 Welcome to the panel discussion on the topic, how to get inclusive growth started in fragile context. I'm Kunal Singh, the director of UNIWIDER. This event marks the launch of a new UNIWIDER policy guidebook, Teals and Development in Fragile and Confident Effective States, now available online and fully accessible on UNIWIDER's website. The policy guidebook will be presented by Eric Worker, who's a William Sehehl professor at the BD School of Business at Simon Fraser University, Canada, and non-resident senior research fellow in UNIWIDER. The presentation will be followed by a panel discussion with five eminent experts, which we chaired by Professor Patricia Justino, UNIWIDER senior research fellow, and an eminent scholar in conflict herself. By 2030, more than half of the world's poor will be living in countries characterized by fragility, conflict, and violence. Violent conflict conflict has increased to the highest level in the past three decades. Broad-based growth has the potential of delivering a double dividend for fragile and conflict affected states. Firstly, such inclusive growth processes can lift millions of the most dire living conditions that can be found anywhere in the world. Secondly, inclusive growth can lead to increased state capacity to deliver public goods that matter for development and contribute to the legitimacy of the state. By doing so, they can bring about political stability and essential precondition for a country to exit out of fragility and conflict. Unfortunately, sustained inclusive growth as politically legitimate is rarely observed in fragile and conflict affected states. So how does one get growth going in such states? In the policy guidebook, we provide a framework understanding the constraints to growth in fragile states that takes as a starting point, the premise that igniting growth in fragile states is not simply about fixing institutions. Ecocratic reforms will not work if one is not sensitive to the political context. Growth and governance interventions are inextricably linked and need to go hand in hand. The guidebook is designed to help advisors working with developing agencies as well as policymakers in fragile and conflict affected states to analyze country contexts, their own country context, and design interventions with the goal of enabling positive growth episodes that reduce fragility. The aim of the guidebook is to provide actionable levers of intervention to bring about ground reform and improve a fragile and conflict affected states chance of achieving transformative economic growth with an objective of building enduring peace and prosperity in the country. I will now invite Eric Worker to make his presentation on the framework and the policy guidebook. Eric, over to you. Thank you, Kunal, for the introduction and thank you to everyone in attendance for sharing some of your time today and looking forward to your insights on the challenge of inclusive growth in fragile states. So the work for this guidebook comes from a broader project that Kunal and I have been involved with, along with Lant Pritchett that we've been working on for a number of years, a project called Deals and Development. And in that project, we came together with a number of scholars from around the world and put together a framework and then a series of country case studies in which we took the framework and brought it to different countries around the world. And for that project, we started with three observations. The first is that the countries that we care about do not experience steady growth, the 2% per year that OECD economies like Finland or the UK might normally experience. Rather, what matters for those countries is growth episodes. In other words, a period of growth of five to 15 years in which a country grows at a normally consistent clip. And if we look at fragile countries in particular, we see that they're the slowest average growers with the highest level of variance. In other words, even though they're growing slower on average, at any given point, some of the fastest growing countries around the world are fragile. And as Kunal mentioned, institutions can't drive economic growth in the medium run. Sure, institutions are highly correlated with GDP per capita, but if you look at whether institutions today can predict growth tomorrow, there's very limited predictive power. Looking at fragile states, for example, if we take the slowest growing and the fastest growing fragile states, they have almost the identical level of basic state functions. A third insight that motivated this larger project is that policies don't imply implementation. As development advisors, we might work hard to come up with the right policy and suggest a law or set of regulations for a lower income country. But what research has found by Lantan others, is that firms don't actually face those rules, but rather a selectively enforced business environment. And that couldn't be more so than in fragile states. Go to the next slide. So what I'm gonna present today is a framework that builds off the framework in this book, available by the way for free downloads on the OUP website, in which we modify the framework to make it directly applicable to those who are working in fragile and conflict-affected states. Building off the IGC report that Adnan Khan, one of our panelists today, helped to contribute to in which they identify a number of characteristics of state fragility. And at its heart, this is a framework that is a political economy model of business government relations. And there are five moving parts. And in the guidebook and in this presentation, I'll briefly take you through those five different parts. But as you'll notice, we bring on some of the latest research over the last two decades in political economy and development and try to bring that into an actionable space that you as policymakers and advisors can hopefully sink your teeth into. So of the five moving parts, there's two that represent the political and the business interests. And those interact with one another to drive a set of government actions. The first set of actions is around the investment environment and the second is around investments in state capacity. And then together those interests working through those government actions, along with any external events or exogenous forces lead to a growth episode. But importantly, that growth episode then has a feedback loop back into those original business or economic and political interests as some constituencies are empowered by the growth episode while others will recede in power. Next slide, please. So the first piece of the framework that I'll describe is the rent space, which is the variable that we use to capture the business or economic interests in the country. And the key driving motivation here is that one shouldn't think of the private sector as a monolith with a single set of interests but rather different firms have different interests and different demands on government which will lead to different government actions in the future. And to simplify that a little bit, we divide the private sector into four different quadrants along two dimensions. The first is distinguishing what power business makes its profits. At one side, we have businesses that make their money through market competition that is through a better good or service than other businesses in a competitive marketplace. And in the other side are those businesses that achieve their profits through discretionary government actions that lead to regulatory rents such as allowing a monopoly to occur. And on the other dimension, are businesses in that country to sell stuff to the rest of the world using local factors of production or are they selling to the domestic market? So that gives us four types of firms. And just to take an example, workhorse firms, those that are in competitive sectors selling to the domestic market are gonna make demands of the state such as for better rules, more common infrastructure as well as investments in people's education that can allow them to be more productive. In contrast, power brokers, those that are selling to the domestic market but gaining their profitability through regulatory rents might actually benefit from a convoluted business environment that might show up as one of the lower ranked countries on the world's doing business indicators because that will provide barriers to entry that will allow them to take advantage of their unique relationships with those in power. And looking to fragile states, we're likely to see a higher share of renties and power brokers, those firms that are likely to advocate for the types of policies that will not lead to inclusive growth. Next slide, please. Our political interests is captured by the well-known construct of the political settlement that has been used in development circles for nearly two decades. Did John and Putzel summarize Mushta Khan's work in this space describing the political settlement as the balance or distribution of power between contending social groups and classes on which any state is based? Now, as an economist, I think of the political settlement as I sort of imagine a bunch of political actors who have what Khan calls some underlying holding power and you don't need 100% of all political elites in a coalition in order to govern. Rather, some subset of those will be governing and they just have to provide enough carrots and sticks to those who are on the outside to sustain that political settlement. Now, if we look at fragile states, one of the characteristics as mentioned in the IGC report is that violence or by non-state actors is present. And what we found looking across several case studies is that rather than always leading to instability, violence can also help sustain a political settlement by allowing those who are inside to use coercive action in order to maintain access to politics and also enabling the business actors who they can basically tap on to provide political finance in exchange for protection. A second feature of state fragility that's relevant to the political settlement is that societal divisions are more common in fragile states. And that just makes a political settlement harder to form and less stable when it's there. And next slide. So now we've got our economic or business and our political interests which feed back with one another by demands on government and then the needs of political actors to undertake specific actions. And one of those areas in which they undertake actions is in the investment environment which we capture through a concept we call the deals space. Here, recognizing that it's deals, in other words, firm or investment-specific arrangements that describe the business environment in fragile states. Now, we distinguish between ordered deals, that is deals that once made between a state and a firm, for example, are likely to be honored once they're made and disordered deals. That is the interests will come together and the deal will only be in place so long as those interests remain there. We also distinguish between closed deals, that is deals that are only available to those who are closely aligned with the regime and open deals that are available for anyone who's willing to play ball. An example of open disordered deals would be in the informal sector where small businesses are able to come and transact their business, perhaps as part of a membership in a loose-formed coalition with one inspector coming from the government in one week and another in a couple of weeks, but that doesn't allow those firms the sort of runway to be able to make long-term and significant investments. What we find is that many of the deals in fragile states are both closed that is only available to some as well as disordered which leads to a complex environment if you're looking to make more complicated investments. We also find, however, that across the rent space or across the private sector, there are some industries that faced more open deals than others as well as more ordered deals than others. And next slide, please. Okay, so we've got our business and political interests leading to government actions in the investment environment. And then the second category in which government actions are occurring are in investments in state capacity, specifically essential functions like infrastructure, education, and healthcare. Now, in some takes on state fragility where this is the common feature of state fragility of having low state capacity, the problem is seen as one of lack of capability or ability. And in our framework that couldn't be farther from the case, rather we see low investments in state capacity as a deliberate response to the political logic of the business and the political elite. In the case of fragile states, there might not be a demand for it from business actors, power brokers and wrongties who dominate the space in fragile states don't require more effective inputs of human or physical capital for profitability. Similarly from the political side, the political settlement might be sustained through repression and patronage rather than competence and performance. If that's the case, none of the elite are really seeking to increase investments in state capacity. Next slide, please. So now we've got our interests and our government actions which lead to growth episodes. And we're not just interested in the change in economic growth or GDP per capita, that's one of the features of the growth episode would be the number of years and the average rate of economic growth of an episode. But we're also interested in two other features of the episode. One is the change in legitimacy that the government has to undertake what scholars would call coercive action. And then the other is the change in structural transformation that is going from producing fewer and simpler things to more and more complex goods and services. Now our research in the book project showed that when we observe a growth acceleration that is a growth episode that suddenly fast or medium coming out of a period of stagnation or decline, that that comes usually from a switch from disordered to ordered deals. In contrast growth maintenance going from one positive growth episode to another tends to be driven by open and ordered deals. So in other words, what starts growth leading to order might not perpetuate, which is open. State capacity we don't find necessarily as a driver of the GDP growth rate itself as I mentioned earlier, but it's more likely to be involved in the legitimacy as well as the level of structural transformation as those are investments in the underlying factors of production of capital and human capital. Now looking at growth episodes in fragile states how could we make sense of observing a country growing at eight or 10% per year and then possibly seeing that country return to state fragility? Well, in our framework, there are what we call negative feedback loops that bring about negative consequences for increase of growth. So the growth could be driven by closed deals that are favoring Ranche and power broker firms which themselves aren't demanding much in terms of inclusive reforms from the state leading to limited investment in state capacity. And then you have a growth episode with reduced legitimacy and no or negative progress on structural transformation. So if a country growing like this over five to 10 years if you can imagine that feeding back into the business interests we would see further empowerment of those same segments of the economy that are not demanding inclusive growth. And in the political settlement reinforcing the existing status quo which all will reinforce the drivers of fragility in the first place. Next slide. So we promised some ideas for policies and I'll leave this to most of this to the panelists as well as if you'd like to download the guide and look there's some suggestions in each of the different areas on potential policy interventions and also things to avoid. But let me just mention the first one here which is to consider sector development activities in workhorse and magician industries those in which businesses are competing against one another. And the idea here isn't just to create new income per capita which could be create some sort of social surplus though that's a good thing but rather the motivation in our framework is to create new constituencies that is new business interests who will be in favor of inclusive reform hopefully demanding improvements to state capacity and a more open deals environment. Thanks very much. Thank you very much Eric for such a close provoking presentation. And thank you Conal for the kind introduction. For those of you that join a bit later my name is Patricia Giustino. I'm a senior research fellow here at UNYWIDE and I have the great honor of chairing the next panel with five exciting speakers and experts on this area of research. I'll let me start by introducing them to you. First we have Adnan Khan who is the academic director and professor in practice at the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics. Adnan previously served as research and policy director of the International Growth Center and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. We then have Aloisius Uche Ordu who is a senior fellow and director of the African Growth Initiative in the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution. He held previous senior positions with the African Development Bank and the World Bank. Our third panelist is Ankh Hovla. Ankh is also of some of the most influential academic studies on conflict and she's currently a professor of development research at the University of Konstanz in Germany where she holds the prestigious Alexander von Huwold professorship. In fourth we have Frank Busquay who is the deputy director at the Institute for Capacity Development at the IMF. He was also previously the senior director of the World Bank's Fragility Conflict and Violence Group. And finally we're very happy to have with us Miko Martini. Miko is a political governance advisor with the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office in Somalia. Welcome all and thank you so much for joining us for this important discussion on how to promote growth in some of the most difficult settings in the world. I'm gonna start this panel discussion with Admir and then follow with the other panelists in the order of the introductions. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ask a question to which one of you and we agree that everyone would speak for about five minutes. And in the meantime, all participants and welcome for joining us which I see you have a very large number of attendent attendees. Please add your questions to the Q&A function. The chat is not working so you need to add your questions to the Q&A and I'll be monitoring those during the panel and then open up the discussion after all the panelists interventions. So let me then start with Admir. Admir, we just heard Eric reflecting on the challenges of establishing inclusive growth in conflict affected in fragile countries. And you yourself have called the very influential report on escaping the fragility trap by the LSE Oxford Commission on straight fragility growths and development. Based on what you have heard from Eric and your own work, what do you think makes economic growth and development initiatives so challenging in fragile states? Over to you. Thank you, Patricia. And thanks to the organizers for inviting me and congratulations on making a very important contribution. But given the names on this report, Eric, Kunal, and Landt, one couldn't expect any less. So thank you, Patricia, for asking the question. I don't need to motivate the question that fragile states are important. And but let me start that we know very little. We have a very limited understanding of both about how to generate economic growth in developing countries in general, but fragile states in particular and how to go about the business of state building it. So basically we are looking at a history of mostly failure. And it could be a failure of national sector, but I would also say in case of fragile states, it's mostly also a failure of international sector. The strategy that we have been generally following has not worked. And in economic growth also, we have very limited understanding of what ignites economic growth, how it is maintained. And also in terms of thinking about a structured analytical framework for thinking about episodes of economic growth. And that's why I think this particular book makes an important contribution. We do have a large literature on economic growth from solo, the endogenous growth models and others. The question is how do we apply those to the developing countries and especially the fragile countries where as Eric mentioned, the question of economic growth is inextricably linked to the other dimensions. It's basically a syndrome of fragility, an environment where we have weak state capacity, weak state legitimacy. We have also very limited private sector participation. And I will also say that partly our limited understanding is because of the flawed models or the understanding that we have about these countries. And especially coming to fragile societies and one quick clarification, I think as mentioned in the report is at least some of the international works is obsessed about this binary distinction between fragile and non-fragile. I was glad to see that the book and we also do that have the same approach. Thanks of fragility as a continuum and the dimensions of fragility and not just like either or a zero one state. But it's partly also because although we have some technocratic knowledge, in fragile states, it's the reality of politics also which has to be seen with the technocratic knowledge that we have on economic growth. And that's where lies the, especially in the policy implications of it, lies most of the failure of how to kickstart growth. Basically, what we have been doing is to infer how to kickstart growth or how to build a successful state from the current characteristics of successful states. What I would call the curse of Denmark. If Denmark has done it, it's a successful state. Let's copy Denmark. Now Denmark hasn't become Denmark by being Denmark. It has gone through a very messy history of making all kinds of adjustment, political settlements, adjustments over the period of centuries. And ignoring that, what I'm, is completely counterproductive. What I'm trying to say is an approach that ignores history, initial conditions and politics is not going to work. Both history and initial conditions and politics are inextricably linked. And that's where I think this book makes an important contribution in linking the literature on economic growth with the literature on politics and institutions, both Asim Adlur Robinson, North Wallace Weingast, but also Dijon Putsul and Khan and taking it forward and having an analytical framework that links those together. Why this matters in practice? Let me give an example. My colleague on the Frijal State's work, Rafat Alakali, was a minister in the post Arab Spring government in Yemen, a government facing huge challenges, very limited, like legitimacy, but also facing crisis. And there was a huge, very high citizen expectations about what the government could deliver, coupled with very limited capacity of what the government could actually deliver. And the reason these call it like these flawed frameworks could be debilitating is the government had resources, some resources, but they were asked, in this case, by international community to come up with almost a perfect PPP law, a law on public-private partnership, before they could actually spend that money. And so after a couple of years later, after many, many iterations of that law, yes, they came up with, maybe I wouldn't call it perfect, but as close to perfect as they could get. But the perfect was the enemy of the good. By that time, they had lost their political legitimacy. The government was out of power by the rebels who exactly used this argument, here is the government that doesn't deliver. And the rest, as you know, is history. I could go with examples like this from other contexts also. I worked in Africa quite a lot, South Sudan before the Civil War, one of the major donors was forcing them to adopt a carbon reduction as their core strategy. And at that time, South Sudan had many other priorities as you can imagine. And similarly, I can give example from other contexts also. So I like this book with the realism that it brings along with the framework. And also with the country-state case studies. To me, it's more of a case of like, given the messy world of politics, how do we think of, call it, honorable growth enhancing political deals that are actually honored in practice exposed? So that's one way of thinking about it. I like that quote a lot. I also have a couple of, call it like questions, the queries or reflection points of reflection that I hope Kunal and Eric, whether today or later could come up with something. One is this book focuses primarily on kick-starting and maintaining economic growth while taking the other dimensions of fragility as given. And so one question is, how do we think of this? How do the authors think of this interaction between the initial conditions, between the politics and the economics? This could vary at different times. But in other words, how much can we maintain or think of this separability between the other conditions and about the economic strategy which could be growth promoting? This could obviously vary with the conditions and I give you one example so to make it maybe more complete. One of the most insightful testimonies in our commission on fragility came from the Tunisian minister, Hedi Larbi in the post Arab Spring government where again they had very limited no government of national unity, limited legitimacy, faced by Islamists on the outside, huge pressure on them and very, very limited capacity to deliver. And how do we prioritize? And many from the international and other communities came up with long list of things that they could do to promote growth, to promote like other things. They had very, very, very limited political space. They ultimately ended up doing something which was not on any of those lists, which was they ended up as their top priority for the next limited time, few months, as cleaning the mosque. So an agenda that the outsider, the Islamic student object to which gave them some political legitimacy. In other words, an example of doing something that gives them quick win, small step that give them some legitimacy and some space that they would build on for doing longer term things. And I'm interested in knowing from how do the authors think about this like the medium-run growth strategy along with how do we build the political space for doing this? My last comment is again along the same lines about the policy implications of their work which I personally find is quite interesting. In other words, like in thinking about how to move from an unstable disorder and political environment marked by disorder deals to a stable political environment marked by ordered deals. What concrete actions can be taken by policy makers? Again, the book talks about principles at the right which is the right approach because you can't be too prescriptive about how each country would do. I agree. I think that's the right. And the specific examples in the trip has go into more details. But even at the level of the principles, how do we think about like about the policy space and who is the audience? What role can international actors and other actors can do and what role can national actors can do? Which is also, I would also say the book and I think Eric also mentioned a little bit which is what concrete actions can be taken by insiders both in normal times. And here my, this is more of what I find quite useful is not only the framework that the book has used, I find all of those like fascinating and very useful but also using a Basile-Bersam framework of how do we build state capacity in environments marked by fragility and how do we move, escape the fragility trap by making specific investments and under what conditions different societies make those investments in legal capacity and in collective capacity, in fiscal capacity and how does that promote economic growth? So some reflections along those lines would be great. Let me stop it. Thank you. Again, I congratulate the authors for making a very important contribution. Perfect. Thank you very much and you've made my life easier because some of the questions are also part of the questions I have for the panelists. Also we'll make Konal and Eric's life a bit easier also answering some of these. Let's then move to Aloysius. And you have a wealth of experience working in some of the context that Eric and Konal mentioned in their piece. And one of the issues that was emphasized in Eric's presentation is the role of elites which also links to what I just discussed as well. And I wonder if we could explore this a little bit more. In your view, how should state capacity be developed when elite interest may not necessarily align with developing state capacity? There may be an inherent interest in keeping state capacity low. What are your thoughts and in your experience have there been any successful policies that could address this challenge which is pretty prevalent in a lot of the context we're talking about? All right, thank you. Thank you very much. And first of all, let me thank Eric for the presentation. And of course, my friend Konal for inviting me to this panel. It's great to see the other panelists and to appreciate the point already indicated by Adnan. First and foremost, the topic we're dealing with today from the perspective of the African continent is a very, very serious one. Because what are you talking of the IMF? You're talking of the World Bank? You're talking of the African Development Bank? Or any other institution? It's quite clear that the largest numbers of fragile states are on the African continent. This is clearly a very, very serious problem. The Institute of Security Studies in South Africa, for example, in their projection, estimated that by 2050, more than one billion Africans, about half of the projected population of the continent at that time would be living in fragile states or situations of fragility. This is really scary. And it puts, it's quite numbing when we think of the issues that Eric outlined in the approaches in the book, which I found very, very helpful. And when you look at the fact that these many people are going to be living in fragile states or situations of fragility on the African continent, it has tremendous consequences, not just for the African continent itself, but for the global economy as a whole. Back in the 19th century, 12 million able-bodied Africans were marched out of the continent in slavery. Today, we have many, many African youths leaving Africa on a treacherous journey, many of them ending up in the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea and those who make it to Europe and elsewhere, the United States, et cetera, for in search of better life. Why are they doing this? A number of factors that encapsulated in the point Eric made in the book and with the other authors, state capacity is weak in their countries of origin. Take my own country, Nigeria. The concentration of fragility was the Northeast because of the problems with Boko Haram. Today, you see that fragility has moved from the Northeast of the country to the Northwest and now there is also the challenge between the nexus between climate change and fragility and as farmers move south, all kinds of insecurity. Whether you're talking of Northern Mozambique, you're talking of the Central African Republic or the central part of the continent and of course the Sahela, say hope. So this is the subject matter of this book is really, really important because for the continent in particular, as I mentioned, the challenges are enormous and it's not obvious to me that we've found a magic bullet and then your question is very clear that the interests of the elite and I'm not even sure that we found a compelling example where the elites themselves have done something to address the issue of fragility. One that comes to mind, of course, is we would go back to 1994 when clearly if you are talking of fragile states on the African continent, you could not include a wonder, right? But fast forward to today, you know, back to your question, Patricia, fast forward to today, the elite, the leadership of the country, the recognition that state failure is at the heart, the institutional failure to deliver goods and services for the children, the women and men of these countries. It's at the heart of the whole thing. And so we could cite that, if you like, as an example of where elites have actually taken this seriously and transformed their country by building basically institutions of governance, restoring the institutions of government. If you take side by side next door with Burundi, where that has not happened, then anybody's list you care to mention on fragility, Burundi's included, but Rwanda is not. So that's directly to your question. So some of those characteristics in terms of armed conflict and violence that threaten citizens, the inequality, the exclusion of a majority of the population, and of course, weak governance. These are explosive cocktails, the so-called fragility trap or syndrome as others have referred to it. And I agree with Anand, particularly that history, we ought to learn from history. Important to consolidate state security, that's what we've learned from Europe and elsewhere. Important to build capacity, that's what we're also learning as in the case of Rwanda, et cetera. The transformation to greater inclusion. These are all lessons of history from all world regions. But in Africa, all these things are happening simultaneously. And the state is constantly on the challenge. A couple of the challenges Eric mentioned, and I see Frank is also here because most of the work he did, not to steal his thunder at the World Bank, basically hammer home this point. These countries, these things are happening simultaneously. So where does Africa go from here? It's really the question, what to do? First of all, fragility is not cast on cement, right? It's not cast on cement because if you have domestic ownership and commitment, which is the starting point to move the agenda forward, then things happen as you contrast South Sudan and say Rwanda, right? That domestic ownership and commitment is missing in South Sudan. Whereas that wasn't the case in Rwanda. There are other, there's no shortage of what international financial institutions should do. In fact, many, many years ago in 2014, the African Development Bank itself Rwanda Donald Kabiruka commissioned a panel which was led by Ellen Johnson-Seliff at that time on what to do on the fragile states of the continent. Whether you look at World Bank's own recommendations, IMF, these institutions have made similar recommendations, which is where I find this book that Eric outlined today very, very helpful because the political economy dimensions often at the heart of the matter. Let me just end with one remark and that is really a question for the authors themselves because there is this sense that we often see fragility not as a, I mean, we see fragility as a category of states, we list them. But in my experience on the African continent, it's important that we don't see fragility as a category of states as such, but as a risk inherent in the development process itself. Because when I left Nigeria, Nigeria was not a fragile state. When I talk of my own country today that are just situations of fragility, raring its ugly head everywhere. So that as we pass through these development processes, what do the authors see in terms of the classification of the main culture, rather than here are a bunch of fragile states? Perhaps it's a risk inherent in development. I'll leave it at that. Thank you very much. Thank you very much and I couldn't read more. I mean, we have plenty of examples of developed countries with pockets of fragility and conflict. But talking that for now, let me move to Anke. Anke, you've researched many of these challenging topics for many years and an interesting thing is, or maybe a trade-off that we might be observing here is in the literature, we often have shown that adverse economic shocks can increase the type of violence. However, can economic growth interventions reduce that threat since effectively higher economic growth may increase the overall pie, hence the rent space that Eric referred to, and potentially also increase the threat of violence from actors outside the existing political settlement? How do we square the circle? Thank you very much. Sir, this is a hard act to follow on Adnan and Aloysius. Maybe he shouldn't have left Nigeria and it would have been more stable, sir, as a question of causality here. And of course, on the sidelines, I've sought off, I was still in Oxford when Adnan and others were busy with the LSE Oxford Fragility Commission and produced a big report and also a lot of interesting countries studies. So what I liked about the LSE Oxford approach and also, so while I was in Oxford, Lant Pritchard, so I became more familiar with Lant's ideas on deals and development. So what I like about both approaches is that this isn't economists sort of solving a problem. But because in economics, a lot of things are easy. You need more investment in physical and human capital. You need technological progress and voila, you've got growth. I mean, we understand these models, yeah? But at the core of these problems, and this is what I like about these sort of fragility or approaches to fragility is our political problems. And unless we solve these and tackle these, we will not have growth. So we need to work across the disciplines and really learn from each other what expertise everybody can bring to the table. And I think the sort of complete dominance of economists in this area has got to stop. And I think these are very good signs, yeah, that people are opening up and sort of saying, okay, these are the problems we could use for the address, but there are other issues we need to sort of open up on. So what I find also helpful as a way of thinking about things is a very simple triangle that was proposed by Sam Boles and Wendy Carlin, published last year, where they look at governments and markets, so these sort of main elements that you were talking about today, but then also this sort of relationship to civil society. And Adnan was already talking about this, yeah, you need buy-in and trust, and you have to reinforce these sort of these deals that have to be honored. It's sort of our honor ideal, because I think you are trustworthy because it's a reciprocal arrangement. You can't regulate everything. You need buy-in from the population, yeah, from civil society. And how do you do this? Well, different things will work in different places. And Adnan already cited the Clean the Mosques initiative, yeah, that incidentally also didn't cost very much. So it isn't necessarily about investing a lot of money. You need to find an entry point. So what are the main functions of a state? So a state has to provide security and a state has to provide something that enables individuals to lift themselves out of poverty. And of course, these two things are interrelated, yeah, and a lot of people are, you know, coming in rickety boats and try and cross the Sahara Desert and are being terribly traumatized. Even those who make it and don't die on the way, they are enormously in debt to their own families, to other people have been very often brutalized during their journey. And why are they coming? Because they neither have peace nor prosperity where they come from, yeah, or to varying degrees. And incidentally, of course, you know, there's sort of like continuum of fragility is an important way of thinking about it. Okay, but for me at the core of this is really how do you get security? And in post-conflict situations, you very often have an opportunity, a window of opportunity to have security sector reform. Because very often the army and the police are part of the problem, they're not solutions to the problem. So you need to sort of start there, but none of these security sector reforms can be successful unless they're embedded in a wider political agreement here, yeah. Now, rebuilding an army. So for example, in Somalia, the army isn't really totally on the state side. There are a lot of, there's a lot of infiltration. You don't have an army that really wants to fight al-Shabaab and so you won't really get security here. So, but in principle, you should be able, in terms of building an institution and building it on merit, the army should be a good starting place. Because soldiers, you can, they have to be young and fit and capable of fulfilling these tasks. So it might be a very good exemplary institution within your state apparatus, because I mean, virtually every country has got a standing army to sort of instill the idea that there should be recruited on merit. Police is very often much more problematic in fragile countries. Typically they are over-armored because the worry about the elites is always they will be toppled over. So the army has got a slightly different role to how we would maybe like to have it in a non-fragile situation. The police is very often seen as corrupt and incapable of sort of unwilling to stop violence. And this can be very dangerous because if you look at Latin America there, the danger doesn't come from armed conflict any longer. I mean, it used to be a big problem, but it comes from within it. So hollowing out of the state, it's the narco-trafficking that is so lucrative, and you can't really do it without help from within the state. And parts of West Africa are already there, I think, where there's a lot of trafficking of illegal drugs going on. Okay, so the question was, so it's quite clear that these adverse shocks, as we've also heard from Aloysius, adverse shocks give you armed conflict. We've done lots of people have done research on this, but there's an asymmetry. So if we've got growth, do we then, I think there's an asymmetry, sorry. So if we get growth, do we then stop the whole process? And I think that's unfortunately less likely to be the case because in a lot of, let me stay with African countries, a lot of African countries have seen growth because of primary commodity booms. And that does not give you that sort of inclusive growth. And it also doesn't give you a good opportunity for policy reform. Policy reform happens in times of need, not boom. And so I think you shouldn't let a good crisis go to waste as the silly joke goes. And sort of try and... So in a sad way, this doesn't help you to sort of generate that this growth that came more or less from a global perspective to help you with your more localized problem. Let me end on one thought that I find quite important to discuss. As we are going forward with greening our economy and digitalizing after this pandemic or through this pandemic and after the pandemic, we will need a lot of natural resources, so rare earths. They're not rare, it's just, they are everywhere in the world, but you just profitably mine them in a few places. And for all these lithium batteries, there are quite a few places in Africa where there's going to be more mining. And that might be very good for global climate change, but it might cause even more local instability. And I'd like us all to be mindful of that and address these issues as we move forward to greening the global economy. Thank you. Thank you very much, okay? And I'll park for a moment at your point about growth and come back to that in a minute. But let me now move to Frank. Frank, you led the World Bank's Fertility Conflict and Violence Group at the time when the bank moved more decisively towards working in these political difficult environments and now at the IMF. In your view, what is the role of development partners including natural donors in promoting growth and stability in these contexts and what can effectively be done to support economic growth or different types of economic growth that we just heard discussing without increasing the risk of violence? Sure, I will have the answer to these questions. But thank you very much, Patricia, for inviting me. Very happy to be at this event, joining some old colleagues, not all by the age, but from the provenance institution. So very happy to see you all, really. Now, two quick points I would like to make. And by the way, I actually fully agree with many, many points that have been raised before. I think the whole point about the Fajiti trap, the whole point about having a tailored approach, looking at drivers of Fajiti, not making some assumptions that make sense in some less fragile context, I will come back to it. So I just want to already say where I stand on this notion. Humility is also important. I don't think, I think we unfortunately have more failures and difficulties, at least in a short medium term, then success and recognizing the leadership and the momentum like Professor Coley used to say is actually critical. So already, so that you know where I stand here, basically the some of the key principle that I think are quite important. Two quick points because I think it was a little bit raised by Alousius, but I would like to come back to it, especially at the time of COVID-19. I mean, if you look at what happened over the past decades, you really have a level of violence that have been at their 30 year peak. You really have, we have about today 80 million people that are forced displaced. I think the last statistic that I saw is that the world population living 60 kilometers from a major conflict event had doubled to 220 million since 2007. So the situation was actually quite already serious. Now with COVID-19, it's actually even worse. When you look at the conclusion that we just did some internal analysis, you have debt and inflation that are really rising. I have the numbers here, public debt in federal states rose by almost 16% points to 76% of GDP last year. And the debt as well have been increasing in all those countries. So the whole point is that today, and that's why this event is so timely, federal states, and I will come back to the definition and categorization as well. But in any case, whatever list you take, they are really a significant risk offering behind non-FCS. And it's not only about economic aspects, it's the whole point is that you have countries that are impacted by fragility, conflict of violence or active conflict. They really have a new threat posed by the COVID-19 which is exacerbating some current grievances, inequalities and gaps in institutional capacity. So really the key question for all actors today is how to help authorities, countries to build back better. We can talk about green recovery. We can talk also about inclusive growth and making sure that we tackle key grievances. I think it was mentioned just now by anchor. It's during tough time that you also can take some focus on some key reforms. Just on these notions about the categorization for federal states, non-federal states, I think actually the key point is for national and for international actors is to focus on those countries that are not yet fragile. Looking at Birkin Faso eight years ago, which was on no list, whatever list you can consider, but basically you could see that definitely there was a potential for increasing inequalities. And then when you can look at the end of the day, all the non-state actors, Islamist groups, they are coming to a space where there is actually a lack of support from authorities and lack of social contracts. And therefore very important to look at this early warning system, to look at this trend in inequalities. It's not only poverty, we know it from the Arab Spring. I think it was mentioned when you mentioned also when it was done with Adil Abi Indonesia and so on. And the whole point is to say, how can international actors not focus just on fragile states, but focus on the non-fragile states and look low income, middle income, what are some of the trend and how can different actors with different mandate can actually focus on those issue before it leads to an escalation of violence and conflict. So you see, I'm not too much into where we have a list that's really the key list to be adopted worldwide. The opposite, there is a continuum. Obviously it goes low income, middle income. Why do some institutions have those lists to make it super clear? Because at the end of the day, it helps to focus an institution on a specific set of countries that really have, as we have heard right now, a different type of issue. When there is no security, no rule of law, significance, government challenge, yes, this actually requires a tailored approach. And that actually leads me to my last point, which is to say, what does it mean? It means that in this context, it's very important to recognize the importance of the drivers of fragility that need to be embedded when you design program. The bank, as you may know, is now asked to carry out what we call risk-resistant assessment in all federal states. This is good, because at the end of the day, you need to ensure that when you design program of development, but there will also financing program from the fund and other key actors, you are going to fully understand what are the source of resilience, what are the key drivers of fragility. At the end of the day, it's not only about macroeconomic stability, it's about inclusive job and helping countries to exit fragility. And the whole point is, how can we better tackle all international actors, those key drivers of fragility. I think there are a few, about the point about tailoring the support and that's why there is some list. It's also recognizing the importance to adapt the support to the environment. When you're looking, and that's really the whole point about tailoring. So it means that, for instance, when you're going to have the need for reform, you need to obviously look at gradual pace for fiscal adjustment. They will need to take into account the capacity, the vulnerabilities, but also what are the costs needed for cohesion building initiatives. For the whole point about focusing on those countries in at this time, is actually like I was mentioning, Professor Coley, who is always insisting rightly on it, is about looking at the pivotal times. Reform may be good, but may not be actually the right recommendation at this time. And therefore trying to better understand again, the political economy, drivers of fragility, and that's why cooperation between all actors, even you maintain actors, the bank, the firm, bilateral agency is so important to have a well-informed and good understanding about the situation on the ground and be able to have a tailored approach when pushing for reforms or providing financing. So I will just stop here, but I think my message is three, four. One, today is actually getting worse with COVID-19. If not only in terms of economic situation, it's actually in terms of exacerbating inequalities. So we talk a lot about divergence, divergence between countries, but also within countries. And my second point is to say more and more, I'm very happy to see this, you see more about the importance of humility, recognizing the importance of partnership, meaning having more presence on the ground, making sure that we focus more on the how and not the what, making sure that we can leverage assessment for all the organizations, especially focusing on the political economy, drivers of fragility, and ensuring that we have a tailored approach, meaning that fully consistent of this recognition of the situation on the underground and the different constraints that countries are facing and something that could work very well in Denmark, which was mentioned, that's why I mentioned again, may not be at all appropriate at a specific time for another countries. Let me stop here at the stage. Thank you, thank you very much. And picking up on those points, let me now turn to Nicole. Nicole, the SCDO country office in Somalia has, I assume, to grapple with these difficult questions at the very practical level on a daily basis, and therefore pragmatism may be more important than ideal policies, which is a point that has been made by almost all panelists. All panelists have also mentioned by now the issue of quality of growth. In your opinion, is there a difference between good growth and bad growth in the sense of growth that leads to a further reduction in political legitimacy and state capacity? And can we prevent bad growth at all? Or are there shades of bad growth that we can support provided that violence can be prevented? Yeah, thank you for that great and very tricky question and also to Kunal and Eric and the team for inviting me to participate here. I think much of what I will say about this really picks up on the excellent points that have already been very eloquently made by the panel so far. I mean, I think the fundamental thing to say here and really is picked up very clearly in the framework that Eric presented is that growth, of course, can be bad in that it can be part of a system that retains instability. And I think this is the sort of fundamental point that I would want to make, which is that growth is essentially a reflection of existing political behavior. I think Adnan made that point as well. It's not separate from this, but the deals on the table both drive and then in turn are driven by these dynamics in this sort of mutually reinforcing set of relationships. And so we should probably not be all that surprised that we're political dynamics are unsettled and benefit from instability. That growth is a part of why that is the case. In trying to think about this and the sort of work that we've done in this space, I think there are sort of over, I would suppose a number of overlapping circumstances or sort of criteria. And these are picked up very well by Eric and others that when our present together would give a pretty good indication that a context is in this sort of negative feedback loop domain. So I think the first, and these have been said already, but it's the presence of a sort of narrow elite bargain or a political settlement that is pretty informed where elites are still vying for control. Two, where governance structures aren't really accountable to the public where citizens aren't the main source of legitimacy per se. Three is where security apparatus is very fragmented or where elites or private actors can deploy violence as a tool for where the state is new, is very weak or where you're dealing with a rentier state, which is certainly the case where I work. And finally, where you see these rents clustered in so-called power broker and rentier growth sectors as articulated in this framework without real scope for deriving profit from more competitive growth areas. I recognize there's probably other criteria, but I think when these things overlay, these are big red flags that we should be really paying attention to. And in these contexts, growth is probably a source of contestation and maybe generating rents into a system that is going to disincentivize the opening up of the political settlement or the establishment of the rule of law. And I just wanna touch briefly, as you mentioned at work on Somalia where I've worked for four years most recently, but in total six years. And I think this is really well illustrated in the Somali context. I mean, here you see rents very much clustered in these natural monopolies and there's a sort of fragile elite bargain which has predicated essentially on a division of spoils and a sort of clan-based power sharing arrangement, which agrees sort of ostensibly that dominant clans will enjoy relatively monopolistic control over rents in relative geographic territories. And those parties to this agreement, more or less have arrived in this because they have the ability to use and deploy violence. The state can't really check that. I think Anke made that point about Somalia, but in fact the state is actually often uses what limited access it has to a security apparatus to fuel these internal squabbles and shore up its own control in the system. So any rents that elites can seize upon really reinforce a desire to avoid establishing the rule of law or the sharing of power beyond this narrow group. I should just say quickly that this context is particularly marked by the presence of al-Shabaab which isn't always true in fragile states and is a powerful actor that plays into this political economy. And the sort of cumulative effect is that this essentially prevents and constrains in any really practical way any means for competitive or productive growth and that reinforces there's reliance on the capture of rents. So in Somalia fragility, it's not a consequence, it's retained with intent by these vested financial interests and it's secured to the use of threat of periodic political violence and conflict. And so I think that kind of brings us to this question of so what can we do about it? I mean, I think the question of prevention is really tricky. Where you see most of these dynamics you're probably already in the pot boiling and it's a question about how we incrementally make things better. I think Frank's point about humility is really important. There are no easy wins here. It's literally systemic. But I guess just to offer a few thoughts as we have been trying to think a little bit creatively about these things that I know others are as well. I mean, I think first cause there are no easy wins we need to really be good at and better at making sure our ambitions are realistic. In the context where we engage do we have actually not just a good sense of what Denmark looks like but what that next incremental step would look like? Do we have a vision for that ourselves? I think the second point is just to think about as we have these visions around trying to break away from these negative feedback loops and diversify into more competitive sectors this really needs to be done in recognition of these underlying power dynamics because if they're not addressed and worked with and through they can create new sources of conflict. I think the third thing is that in places where these entrenched dynamics exist an important bit of this is to keep a keen eye out to opportunities that may emerge but recognize that these will come with risks. And I keep thinking about the energy transition in particular and others have mentioned this. I mean, that could be an opportunity enforcing elites to look for new sources of generating rents in particularly in resource-dependent conflict affected states but equally that transition may encourage even shorter term rent seeking behavior. The next point I think I would just want to make is around thinking about whether there are entry points to reduce constraints placed in more competitive sectors. For instance, overlapping taxation, international sanctions and trade regimes, security challenges, all of these may constrain more competitive sources of generating profits themselves. So there may be entry points there. I think there's also within this and linked to this a point about revisiting and sense checking the role of the state itself and how we approach the sort of project of state building which can play into and exacerbate this dynamic. And finally, I think I would just say, there are big questions in this space. I think others have said this, but I think there's just a fundamental question about, is this pernicious cycle just part of a longer, non-linear but ultimately progressive process or not? Are these bad growth feedback loops actually perhaps not viable for the state in the longer term? And then I think there's a question to all of us is whether we are structured and set up and incentivizing ourselves in our own institutions to continue to ask us questions and make these assessments in a more kind of collective and collaborative way. Thank you. I'll leave it there. Thank you very much. And thank you to all for these great interventions. We're actually running a little bit late but then we have a lot of questions. So what I thought I would do is compiles the questions into sort of groups. So apologies if I'm not asking exactly the same question that you posted, but I'll try to compile them into topics that will be manageable for the speakers. And then I will give the pass on again to Eric and Kunal to react to both the questions from the participants and from the panelists. And then give everyone the opportunity to sort of come in and pick and choose whatever questions you'd like. So I can see sort of three broad areas of questions here. One, and it was asked by quite a few people is about the prerequisites for fiscal and monetary policy mix and also support for other sectors, for instance SMEs and other sectors. What are these prerequisites? And I guess this is also a question about prioritization and policy sequencing as pointed out by Adnan. So I was wondering if we could reflect a bit more on that. There is also a question about COVID. And I think it was Frank that already brought this issue into the discussion. I mean, as a response to the UN Secretary General, we saw a series of peace accords coming up, ceasefires coming up immediately after the start of COVID but by October, November conflict have returned to previous levels and it's probably getting worse now. At least in certain areas, that's what the date is showing. It's getting worse, violence is increasing. And this is because it's opened the opportunities for several opportunities to armed groups and various groups outside of the settlement. Are there also opportunities being open for inclusive economic growth in a situation like this? What's the role of COVID in promoting certain types of growth in fragile countries? And finally, there is actually quite a relevant question here on corruption and point well made that corruption is multi-dimensional as we know. What are your thoughts about the direction of causality between corruption and fragility, both corruption within the country and also spillovers from, I guess, neighboring countries or are in the same region? I think this is a lot for Eric and Kunal to absorb. So maybe we give them now the space to address all these issues and then maybe all the panelists then can have a few words about any of these issues that you'd like to pick up on. So Eric, do you want to go fast or you could pass on the Kunal too? Sure, let me say three things in brief. There's so many excellent points raised and I'm so grateful to our panelists and to our attendees for these really rich and interesting questions and discussions. Let me just say three things. One is that kind of around what is success in this framework? And I think it was raised by a number of the panelists. And in our framework, it's a very simple one which is can you achieve growth that's positive but that also brings about incremental improvements with a, I guess, a barely positive feedback loop because the one generates increasing prosperity at the individual and community level and then the other reduces the drivers of fragility and that would apply whether a country is labeled fragile or whether it's not labeled fragile but it still has those same underlying political dynamics. And a second which is kind of representing the humility that we bring to it. It's hard in 15 minutes to communicate that but essentially if you spend more time with the framework and with the larger book it's what we try to offer is more of a framing more questions than answers. So you get folks like Nicole who go into such level of detail and insight that the initial framing just can't do and it's to stimulate the types of questions and conversations and ideally work across disciplines as Anka mentioned that can generate those real local understandings of what the solutions might be. Let me turn it to Kunal because I'd like to hear from our panelists as well. Okay, so let me actually thanks so much Eric and Patricia. Let me actually go and address Adnan's brilliant question also what Alas has also asked also on the framework because I think it's a really important and cuts across on the discussion going on here. First, Adnan asked that do we see legitimacy and growth enhancing investments or policies separate? That's a great question because we haven't really spent too much time talking about this in the framework and Adnan, you're right. But one of the things we try to do in the framework is say, look, you as an economist or a growth advisor in FCT or any economists working in the multilaterals you should not see yourself as an economist prime in our new city of United States and think also outside the box when you look at what we need to do and the example you gave about legitimacy enhancing action in the case of the example you gave is a great example of how one should think outside the box because legitimacy enhancing actions help growth going because it leads to more volatile stability which is very important for getting all the deals on the table. So I think the point that I think we were trying to do in this policy guidebook and the work that we've been doing previously is to try to get the growth and the governance and humanitarian advisors in different agencies think together and work together because you cannot do this on your own. And I think that's a very so example you gave exactly what I think should lead to that kind of discussion among agencies working on federal states and thinking through thinking outside the box. The second point you made is how do we move from a disordered deals environment to order deals environment? And then of course, let's just raise the question of the example Rwanda. And I think one critical thing we know and this is not just the example Rwanda if you think about many of the success stories we have in the developing world the South Korea's, the China's more recently Bangladesh the incredible periods of Indonesia incredible periods of conflict at the beginning of their development process but they resolved that and they moved on. How did they do that? And one important lesson we can draw from all of the stories is that how the long-term horizons of the political elites gets elongated, it gets extended. So they can start thinking outside what kind of gains are we going to get from the rents in the next few months, next years to thinking about how can we get this our country going for the next 10, 20 years? So that process of extending the time horizon of elites to see beyond the short term gains from the rents that they might see in the economy now to looking at what might happen 10, 20 years from now is a very important transformation that you've seen for yourself in Rwanda. Now, how do we get that going? How does that happen? Very difficult to say. And previously actually sometimes it might happen in a way you may not want. In other words, suddenly the ransom oil might try out. Suddenly there are any other natural resources might try out. And then you might say, oops, we have a problem. What we were seeing in the short term extraction of the beginning of this rents is not possible anymore. Let's think about something else. So in actually sometimes crisis generates this kind of movement towards long-term horizons of elites. And that's why I think we should also think of crisis and opportunity and maybe even the pandemic could well be an example of that. Of how that can actually lead to an extension of the time horizon of elites exactly as I've already mentioned, the best the person work on how cohesive political decisions can be formed. So I think it's a really important point. And I don't think that there are good enough examples yet of how this can happen. Horizons of elites going much beyond the short term towards the long term. But I think we need to think about how that can happen and how the international community itself can try and trigger the sort of trigger or at least enable this kind of processes. So I think that's really important. The other thing I wanted to say is that I think the thing that's really, really I think came across in the discussion so far is that initial conditions, history, all that matter are very important. So we need to understand initial conditions and history very, very carefully. Because each of the subsystems you've seen so far we can move out of fragility itself. There are many very specific issue conditions and historical conditions that allow this to happen. And we need to understand that. And in other words, no one country that has moved out of fragility in the last 30, 40 years is the same as the other country. Each of them are different in their own way. And I think that is very important for us working in this area and the space to understand because often as economists, we don't think about those issues. And I think we think about a one-size-fits-all model which simply doesn't work. So I think that's the thing I think that are things which I think hopefully we're trying to contribute to in this policy guidebook, make us think through outside the box, think about trying to bring growth, governance, humanitarian advices together in one place, not a silos, thinking through together in one way. How do we get growth going? That is politically legitimate, that you can enhance it capacity, that can transform the economy in a way that's absolutely can think about growth for a longer term, not just for a short term. All of those things are very important. And I think that's one of the things that I think Eric and I were really wanted to do in getting the guidebook out to get this sort of conversation going. And I'm really excited to see that has happened to some extent in the panel so far. Thanks, Benji. Thank you very much, Eric and Kunal. Before I pass on to all the panelists because we have literally five minutes left but just to highlight there are questions here that we will pass on to Eric and Kunal on the difference between internal drivers and external drivers. Can we reflect more on external drivers? How do we define inclusive growth in fragile states? Is there other measurements that are new and coming up as well? How do we define fragility? So lots of questions around all these important areas around definition and also how do you sort of extend the framework as well? So we will pass on all of these to Kunal and Eric. Very grateful for all these questions. But now let me give the panelists 30 seconds each for final comments on how to promote inclusive growth in conflict-affected and fragile countries. Why don't we go in the reverse order and start with Nicole and then go around Frank on her hololuses and Anna. Nicole. Sure, thank you. And I should say my internet unfortunately cut out just when you were asking those questions, but I thought there were some really interesting questions I saw in the chat around the international drivers and the regional dynamics. And I just want to say that these are systems within systems. And I do think when we start to think about these interconnectivities, we need to start to also parse out the extent to which there are these regional and international drivers that also benefit from these stable instability dynamics and whether we are piecing those together. So when we talk about, and I really agree with this point that Eric and Kunal emphasize about working more systemically across our areas of specialism. And I think also getting to that place where we're expanding that to a more regionalized or internationalized approach. There isn't this false dichotomy between these states and then everything that surrounds them and the sort of global north, but I think they're sort of part of these systems. So working in greater totality is something that I also am really interested in doing. But just a big thank you for this and really interesting. Thank you, Frank. Just thank you very much, Patricia. Now, just to come back on the COVID-19 because we can look at potential for reform and we need to keep it very clear as well. I was trying to make the point that COVID-19 is having a devastating impact in those fragile states. They already had existing vulnerabilities. They have less capacity than others states to manage shocks. And clearly this is the notion of compound risk. I mean, we clearly see it in Somalia, Anke knows it better than anybody else where you have the triple shock, lockers, COVID and floods. So basically I just want to make it clear that recovery in those countries is going to be protracted. It's going to take time and it needs support more than ever. And it's about costational financing. It's about grants, but also it's recognizing, which was exactly the whole point about Eric presentation, that it has to be fully adapted. It has to be tailored, understanding the leadership, the momentum and the importance of design program that will be addressing this source of resilience and drivers of fragility. And we can talk more about what does it mean in terms of fiscal adjustment, in terms of reform, we've got some feedback from Annan and others, which are really in line with the key recommendation that we share as well. And Mr. Stop here. Thank you. Thank you. I'd also like to pick up on the opportunities that we will hopefully see through COVID. So let me make three quick points. So first of all, COVID of course exposed existing weaknesses. And in some countries, there's little trust in the healthcare system and little capacity to sort of deal with the donated doses. So for example, yeah, there were a couple of countries where lots of doses were actually incinerated, but then there were also countries like Malawi, but there were also countries like Ghana, okay, not a fragile state, but they used drones to sort of get the vaccines to remote areas and vaccination programs in the past in Africa have been very successful, yeah, for example, polio vaccination and so on. So let's be hopeful, you know, that with the nation from the outside, you know, this pandemic is also going to come to an halt in Africa. So it does lower income. Patricia and I are part of a study on a worldwide COVID study. I've put it in the Q&A section here, livewithcorona.org. So we know that this is really hard-hitting for people. So what sort of cash transfer programs can we think of? So for example, the United States has now got a sort of child benefit, yeah, universal child benefit for the first time. And that's also been, you know, made possible through the crisis, I think. So let's think of ways how we can sort of support people. And then the last one is that COVID has brought about quite a few policy experiments. So for example, countries have restricted movement, but they've restricted all sorts of other stuff as well. For example, alcohol sales. And we know that violence has gone down. So let's think a little bit more about these sort of public health implications beyond the virus. But this has been excellent to connect with all of you and also I saw so many interesting comments in the chat, yeah. So please reach out to us, most of us are on Twitter, and we can continue there. Yes, indeed. Hello, Mrs. Thank you very much. And I think that this has been a fascinating conversation. Two points, basically. I think that Frank and everybody here tuned in. We will all agree that one of the most difficult things we confront in fragile states is lack of data. I have not seen a rigorous economic data. Nor should I expect to see on households and firms desegregated, the role of women in our communities, et cetera, et cetera. So data is pivotal. Why is that important? Well, we're in 2021. And so technology, we should not ignore the role of technology, mobile phones and how we can use the new technologies to have access to data that until now, we were not able to. So that's one point going forward in terms of fragile states. And of course, second point, we tend to think obviously on state level and therefore interventions are driven by country-specific interventions. International cooperation at a time when there were tremendous challenge towards globalization and international cooperation. Africa marched in solidarity. If in doubt, see what the African, Africa CDC has done during the COVID. And so our interventions should also focus on continental and regional efforts. Many of the conversations we could have on the Sahel or in the Horn of Africa, it would be very difficult to have those conversations without regional entities. And we all know that many of these regional entities desire support and strengthen to capacitate them. So beyond the state level in the continent, I think these continental and regional entities should not be forgotten in any interventions we think about. Thank you very much. Thank you. And thank you for raising the point about data that hasn't been mentioned. I've spent the last 15 years of my life collecting data in the COVID zone, sometimes with the World Bank, but we're still not there. Adnan. Thank you. Two points. So one about prioritization and sequencing. So one piece of advice rather than thinking of grand strategies that can move fragile countries in one big leap to Denmark. I think we should be thinking about concrete, feasible steps, actions that can take these countries step by step towards greater capacity, greater growth and greater legitimacy and focus on those for each country. In other words, move the frontier and then move the frontier up as well. One comment on corruption, we should focus on corruption when it becomes a major cause of fragility and underdevelopment when it has macro consequences. And there's a role of international community there also don't give aid loans to the mobutus of the world, but also in terms of like tax havens and ownership registries and a number of other things, some of which are happening, actually happen. But also there is an obsession with corruption which is sometimes unhelpful. If it is seen in terms of rents that promote growth that become grieves in the system for promoting economic growth in the context of this book, maybe we need to think differently. But I would also say that the obsession with corruption in many cases also generates more unintended consequences, more harm than good. In my own work, I can show that the cure is often worse than the disease. And while we should think about corruption, we should also think about the unintended consequences of corruption control measures that we start with. Absolutely right. So now we are one minute over the time, but if I could ask all of you to stay for another few minutes with us, I would like to thank all the panelists and all the participants for the great questions and for the great interventions. And I will pass on to Kunal who will close this webinar. Thank you so much for everyone. Thanks, Patricia. I was actually also going to thank everyone who's taking part in this panel. So I was going to thank Eric for my long-term co-author for the policy guide to the presentation. Patricia for very able to chair the panel. And of course, panelists and non-analysts, Anke, Frank and Nicole, for your very insightful comments and for a very lively panel discussion that we had today. I also should mention that Eric and I received some great feedback on our framework and the policy guidebook from colleagues in the UK's FCTO. We had a workshop with them in February of this year. And thanks very much for our colleagues there for really, which has really enhanced the framework and the guidebook itself. And I just want to end by saying that the policy guidebook is just one part of wider extensive work on conflict, just one part. Patricia herself is leading a major project on institutional legacies of violent conflict. And we have more details on the website, lots of exciting work coming out soon in the next year or so. So do look at our website for publication and working papers on the project. Our first of our first major conference next year is on conflict. And the dates are 16 and 17 May. So please keep an eye out for calls and information about the conference closer to the time. So that's going to be very exciting. Hopefully all of you will be there for that conference. Thanks to everyone who attended the event and I hope to see all of you in a future wider event very shortly. Thanks. Thank you so much.