 for the South African Broadcasting Corporation as its economics editor. I often say that we carry one of the most noble and compelling mandates on the continent to educate, to entertain, to inform, and to play a role in democracy and in development. We will be televising this session live as the SABC, as Africa's largest broadcaster to 50 different African countries. Welcome. I will now introduce our guests and my esteemed panel, your Excellency President Nanga Goy of Zimbabwe. Welcome to our country. You're a lawyer. You're former minister of justice, former minister of defense, former minister of rural and housing and social amenities. You're also former minister of finance. You are well equipped to speak to this topic. We are also joined by one of Africa's most influential women. You come from Cairo. You're in the Cape now. You arrived at a time when we are mourning the death of a woman in this country, hence the demonstrations outside the World Economic Forum venue. Her name is Zinene Mkhwekyan. We honour her today. Your background is in electrical engineering and you have worked for the United Nations, the African Development Bank, and so on and so forth. Thank you for joining us. All the way from Europe, Danielle Stoffel Del Prez is a representative of the Swiss government and is State Secretary for International Finance. We will be discussing PPPs. Thanks for joining us. Jeffrey White, CEO of Agile, a very fashionable name at the moment, came and flew in from the Middle East. Thanks for joining us. Madame Wong Ai is from Singapore. She comes from a region whose development path we are all envious of and could share many lessons that we would do well to take heed of. Welcome. Your Excellency, we come from a region, you and I, of uneven development and many infrastructure backlogs. What do you think the big mega projects can do to help us improve employment levels, more even development, most importantly, how can we begin to collaborate? Well, we have to look at each country's background, the history of each country, contributes to where we are in terms of the level of development, in terms of the acquisition of technology in our respective economies. But at the end of the day, history is the past. We now have to look into the future and to see what must we do for ourselves to improve the lives of our people into the future. In my view, speaking about Southern Africa, Sadiq in particular, all the member states of Sadiq have different histories and the size of our economies are different. But it is necessary that we integrate, we talk to each other, we have conversation about how we move forward. It is necessary that I should mention at this stage that the current crop of leadership in Southern Africa, Sadiq in particular, is now different from the founding fathers of Sadiq. The liberation leaders. Yes, because their task at the time they were seized with the task to liberate our region, that every single country in our region should be independent. So there was a political struggle to gain independence, freedom and dignity of our people. But our current crop of leadership have a different task to achieve. It is now economic rather than political. Yes, political because we must deepen our democracy. That is political. But it is necessary that we now grow and modernize our economies. We must be able, as we develop individually, make our economies talk to each other, have a conversation to each other. Now you are talking about major projects in our respective countries. What comes to mind immediately is the major projects that are applicable to the region. Things like energy. We have a deficit of energy in the entire Sadiq area. So we must look at how we must collectively resolve the issue of energy in Southern Africa or in Sadiq in particular. That is number one, so that as we move forward, as we modernize energy or electricity is critical to achieve that objective. Then secondly, the issue of infrastructure. Some infrastructure is domestic. That is national. Some infrastructure is regional. If you look at roads, we must have roads that speak to each other. We must have roads that are developed, a standard that is acceptable to the entire region in our area. Let us look at our railway infrastructure. Our railway infrastructure was developed separately during the colonial period. But now we must make sure our railway system and networks must speak to each other. We must modernize, we must have a vision as to what we must have in future in relation to our railway system in our respective countries. I think something like of the 15 or 16 countries of Sadiq, I think 12 of them also are land logged. They have no access to the sea. But we must not then bury our heads in the sand and say we are land logged. We should say initially we believe we must say we are land linked. And how do we get land linked? We must develop systems to take us to the sea. But down the line as we cooperate with countries which the seas like Mozambique, South Africa and Namibia, we become also sea linked because we have now developed infrastructure that can look after our goods and services in and out. But to do so, we must have a system where those countries who are land logged. The cost of their services in and out, goods and services, we must find a way of lessening that burden so that on average our economy should be beddened by the reason that we are land logged. We must be able to cooperate either by road, by rail or by air. It is critically important that we do so. So I've talked about energy which is a difficulty in our area. We also now must look at food security. It is critical that in developing countries like Africa, the primary thing we must secure is that as a region we must be food secure. Yes, we don't have the same endowments in regard to agriculture in the region. But I believe that if we modernize and mechanize our agriculture and have a focus as to where we want to reach in relation to making our region food adequate, then we must cooperate in mechanizing our agriculture, in modernizing our agriculture, and having each member state doing the best depending on the advantages they have in terms of agriculture, wildlife or livestock. That is another area. Then the next thing that follows is that we are also endowed with minerals. But not every member state of Saudi has the same number of minerals in the ground. But we should say that in the past, when our founding fathers were concerned about liberation and freedom, political freedom and democracy, we continued to exploit our resources and send them out and processed without benefiting our own materials, our own minerals. But now, under the current current leadership, we agreed that it is necessary that we look at having technology brought into the region to beneficiate our minerals together. At the end of the day, in the past, even the minerals, we had no capacity to be effective in the global market. It is also necessary now that as we develop, as Africa joins the global market, we also in our region must make sure we don't limit ourselves to the level of production, primary production. We must move forward to agro processing and the beneficiation of our minerals in the country and then participate directly into global markets. This is what I believe we should do in our region. So our task with the current leadership is that we must continuously interrogate what we must do. In my view, we bring in the type of education that must now be in our region. In the past, we were taken to school 50 years ago, 60 years ago, in order to be able to be clerks or nurses. But we are not given education to be innovative for our own needs to address the challenges which we face and by ourselves develop technologies to attend to the particular challenges which we face as a region. So again, we are now talking to our institutions of learning to change the curriculum so that they address and speak to the type of product we must produce in our institutions in order to develop ourselves. Yes, it is necessary. We cannot even the wheel, but it is necessary that as we look for technology from outside, we must have it adapted to our own conditions and also improve on it to adapt to our own conditions. I believe I talked too much. No, Mr. President, you don't talk too much. Madam Commissioner, the AU has a number of mega projects. Have these translated into increases in GDP in the various areas? What has been the impact of these projects? Thank you very much and thank you for having me on this panel. But let me start on maybe talk about what is happening on the continent and how do we perceive these mega projects. Our aim at the African Union is to create one continent that is peaceful, prosperous, and competing at the global level, as Mr. President just said. To do that, and maybe I will focus on infrastructure because this is what I know best or at least I am trying to know. Now, infrastructure, why it is important? The African Union has launched, as you know, for instance, the African Free Trade Area. And it went into effectiveness last July. We are talking about a huge continent made of 55 countries. The population is 1.3 billion people increasing. And this is a young and energetic and in need of employment. India has almost the same size in terms of population, but it is one country. Now, we are talking about 55 fragmented economies. The size of our economies is small and cannot absorb all this potential of young people and cannot create this large number of employment that is needed. Some studies say, and hear me well, that Africa needs million jobs per month, million jobs per month. This is why mega projects are important. We need to make sure that whatever we are going to do, we need this huge space and that is why we created the African Free Trade Area. We need to trade among each other, but trade in what? Trade in the roots of services. Therefore, we need to industrialize, transform and so on and so forth. Now, the African Union has created or has worked with the regional economic communities in selecting a number of regional and transcontinental projects in the fields of energy, of transport, of ICT and when I say transport, that is road, railways, air and maritime. I wanted to highlight that since we are talking about trade, the cost of transport within the composition of our the cost of export on the continent 70%. So transport accounts for 70% of the cost of export in Africa. It's 20% elsewhere. And every 1% increase in transport and telecommunication infrastructure on the continent translates into 3% increase in exports. That's why it's important we work on our infrastructure, especially that infrastructure that we were left off with mainly goes from Africa to the former colonials, but not between African countries. So that's why our program focusing on linking and physically linking the continent together and integrating it. Exactly. And taking it, taking it further. We finished a 10-year program and by which, you know, thousands of kilometers have been extended. And you're talking about the Cape to Cairo and not only by road, but also fiber optics. And it's actually done by a Southern African company that is, you know, working on the Cape to Cairo linkage. I mean, ICT linkage. So back to the question. We will see the impact in terms of GDP and we are already seeing, you know, and improved GDP on the continent. Many of our economies we have at least. Actually, even in West Africa, we have five or six countries now that account among the fastest growing economies in the world by all accounts. And despite all the challenges we're having on the continent, as a continent, we're still having positive growth rates. And this has been sustained for almost 20 years now. And resilience, not only the growth rate, but the resilience despite the global shocks that the continent has been witnessing. We have overcome these shocks and we still continue to have these positive GDPs. However, the challenge is the large number of jobs that are needed on the continent. And the cost of infrastructure is big. It's huge. We're talking about the financial needs between 100 and 130 billion by some estimates. And we can only provide a third maximum half of that as governments with all the competing demands the governments our governments are having. And in addition to all of this, we are also facing a huge challenge of climate. And many of our infrastructure gets wiped away at the next storm. And we've seen this happening, especially in this part of the world. I mean, Southern Africa and the shocks due to climate are happening in a much more vicious way and more frequently than before. And Africa, which is the less guilty when it comes to climate change, is paying the heaviest price. Madam Stoffel Delpret, Deloitte estimates that over the next 10 years, the Africa infrastructure backlog will need to be funded by the tune of about 93 billion per annum. Talk to us about funding. Thank you very much. Yes, indeed. I come from a landlocked country as well. We know a thing or two about needing infrastructure to have access to markets and to have a growth perspective. But I also come from a country where we currently live with negative interest rates. If you as a company take out money from a bank, they pay you to take their money. On the other hand, if you as an individual want to save your money and bring it to the bank, you have to pay the bank to take their money. So the huge amounts, you just cited that are needed in infrastructure, not just on this continent, but globally to also achieve the development goals that we have all set for ourselves. We need to find a solution, not just to the financing, but we also need to find a solution to having the huge amounts of money that are available to bring them to the projects that need that financing. And we as a financial market, that is one of the largest in the world, and Switzerland is known for having the largest cross-border wealth management sector within its borders. We are very interested in exactly addressing the interface between the money that is there and the need that is so apparent all over the world. And we try to do this in, I would say at least in two paths that overlap. One is we want to look at the interface and bring our expertise to the table in helping assess risks, credit risks, debt sustainability for example. Our huge insurance industry has a great power to play in that role. We are also looking at questions of transparency and of course integrity of financial markets. They all need to play a role and they all need to be brought together by the partners in a bankable project. And we are very much interested in finding maybe prototypes and working also with regional development banks in finding exactly the right recipe of all the needs as also Mr. President addressed them to have money flow from where it is to where it is needed also to the benefit of those who then invest. And I would say the second aspect that we're looking at is the huge chances and the opportunities that are opened especially in the West already by the new digital technologies. Switzerland has a regulatory framework that already addresses the challenges of the blockchain technology and we see how market infrastructure, financial market infrastructure, trading platforms, investment opportunities, advising of customers with regards to investments is already done on platforms, on systems that are easy to handle, that are very accessible, that offer a great degree of transparency and stability and security and we would already want to bring that dimension also into the mix of helping such projects come to fruition. Listening to you, one gets the sense of an exciting future for infrastructure because traditionally on our continent infrastructure spending has been funded off the balance sheet of our states and this is set to change now that you, now that there are new technologies and new opportunities for cooperation across continents and that's one of the beauties of this panel is that it's a multi-continental exercise. Jeff White, what is your contribution to this? So I think as a private sector investor and agility is one of the world's largest logistics companies operating globally and from an Africa perspective I think we are hugely bullish on the African opportunity. A lot of our traditional markets we're seeing are slowing down or stagnating we think Africa is the place to be investing and putting real capital into providing infrastructure solutions. Now as a private company we can't do full infrastructure packages and sort everything so we're investing in what we see is fundamentally infrastructure aligned with the growth opportunity so we're building across the continent a network of international standard warehouse parks. Now on the face of it that doesn't seem particularly exciting but the reality is the capability the warehousing and buildings that are fundamental building blocks to economic growth and prosperity so we use our warehouses we invest we put the capital in we buy 500,000 square meters that's about 100 football pitches to put it into perspective on the edge of all the major cities in Africa we build the infrastructure and we invest in it so it creates a platform that enables trade and we see it and I think it aligns with everything everybody said we see it as a way that manufacturers are able to have at ease of doing business and manufacture locally to meet demand it's a logistics platform that will support regional trade and the growth with the Africa continental free trade agreement the growth of a market that's 1.3 billion 2 billion people by the time it's actually up and operational we think that e-commerce is going to be huge in Africa so although building warehousing doesn't seem hugely important the reality is it enables SMEs to grow and develop and SME can come to us and we've got examples in our current portfolio where they couldn't raise the money to build premises to expand their operations and meet international standards for us they can come in under our SME program sign a lease pay a deposit and get the keys and move in Monday likewise when I look at our 65,000 global customers that we do integrated logistics for they all want to go to Africa they all understand the opportunity they just find it really difficult to execute so by building an infrastructure capability a warehouse park and it's landscaped and it's got consistent power it's safe and it's secure it enables companies to say great let's go into the Africa marketplace and it makes the ease of doing business more efficient and much simpler and faster if I look at Ghana as an example one of our large blue chip customers they had an original plan to go into Ghana that they thought would cost them five million dollars investment to find a site build a factory set it up start operating and they thought it would be five million dollars and three years before they sold any product because we'd already built and invested in infrastructure they were able to come into one of our warehouses set up their manufacturing plant so their cost of going into the Africa market moved from five million dollars to one million dollars for exactly the same business plan and instead of selling products in three years time they were able to start selling products in three months so that's a real enabler and going back to your point that's that's a platform that can create jobs can create jobs for local companies can create jobs from multinationals coming into the the continent and I think although we're doing it in a very niche sector which is in relation to warehousing the opportunity is as infrastructure gets better you can trade regionally you can manufacture and move goods instead of just selling in in Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire you're able to sell across the whole of West Africa and that's what's going to really stimulate the economic growth well thanks for that very granular view from the ground warm you come from a country that moved from being a third world country to a first world country the dizzying speed and your infrastructure is breathtaking and enviable what lessons would you would you like to share thank you very much it's a pleasure and a privilege to be part of this panel and thank you for your kind words I think it's easier for a country like Singapore which is small to get from point A to point B in in 54 years we just turned 54 last month a little bit about myself and and the organization I represent I'm from Baker McKenzie I'm the Asia Pacific chair we are in a global law firm and we believe in following our clients and I have to say Africa has become extremely interesting you're seeing interest not just from the Europeans the Middle East but increasingly from many countries in the Asia Pacific region much has been said about Chinese investments there have been Korean ones the Japanese have been here for a long time and and India and Indonesia as well so initially as with all countries you build you start on infrastructure first and that is the development finance funded initially and then multilaterally through other countries in the region if you can paint a story or you know convince with a story that regional integration and connectivity benefits all in the end you will get a multilateral inter-regional effort and I think Singapore has piggybacked on that through an organization called ASEAN which is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to have allowed the voice on the global stage to get the the funding and the attention that we needed but infrastructure is just the beginning and it's very interesting to hear from His Excellency and from Jeffrey and and from Mina as well the commissioner about you know infrastructure being just the foundation stone right because you're not really just looking at infrastructure per se it's everything else that that can build upon what infrastructure enables things like trade not just exports but intra-regional imports and and trade as well foreign direct investment education banking and finance technology transfers so so I see I see you know Africa is being at the beginning of a very exciting story and perhaps what I'd like to hear from this panel and maybe even the audience is much has been said about multilateral governmental and institutional effort but there has been a lot of private sector investment into Africa as well from all over the world and they're all competing with each other and the the FDI is growing by double digits across the continent so you know be interesting to see apart from this infrastructure what what the African Union and other countries are doing to get together to coordinate and enable their private sector investment because I think in the end that is going to be the engine of growth I think they'll have to answer whether the African private sector is growing and is it growing as fast as it it should but mr president we need to tell a harmonious story and we need to work on social cohesion events in South Africa recently don't bode well for regional cooperation what can we do to enhance social cohesion and unity in our region as Jan was able to tell one story how can we my own belief is that as we aspire to modernize and remove our people from poverty level to middle income levels we must address certain issues that are necessary to lift the lower strata for societies like in the area of housing the area of clean water the area of sanitation these are basic and are local I would believe that the five regions of our continent in our desire to modernize and so on we should not forget that it is necessary that we don't leave anybody behind by making sure we address those issues that are domestic that are at national level but of course in the long run they will relate to the entire region when you have clean water you will not want your neighbor to be behind you would need to say your neighbor to make sure they address that issue they focus on making sure the majority of our people have access to clean water they have access to housing Mr President if your brother Serorama Posa my president were to ask you how to deal with xenophobia in the interests of economic cooperation what would you say sir the issue is a question of understanding a question of accepting each other and that comes from how our current governments relate to the people our political parties we must preach unity we must preach love we must preach that we are one people we are brothers and sisters not only in one single country but in the region we must talk about integration so that the mentality of this is mine and it ends there must be removed we must move away from the past concept of communities being separate currently we are integrated you have South Africans marrying in Mozambique Mozambique and marrying in Zimbabwe Zimbabwe is marrying Botswana people from Botswana marrying Namibia Zambia and so on we are getting integrated so all that is necessary those things that are happening are a result of failure to bring people to a level where they respect each other and that can only be done when people ever hope when people can see that they can progress when there is a roadmap for progress a roadmap for moving from the lowest you can see that okay two years ago I was at this level now I am that level but if persons remain without hope feeling depressed it is easy for these things to happen so it is my view that we should continuously have a conversation with our people giving them hope for moving forward and implementing such projects such programs in society which lifts the hopes of our people to go forward I love it love is about growth as well thank you Madam Commissioner is Africa's private sector growing and is it as buoyant and ready for the challenges of cooperating with the governments of this continent and other private sectors in the challenge of addressing our infrastructure backlogs yes but not enough you will go across the continent all our countries without exception are conducting some form of reform in order to improve the investment line without exception but a lot still needs to be done and as I always say I mean that I just mentioned the number of 130 billion dollars needed for infrastructure alone and of course that's beyond any government to carry so unless all stakeholders are partnering with the governments we will not be able to address the challenge the private sector increasingly in our countries is perceived as a viable partner but as I said it's not enough we need to continue to improve in terms of ease of business creating economies of scale to provide you know an attractive an attractive project you know for investment continue to improve our regulatory frameworks not only at the national but also at the regional continental level since we are talking about about projects that very often you would be across border and that's a role that the African Union is doing so harmonizing the regulatory frameworks and the policies and the strategies is an essential part of what we do but there is also I mean all is not negative we have african initiatives such as Africa 50 which is by definition a private sector initiative or an initiative here to attract the private sector the african private sector to invest in Africa we want our brothers and sisters owners of businesses in Africa not to put their money in Switzerland with all due respect but to put them and to invest them in the continent so we are looking also at attracting and securing the investments of our brothers and sisters Africans to continue working on the continent and that said we are also keen in attracting the foreign investment in order to I mean the private sector the non-african private sector in this is also an opportunity for a technology transfer for improving skills for creating you know new ideas and it's a it's a dynamic so we need to to continue working on it's at this point that we need to open up to the floor but before we do let's hear from you I would just want you to echo the the quest for openness I live in a country where more than a quarter of its population is foreign and capital markets need to be open growth is definitely due to the the quantity or the the relative volume of openness be it capital be it human resources being other factors that need are needed for production and the it is difficult it is not easy it puts every society in a in a very demanding position we see that in Europe as well and I would only like to echo the strong call for openness in all these respects shall we have a broader discussion please sir thank you very much Ishan the ruler of the Washington Post thank you again for this panel his excellency the president of Zimbabwe spoke of the need to preach regional love and unity to move beyond the politics of the past but I would ask you sir what love and unity have you showed for recent protests of opposition in your own country what can you tell us about your country's progress from the politics of the past two years after a very significant transition and and hopefully towards a more progressive and inclusive democracy yes thank you very much for that question from the day I came to office my mantra was that we must be united we want a united Zimbabwe where everybody's accepted we have preached the peace and unity in Zimbabwe we've opened up for the last 20 years or so Zimbabwe was isolated it was a pariah state that we have opened we have said we are going to engage and re-engage engage with those countries that they don't engage with Zimbabwe before re-engage with the Zimbabwe with those countries that they disengaged with the Zimbabwe for the first time my brother if you uh your memory can help you the last general election where the Zimbabwe was the first general election that we held where I opened global space for global media to witness our election and it was very peaceful we were surprised when of course uh at the end of voting on the second day that there was the uh the violent demonstrations that have happened we are against that and I believe that as we go forward for instance during the campaign period I propose that all the 55 political parties participating in our general election should sign commitment to peaceful elections and we did so and it happened but not everybody will catch up with good things some remain behind but we will do our base my brother that we should continue to preach peace and ask everybody that only when we are stable and we're working together in unity can we prosper and it will be respected by the international community if we show that we're democratic we give democratic space to everybody in terms of constitution we have one of the constitutions I think in our region which is very very democratic and we we respect it however the rule of law must be obeyed the rule of law must take a route in our country not everybody observes that overnight but as we go on I have no doubt that as we move on we shall continue to improve and deepen our democracy hand on the side is that hand still up news just in terms of interregional progress how are you aligning with nipad african union how's the coordination working who is the director I think to the commissioner the nipad is is part of the african union so the african union is the commission the african union commission is the body the political body and in charge of policies and strategies and our executing arm is is nipad which is now turned into auda or african african development agency so you're we are one and as such we develop together and the next meeting is going to be in november by the way we developed together this continental transcontinental regional infrastructure project as I said that has transport energy ICT and tourism by the way and we did agreement over these and this has been a bottom up approach so every region every community region economic community southeast north they come up with with the list of projects the priority projects so and they we come together in november we trust only date all these lists and we agree on the on the priority for the the priority projects for the next 10 years and we take this in january to the heads of states summit to endorse it and we we we go for it in terms of resources mobilization and working to that but that's only the physical part of it remember the soft infrastructure is still a very big important element which is the harmonization part which is how to work together the improvement of the regulatory framework and so on and so forth and I still insist on the improvement of the investment climate at the end of the day be public money or private money you want to make sure that it's well spent and that it has you know the returns we we aspire would anybody else like to make use of the one or two minutes remaining for this discussion yes sir um thank you for this opportunity my name is willford moanza i'm part of the global shapers community and my question is directed to miss stoffel delpratt and the african youth are considered a critical stakeholder in these conversations our statistics say that about 75 percent of the population in africa are youth below the age of 35 so this would mean that this would be an integral part where young people should be uh play should play an active role so which areas or maybe how can young people be involved more in this conversation specifically in what you said in bridging the gap between linking the capital excess capital that is looking for places to be invested together with the areas where they can be invested in how can youth be more involved in what advice can you give to them thank you very much for this question um i think i'm i already touched upon a part of the answer i'm going to give you um it's your generation that are the tech savvy you are the ones who have to carry the continent into the next revolution the next the digital revolution and uh you are our counterparts if we talk about blockchain technology and how we could use it for international money transfers for remittances for creating a stable coin or helping to create a stable coin that may help in stabilizing the system so um while having discussions here also in cape town it occurred to me and we discussed infrastructure while you mentioned the side of it all um i did mention that when we talk about mega mega projects they're great providers of jobs and they help create jobs for youth but i do not wish to to for this to be understood that this is the only way youth is going to be involved in in any project mega project or otherwise remember our youth are also providing us through the tech solutions that were just mentioned with innovative ways of doing business of doing these projects and we have across the continent a wonderful number of initiatives that were initiated thought of by youth that provided us with ways of doing things that were not imaginable before think of the energy to pay as you go for instance uh since think of a mobile money which about financial inclusion across the continent this has been i mean ideas that yes you're right people of of my generation did not think off because we continue to think in in a much more conventional manner but you are very much involved you're doing a lot already and this should not by any mean be uh uh overlooked i'm thinking of the south african invention please call me by a young man called gosana makate mr president your excellency thank you very much shukran sia bonga and as we say in this part of the world and gosca