 The Africa workshop started by drawing up some of the main challenges that are at stake on the African continent and we identified three of them. So on the one hand there is obviously providing more opportunities of employment to the growing to the youngest population in Africa. Africa's population is getting younger and younger and this is an issue that should be considered because otherwise it comes with some consequences that I will come on later on. Also there is the issue of managing the economic sovereignty of the States and with this comes the need for a greater economic integration on the regional and the continental level. So on the economic aspects some of the main challenges that remain is that Africa as a continent is still quite fragmented and we can see that because most of the inter-African trade only represents a small share of the global trade at the world level. So African states do not trade enough with each other and this is because there are some barriers to that and there are barriers that needs to be lifted in order for the African countries to start trading with each other. In addition to that we also pointed out that most of the trade in between the African states is composed of manufacturing as well as agriculture where we as on the outside of the continent it is mainly under the form of industry and natural resources. So African countries need to bring their efforts together in order to increase the inter-African trade. So obviously the solution to that is greater integrations but there are some hiccups that block this regional integrations and as the Prime Minister has explained the transaction costs for trade are still very high in Africa. They're still really high and they undermine the potential of Africans to trade between each other and they are the highest in the world and this is still a main challenge for them. There is recently the African continent's free trade agreement that was brought up it was praised as a great initiative to address in the issue of the need for greater integrations. However there are some technicalities that block this agreement from being properly implemented and this was pointed out by Dr. Dadoosh who explained that there are three main challenges to the African continental free trade agreement. First of all there is the need for more inclusiveness of this agreement. Why? Because not all of the countries have signed probably 45 or 46 countries who signed this agreement. Nigeria has not signed the agreement yet which is one of the biggest economies on the continent and although it's said that it will implement it it still has not done so and Nigeria still has some complex political economy so we are waiting to see what will happen out of this. The second technicality of this agreement is that they need to explain better what they mean by liberalizing 90% of trade. Do they mean 90% of the volume of trade which is fine or do they need 90% of the charity fines? In that case it could be problematic because countries can find ways to navigate around it and skip some of the terms of the agreement. And finally the other issue of this agreement is the rules of origins. The rules of origins and we see that very often at the WTO many FTAs are abused because people change the origins of the product and so the rules of origins really should be strictly regarded in order for the African continental free trade agreement not to be abused. So those are some of the of the economic challenges that still exist on the continent. We also had the perspective of Europe with the minister Elisabeth Kigu who explained to us where Europe stands in the middle of this. So she stressed the need for Europe to rethink partnerships together with Africa for a partnership that is more of a win-win partnerships that's more collaborative and she also stressed the responsibility of the European continent to rethink its perception of the African continent. Europe has to counter the populist discourse because the populist discourse is gaining more importance with this obviously it will lead to Europe closing its borders to Africa. If Europe closes its borders to Africa obviously Africa will have to seek new partners. It will have to seek new partners for addressing its need for infrastructure development and this is something that could be really problematic if the the populist fear dominates on on the European continent. So there was also in the middle of this economy partnerships comes a very important point which is the migration the human mobility capital and this has been addressed as well during the workshop because with an increase in growth the human mobility will necessarily increase. People are seeking new opportunities abroad and the continent should be ready to welcome those people who can contribute to the growth of their continent as well and this was also brought up because we need to understand that migrants do not come without the migrants should not be perceived as a threat but rather as an opportunity to contribute to the growth of the European continent but also to the African continent. Now moving on to an example of how African countries can work together and here I would like to bring up one concrete example that was explained to us by chairman and president Mustafa Trab from the involvement of OCP group in Africa. OCP group is involved with different African partners with different African countries and beyond just selling fertilizer it actually works with the locals in order to adapt the products to meet the benefit and to meet the specificities of African soils and this comes with some work that has been done on the field with many fertility maps that were conducted in order to understand the specificities of every soil and to produce fertilizers that are adaptable to the needs of those soils and with this they brought up very innovative ways to collaborate with African countries so depending on the different natural resources that every country has the Moroccan experience comes with phosphates and fertilizers while the others come with other components that are then brought together in order to present products that are adaptable and so in this it's a great example again whereby the African countries can collaborate together to address the need for more fertilizers for the agriculture in order instead of going abroad and seeking products from outside the continent and finally just to bring up another point on the free trade agreement Prime Minister Léon-Nilson also pointed out the fact that in Benin for example 7% 7.5% of the GDP comes from taxes that are on exports and this is huge and this undermines the production and undermines the local production and is a barrier to the production going outside of the country so this is also something that maybe the continent has to address and finally I would like to end up on a note that was brought up by a former Prime Minister Ida Miriam Dizalein from Ethiopia who said that Africa is not a battleground for the other powers Africa we should stop with this dichotomy of Africa Europe or Africa China or Africa United States Africa is a growing power is has its place on the global scene and should be addressed as a partner like the others it is not a field for battle for the foreign partners thank you very much