 OK. Artyrarau, yw ystod ddod? Rwy'n meddwl, dwi wedi ychwanegu. Yr ymddangos y pwyllgor a'i byw, maewn i'w ddim bwysig fel ydi gweithio i wneud ar gyfer y cyflwyffol ac mae'n meddwl gweithio'n gweithio yn y ffazgfyrdd ar y platforms y africahau. Mae'r heddiw i'w olyn nhogol, yr hyn o strategiwn oedd y ffordd. Rhywbwn i'r pannael ei gwestiynau gael y peth wedi nhw'n ymddangos i'r ffordd unig ac yn digon, gwneud o'r platform. Wrth gwrs, roeddwn i fynd i'n gweithio ymlaen o Ysbytyg Cyfnodd, rydyn ni'n bwysig o'r cyhoedd ymlaen, oherwydd mae'n gweithio gynhyrch yn gyfryd. Rwy'n adrodd o'r gweithio ymlaen, gallwn yn gweithio'r gweithio'r cyhoedd, i fynd i gael ar y dweud, ac i'n meddwl ein gwirionedd yw'r gweithio'r cyhoedd, a'r gweithio'r gweithio'r cyhoedd o'r region. Mae wnaeth dweud o'i 25 mi iddyn nhw, nad o'r cyhoedd yma, Panlystau yw eu ddechrau i ydw i ddweud hynny, hynny'n mynd i gyd yn y ddechrau. Mae'n gwybodaeth o'r hyffordd yn ymgyrch yn bobl, felly rydyn ni'n gallu gyd yn ei ddweud yn y ddweud. Mae'r 1rhyw panlystau i'r All-T-Kanzer. Rhyw o'r hyffordd afro, o'n rhaid i'r ffórwm. Rwy'n ymgyrch yn ei ddweud, yn ymgyrch yn gwneud yn y platform Afro-Growf. y context of the current times we live in. Tell us why this is so important for you and for this meeting. Thank you, Ollie. If we go back two years ago, you may recall that we were talking about inclusive growth that was part of the main theme for the summit that took place in Durban, here in South Africa. The major concern still being recently as well as globally that while we were investing more and achieving growth rates that are pretty high on average in Africa, it was not translating into the creation of jobs and we have tens of millions of young Africans joining the labour market every year. So since then in collaboration with our leading business platform, the Africa Regional Business Council, we essentially applied our minds and particularly the minds of business because growth comes from business, about how we could go about supporting the ecosystem for small businesses, SMEs, which is really where most jobs are created globally when you look at the evidence. And so this essentially snowballed into the Africa growth platform that we see today. So it's been a journey that's taken a while. A lot of research and discussions about what works or what doesn't, looking also in particular at interventions by governments, by big businesses, by foundations and also investors that have been keen in supporting, for instance, accelerators or startup hubs and really querying what was missing. And a key part that was missing is a collaboration among the different actors, a lot of fragmentation, duplication and therefore limited impact. So the really exciting part about this initiative is that we have entrepreneurs at the centre of it. We're really looking at things from the point of view of the SMEs and small businesses and then we have this collection of actors that are willing to combine their forces and say what can we do together so that we can reach 100 million small businesses over the next five years and help them grow. Great, and also you talk about interventions and the challenge of having more interventions and getting people working together in the right kind of way. What are we expecting? What do you expect public sector and the private sector to do together to create this momentum? In the short run our main focus also with the key partners is on quick wins. What do we know is already working, working in the region, working globally. Why is it that you can set up a business in Rwanda in a couple of hours and in other places can take you a year, right? So those are easy, quick wins. Pay the small businesses on time. We have culprits in the public sector as well as the private sector. A lot of our small businesses are being squeezed because they have no working capital that is easier to implement. Father up the spectrum you have countries like Tunisia and Mali where they have startup acts. Why don't we learn from them? How did they get so far where you have a legislative framework that deliberately is targeted at supporting small businesses? So in the short run this is a primary area of focus. Let's focus on what's easy where you can go and see how they made it happen, what the impact was and then as we go further along for sure we're going to have to deal with the harder issues infrastructure is still an issue, just basic energy, transport for roads and water and this is feedback from the small businesses themselves. Great, fantastic. So before we go to questions let's just talk to four of the key members of the platform from the private sector. So I'm honoured to be joined by Theosibir, partner and head of Africa at AT Kearney, Brian Wong, vice presidents of global initiatives at Alibaba Group based in China, also a young global leader here of the World Economic Forum. Dr James Mwangi, Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Equity Bank based in Kenya and Raphael I'm your dabbwg group, I do apologise, my notes are incorrect. I do apologise to James from Dabbwg Group and I knew that, I surprised myself. Raphael Apador, who I hope is from the Export Trading Group, very prevalent across southern Edith, Africa. This is why I don't talk very much, I'm prone to mistakes. Theo, let's start with you. You're all busy people but you've chosen to invest your time in this project. Tell us a little bit about why you've done that. Yeah, I think our interest is really on two fronts in respect of supporting this particular initiative. So firstly as AT Kearney we are true believers in the potential that this continent offers if it can be facilitated and supported in activating its full potential. That's the first part and AT Kearney is really interested in playing a role in that narrative and hence our investment in this initiative. The second key area, which is of real interest for us, so one of the roles that I fulfil is that of the co-chair of the regional business council of the World Economic Forum and together with Mr James Ovia we decided that the theme that we felt most critical for the continent was around empowering the youth, the African youth, of which there's a significant and fast growing number of youth, most of which are unemployed but probably most disturbing are not really engaged in any meaningful contribution to the economies of the continent. So we saw this, we saw the theme around empowering youth as critical for us and as it evolved we saw that there's a fantastic opportunity to crowd in new technologies as well as have a focus on small to medium-sized enterprises as a way of trying to stimulate job creation as small to medium-sized enterprises are critical players in terms of absorbing the workforce coming into the African market. So we then said this opportunity, the African growth platform, really combines all the areas that are of real interest to us as the regional business council of the forum and so very excited about the initiative and hence our interest in supporting it. What kind of technologies do you think have the most promise for addressing the challenges we face? Yeah, so our initial views that we are allowing the entrepreneurs to in a sense identify them as critical technologies that they think are going to help address some of the challenges but we are guided to some extent by key technologies that are driven or coming through the fourth industrial revolution so opportunities for the leveraging of for example 3D printing in distributed manufacturing or the leveraging of artificial intelligence in terms of some of the applications that are available or areas where you can actually use blockchain technologies or those kind of things which will address issues around facilitating trade on the content between different regions of different countries. So there's a whole host of technologies but the most prominent ones are probably those that are coming through in what we see anyway from the fourth industrial revolution technologies. Great, Brian, you join us from from China, you work very closely with the founder of Alibaba who spoke passionately about Africa in the past so I'm not for a minute suggesting this is the only reason you're here but there's a philosophy there's a philosophy at Alibaba that of helping and harnessing entrepreneurs as small business people so how do you hope that's going to translate into the African continent? So from the time that Alibaba was started you know our mission has been to make it easy to do business anywhere but what does that mean? It really means that at the time that Jack started a company it was focused on helping small medium-sized businesses or any group that was not part of the mainstream economy to get connected with the economy through technology so Jack you know he was a teacher actually by training when he before he started Alibaba so empowerment is really a key part of who he is and what he believes in and the platform model that has really emerged in the fourth industrial revolution as a means to create marketplaces is something that Alibaba really has focused on and I think now is time for a new development paradigm. I think Africa stands at a crossroad not unlike China did 20 years ago when Jack started Alibaba in China there were 8.8 million internet users if you fast forward 20 years later there's 830 million internet users the per capita income in China at the time Alibaba started in 1999 was $800 per person today it's 9 000 per person in China so I think that we can see and the population of China obviously is 1.3 billion people the African continent is not that different so when Jack came to Africa for the first time two years ago he was inspired he was very excited he saw what the possibilities were for a continent to transform itself by enabling youth enabling small businesses to become part of the mainstream economy by using technology so the reason why you know we feel so excited about Africa and the future it has before is because we we know that it's been done before in a place like China an emerging market that didn't have very much in way of infrastructure but that became an advantage to the market just as this should become an advantage to the African continent to leapfrog and go straight into the fourth industrial revolution and leverage and harness the power of youth to drive that so I would I would say that you know LC and the team by pulling together this initiative we're very excited to be a part of it because we see how how much potential there is but also how it's really important for the public sector the private sector the civil society to all come together to work together and align themselves towards a common goal and that will accelerate what Africa can do for itself by using this technology and just stay with you for a second more Brian Jack of course is a legendary philanthropist as well he donates lots to good causes and sport and other areas how much of this is philanthropic how much of this is hard-nosed business well jack is also on his personal foundation supported conservation efforts in Africa and also he's announcing a prize this year in November it's an entrepreneur prize that is celebrating the success of entrepreneurs across all sectors in Africa and he's he's committed to do 10 years of this prize a million dollars each year he will give to these entrepreneurs because he personally believes in the power of entrepreneurship so you know Alibaba is an interesting company it's it's a business but at the same time it's it's a how should I say social impact but that's actually within the DNA of the company so the two are actually not different it's actually very well aligned James and Raphael I have the same question for both of you which is you're busy people yeah you've LC's got you involved in this project and got you to commit your time and resources I'm sure she'll be you know going around with a checkbook after this session so tell us a little bit about you know how you think you can make a difference to this platform and why you want to well the first thing for me the exciting thing about this initiative is in some ways we felt like at Dalberg this was already kind of our almost our raise on debt you know we began our business 20 years ago looking to work towards inclusive and sustainable growth around the world you scratch a little bit below that it's all about giving people the tools and the ability to improve their own lives and empowering them and that then becomes synonymous with unlocking the power of enterprise we ourselves were a startup business that's become a global platform how do we build how do we think about that entrepreneurial journey and unlocking the barriers that entrepreneurial journey and part of that is recognizing that Africa which is the place with the biggest challenge around attaining sustained economic inclusive economic growth is a place where the challenges of the continent and the opportunities for transformative business are more or less the same things we can take inspiration from companies like Alibaba that by filling a gap created real wealth and a lot real opportunity for themselves and others and so we stepped back and said all of the work that we're doing in terms of generating new data and understanding what's limiting the progress of small business or in understanding the application of new technology or new business models actually finds true manifestation in the goals of this of this new initiative and it just makes sense to make common cause with others because this is there's more than enough for everyone to do and actually the more of us are collaborating and coordinating ourselves the more we solve the collective action problem and the more we can attain impact at scale so that's why we're excited and really committed to this and Raphael how are you going to contribute to this so yeah i do i do represent the export trading group where we recently started a digital platforms subsidiary where they're thinking very simply that the future is digital etg has been was founded 51 years ago and has a significantly an African company i mean traded in more than half about half of the countries on the continent and we we do a lot of traditional business logistics you know commodity exportation inputs importation and distribution et cetera and so we've built a lot of you know relationships with you know commerce within the various countries with you know government with the various countries and also know how but where i came in was to bring that digital competency in my background you know co-founder junior et cetera but what you learn over time is that to be able to build big businesses you need real resources real resources that actually exist already that can be leveraged with a new know-how right so etg is significantly and heavily going into you know the digital space um and to be able to accelerate the growth of digital companies and it's actually going in in multiple ways one as a company builder itself and two as an investor and three as one who actually leverages the relationships and the competence and the know-how that it has in the market to be able to accelerate growth and so that's what we're doing now what we have is a digital platforms um a subsidiary now we'll take ideas and take them to market and also look at you know various things that are being done already in the market that we can actually catalyze whether through investment in in or buying companies you know early stage companies that are showing potential that we can actually invest in so so this initiative is one that is very close to our hearts because we get to work with various different partners that will enable us accelerate the growth of the digital economy in in on the continent so part of the framework work that we've done over the last couple of weeks for example talks about the role of governments the role of investors and the role of private enterprise to be able to and we can come in with relationships at the government level we can come in as investors and also as private enterprise we can invest in things like the skills influence policy making um entrepreneurs ourselves um and and bring the capital to bear but most importantly we need to be able to build big companies on the subcontinent we have too many small companies that aren't really going in the work and to be able to build these big companies we need to be able to have some level of some level of coordination in the way we're thinking about the growth of digital economies across the subcontinent and that is where our work with this with this group actually is very helpful because by taking best um use cases from one place and being able to use relationships to be able to get policy makers to be able to implement the right you know use cases in other places we're able to grow much bigger panafrican companies thanks for that right so we have a few minutes left for questions a quick show of hands he wants to ask questions the microphone is ready anyone no okay right so over to me happy to say look we are clearly at a at a something of a juncture here where we see growth modestly accelerating and we see fdi increasing and all that is good but at the same time we see a huge labour force expansion um due to the demographic pattern of africa's growth um so many so many to be done right and we see and that we'd read in the newspapers across the across the continent not to mention the whole world so my question to each of you on the business side is if there is one single intervention that you could ask for whether it's skills or better regional integration or access to financing what is the one single intervention which you believe would be most critical in achieving a breakthrough to help africa and it's in its course to develop and grow rafael we'll start with you well i wish there was a big fat red you know button that can be pressed to create the change that we desire but if you ask me i think you know african economies are relatively smaller than you know most of the economies you see in the world and you pull africa together that's when it becomes very interested so if you can get some degree of integration in terms of how we're thinking about digitising the continent um and uh some degree of police integration so when you start something in Nairobi you go to Rwanda and you have a good idea of what you're running into there um that would be very helpful and we can actually if we can use best practices that we see around us right i think just about the entire continent can learn quite a lot from Rwanda for example with what they've done with you know with the economy or you know cashless society initiatives at least some part of what Nigeria has done can be lent emphasize another good example if we can actually use these use cases and implement and accelerate growth across the continent it would be very good for for building enterprises and accelerating them fantastic and actually it's a really good point so because we are we like to think positively as well james and brine and the if you can think of a successful intervention which you've seen change the game to a any degree as well let's include that as well james you're next um i'll begin first by echoing what rafael i said i think there are two themes that are really stand out that speak to africa's unique positioning the first is africa is going to have to transform itself in an error in a digital era and we need to make the most of digital tools and digital capabilities now what that speaks to is how are we thinking about the critical enablers of that ecosystem things like identity things like the ability to make payments and so on and i think we believe that if you can unlock that you can provide those basic enablers that allow the majority of the population to be digitally able to digitally transact you will allow four folks to actually innovate and and and and build pathways out of poverty themselves central to that though is that notion of of market integration and that notion of how do we actually create a single set of rules of the game one integrated set of rules of the game for the continent because we are not in africa going to be able to export our way to prosperity as our friends in asia were able to just the nature of the state of global trade today tells you all you need to do you know optional about that so if we want to build more sophisticated economies we're going to need to trade indigenously across african countries and find ways areas of comparative advantage and finally and perhaps a little bit different from that is the question of unlocking the full potential of our population and that means the role of women as a productive asset in africa and we already see it because women are such a big part of the biggest part of africa's economy is agriculture and small old agriculture and so we already see women carrying the the bulk of of value in that space if we can be deliberate about policies and approaches that make use of you know technology as well to make sure that women are part of driving this change I think it gives us a better chance of succeeding we can't afford to go into this fight with one hand tied behind our back Brian so I want to piggyback off the previous two comments I think integrated market is critical it's just a basic necessity but on top of that I would say that mindset shift is critical for success of the african transformation and that especially relates to the youth and the belief that there are possibilities outside of traditional career paths like you know banking or oil and gas or even government and that being an entrepreneur is a noble thing in a worthwhile thing but also a very exciting thing so you unleash the power of youth in terms of creativity and this is a especially important because there is no predefined path for africa's digital development right now it's not china it's not the united states it's some other path that meets the needs of the market and so they are the ones so we want to celebrate those those successes those heroes that's why we have a program with umtad uh called the e-founders fellowship which is to really nurture uh the future sort of jack maws of africa so they can create the platforms to serve africa but in addition to youth we need to engage governments and and allow them to to realize that they have to change the mindset of the traditional governance structure and and really embrace what's happening now to enable and provide the opportunity to private sector to actually move things forward so that they protect the rights of of the individuals but at the same time don't control it to the point that it stops innovation so mindset across public and private sector uh and also education I think is critical fantastic thea yeah I guess I'm I have to agree with all getting tougher it's getting tougher and tougher integration and women mindset shift we've got some diversity here as well as an agreement which is right but but but I'll say for me maybe on the back of everything that's been said I'm very much at the point where I think it's it's really about how do you execute quickly right the answers are all here we've heard them we know what needs to be done right it's kind of of course there's obviously there'll be barriers here and so forth but we have the intellectual capability to come up with the solutions I think that's that's that's a given our biggest challenge in this continent is execution right and we've got to find a way to execute and it doesn't mean I have to execute a perfect a perfect uh um solution from the from the onset let's have a minimum viable you know product let's get it out there and let's start uh iterating and and getting it better and better and now this is where I sort of lean on on what's been said is how do we get to execute better and this is one area that I'll then highlight and say one thing that I think could fundamentally move the needle in terms of implementation is is the removal of politicians maybe I shouldn't say politicians they say that the politics whatever you want it's just us in the world so one of the challenges we have is around policies and coming up with policies enabling policies and so forth that in and of itself and the rate at which we do that slows down execution in many respects and so in my view I think rather than removing policies this let's remove politicians and give entrepreneurs the space to do what they want to do right don't hold them back I think we always hold ourselves back so how do we do less policy making and more um enabling or supporting or encouraging execution and implementation try try and fail try and fail try different things do do all those those kind of things um as quickly as possible fantastic yeah that's great LC over to you so execution we've been talking about what are we going to be talking about one year from now when we uh we we meet back here for the 2020 when I come for a meeting in Africa so let me start off with what I see is the biggest opportunity in two respects one is the fourth industrial revolution many wonder whether it's relevant for Africa I think that's the wrong question it's how we engage with it as the youngest continent in the world if we're able to harness the power of youth who don't have to unlearn an old way of doing things old technologies but to be ready for this new era and to be able to run with it then we'll be able to move faster see quicker results you know it unlocks a different way of doing things a lot of these technologies don't need you to have a degree right just apply yourself for a couple of hours and you're able to go to market immediately so that's a key opportunity if we can unlock that get them excited get them fired up then we will have less to do we should be following them not trying to drag them along right so that's one key thing two is as the world economic forum we're a platform of platform so for everyone out there who's wondering gosh are you setting up yet another thing absolutely not what we're trying to do is to play the role of a conductor in an orchestra and just say listen can we just align our different efforts and know what each other is doing and see how we can leverage each other's efforts so a key fact of success will be to expand the group of actors that is willing to be part of this initiative to align their interventions with those of the of the founding members so we can reach more people faster it's all about impact and impact means the more of us working together the more we can get done and be able to show concrete results and then lastly it's about leadership yes you know to make fun of me especially my fellow young global leaders about harassing them and and being on the case they'll have day jobs they're very important people but they believe in this they believe in the importance of the continent the youth of the continent the talent the the possibilities and are moving from talk to action you know there's enough talking we need to act and that needs people to say i'm ready to be counted and this is what i'm going to do and you know you can count to me and so we need more leadership from different quarters where people don't just stay at problems but they actually engage with them they're not perfect solutions but the more of us apply ourselves and you know and and learn from each other we can resolve many of this tough intractable challenges faster even if it's bit by bit but eventually we'll get there there's a lot of letting free we're hearing here we're letting free the youth the entrepreneurs the women of course so important it's changing our mindsets and it's keeping on integrating in less small companies less small economies more big companies and big economy and and and big big everything right thank you so much indeed we're now running over time i've said enough this session is over thank you