin with Mark and we'll have responses prepared, very relevant for this particular session related to the international building exhibition idea you'll hear about in a moment. And we were very fortunate to have Michael von der Mühlen with us throughout the task force process who was a former state secretary, and was centrally involved in an international building exhibition in Germany in Dortmund, Germany, which is well known under the name Emscher Park. So we'll have now the three colleagues in one go and Mark over to you again let me know at what point you'd like me to share the slides. Mark your mute. Thank you very much Philip for the opportunity to share some of the outcomes of a study that we conducted around participation and participatory forms of co design and co creating the city. The study also built on a series of case studies exclusively from the African continent from Cape Town of the southern most tips to Tunisia in North Africa. And maybe you can show the first slide here, kind of the core idea of what we found examining those examples was that participation often elicits to responses. In principle, there is an acknowledgement of how important it is, we just saw that at the end of Cecilia's presentation. But on the other side, there are concerns and sometimes even reservations in terms of the practicalities. And the report builds on the recognition that participation is mostly kind of oversimplified into static formulas like for instance we have to run a public consultation or so. And if we oversimplify what participation means and can do that leads to detrimental consequences so rather than leveraging the potential of participation it creates frustrations and consequently damages reputation. And hence we must become more skillful and deliberate in tailoring participation to very specific situations and needs. So, the first thing is really the intention. What is the end of participation, what do we try to achieve. For instance, do we jointly and maybe you can go to the next slide. Do we jointly want to create a livable habitat, which involves participation in creating the urban space in place making designing, or do we jointly want to co govern power and resources. So the idea of inclusiveness in how do we distribute resources power how do we engage involve issues around for instance budgeting and so on. Or do we want to jointly co manage and co administrate systems and structures of the city. So ideas around resource optimization effective operations and so on. So in the next slide we see also if we design participatory ways and processes we need to look at at what urban scale do we work. Do we work on a site specific situation, sort of hyper locally on a block in the neighborhood do we work on metropolitan or city scale. What kind of system. Do we try to shape in a participatory way or manage is it a political and economic social cultural system. But lastly and also importantly, what kind of function does participation take on. We try to govern co create produce build sustain the city. And lastly on the last slide I have we see, based on these different categories we come to very different forms of how participation can be done. And the examples in the report do highlight and showcase some of these forms of participation. And with that I'd like to hand over come to Timnit with who I had a few discussions, maybe Timnit. Can you please share an example of participation in others which you would consider relevant and impactful. So participation is really crucial for one of the city administration. Timnit can I just interfere we can't we can't hear you very clearly if you couldn't make sure the microphone is close. If you use a note or speak louder a bit thank you. Can you hear me now. Okay, okay. So this participation issue is becoming a very crystal issues, as one of the participants in the panel in this webinar have also mentioned this big mega project as well as there are trial here and there we can see it, but it hasn't been actually in the project to the finish of the project or else we can see the Laghahar project of Addis which was this huge mega housing project which was done which was supposed to be done in collaboration with the foreign investors so there was some some source of participation that was conducted in trial like instead of actually moving everyone who be living around there to actually settle them within the apartment that's going to be done on it or beside it. So this participation are a trial kind of thing in our city but we can't actually say it's been implemented within the project and it goes through all the project phases and till the implementation phases so I'd say there is a trial here and there but it's not as sufficient and it's kind of as you've been saying it's oversimplified and in the governance issue it's not incorporated. Timnit, based on those experiences kind of what have you seen as positive longer term impacts where participation has been done successfully in Addis? As I told you it's really difficult to say it's been successful and fully implemented throughout but we lock it throughout our processes and in our planning and all but there are, as I said, since the trials are going forward and we can see on some projects where some trials have been done there will be a consistent and flowing, good flowing project going on instead of the ones that were actually abandoned and put in the places. So what would be the implication for Addis to make participation really work at its best in the Addis context? What is kind of the lesson? Okay, I think we've learned a lot of places through our problematic problems where people are actually abandoning the project or not accepting what's been invested on put through and all. So I think this is a good lesson that we get from our project that participation is really crucial on our implementations and all from the inception phase as well. I would explain a lot on our next questions as well. Now, there's the idea around participation that there's the concept of international building exhibitions, the EBA, which we will hear a little bit more afterwards still. And that could be an idea sort of to model not only forms of urban development and so on but also possibly of participation. Can you share a little bit sort of how such a concept could leverage meaningful participation and how that could be trialled in the context of Addis? Yeah, so the international building exhibition concept, which is the EBA, which we're actually working with the GIZ. I think Anka will explain it better, but I'd like to say something about it. We've been doing a lot of explorations in Addis, like Addis being rapidly urbanizing and with lots of population having this weak transportation system. There's some lack of actual access for basic services and oil with lacking green and landscape issues, which was actually discussed by Kesha. Just having all these issues, having the EBA coming is a very good methodology because we're thinking of having the idea is to have an EBA agency which will be directly conducting it within the government. So that this agency would do this participation in all the projects that will be conducted through the project space. So I'd say the EBA would have a big role in this participation issue as well. Having this contextualizing issues and all can be really answered or can be experienced and be a trial on this phase as well. So I'd say the EBA is a good approach and Addis is actually ready for this approach as the government also have main tools that the EBA would really appreciate to work on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Tim, for anchoring that in the local context. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Timnit, would you like to build a bit more on the EBA or should we hand over to Michael immediately? I would, if I have time, I'd really like to say instead of the EBA would be a really inclusive planning system instead of just top-down planning management system. It would actually help Addis to have this part of the professional and discussion phases where you can have the different experiences because of this coordination between stakeholders and other professionals from abroad as well, which will really help for the city to actually think in a bigger context of having or thinking about our infrastructures, our sewerage system and others in a bigger scale. Not only in block or new development that are just coming in blocks or in such a here and there kind of planning system. I'd say the EBA would help a lot in our planning system and actually implementations. Thank you, Phillip. Thank you. And I should just add that in addition to the materials which we formally provide, GIZ has led a broader investigation into the opportunities and possibilities for an international building exhibition in Africa. And these are also documents which will end our reference. But for now over to Michael. Michael, you are on mute. There we go. Okay. Thank you, Phillip. Well, I was a member of the team of GIZ. It was contribution to the research of the urban age task force was the evaluation of the question, can an EBA be a useful instrument of integrative development for Addis. One of the problems, I suppose, not only from Addis, but from a lot of cities that they are working in silos and strongly sector oriented and the EBA is so to say an instrument to overcome it. EBAs have been regularly held in Germany since the beginning of the 20th century for 100 years now. And throughout history, EBA have gained significant relevance in moments of grand, great transformation. That means moments of shifting social demands or linking local demands with overarching global challenges like we have now climate change population movement, economic transformation and so on. And this rather an open process in times of change, so to say, and a very quick change. And it is so to say it doesn't focus on the master plan. It focus on projects projects are the heart of every EBA. And our combined strategic tom down with a participatory bottom up approach, which we just learned. And then as a baby became very evident that the provision of urban infrastructure for basic services is one of the most pressing challenges and onsite discussions. And Tim just stated that confirm the challenge of a week and sector oriented and partly uncoordinated administration with regards to infrastructure provision, which needs so to say a format of integration and this discussion to which we had indicated that the city is open to considering an EBA through several issues. Those several issues would be have to be addressed. So, I must say that, unfortunately, of course, we, we could not continue our work because of the pandemic. Two years ago, and it is so to say part of an EBA that is very strongly related to local actors. And focusing on governance. In today's statement, a one if effect of an EBA and others could lie in strengthening the currently rather weak multi stakeholder coordination mechanisms of the city administration by implementing integrated project prevailing top down planning mechanisms might be altered to more inclusive ones in an EBA project. So, EBA might serve as a vehicle for new modes of implementation, and contribute to building trust and local and regional institution, as it focuses on projects which are determined to deliver results from cooperative collaborative and bottom up co creative forms of planning and implementation. And our works and our reports and with a lot of, so to say hints and questions but now, when the time has come, they have to be, so to say, put on the earth with concrete actors which have to be found there. Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed. We have a few comments on particular participatory participatory element and timnit specific question asked for you about the lagara participation, which is judged here by one of our attendees as being on the one hand, yes conducted but at the expense of essentially no longer complying with the master plan or the strategic plan. So what can be learned from from that particular participatory engagement. Any views on that timnit. I was mentioning actually. Of course understood that. Turn on your video so that we can see you thank you. Okay. Okay, thank you. It's really kind of disappointing as well for me. Actually the master plan was changed the lagara project changed the master plan was saying it's the space to be a big transport hub. Then it was changed directly to housing projects by the city administration. That's being said I was actually discussing about about the housing project participation people were there was this big residence area around there. So I was referring to that participation where the people were actually discussed about the housing project. And they were promised that they will have a house that they can live in the in their surrounding, because in our housing project we actually were relocating people to the periphery and building different developments within there. But in the specific project, it was promised by the city administration that the people who are relocated from that area will be set around there. And with having all those problems with the developers and all. There was this participation that was done with the city dwellers who lived around there so I was actually mentioning about the participation on the housing project not the the the change in the master plan. Thank you very much, Tim. And then maybe Mark to also connect a bit what you talked about more broadly about these participatory principles when you listen to what also throughout the years we have heard from Michael from the EBA concept. Where do you see a real synergy with your approach to participatory practices, but equally where do you may be also see a tension where we need to be aware that maybe the EBA in Africa will have to look differently compared to how it has been organized in Europe. Well, I think the EBA is in its core an incubator and a laboratory and I think that's very well suited also to incubate or to experiment with forms, as I mentioned of participation which might work or might not work and to start creating an experience basis of what is an adapted and appropriate and workable form or what are formats of participation which which would work in that local context and and I think they're the EBA. I think inherently that is part of the idea of an EBA and that may need require a focus also kind of to start establishing a certain practice and maybe overcome that reluctance or the critical voices which which which are well founded in negative experiences which have been made in the past so I see a lot of potential on that level. I think the difficulty is that that we kind of tend to over promise what it can do and how it will work and that in particular in the field of participation leads then to deception and frustration and up to anger and and kind of brings the idea into this dispute and so on and and we can also lose territory so I think we need to be very careful of what we promise and and how we approach and how we sell the ideas. Thank you Mark. We also seen quite a bit of endorsement of the overall sentiment which was shared here by our audience. I just want to read out a few comments that have been made. In particular, it says in some parts of South Africa projects have come to a standstill as local communities protest, a lack of consultation and lack of benefit for them. It's crucial that local communities feel they are part of the development. They also then take ownership of projects minimizing any damage and vandalism associated with infrastructure. In Tesigae, Girm May says on point development without a strong sense of ownership will likely end up in regression. So very important observation here. I can come back to that in a moment. I would now like to briefly see whether a to give a wasn't can hear us and whether he's able to come in the deputy plan commissioner. And if you can hear us, if you can hear me, please do let us know would be wonderful to hear from you as well. But in the meantime, we are having a lot more comments also on our different parts of the presentation. I want to just pick up a few. This is a challenge to the other city block where one of our participants suggests here. This looks like a cookie cutter of Manhattan, and I don't understand how it adapts to locality. So, maybe important to come in again. Yes, and maybe explain where you would beg to differ. Thanks again. Well, it seems it may seem like that. But the point is, as you know, to date, the practice we have in Addis Ababa is to have buildings as a standalone vertical buildings. Even those single storyhouse are in, you know, in a plot of land fenced. So the idea of having a building right on the side of a street is a bit new, I would say for Addis and for the rest of the city. So what we are suggesting is maybe before the suggestion. Again, we tended to talk also about shortage of land in Addis and elsewhere, but I would say I differ to say that we don't have shortage of land. The shortage of land is in our mind. Rather, what we have is the lack of, you know, how to organize our cities in a proper way. Meaning one suggestion which we are putting forward is the perimeter block, but adapted to our situation, to our context. We are not using this cut in the past of Manhattan or Barcelona or Paris or Berlin, but we are re-conceptualizing it in such a way that it accommodates our reality, the need of most importantly of the low income. By doing this, we are, you know, putting in a very clear terms the realms of the private, the private, the semi-public and the public. By doing this, we are economizing the use of land. We are making clear who owns what. So our suggestion is if we come up with such an alternative where it becomes clear who owns what in terms of land, in terms of appropriation of land, then we can be efficient. And this would have an impact to our transportation system because it impacts the road. It would have an impact to our open area system parks and green areas. So it's a potentially, it has a big impact in reorganizing our cities. So I wouldn't agree that we are simply cutting and testing. We are adapting and to the better way that it can be used in our context. Thank you. Thank you, Elias. Then a further comment on the transport proposals here by Bethlehem de Messe. Should that be a priority, i.e. the digital van service? Improving the large capacity buses and BRT systems should be a priority, wouldn't you say? Yes, the answer is, of course. The problem being that the increasing amount of space tape, the amount of public road space being taken by a private vehicle is probably already at this point well above 50% by a very small minority. And that's going to increase. We know statistics from cities like Mexico City where just below 20% of the population use 80% of the streets, making it impossible to run attractive and efficient public transport. So as long as you're not answering the question how you are dealing with the 20% or the 2%, in other words, it's just 2% or 3% that are currently driving and how you are providing for alternatives, one is missing an important part of the sustainable transport puzzle. That doesn't mean that needs to be subsidized, obviously not, because actually the money is there. Buying your own vehicle is so much more expensive than even having the most effective digital van service. And on top of you save money for parking, underground storage and so on, it should be self-supported. It's not about making it sort of a public system with public money, but it is about introducing the legal instruments and the incentives and the political incentives of making that alternative possible. I think this is how far I would push it. And then, Samiri, there's a question about park and ride, how much that has been considered. Again, that sort of assumes that at least part of the journey is done in a conventional car, but Samiri, maybe a quick comment from your end on this. Eric, are you still there? Can you hear us? Okay, let me then move on. We had few more comments also on the green infrastructure, which I do want to come back to, where the question of land ownership was quite an important consideration when you start with land ownership. If you need more space, we know that the percentage of green space that is currently available to residents in Addis Ababa is very minimal. So Cecilia, what are and maybe also Timnit colleagues, what are international practices of actually increasing the amount of land for green purposes if that land is at the moment used by other functions? I think there are different ideas and again bringing back the idea of greening streets. I think thinking about streets being the closest public space to anybody, I think it's one of the most important things and solutions to consider. And then pocket parks that it's usually also like sometimes we're thinking about like big green infrastructures when in reality what has been proven is that the more access or the more immediate access that we can give to green infrastructure, the better for families, especially for young children's development. So I think sometimes if you're able to really kind of like micro plan at a neighborhood level and find and be able to recover this public spaces that might be used for other functions, it's part of the challenge that every city around the world has. I don't think it's a challenge just for Addis Ababa, it's just a matter of taking the opportunity of seeing sites that were probably not considered as green spaces as the possibility of becoming green spaces. And that's why, for example, I just showed the case of Medellin which is the perfect example of using some public infrastructure that was there for a different purpose, but maybe there's an opportunity to use that public infrastructure for a different green objective. Or the school yards that we were seeing and mentioning in different cities, this is what many cities around the world are doing is instead of closing many of these spaces for just for kids or for very private purposes is like reopening these spaces for public purposes. So I think again it's more a matter of replanning some of the screen spaces for a different purpose. Thank you very much Cecilia. We're coming now to the end of the Q&A. There were of course more questions. I encourage those that have been joining us today to directly get in touch with our Task Force members if you want to follow up. And possibly we'll also have future events where we go a bit deeper into those specific points. I would now like to formally launch the website of the Addis Ababa Task Force and I'm doing a screen share for this and I like to ask my colleagues to also give you the direct link to www.addisababa.org. If we could put the link into the chat so everyone can access that that will be great. What you'll see there is a quick overview but the really important part is when you scroll down, we have here the series of publications first the four different policy projects that are dedicated to some of the key points that were made today during the presentations but also already going a bit deeper into that and then very sort of deeply grounded technical reports, some of them quite large, which really support the broader findings. These are all available for download as of today and we will within a few months also add the Amaric versions for the policy briefs to our website so please do have a look at this, share it widely. This is a public resource it's available for anyone with an interest in urban development and of course with a particular interest in Addis Ababa and our strategic pilots. Good and we're coming now to a final round where we want to hear just in a few sentences about final comments plus maybe next steps around the Task Force from the organizing organizations. I want to just check whether to give a wasn't can hear us if so do indicate I would very much like to also hear from you on this occasion. But let's begin with anchor deris was the senior strategic urban development advisor at the Deutsche gesellschaft for international at zusammen and our by GIZ anchor over to you. Thank you Philip. What a good cooperation given the odd conditions of the past two years and wonderful to see all members on screen today. Thank you to the LSE for excellently coordinating our collaboration together with the plan commissioner of Addis Ababa. And thank you to all partners for including GIZ into the task force. In my point of view the work of the task force is urgent, valuable and encouraging. First, there is an urgency to act as we heard today given the dynamics in artists and the rapid growth. And I see the task force as a kind of additional engine supporting the city administration of Addis Ababa to act. And secondly, as you've just seen now value the content was produced. So I'm glad to hear it will be used by the city administration and practitioners in Ethiopia. Glad to have so many in the call and the webinar today. So these papers point to options the city has for dealing with the current dynamics. And even more importantly, the task force offered a group of experts and scientists, assisting the city in tackling its own priorities for sustainable city making. And we as a group learning from the experiences in Addis. So I do hope that the contacts and the communication will continue. And as a task force, we are ready to meet with the plan commissioner and urban practitioners for a joint debriefing on the work and discussing possible next steps. So I do hope the papers which I find are all scientific and advisory treasures are used for bold city making. I'm particularly glad that she has that could contribute with two studies that were mentioned besides translating the policy briefs into a Merrick which will, they will soon be ready. So one paper on exploring the innovative format of city making like an international building exhibition which we heard. In it you also find next steps for the city to pose to itself on how to apply such an experimental format, which is not easy to apply. But we have heard about several topics that such an international building exhibition could take up be sustainable retrofitting and housing or blue and green infrastructure for example. And we all know about the conflicts of interest in designing such projects and I read it in the chat as well. So mediating such conflicts has to be a big part of any infrastructure investment and is a big part of our work as GIZ. So in both working processes on the paper also on the green construction for the city block of Addis, I've enjoyed very much the cooperation with the University of Addis. So finally I can only encourage anyone here to be bold. Otherwise, we will not manage to turn around in sustainable urban development, creating cities where people have clean air to breathe and a peaceful slumber at the end. So a teamwork like this task force is encouraging definitely over to you Philip. Thank you very much, Anka, and I would now like to invite Elizabeth Mansfeld, who is the lead for the city's project area at the Alfred Herrhausen Gazelle Schaft. Thank you, Philip. And first of all, really, thank you to all which are participating and has participated for now for the three years within the task force. And first of all, thank you almost to Philip, Ricky and Emily from the London School of Economics, which set up the project, which brought us through hard times of COVID and elaborated this excellent papers with all experts. And thank you to all experts, and especially to GICET, Anka Derricks, and our Beber Commission, who were our partners within this time. And I just would like to share some observations of success factors and where the Alfred Herrhausen Gazelle Schaft stands for. And we as Alfred Herrhausen Gazelle Schaft, we have been active into urban development investigation into cities since 2004, so a long time with London School of Economics. And in the investigation into cities after the conference into with Addis Ababa in 2018, we understood and we decided we need to embrace not only the science, we need to embrace application and integrating and understanding of science with a proper field analysis. And that brought us to this first pilot of the urban age task force with the London School of Economics, LSE cities, and we, I think we need always to integrate different perspectives and never forget the local and the global. And the urban age Addis Ababa Task Force has been a pilot on the local perspective and build up platforms, platform where different dimensions and experts can be integrated and provide solutions. And I see and we have seen a high interest in this kind of model from academics and policymakers as a future engagement tool towards capacity building knowledge exchange and through this workshops and network of knowledge exchange has been built which has already led to further exchanges between experts in different cities. And, and there's a potential of building new partnerships and bridges which and the translation into research informing discussions about future developments. And I think even with COVID the digital con connectivity improved, and we were able to integrate over a long time international experts, which is really value added. Therefore, I really considerably see this kind of task force model across urban age and LSE cities network as a potential first development. And, however, we shouldn't forget within the local perspective, not the fragile political situation in Ethiopia, and which has created challenging work environment for the task force and looking from this to this global local perspective to the global dynamics and challenges, which are influencing our futures is not only be Ethiopia, it is back on the geopolitical competition. We see political instability. And in Europe, when I'm coming going, I see half my perspective from Europe, the Europe democracy is called into questions. So, we have been hardly hit by different crisis and as well hunger energy source. So it's uncertainty separation, and the increasing pace. So it, it's no longer a question of recognizing the issues, people are expecting solutions. And for the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft, it is clear that we anyone who wants to take responsibility must pre must be prepared to understand the complexity of change, and what that what we have seen with the complexity was this kind of task force. And we seek to bring together the people who can identify opportunities and develop solutions. And in this way, I saw a really empowerment of social and economic actors and scientific actors play an important role, which provide the impulses and need to put into practice the view to making forward looking decisions. And therefore, again, I would like to thank you for this practical and integrating and task force, which we have seen. And as Alfred Herrhausen of found for said, we need to say what we think, and we need to do what we say, and we then need to be what we do. And therefore, I wish and encourage all actors involved to be to continue such translating work. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Elizabeth for these thoughtful words, but also very encouraging and forward looking words. And technical colleagues tell me that I should try one last time to see whether to give a wasn't is able to hear us as he would like to come in. Let's just see whether the connection works. If I wasn't over to you. Yes, we can hear you very far away if you speak up, it will work. I'm going to make it. Thank you. I submit you to leave Michael, Cecilia, Timnit, Elizabeth and Samara, all the task force, thank you for your contribution for our city in different perspectives in sectoral issues. I'm happy to hear all these policy issues, which are thematic issue, which need to improve our city. I'm happy to hear all these things. But I do have a remark on one issue only, the issue of participation. In our context, participation is a trend for planning, it's mandatory. We do have urban management, urban planning is good for urban management. So to implement the structural plan, we use bottom up approach. We design for neighborhood design. We design for city center design. We use participatory approach for all prepared local development plans. So consider this issue as a first participatory issue. And I will agree, the whole issue that has been raised by the task force, I'm happy to hear all these things. Thank you very much. Again, that is encouraging and really important to once again come back to the participatory perspective. Let me now bring this to a close. It's clear for us as a program, the urban age program with the Alfred House and Gazeshev that of course we would have been unable to even set up the task force without our urban age conference in 2018, at which we really established not just colleagues and reliable partners in Addis Ababa, but many friends and colleagues that have been incredibly supportive and even over the last two years during those difficult times, we're allowing us to continue making hopefully a valuable contribution. And I do hope that regardless how the sort of future scenarios pan out, that those relationships have been enabled further through the task force work, that there are many new contacts that have been made and connections and trust has been built up. So we can ideally continue some of the work collaboratively and also where colleagues from Addis with the enormous wealth of information may not only contribute to the local context, but to other cities in the region and beyond. It's very clear that throughout our work at LSE cities, we are increasingly referring to mechanisms like the structure plan to a whole range of infrastructure projects that have been trialled in Addis in very different contexts, and that is being very much listened to. So I do hope that we can build on engaging with professionals and academic partners in the future, and that we will really keep a network alive, whether it's under a banner of a second phase of a task force or indeed through other type of initiatives. I do want to thank, of course, all task force members that have been incredibly patient to remain with us to continue supporting us both the internationals and our local partners. I want to thank my co-chair, Deretje Fekadu, who was the Plan Commissioner up to 2020 and who really enabled the process at the very beginning and made sure that many colleagues were activated throughout the process. I want to thank Attu Giver-Wossen, the deputy commissioner who just spoke for his support in this final phase and really encouraging to hear that you will be making use of some of this work. Our partners need a big thank you, the Alfred Herrhausen, Geserchef GIZ, without them this would have been impossible and their trust in our collective work during these uncertain times ultimately enable what we have been able to achieve. And finally, there are our two colleagues, the task force coordinators at the LSE, Emily Cruz, who I would like to thank for enabling what we have been doing. And Murgis Tadesse and Addis Ababa, who you have heard from earlier, these were the anchors of the task force really making the operations possible in the first instance. So for now, I'd like to thank you all, our participants for joining us today and I'm wishing you a good day and all the best for the coming phase. Goodbye.