 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, their friends cordial welcome to his excellency Cyril Raman-Posa, President of South Africa. Good to see you, Mr. President. We know that President Raman-Posa also has been the Vice President of South Africa. He's also the current chair of the African Union. And as we know Africa has better the pandemic a lot better than many other places in the world, at least during the first wave. We'll come back to that. Raman-Posa is also a very successful businessman, but started his career in ANC and was the Chief Negotiator when South Africa moved from apartheid to democracy and worked very closely with also late President Nelson Mandela and headed the committee that really was also in charge of his release. So President Raman-Posa, great to see you. We know you have a tough job. There's a lot of challenges, but also opportunities. So we're very pleased to have you here and I'll leave the floor for you to some introductory remarks and then I hope we can do a Q&A. Welcome. Well, thank you very much President Brenda and distinguished participants and ladies and gentlemen. I must say that I wish to thank the World Economic Forum for the kind invitation to deliver these remarks on the state of say the world as we confront the devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Today humanity is facing an unprecedented global health, social and economic crisis. The pandemic has triggered a global economic downturn of massive proportions which has not been seen since I would say the Great Depression of the 1930s. The World Bank has reported that extreme poverty is expected to rise globally for the first time in over 20 years as the disruption caused by the pandemic exacerbates the effects of conflict, climate change and also underdevelopment. As far as I'm concerned, it is clear that the world is at a crossroads. We are facing a common threat and this means that we must therefore act together. While we must unite in defeating this disease, the challenges we must confront were not created by this virus. They were created by us in more ways than one. These challenges from poverty to the destruction of our environment, from conflict to inequality, from illiteracy to famine are all the results of our own actions and too often our inaction. The virus has exacerbated these problems. It has also deepened these inequalities and set back our efforts to overcome them. Our task is therefore not to restore the world to where it was when the pandemic struck but it is to forge a new path and a new design to a world that is just, peaceful, cohesive, resilient and sustainable. It is only through multilateral action that the world can solve its challenges. It is our collective interest that the United Nations is strengthened as we work together to advance the global agenda for people, planet as well as prosperity. The pandemic has underscored the vital importance of multilateral institutions working together in facilitating coordination, cooperation and common responses to challenges. Beyond COVID-19, there is perhaps no area of human endeavor that requires common global action more than our response to climate change. It is essential that we each honor our commitments under the Paris Agreement to combat climate change with a specific focus on the means of implementation, support and adaptation efforts. This is a key priority for our continent Africa as our continent is disproportionately affected by climate change despite releasing the lowest carbon emissions in the world. Over the course of the last 10 months the African continent has demonstrated its capacity for united action and this is the one time when the African continent has acted or has won to confront a common challenge. As the current chair of the African Union we had to refocus our priorities to what's addressing the immediate challenges presented by the pandemic. The AU that is the African Union moved very quickly to develop a continent-wide COVID-19 response plan and this plan includes technical assistance to national health systems, setting up regional collaborating hubs and deploying community health care workers to support testing and treatment. One of the most significant innovations that I like to talk about was the establishment of the Africa Medical Supplies Platform. A platform which has enabled all African member states to secure vital health supplies such as diagnostics as well as therapeutics at really reduced prices. We also established a COVID-19 African vaccine acquisition testing to secure and find sources of funding for sufficient vaccines but also to secure vaccines and to date the testing that I set up has secured a provisional 270 million doses for African countries directly through vaccine manufacturers. This is in addition to the 600 million doses that are expected from the COVID-19 WHO-led initiative. Through its participation in these continental and global initiatives, South Africa itself continues to promote the need for universal, fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. We are deeply concerned about the problem of vaccine nationalism, which unless addressed will endanger the recovery of all countries. Now ending the pandemic worldwide will require greater collaboration on the rollout of vaccines ensuring that no country is left behind in this effort. Here in South Africa, as in most countries, the pandemic has taken a heavy toll on our population. With the greatest burden of disease on the continent, South Africa has recorded around 1.4 million COVID cases and more than 40,000 people have lost their lives. The current economic downturn follows a decade of weak economic growth which adds complexity and difficulty to South Africa's economic recovery path. Over the course of the nine months, with the support of social partners, the South African government has rolled out a comprehensive set of measures to limit the economic impact of the pandemic. We massively expanded social protection to our people and made sure that it is done on an unprecedented scale providing temporary increase in monthly social grants to around 17 million of our people and implementing a monthly grant to those who were unemployed and they amount to about 6 million. And other relief measures include wage support that we have given to those who needed the wage support. And we also introduced an assistant package for companies and for working people. And through this scheme, we've been able together with the banks to ensure that companies do have great assistance and we also defer the payment of certain taxes. While these measures have proved vital in keeping many businesses afloat, also saving many jobs and keeping millions of South Africans above the poverty line, our attention has now shifted to rebuilding the economy and working together with business and labor and various other stakeholders, we've been able to craft an economic plan. And this plan has a number of interventions that are aimed at repositioning our economy. And through this, we are hoping that as we go through this pandemic, we will be able to have an economy that is sustainable going forward. Now, there are a number of things like growing, manufacturing, increasing the level of investment. And over the last three years, we have mobilized about 51 billion dollars in new investment commitments in our economy. And we are hoping that that will ensue as we go on. Now, these interventions are also going to enhance and enable South Africa to better realize the one great potential, which is the Africa free trade area, a fundamental sea change type of initiative to the African continent, which will enable the African continent, which has 1.2 billion people to operate as a single market over time. So we are hoping that as it has introduced on the 1st of January, that that is going to boost integration, increase trade and accelerate the buildup of productive capabilities and infrastructure in the African market. We will benefit from this as South Africa. And we are pursuing each of these interventions with an urgency and resolve that matches the proportions of the challenges well. However, we draw hope and encouragement for the way in which the people of South Africa have come together to confront this pandemic. In the last year, we have shown that it is collaboration, it is partnership and solidarity that have been the most effective way in which we have approached this pandemic as South Africa. And now we are saying as we restructure and transform our economy, South Africa will be open for business. As the entire continent is doing exactly the same, we will through the Africa free trade agreement be able to say to the whole world, we are open for business, we are now moving forward with integration and we are going to be trading with each other and the world must participate with us as we search forward as a continent once again. I want to thank you for allowing me to share these thoughts with all of you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. President, and thank you for your leadership throughout very challenging time. And also as Vice President, securing South Africa as a democracy, as a transparent economy, you have underlined the importance of the recovery plan. You're talking about a new economy in your speech. How do you see South Africa in the five to 10 coming years? Where are the reforms that will really increase the competitiveness of the economy? I know you're also focusing a lot on energy, that not everything is going to go through SCOM and etc. So I think a lot of the listeners would love to hear your vision for making sure that South Africa is a vibrant economy in the future. Okay, so you couldn't hear my question? Okay, so I think we have an audio issue. No, you can hear me, Mr. President. Okay, thank you. So my long speech of a question wasn't heard by the President. Sorry about that. So I was thanking you really for your leadership, Mr. President, during very challenging times. You also, in your speech, underlined the importance of the new economy. And you start for South Africa and the competitiveness of your economy. You're also reforming the energy sector, not everything through SCOM. So where do you see your country in five to 10 years if you succeed with your new economic plan? Well, we issued a recovery and reconstruction plan just towards the end of the year. And this was largely in response to the challenges of COVID-19. But of course, we were having other challenges prior to that. So we needed then to speed up the process, not only of economic recovery, but restructuring, restructuring, focusing on reforms that we've got to embark on. Reforms that have to do with a whole range of issues, starting with our energy challenges and the finding new source of energy, but also allowing the private sector, as well as our local governments, to be the ones who can generate their own energy. Either to the entire country has just really relied on a state-owned energy generation and transmission company, which is called SCOM. And we've now agreed that we now must grasp the multi-energy source era and have various forms of energy, solar, hydro, wind, and a number of other options that we have available. And that can also be generated by private sector entities. Now, this has been greatly welcomed and we have now embarked on that journey. One of the areas where we've been a little bit slow and quite slow is releasing the spectrum to allow new innovations, fast data, transmission, and broadband. We've now embraced that. We're now in the process of doing an auction of the spectrum. This has been done in a number of other countries. So we are doing that. We're also looking at network industries. Our ports have to be repositioned, our roads. And we've now also embarked on a massive infrastructure build process to build not only roads, our dams, and a whole number of other social infrastructure. So the economic recovery is then pivoted on all the reforms that we believe we want to make. But in arriving at these reforms, we've worked together with the private sector. We've also worked together with the unions. We've also worked together with social partners. So the issue of collaboration, the issue of working cohesively has underpinned everything that we have done up till now. And when we released the plan, it was welcomed by all. And now we're in the process of implementing it. It also touches on an important area which had been neglected in the past. Visas for professionals and other skilled people who want to come and work in South Africa, entry visas. We're also focusing on the tourism sector. Much as right now, we are really engulfed in challenges of COVID-19, but we will get over this. And we're going to be restructuring a number of other sectors of our economy, agriculture, mining. You name it, we are manufacturing as well. So we are now in an era of truly restructuring and true reform. And this is going to reposition the economy of South Africa. No, thank you for sharing that vision and also the action plan, Mr. President. We know also with your background from business, you know also what is important in that respect. I saw in the news that you were able to buy 20 million vaccines, I think it was from AstraZeneca, but you also, in your introduction remarks, mentioned this vaccine nationalism. So how do you see the next months when it comes to dealing with the pandemic in South Africa? And you also, of course, have still your hat on as the chair of African Union. And you have brought a lot of positive remarks on the way African Union has handled the first wave and how you came together in this. And Africa has been bettering it better than many other places in the world. Well, as I said in my remarks, we are concerned about vaccine nationalism. The rich countries of the world went out and acquired large doses of vaccines from the developers and manufacturers of these vaccines. And some countries have even gone beyond and acquired up to four times what their population needs. And that was aimed at hoarding these vaccines. And now this is being done to the exclusion of countries in the world that most need this. And it was a great plaudible effort by the World Health Organization to set up the COVAX facility where it felt that we needed to agglomerate all our acquisition processes so that there can be equity in the distribution and in the access to vaccines. Now rich countries in the world are holding on to these vaccines and we are saying release the excess vaccines that you have ordered and hoarded. It's just no need for a country which perhaps has about 40 million people goes and acquires 120 million doses or even 160 million. And yet the world needs access to those vaccines. Now we in realizing how the world richest countries are behaving with set up the vaccine acquisition task team in Africa and we've been marginally successful. But we need those who have hoarded the vaccines to release the vaccines so that other countries can have them. But also to have financial assistance and in releasing the vaccines we're not saying them just give them away. We're also saying in addition to yes doing that we are saying do make them available so that those countries that do not have access to vaccines right now should have access. And we want vaccines as quickly as other countries do that have already started because we are all not safe if some countries vaccinating their people and other countries are not vaccinating. We all must act together in combating coronavirus because it affects all of us equally and therefore our remedies our actions to combat it must also be equal and they must be overarching for all of us and not be something that special countries or certain countries have on their own to the exclusion of others. Thank you so much Mr President I think we all know that COVID anywhere is COVID everywhere and if you don't fight it all over the world it will also then potentially mutate and it will then hit also those countries that are already vaccinated. So this vaccine nationalism is also biting yourself I think that's very clear. So we know that this free trade agreement in Africa is a huge step forward. It's more than billion people. It is a huge potential also for more trade and investments in Africa but also to Africa. How significant do you think this free trade agreement is and what are the next steps to make it into really a kind of EU free trades a single market of Africa? Well the Africa free trade area agreement is one of those I would call revolutionary a sea change initiatives that the African continent has embarked upon. And if I think about the formation of the African the OAU which was formed many years ago by our forebears in 1963 this is possibly the most important initiative that the African continent has embarked upon. Our forebears our founders wanted Africa to act together to be integrated and it has taken us some time to arrive at that. And integration means much more when it affects the economic lives of the countries of the continent. We're a market of 1.2 billion people and it's a growing market as seen by everyone around the world. It's a youthful market and it's a market of people who want to go forward and grow their economies and grow their countries. And this is a great advantage to us as the African continent. Now most of the countries the great majority of the countries have signed up to this free trade area agreement and trading has now been switched on from the 1st of January and now countries on the African continent are going to start going ahead with trading with each other rather than continuing to import goods that are made elsewhere in the world. African countries are going to be able to make their own goods and trade with each other and we actually saw visions of the future with the African medical supplies platform that we set up because in a way that was like the precursor to the Africa free trade area agreement because African countries were brought together on this platform and they started procuring medicines and medical supplies together but they also started going beyond that because producers and manufacturers in Africa started fighting their own products on this platform and through that African countries started trading with each other. South Africa for instance has already through this platform been able to trade up more than a few billion rands based on the existence of this platform. So when we now have the Africa free trade area we are going to see greater trade we're going to see greater participation and tariffs are going to be reduced or eliminated to a large extent and as the years go by we will become a free tariff area and we will be a free trade area where we are going to be able to trade with one another and the greatest joy is going to be working in a store in Johannesburg and finding goods which we don't find now finding coffee from Kenya we don't have that right now finding coffee from Ethiopia in our stores teas from tea from Rwanda and so on we just don't have those type of products right now and this free trade area is going to open the door for trading for African producers and manufacturers but the other advantage is going to be in boosting manufacturing in boosting industrialization because all of a sudden a market will have been opened and manufacturers and entrepreneurs and industrialists will now know that we now have a market because when you have a market you know that you can be innovative you can be creative because you have a playground to be able to trade your goods and wares so this is going to be the great advantage and I applaud African leaders for having grasped this needle this nettle rather and now we are moving forward to begin the trading process in on the African continent. No thank you so much Mr President thank you for your leadership and also thank you for your clear vision on a free trade in Africa this is the Africa century also and instead of beggar your neighbor you should prosper your neighbor thank you so much Mr President and all the best to you and your countrymen also in this struggle that we're all in with the pandemic so thank you so much for joining us today thank you thank you