 Okay, good afternoon everybody, you're all very welcome to the Institute of International and European Affairs. As I do it myself I recommend everybody to switch your phones to silence. We encourage you to tweet in the usual way. We are on the record for the Tonnes-Thos keynote and the Q&A there after. There may not be a huge amount of time for Q&A. We have to finish it too, but the Q&A is under the Chatham House rule. So we are delighted to have the Tonnes-Thos here. I know the former colleague of mine in the Iraqis and I think throughout his professional career a huge interest in development in Africa and in human rights and we're delighted to have this opportunity to hear his view of the future and how this plays a crucial role in Ireland's foreign policy and indeed in the European Union's foreign policy. So to introduce the Tonnes-Thos I want to first of all ask you to welcome the head of Irish aid. Irish aid are in partnership with the IAA on this speaker series. So please could you give a welcome to Rory de Burkett. Thank you very much. I'm going to be very brief because in many ways the Tonnes-Thos is one of the best known people in Ireland. So it's very little I can say that anybody in the room doesn't know and he's also my boss so I can't say anything that he possibly should know but doesn't want to hear. No, I think look it's fantastic the Tonnes-Thos is here today because the topic is one that is very close to his heart. The Tonnes-Thos relationship with Africa long predates his assumption of the role of Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade. In fact when he was in other ministries he did his very best to extend their remit to Africa as well and I think you know that's testament to his personal interest in the relationship between Ireland and what is a very fascinating and rich continent and you know today you know the Tonnes-Thos is going to explore some of the richness of that relationship and it's one of a number of speeches he'd be giving this week around Ireland and Africa including tomorrow when we launch a public consultation on a new white paper for international development. So I think today you know when he speaks you'll hear something about the broader tapestry of our relationship with Africa and I think in many ways that reflects his own personal interest in the subject. I'll say no more because it's the Tonnes-Thos gig. Tonnes-Thos, good luck. Thank you Rory. Ambassadors and of course members and to Barry in particular thank you for the invitation to be here. This is an institute that is a really important part I think of our debating infrastructure in Ireland in the context of international and European affairs and continues to play an important role as it has done over the last 30 years. However at this time of potential great change in Ireland's place in the world, your thought leadership and the space this institute opens for debate I think is probably more important than ever. My theme today is the richness of the relationship between Ireland and Africa and the real and exciting possibilities that flow from it. In exploring this unconscious but over the last few years there have been many reminders of the interconnectedness of our world. In particular our place in Europe and its neighborhood of which of course Africa is such an important part. Africa is a place that is close to my heart, both personally and politically. I've explored it on my holidays, been there as a student many times and I visited many countries there in various ministries from defence in Mali to agriculture in a number of different African countries and of course now as a Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade most recently to Kenya to Ethiopia and what would have been to Somalia if it hadn't been for some difficult security issues at the time and of course I've been to Egypt as well and to other parts of North Africa. As a student I was at the peak of Africa at the top of Kilimanjaro on a memorable visit to that extraordinary part of your continent. Africa is a place that I find both challenging and exciting, a vibrant growing place at the centre of our future and I don't say that lightly. The vitality and potential of Africa's young people is undoubtedly its greatest resource. The reason why the former Ethiopian Prime Minister said to me when I met him last November in Addis Ababa that his view is that this century is Africa's century. Of course Ireland and Africa are not strangers to each other. We share a long and complex history of connection and interconnection. There are the frequently mentioned touchstones, the contributions of our missionaries, our continuing contribution of our NGOs and of course Ireland's development cooperation programme which many people in this room are rightly very proud. Perhaps sometimes there may be a tendency to imagine our relationship as primarily determined through this prism of solidarity. However, there is much more to our connections than we can and do value. Ireland and Africa have remained connected over the centuries by the innate Irish desire to travel and migrate to distant lands and to talk to other people and do our best to teach them. Often in search of a better life but also there were those motivated to be part of a larger project of justice and solidarity. I'm thinking of those women and men who have worked in rural Africa, saving lives and building communities. Their commitment to mother and child health has helped many tens of thousands of people and contributed to the development of healthcare systems in many, many countries. And those educators, those who worked in such a way touched the lives of so many. In my visits to Africa as a minister, I'm always struck by the number of senior people I've met who've been educated by an Irish teacher, a brother, sister, priest or nun, including the President of Kenya when I was last there who reminded me of his education which he said was something that I'm not sure I wanted at the time but perhaps I needed at the time. Often those they educate are not the great and the good but also the most vulnerable. And it's about changing lives through knowledge, through education, through development. Ireland's experience of colonialism and struggle for self-determination inspired a generation of African leaders, including Nelson Mandela, of course, being the most prominent, who recalled in his visit to Ireland in 1990 how inspirational the existence of the Irish state was in encouraging those struggling against apartheid. And in turn, Mandela has been an inspiration to us and to many around the world. It is fitting that tomorrow Kilmainham jail sees the opening of an exhibition to celebrate the centenary of Mandela's birth. The exhibition traces his life from prisoner to president and side by side charts the relationship between Ireland and South Africa through an extraordinary period in both of our histories. It documents the solidarity of anti-apartheid years and the role of Kader Asma, a man who we like to claim as one of our own and others in imagining a new South Africa before it became a reality. It reminds us that we established diplomatic relations 25 years ago, opening an Irish embassy in Pretoria only when the apartheid regime ended, and not before that. And it focuses a spotlight on our continuing relationship through arts, culture, business and investment both ways. And the enduring people to people links that define our relationship with South Africa. That solidarity and commitment to principle, that solidarity and commitment to principle demonstrated in relation to South Africa is one that continues to define our relationship with the continent as a whole. In many respects, the scale and diversity of Africa as a continent should prevent us from attempting to talk about this as one place. Which I know is something that always really irritates African ambassadors. It's a bit like when you go to the US and they talk about Europe as if Ireland and Hungary were the same place. And in many ways, the diversity on the continent of Africa is even more stark than on the continent of Europe. Africa is not a country. And yes, in our imagination, we often ascribe is the characteristics of one country. As I said, much the frustration of Africa's leading commentators and opinion formers. As a continent, it's complex, more complex than we perhaps appreciate at once prosperous and poor, peaceful and troubled, a place of great potential, but with interconnected and cyclical challenges that will take generations to overcome. In the decades since independence, we have worked with our African partners to support their post colonial projects of state building and development. Over this time, we have witnessed considerable progress in health and education services, and in the entrepreneurship of young Africans, striking a path towards their own prosperity. New challenges have come into focus, such as climate change and gender equality, where there are where there has been less progress and where urgent action is required if we are to secure a future for the next generation in their own home countries. Many African governments recognize that the way to change direction and unlock the inherent economic potential in their countries is to build a strong internal market for Africa. And increase intra Africa trade as a means of creating jobs and growth. Currently intra Africa trade accounts for only 12% of Africa's total trade, compared to 60% in Western Europe. There are interesting moves afoot to eliminate barriers to free trade across the continent. The Summers in Kigali last March agreed to launch the African continental free trade area. The largest such area agreed since the formation, the WTO. Ireland supports this initiative and through our development cooperation program and the EU is providing assistance to countries interested in joining. For example, through trademark East Africa. Additionally, our work on the development of value chains, support for small holder farmers and the building economies of scale to keep communities in preparation in an inclusive way to take advantage of coming opportunities that are undoubtedly there. An example of this is Ireland's support to potato farmers in Kenya, which I speak regularly to the Kenyan ambassador about, and to which we had such a fantastic conversation about when we were when we were in Kenya a number of months ago. The exchange of Irish seed known, a virus seed know how is helping increase Kenyan potato yields from five tons per hectare to something approaching the 60 tons per hectare that we generate here. You can imagine if we just got even halfway there. What that would do. Changing yields in a country from five tons to 30 tons a year transforms an agri food economy in a way that can be so valuable. Irish storage techniques are helping to preserve stocks, allowing investors to look at value added products. Last month, some Kenyan entrepreneurs were here to meet with potential Irish partners. Who knows Kenyans may yet grow to love Tato just as much as we do in Ireland. And perhaps in time it'll be Kenyan technology that's being imported back into Ireland to increase the yields that we currently enjoy. But it is true in general terms that for various reasons, our trading relationship with Africa is not as substantial as it is with most other regions or indeed as it could be and should be. Our history today is not limited to our future ambition, of course. As with our political and security relationships, the future of the European and African prosperity is inextricably intertwined and the economies of our continental southern neighbor represent huge potential for job creation and economic growth here in Ireland. I think we have much to learn from each other, not just in terms of trade and resources, but in the sharing of experiences and best practice. I'm personally very excited, for example, about the work of our embassy in Nairobi, which has developed a framework for agri-food cooperation between Ireland and Kenya that goes way beyond the simple potato, and which I was proud to launch last November. This approach goes beyond traditional development instruments and seeks to identify key requirements within the Kenyan agricultural sector which might be messed by Irish expertise matching the two in terms of getting, as farmers would say, some hybrid vigor from the two approaches. And the relationship should be a mutually beneficial one. Indeed, there is much that we in Ireland can learn from our African partners through a greater understanding of how our common objectives of creating jobs, growing business opportunities, and transforming lives can be pursued elsewhere. Who knows, given the weather we are experiencing and enjoying this summer, perhaps we have a lot to learn from Kenya on how to manage drought in years ahead, something we didn't think we'd be talking about in Ireland anytime soon. It's for that reason that I'm delighted today to formally announce that the sixth African Ireland Economic Forum will be held in Dublin on the 11th of October next. The forum has been running since 2011 and is the centerpiece of Ireland's economic engagement with countries across the African continent. It provides a unique opportunity to bring businesses, policymakers, and influencers together to share experiences and best practice with the aim of building long-standing and mutually beneficial partnerships. And really, that needs to be the theme of the future relationship between the EU as a whole and the African continent. It must be about partnerships as opposed to an unequal relationship where one is telling the other what to do and providing the money with which to do it. And that is what we will be doing this year, highlighting to Irish audiences the many and diverse business opportunities that exist across the African continent and providing the space for companies to come together face to face, strengthening existing relationships, and building new partnerships. This year we have chosen to focus on two specific and complementary topics. The agri-food sector, which we probably come to realize I'm partial to, and women in business, which I think is also an area where Ireland is starting to show global leadership and can do much more. On both of these subjects I'm convinced Irish companies have a wealth of experience to share with their African counterparts. Ireland's relationship with Africa has often seemed to focus on English-speaking countries, perhaps reflecting the spread of Irish missionaries, and understandably so. Our embassies have tended to be concentrated in east and southern Africa, with many of our NGOs and businesses also active in the same places. Our knowledge of and engagement with West Africa has tended to be more sporadic, anchored in Nigeria, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, with less attention to Francophone Africa. That is something which I hope to change, as the government moves to implement a strategy of doubling our global footprint or our global presence. Our embassy in Abuja will serve as a hub for engaging with and exploring opportunities to deepen bilateral relationships with the neighbouring Sahel region. We are upgrading our office in Liberia to a full embassy. That will happen next year. We need to look to expand our footprint into French-speaking West Africa, building on and from our existing relationships. We have a very solid platform that we can work from, but we shouldn't be limited to that footprint. And I think you will see in the coming years, Irish influence and Irish interests and Irish partnerships expanding into French-speaking Africa. We want to deepen our relationships with Africa in the context also of the Sustainable Development Goals, which Ireland brokered in the UN in partnership with Kenya. I think both countries are very proud to say. An important tool which will help us in this endeavour is the government's commitment to meeting the UN target of 0.7% of gross national income for development cooperation by 2030. Put that into a context because I know nobody really believes that we're going to do it until you actually see it happening. That means we have to move from spending about 720 million euros a year to spending about two and a half billion euros a year on an Irish aid programme over the space of 10 to 12 years. That is going to put significant stress and strain on the political system to be able to find a way of doing that. And I think we will need to start as we mean to continue in the context of the 2019 budget to get us started in that direction. We're currently less than 0.3% of a target that is more than double that figure in percentage terms and a lot more than double that figure in actual money. But I believe the Irish people will be with us on that as long as we ensure that we're giving value for money and as long as we ensure that we are really changing lives for the better in the context of an economy that can fund and support that level of ambition. I'm working on a new white paper on international development. The formal launch of the public consultation process towards that white paper will be tomorrow, the 12th of July. And I would encourage anybody with an interest in Ireland's relations with Africa to make a submission. It doesn't matter how detailed but we'd like to hear what you have to say to make sure that we are at least considering all the basis before we make decisions in terms of what areas we prioritise. Ireland is applying for membership of the African Development Bank, a process now underway. Joining the African Development Bank will see an Irish diplomat posted to the bank's headquarters in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, which I visited a number of years with a large business delegation and found to be a place of extraordinary opportunity for Ireland in the future. We do this at a time when the EU is looking to deepen its relationship with Africa. Something which I believe is essential as we cannot meet the interconnected challenges of our modern world without a more dynamic and deeply cooperative political relationship. The EU summit in Abidjan last November was an important moment in this regard. Negotiations will open shortly on a framework for the EU cooperation with Africa and also Caribbean and Pacific states getting these negotiations right will allow us to make progress on shared objectives. This is the post-colonial agreement. There is an opportunity in this regard to see how we can strengthen regional organisations and regional integration on the continent and also how we might build a more effective political dialogue between us. Given that Ireland shares with many African, with many countries in Africa, a lived history and experience of colonialism and of struggle for independence as well as being a latecomer to development in many ways, there may be times when we might help bridge gaps in these negotiations. Also as an English-speaking country at the European negotiating table, we may also be able to represent perspectives from our friends in Africa in a new and dynamic way. Our experience of conflict, of peace, of economic and social transformation inform our long-standing commitment to internationalism, to multilateralism and a rules-based global order. And to the United Nations in particular, this commitment is at the heart of the government's decision to campaign for an Irish seat on the UN Security Council in a few years' time. Our commitment to the UN is more than rhetoric. Over the more than 60 years of our membership, we have continuously worked at no small cost to ensure that the principles of the UN Charter are held, building and sustaining peace and security, human rights and the rule of law, in particular, giving a voice to small nations across the world. And we will continue to do that. And Africa has been a constant part of that work. During our last term on the Security Council, for example, a central focus of our efforts was to foster and support the peace process in Angola. More recently, as I mentioned, Ireland in partnership with Kenya helped to broker the agreement of the Sustainable Development Goals. These goals agreed by the entire UN membership are an agenda for a better world by 2030. Each country, including Ireland, is encouraged to make progress against those 17 goals. Ireland's first voluntary national report on what we have achieved so far will be presented to the UN later this month. Above all, though, I think it is through our role in peacekeeping that Ireland's commitment to the United Nations is perhaps most evident. It is certainly the area most visible to the general public. I'm very proud of the unbroken record of service of Irish Defence Force personnel as UN peacekeepers since 1958. 60 years of unbroken service. We are Europe's largest per capita contributor to troops to UN peacekeeping operations. And again, it forms a central part of our history of engagement with Africa over the past half century. Today, Irish peacekeepers are again in the Congo as part of of the Manusco mission and also participate in the mission in Western Sahara and are also in Mali. I had the privilege of meeting our troops there who are working in partnership with the United Kingdom on a training mission. And over the past decades, the Defence Forces have served with distinction as part of the UN missions across the continent in countries and situations as diverse as Namibia, Somalia, Liberia, and of course Chad. Irish missionary doctors helped to fight against Ebola in Sierra Leone. Irish civilians, too, work to build peace, including in the Philippines, the hell and Libya. We must recognise, though, that we are not alone in our support to the UN and our willingness to commit personnel to its work. It is a principle shared by many of our partners across Africa. Indeed, while Ireland lost our first troops as part of the UN peacekeeping force in the Congo, so too did the then newly independent Ghana as part of the same mission. And often I think people forget that and they shouldn't. Ladies and gentlemen, looking to our future relationship with Africa, it is clear that building peace and prosperity will continue to be a central feature of our engagement and will drive what I hope will be an ever deeper set of political relations. We must use all available mechanisms to build those relationships at the UN, through the African Union and regional organisations, and of course through the European Union, as well at a bilateral level. There is nothing like face to face contact, which I feel are always the most productive. Our dialogue will be, should be and indeed must be, based on mutual respect and partnership, on empathy and on an openness to listening and responding to each other's concerns. As Ireland, I hope, has always done. In my view, the current infrastructure, within which to have that engagement, is simply not fit for purpose. And the idea that the extent of the collective leaders meeting between the continents of Europe and Africa is in an EU Africa summit once every four years, with the hope that foreign ministers might get together once a year, is totally inadequate in the context of the collective challenges that we face now. Not just on the migration challenge, which is, in many ways, a symptom of a much, much deeper and more complex challenge that we have to face together. And so my big narrative on this issue is that actually politics is the problem. Not finance, not commerce. The capacity for the kind of depth of engagement politically, in order to put a context around the solutions to the enormity of the challenges that we face and opportunities that we face together, is something that I believe should be to the forefront of the future of Europe debate in terms of our external policy, if not actually the most important part of it. Given the trends and demographics that we know continue to develop in the continent of Africa, where we're likely to see an extra billion people in the next three decades or so. While Ireland plans in the next 20 years to have an extra million people, I think we do have to ask ourselves the question, how are we helping our friends and partners in the continent of Africa, planning for those kind of numbers every year, each year, within their own countries? A reminder of that was really evident to me in Ethiopia, when I asked the question, how many jobs do you need to create in your economy to keep pace with the demographics and population growth, to simply keep unemployment at the level that it's at today? And the answer was 2 million, 2 million jobs a year every year and definitely into the future. This is the extent of the task that many governments on the continent of Africa are thinking about and grappling with, and that is why, in my view, like so many other areas, a lot of the challenges that countries face cannot be solved on their own. And the same goes for Ireland, by the way, in terms of some of the challenges that we face in the future. So these are the conversations that we need to have, the conversations that we will have in Dublin and in many parts of Africa at ministeria level, using our embassies in multilateral forums, conversations which we have in a formal setting, but also as friends over perhaps an Ethiopian coffee or an Irish beer or whiskey. I know which one I prefer. So these conversations will determine the next phase of Ireland's rich relationship with many countries in Africa. And can I just finish on a personal note? And Rory did mention that I'm kind of personally engaged in this project, and I am. I remember when I was growing up, when I was six or seven years of age, my family fostered children at the time. And we fostered a young boy from Nigeria, who was a brother in my household, literally while he was there for a few years. And he, as far as I can remember, was the only black person in Cork at the time. It was in the late 1970s. And when we held hands walking down Patrick Street in the middle of the city, crowds would part in front of us with everybody staring. Because we lived on an island and in a country that was predominantly white and Catholic, and some Protestant too, but still white. We certainly didn't have the kind of cultural diversity that we have today. Now I drop my children to school, and about a third of their class come from other countries, some of them from Africa, Eastern Europe, and other parts of the world. And so we have seen a transformation in Ireland in less than half a lifetime that has been hugely positive. But is developing our capacity to build relationships in my view in a way that takes us to a new chapter from one of aid and charity and support to one of partnership, integration and mutual respect. That respect, I think, has always been there, but perhaps it wasn't as tangible as it is today. So for me, the new Irish aid consultation process is an exciting opportunity for us to try to reflect the modern challenges that we face, but also the modern opportunities that we have through technology, through new media platforms, through technology transfer, through know-how, through partnership, through respect, and through an entirely different form of engagement between two of the world's great continents. And that might sound a bit highbrow, but in my view, if we don't have that level of ambition, we will constantly struggle to deal with the fallout from the absence of the potential of partnerships like that, which is exactly what's happening today in the Mediterranean, which is changing politics for the worst in Europe, through fear, of the unknown, of change, and through a resistance to migration and to multiculturalism, which in my view, in many ways, is a poison in the political system that the European Union is going to struggle to deal with. So there's a lot at stake here, and I think that the relationships that we develop will be hugely important in that context, and that's why I thank so many of you for coming today to listen to my perspectives on them. Thank you very much.