 Next we will be having a keynote speaker Ms. Telma Ekiyo. Ms. Telma has over 23 years experience working in the developmental sector as an impact investor, a donor, a philanthropic advisor and social entrepreneur. She has experience working in 22 African countries. She has pioneered, founded and led several organizations and initiatives focused on impact investing and women's economic empowerment. Thank you so much ma'am for speaking to us today on the amazing topic of the business case of philanthropy and impact investment. Welcome with me Ms. Telma Ekiyo. Good morning, it's still morning, it's raining heavily so I hope the rain isn't coming through here. First of all let me congratulate Omi for a job well done. I know how difficult it is to organize things like this and to organize it with class and a high standard and for your book. So well done Omi and all the women who have committed to joining the festival. It's an investment into your life and women across the globe who are listening to me this morning. So when Omi sent me my topic to talk on the business case for philanthropy and in fact investing, I thought, you know, is she, does she have exposed into the things that I'm really passionate about now, you know, because a lot of the work that I've done over the years as a professional in the philanthropist space has been a job for so much of what I am about now is giving back. And so when I hear, you know, the name of the festival, the richer woman and the community, the richer woman for me. The richer woman is a woman who is well rounded. She has wealth, yes, but she also impacts her society for good. It's extremely important, you know, it's and I think more and more as I, you know, over 20 something years in this work, I really believe that it should be the other way around. It should be that the richer woman impacts a society for good and then has wealth. I think that should be the order, because I think when you go about impacting your society for good, a lot of things happen. And this is where philanthropy comes in. I'm sure you've noticed a trend across the world with a lot of billionaires. So for example Bill Gates, extremely wealthy billionaire left Microsoft established the foundation. Jack Ma, extremely wealthy billionaire, left Alibaba established the foundation. Let's come to Africa. Mo Ibrahim made a lot of money established the foundation. Let's come to Nigeria. Aliko Dango Te, the richest man in Africa established the foundation. My former boss, T. Waidanjima, extremely wealthy established the foundation. Tonya Lumelu made a lot of money, left UBA established the foundation. What is it? And then, I mean, one or two women that at that level, you know, what is it? What is it that happens that when people make an extraordinary amount of money, they start to think about giving back. And it is because when you make that type of money, you start to wonder, there's more to life than money. There's more to life than private jets, islands. You start to think about your own immortality or sorry, your own mortality, the fact that you're not going to be here forever. You start to think about legacy. And that's why all of these people established the foundation. But I don't think you have to wait till you make billions and billions to think philanthropically. So I was really happy to hear Omi talk about the foundations they have to support disadvantaged women, extremely important. For me, I honestly believe philanthropy is not reserved for the rich. Philanthropy is not something that only rich people can do. Philanthropy is something that every single person who gets a measure of success should be committed to. Because for me, success is responsibility. Success is responsibility. And I think in a keynote like this, so that it's not theoretical, it's important for you to those of you who don't know me to get a sense of why this is important to me. My whole life throughout my career, I never applied for a job. What I mean by that is all the jobs I got, very high level positions, all the CEO jobs I got. I never applied. I was always headhunted or selected. Literally the phone will ring and someone will say, we've been given your name that you work excellently. You do this, you do that, we would like to offer you this position. Can we sit and talk with you? And I didn't know that that was the case until it happened three times. And I looked back and I said, oh my God, this is. And I realized that there was a severe grace of God upon what I was doing. And that severe grace of God on my life really made me realize that I had to give back. I had to give back because I couldn't really say that I had earned all the things that I had achieved. And that's really where many people make the mistake. Many people feel like they have earned everything they have done. So they never feel like they have to give back. Is that really true? Don't we know professors who are poor? I'm sure many of us know have relatives who work so hard, got all sorts of aids in school, but they ask you for money. So it is not true that academic success is commensurate to wealth. So when you get some level of success, I think there's a responsibility to give back. I had something a while ago that has been very strong in the way that I view life now. And it says, from zero to 30, you are searching for your purpose and your assignment. From 30 to 60, you must be going about implementing your purpose and your assignment. 60 plus you must be leaving a legacy. I wonder which bracket the women listening to me are in. But that means that there is an intentionality about life and that there will be a point where you have to think about, am I making a difference in the places that I'm from, the places that I would like to impact. All rich men and women that I called earlier, that set of foundations is about legacy. A while ago I sat in a church in the UK and I just, my eye caught a plaque and it said donated by ex-family in 1820 something. And I said, wow, a family donated this part of the church in 18 something. Having no idea that one day some African Nigerian woman will be sitting here benefiting from what they had donated. That is legacy. That is what philanthropy is about. And so about many people, they run away from philanthropy because they're like, I mean, I'm just going to be giving money away because people are very interested in returns. So I think there are different types of philanthropy and when I was called about this topic, I said, do you want me to just talk about philanthropy and impact investing and the current state of it? Or do you want me to be educated? And they said be educated. So here it is. The different types of philanthropy, there's financial philanthropy. And so women need to know which one you want to be part of. There's corporate philanthropy. So financial philanthropy is private philanthropy where you establish a foundation. So all of these foundations I talked about are financial philanthropic variables. There's corporate philanthropy where a company establishes a vehicle to give back. There's research and education philanthropy. Now, this philanthropy has to do with not so much in Nigeria. It's happening in Nigeria more and more where, for example, my former boss built the conference center, the Lagos Business School. That's educational philanthropy. So many schools in the west, you will see that are endowed by different people. That's education philanthropy. There's venture philanthropy. Venture philanthropy is when you use the same type of techniques that are in venture capital and merge it with philanthropy to do philanthropy giving. And then there's catalytic philanthropy. Catalytic philanthropy is when you help to bring about transformative change by putting finances behind an idea that may not have been fully formed to give it traction. Essentially that is what it is. So those are formal forms of philanthropy, but they're also informal forms of philanthropy and there's personal acts of giving. Personal acts of giving is what Africa has always done. Informally, I don't know that there's any African family that just attains a measure of success that your relatives don't come to and say, can you send my son to school or whatever. So those are personal forms of philanthropy. More and more, those personal forms of philanthropy are becoming more structured because it's important that philanthropy has accountability. And one of the things I want the women of the richer woman to consider is something that has taken off mostly in the west, but more and more it's now in Africa, giving circles. Giving circles are where a group of you that have the same values, the same goals. And you decide to give to a certain cause. And that cause you give to can either have financial returns or it can just be, you know, just totally to just support an initiative without thinking of financial returns. You can also be involved in philanthropy through existing vehicles. Maybe I know a friend of mine who says, you know what, I can't set up an organization. I just don't have the time. I rather just give to somebody who is already doing something. Yes, that is a very valuable way of doing it. But if you do that, make sure you insist on reports, make sure you insist on knowing how your money is spent, because that also brings, you know, impacting itself. So there are many ways that you can give if you are interested in financial returns because many people say, oh Bill Gates is Bill Gates is, you know, he's giving mosquito nets to Africa. Bill Gates has helped to cure polio. But if you sell one mosquito net at one dollar and you end up selling three billion mosquito nets, how much is that? That's three billion dollars. So it is not true that, you know, philanthropy does not give financial returns, but you have to state that from the beginning. And that's where philanthropy is different from impact investing. Impact investing is about intentionally stating that you want to have financial returns, but you also want to have social and environmental returns. That is what impact investing is. Whereas philanthropy, you may or may not want to have financial returns, okay? So there are some examples I want to give now of philanthropic endeavors that, you know, provide financial returns at the same time do good. And this concept of doing good and doing well is something that every rich woman should imbibe. The minute you start to have any level of success, which means you're doing well, you must look for how to do good. Especially in the societies where, you know, I'm African, I'm Nigerian, we're surrounded by so many problems. And it's always strange that when I invite people to Nigeria or Africa, they all, they see our opportunities, but all we see are problems. And so we do not realize that, yes, whilst I'm solving this problem, I can have returns, but I'm also doing immense good. I think about a school in Ghana, when I lived and worked in Ghana, there was a school that was letting students pay every day. Because the parents could not afford the accumulated school fees. And that's because most of the poor, most of the poor in Africa earn to eat.