 Let me firstly thank you to my dear mother, Toby, for the very kind invitation to join you at this 2022 Group German Forum. It's a real pleasure to be with you this evening and to be with you all this evening. I would like to check just to be sure how young people are in the audience. And I'd like to just find out how young you are here and how current you are with some of the more popular music. Who knows this particular I'd like to be first to show you a few more people here. Thank you sir. And my dear son. Keep good. Keep good, didn't you know? By the way, I'm here to the call. How many of you know what I'm talking about? How many of you know what I'm talking about? No way do I know if you know the song. No way do I know. We know those, we know the young people we have. I can see all the young people they know that we know what we're talking about. I mean, you guys, we have told you. You know, move up, move up, move up. Thank you very much. I want to just say again that it is a real pleasure to be here. I've been asked to speak for a few minutes on this topic, digitisation, COP26 and African developers. And I'm sure that several of us who are here recognise that those are two important topics that would shape the future of our continent. And I think that really, if we start with digitisation, there's no question at all that digitisation will, and of course, climate change will determine to a larger extent Africa's growth trajectory in the next few decades. At least there are those two issues, digitisation and climate change. Digital technology, for one, offers the most effective way for Africa to live on and develop already the basic indicators are there and they look quite good. Africa's total inbound international internet bandwidth capacity increased by in the past decade more than 50 times. The operational fiber-optic network extended by almost four times. Mobile telephony, mobile cellular subscriptions are more than doubled. And about 58% of the population now live in areas that are covered by 4G networks. Africa has over 418 million mobile money accounts, more than any other development region sticking together. And more than 500 African companies provide already technology and good innovation, the so-called FinTech companies. The valuation of some of our African startups exceeds several billion years old, who in Nigeria have six unicorns. And the FinTech companies most of them that are valued at over a billion dollars. We have over 640 tech crops across the country. And here in Nigeria, we are already leveraging digital technology in various ways, especially for government to deliver goods and social services. To implement our social investment programme, for example, we have a programme called the MPart, where we are engaged about 500,000 young graduates. A digital company, a local intelligence company, very long endurance builds their entire platform, robust enough to take and vet applications from millions of applicants and conduct tests, and make monthly payments in every local government in the country. And this is locally developed and targeted for a long time. Then two weeks ago, we commissioned the FACA window piece growth platform. This is a digital platform that has won each national award for delivering the largest micro-credit scheme in Africa. It's called the Government Empowerment and Enterprise Program. Under it, we have the Trader Money scheme. And this is a scheme that involved giving micro-credit to about 2.4 million informal traders. Now that platform engages about 22,000 agents, living across all the local governments in Nigeria. Equipped with proprietary mobile technologies, they receive mandates to capture and digitise businesses and digital for growing for a very large number of different programmes of the Bank of India scheme, a lot of them tied to micro-credit. In some cases, these agents is 22,000 agents. Some of them are called human banks. Open the first ever bank account or mobile wallet used in many of these micro-acquires. Every detail of each of these businesses is trackable centrally, down to bio-data, geolocation, imaging, spatial id, every micro and small and medium-sized in Africa. So to be able to use technology for the first time in so many of these ways, and it's been particularly intriguing because here we have a situation where in the past we are getting impossible for us to reach all of these various cases and quickly efficiently. But that has been done today. In our food for jobs programme under economic sustainability plan, we've reached digitally and marked over 4 million farmers and geotacted to their farms. So this enabled us to reach them more easily with government services and it also makes it easier to give them loans and ensure repayment. Repayment, of course, has been a major problem with giving agriculture, especially to small farmers, part of the reason, of course, is that it's very difficult to find, to locate them where they, where they land and all of that. But now we have at least 4 million geotacted to their land, we know exactly where they land, we know exactly where they are. And so it makes it so much easier to be able to deliver services to them and at the same time get credit to them. Digital companies, of course, also I'm sure many of us are familiar with this, are opening up opportunities in every line of business and I'm sure that sometimes, you bankers must get a bit uncomfortable with some of these companies. Kea Kea, for example, is now a company using artificial intelligence and algorithms to process loans, a loan request within minutes and grant credit without the hassles of the regular bank. Kuda Bank, I'm sure you've heard of Kuda Bank. That's another example of a bank without a single physical branch with all the features built into a mobile app. We also have, I'm sure you've heard of Invest Bar Blue for those who, and I know that a good number of young people use it for investments. 26-year-old was the one who pioneered that particular application. It offers new ways for you to save money, invest in stocks, all from a single app. Others have developed technologies that make it possible for us to invest in farms without ever seeing the farm. These are two companies that do exactly that. They have a crowdfunding platform, so you can actually invest in farming and agriculture without ever seeing the farms all the time, doing this at the end of every cycle. So there's so much that's going on and you'll find that the space is right here. But the challenge for us in the next few years is how to effectively use digital technology for mass education and for healthcare. That is a major challenge. So the question there is, we have a population of 5 million people every year. Now that's just to get a sense of the size. Liberia has about 5 million people. So that's like creating 5 million, and that's like creating a library at every single year. And with all of the implications for education, all of the implications for healthcare. So beyond all of these, all of the successes we see, we need to be able to educate like a number of people, train teachers. That's going to be a major issue in all of the, especially in states where we have a large number of out-of-school children. And those challenges and the sorts of challenges that we're sitting down to look at, how do we train large numbers of teachers? And you can't, you're not only going to be able to train them to college as a reputation college, there's just no space to be able to do so. So we've got to do that. This has to be technology-driven. And that's really those are the sorts of challenges about healthcare, you know, public healthcare. Public light has shown us, you know, that we have a robust healthcare system. And this is because we have a lot of experience. We have experience with Ebola, we have experience with lots of fever, everything by itself. So mass vaccinations and all of that are things that we've done very, very well. So we have a robust enough system, but the issue is that just millions, millions of millions of people out there, in the news and programs. So technology must play a role. Technology must play an increasing part in abilities to be able to reach populations everywhere where they may be. So the future is, especially for digital technologies for us, is one that we just have to take on from the very beginning and we've got to look at it and see what we need to do, what are the things that we need to do. They're not thinking. It's going on. Imagine where we're convened in major conference to look at all of these issues, especially of the related to technology. Some people have done internally within the public service to look at how to imagine as it were the future of digital technology. And there are so many different aspects of that, but I'm not going to bore you or take your time too much on that issue. So we'll just go on to the other issue and that's the question of COP26 and climate change. Of course we all know that COP26 is that country that was celebrated all over the world where we expected that the world would come to some conclusions as to how to ensure next-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Most people simply agree that by 2050 we should have next-zero carbon emissions. And most of the world, especially in the world we are countries of, of course accept that by 2050 there should be some, we should be able to achieve the target set in Paris and the climate change conference in Europe. Now, the question for us in Africa is slightly different from those of world-wide countries. The question for us is not just about climate change. We know that we have an existential crisis. The climate crisis is a major crisis. We know that this is something for us to look at for. But for us in Africa, we're both beyond that. We have a different type of crisis also. And that is a crisis of extreme poverty. So for us, climate change as well is extreme poverty. And extreme poverty is important to us, especially and the way it relates to climate change is that it is tied to energy poverty as well. It's tied to access to energy for us. So for an African country, for Nigeria for example, it's important for us to take into account the fact that yes, we want net zero emissions by 2050. But in transitioning to net zero emissions by 2050, we have to take into account that even today, we don't have enough energy. We don't have enough power. Most of our population do not have access to power. Now, the rest of the world in transitioning to net zero by 2050, we want to bang fossil fuels. In other words, they say we're no longer going to use charcoal which is understandable. We're also not going to use oil and gas. We're not going to fund oil and gas projects anymore because obviously these are pollutants, they are not the worst, especially gas. Gas is much cleaner than most fossil fuels. But for most of the world there are countries of the world, they would rather see a situation where at least public investments in fossil fuels are no longer made available. So, the African country has a dilemma. Yes, we want climate change. We want net zero by 2050. By 2050 how are we going to transit from where we are and at the same time be able to provide power for our people. Our country, for example, has huge gas reserves. We know that the transition fuel for us is gas. The only way by which you can power industry is to use gas for power. So, if you say you're not going to invest again with oil and gas anymore, it means that we're going to have to rely on renewable energy. Now, no country in the world so far has been able to industrialize using renewable energy. So, what the rest of the world is telling us, perhaps, is that we should be the experimental continent that will industrialize using renewable energy. But that's obviously the path we're going to try to take. We simply cannot do so. And we know that that's not possible. So, the point that we have been making and those of us from African countries and developing world is that we require gas as a transition fuel. And that it is important not just for industry, but also to be able to ensure that we are able to move from firewood to all sorts of pollutants in cooking. So, we want to move also to clean cooking. Clean cooking can only be done with LPG, which is gas. And so, if we're going to be transient from firewood and all sorts of other pollutants, then we need LPG. We need gas to be able to do so. So, for us it's not just gas for industrialization, it's also gas for clean cooking. Because clean cooking for us is one of the major pollutants that we raise. It's a major cause of death, especially in rural areas of our own country in Nigeria where we have the facts and triggers and I'm sure in many other African countries. So, the whole energy transition issue for us in Nigeria and of course in many African countries is a known sport and we have to approach it in one way. We can't accept the situation where it is the same pathway for the welfare countries as for African countries. We have to have a different problem. So, in the welfare countries that are prepared to ban fossil fuels investments they've got to give us room to be able to continue to use our fossil fuels. Obviously for a much longer period to allow energy access for our people and also to allow us to transit for new times to clean our fields. So, there's that issue. Well, you know sometimes what you tend to find is that in making the point in making that point we also are asking you know because there are some places that have been made by some of the world their nations of the world that in order for us to have this smooth transition somebody would be made available and this was at the Paris Climate Change Conference where $100 billion annually was the price that was made by many of the world their countries of the world. Well, we haven't really come across that $100 billion in shape or form that we would like to see but we're expecting that that would be part of because we need to have if the whole world is safe to press and move quickly there are parts of the world that may not be introduced as quickly as others in the development which is why these sums of money are required and will be helpful in that transition to next year emissions by 2050 and in our case by 2026. So, we in Nigeria have developed an energy transition plan and we're possibly the first Africa country to do so. Well, we've looked at very closely at how to transit to 2026 to carbon to net zero carbon emissions by 2026 That energy transition plan is fairly detailed where we've looked at how long it will take us to transit from with respect to cooking fuels where we're going to be converting cars from combustion engines to gas run engines and how long that will take and how much it will cost Obviously, the cost we're also hoping that we'll be able to get some of that cost It's about outside of the business and regional spending it's about 400 billion million dollars over the period of until 2026 So, we're looking at how to ensure that we're able to make those resources. So, just to conclude, I think that by and large you know for those of us in Africa what it takes for us to make the kind of problems that we need obviously it requires us to be as nimble as possible to be as forward-looking as possible and also to be paying attention to the various things and the various developments that are going on I think we already have a youth population that is way ahead just in terms of being able to use what is available both in digital technology as well as in all of the in finance for example there isn't capital here and there So, we think that the future certainly is extremely bright and my view is unlike those who think that Africa century has come to an end especially after COVID and some of the bad figures that we're looking at I think that we're just coming to our own I think that we're going to take advantage of a lot of what we've seen especially coming from COVID-19 I think that we're going to see a lot we're going to see greater growth I've seen some of the statistics of macroeconomic figures that are coming from there and there but we're always beating those figures I think we're going to do even more better So, let me thank you once again for the opportunity to come and join you and I hope that I've not spoiled your appetite for dinner and for dessert I'm always very anxious when you are trying to be the electrode to people who have just had dinner and wine I think that you are a very good audience Thank you