 Friends and colleagues, honored guests, Professor Jonathan Levin, thank you for inviting me to speak. I would have loved to be there personally, but my schedule has made that impossible. So I'm glad you're able to accommodate my contributions in this way. Thank God for technology. Our theme, African innovation shaping the global future, is counterintuitive, yet very perceptive. Why would Africa play a pivotal role in the global future? After all, Africa is home to most of the least developed countries in the world, and many African countries are the bottom of the rung of human development indicators. It certainly is not a global leader in research and development. And in terms of digital technology, Africa seems to have a high mountain to climb, as its internet penetration is at 39.3% compared to the world average of 58.8%. But I would say that it is precisely because of its developmental limitations, its distance from the frontier of economic development, that Africa needs to innovate and in so doing will catch up and indeed set the pace for the rest of the world. First of all, digitalization offers opportunities for innovation that are not so readily available with other forms of technology and will enable African countries to leapfrog, while at the same time contributing to the global future. It's now well acknowledged that the tech sector in Africa holds a lot of promise. There are said to be almost 700 innovation hubs on the continent and venture capital funding continues to expand at a very rapid pace. This last frontier continent offers opportunities for using innovation to solve the huge deficits in financial inclusion, in human capital development, in access to electricity, in access to clean energy, in access to credit, and payment processing. So for example, the story of mobile telephony in Nigeria, which has created the basis for the widespread use of digital technologies, is an important one. From barely 300,000 telephone connections at the turn of the millennium, we now have up to 188 million active mobile lines in the country. The use of mobile telephones in Nigeria has completely redrawn the economic landscape of the country. In addition to making it easier to communicate, smart devices are now the major way of making payments, of booking air tickets, of ride hailing, of accessing streaming services, and listening to music. The revolution spawned by mobile telephones would have been difficult to imagine if it had not already happened. So a good example is financial inclusion. Using technology, notably by taking points of sales services to the informal sector, Nigerian fintechs have helped to overcome the challenges of limited access to banking services, and by so doing, ramped up financial inclusion in the country. So they've begun to spread into the rest of the continent, and in many ways, have become global leaders. So of course, it's no surprise that companies like Paystack, and Della, Flutterwave, and OPEI have achieved valuations of over one billion US dollars. Have a mass education. It's evident that in order to bridge the digital skills divide and enable African children to cope with a rapidly changing world, education, relevant, useful education, is key. Yet given the fact of its rapidly growing population and the relative lack of resources, it is clear that Africa cannot keep up with the bricks-and-mortar approach of educating its young. So innovation is the only way to avoid this dilemma, and we must explore the opportunities to educate a large number of young people. And there is already significant activity in the ed tech space. Today, there are close to 300 ed tech startups in Africa, and many of them are doing good work in mass education and even STEM education at science, technology, engineering, and math. The increasing economic viability of advanced robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, the internet of things, cloud computing, big data analytics, and blockchain technologies requires that young Africans acquire a new set of skills. The skills that will be required range from basic digital literacy to knowledge of software and hardware engineering that's required to build and maintain ICT equipment and systems upon which comes the top layer of the ability to use digital tools innovatively. So Africa must promote talent and the acquisition of relevant skills for its citizens, especially its young people in the next few years. We already have companies like Andella that's focused on top-class software engineering talent in Africa, and Andella has done quite a bit of work in providing that class of software engineers, while Paystack has teamed up with Lambda to provide world-class full-stack developer education for free. Productivity remains a problem for Africa. So agriculture production, for example, is well below its potential, despite having 25% of the world's arable land, of which 50% is uncultivated. If care is not taken, the continent will continue to have unsustainable dependence on food aid and increasing food security. But again, it is clear that it is innovation that must come to the rescue, and there are many takers filling the gaps in many parts of the agricultural value chain. There's, for example, a startup called Kubeko from Kodevoa in West Africa, which produces low-cost equipment that is able to process bio-waste into organic fertilizer. Now, at a time when global oil and gas prices are at record highs, this sort of innovation will help to reduce the cost of producing food while reducing post-harvest losses. There are also quite a few fast-growing technology-driven and cultural companies. There's, for example, Thrive at Greek, which recently secured a $56.4 million loan debt funding from commercial banks and institutional investors. And what this company does is that it links African farmers to capital, to data-driven best practices, and local and global markets for their commodities. Now, access to credit, especially for small farmers and informal traders, has also remained a major challenge, but also it's an important opportunity for innovation. In 2016, in order to facilitate a major government program on microcredit for 10 million informal traders, which is the largest of its kind in Africa, the Nigerian Bank of Industry commissioned a digital platform for that purpose. And it proved to be tremendously successful and has now led to the commissioning of its growth platform, which engages 22,000 agents living across Nigeria. Each agent is equipped with the platform's proprietary mobile technologies. They receive mandates to capture and digitize businesses eligible for its growing suite of microcredit programs. So this has proved to be extremely successful. In some cases, these agents and they're called human banks open the first ever bank account or mobile wallet used by microenterprises. Every detail of each of the businesses is trackable centrally at the Bank of Industry majors and facial IDs of every micro, small and medium entrepreneur were applicable. Now, climate change is yet another issue. And it continues to pose serious risks for Africa and could hamper even our post COVID recovery and cause 86 million Africans or more to migrate within their own countries by 2050. The current solutions to tackling climate change also pose a dilemma for Africa in the sense that they take no account of the continent's energy poverty. And it's estimated, for instance, that only 40% of Africans have access to electricity. So Africa must find a pathway to improving energy access which is so vital for economic development while making its own contributions to tackling climate change. This is why startups like Reedy in Nigeria which produces and rents out solar powered batteries holds out great promise to increasing access to electricity while helping to save costs. So it's estimated that small businesses in Nigeria spend up to 40% of their daily expenses on electricity and amount which, if you use Reedy, will be reduced to about 10%. In a similar vein, Africa's creative sector is doing very well and building new talent across the sector and also leveraging new technologies, even NFTs. There's also the use of virtual reality to bring Africa to the world by showcasing our arts, museums and culture. Given the need to lend further impactors to digital technology in order to innovate for the future, we are establishing here in Nigeria the investment in digital and creative enterprises program which is called iDICE for short. So iDICE is supported by the African Development Bank, by the Islamic Development Bank and the French Development Agency and to raise about $600 million to support four key pillars of our technology and creativity ecosystem. And the four pillars are finance and investment, catalytic infrastructure, skills and policy development. There's of course some concern that the increasing use of digital technologies could lead to a loss of jobs as industrial robots and automatic tele-machines replace people. Now this is an important consideration because beyond the very many problems with alienated young people, jobs matter because the consumption from workers' incomes contributes to economic growth. However, job losses need not accompany increasing digitalization because clearly numerous jobs and opportunities will abound in the digital space. And I think some of the evidence we're seeing already is that there is so much room and so much opportunities for the creation of jobs in the digital space and we may not have a significant worry in terms of loss of jobs. The key thing is to provide our young people with the skills and knowledge to participate and benefit from the digital economy. So in conclusion, I think the evidence all around us is that in the process of addressing these challenges, Africa is using the opportunities of the digital era quite innovatively. It's imperative that we keep the momentum going so that the continent thrives, backstops innovation, creates wealth and contributes to overall global development. And I think there is no question at all that with the right spirit of hard work and problem solving that we see all over the continent, the green shoots of technological innovation will transform the continent and impact positively on the rest of the world. Thank you very much for listening.