 Hello, Ed. Welcome. You're watching us live from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. You're watching a session that's going to discuss the tools, the policies, and the plans that we need in order to be able to reignite growth on the African continent. When the economic history of the continent is going to be written, I'm certain that we will be talking about one of the key chapters in that, the very first part of the 21st century. I don't know how many of you will remember the lines on the move that were written by Mackenzie, of course, when we were talking about that very long stretch of growth that we saw on the African continent. What about the condemnation that we got from the Financial Times about the hopeless continent also preceded, of course, when we got that growth going? We meandered a little bit when we came into the 2015 to the 2020s, but I am suggesting that perhaps we could be sitting here on the cusp of a long stretch of growth that could well rival what we saw in the first part of the 21st century. I have the speakers who I am going to ask to make sure they back that argument. Let me introduce them. On my left, Gavina Njeroge, the Central Bank of Kenya is on the panel. Thank you, sir, for coming through. Thank you. Chairperson, Standard Bank Group, thank you, ma'am, for being with us. Professor Tulin Mube, I was going to say Chief Economist. Not anymore. He has moved on. Finance Minister of Zimbabwe, Vera Songwe, Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. You've moved on, ma'am, as well. Oh my, I need to do my reading properly. Thank you very much for coming through and for joining us in this session. I'd like to begin with you, Vera. You sit, I think, at a higher table than all of us. You look across at the continent, and I wondered your insights in terms of those key things that you see that are perhaps impeding growth and would need to be addressed for us to be able to kick-start growth again on the African continent in the most sustained way. No, thank you, first of all, and good morning to everybody. It's a pleasure to see everyone. I think maybe less about impeding growth and more about exactly, as you said, you know, how can we reignite it, right, and turn some of the constraints into positives. And I think the first one is something that we're all talking about here, and the Governor is here with me and the Finance Minister, the Chairperson. I think we're all looking at how we come out of this current crisis, right? And the fact that we're living in what I would call the polycrisis or the four Cs, climate, it's COVID, it's conflict on our continent, and it's the cost of living, inflation. I think we've heard from many during this last few days about the fact that maybe because inflation in the West is tapering, we will no longer see rises in interest rates. What does that do for us? And this is a little bit your question is essentially it tightens our fiscal space. When it tightens our fiscal space on the public sector side, it increases rates on the private sector side. And so interest rates become very difficult for us to meet. Actually, a lot of African economy is the price out of the market right now. And we cannot go back to the markets to raise any resources that can actually help us with investment. So I think if we can fix that, you know, this is the first sort of big overarching problem is how does the rest of the world, you know, get its act together, bring inflation on the control, bring down rates so that we can unlock Africa's growth? Because today, a lot of that growth is being locked up in the decisions that are made on this one item, which is inflation. And if we can fix that, the second big thing for me is climate. And we've talked a lot about it here. And I see climate again for us sort of the huge opportunity for the continent. The other sort of, I think most repeated word in the last few days has been supply chains and supply chain disruptions. The beauty of it is that a lot of those supply chains start on our continent and can finish on our continent if one decided to transform our raw materials into finished goods on the continent. It will create jobs. It will add value. It will increase our sort of involvement in our trade. AFCFTA will be, I think, put on autopilot. So the supply chain, which today is talked about as a constraint, can actually be fixed on the continent with climate change and looking for better sourcing. And the last thing is our youth. Our population structure is probably the best for growth that anybody else has. But what we need to now do is reskill that youth to be the youth. You know, in 2050, one in every person working on the planet will be African. That African will be delivering the sustainability that African will be borrowing. So rates, climate, and who is going to be the actor around it is the youth that we need to make sure that we skill to be ready and prepared for it. Yeah. Thank you, Vera. Thank you, Vera. In the meantime, what I did was I went very quickly on Google to give you your proper title. That's a chairwoman of the Board of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility, of course, ex-head of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Minister, let me come to you. It's been suggested that we are asking you to do the impossible. We are asking you to find resources when your fiscal space is extremely tight. We are asking you to make sure that every good is financed when you are fighting liquidity issues. At the same time, we are also saying to you, please find ways in which we can reduce our indebtedness so that we're not paying most of our money to go to paying those dates that we got in the past. Is that an impossible task? Are we being unfair? It's certainly a very tough task. Good morning, everyone. This is a very tough task. But I see opportunities as well. To me, actually, it's quite exciting as a policymaker. I'm very excited to tackle these very tough issues. I think that let's just make sure as policymakers we stay on the fiscal consolidation path. We have to try very hard to live within our means right now because the cost of borrowing is high and our debt levels are rising and we have to live within our means. We need to be creative as to how we use our government balance sheets. So one of the things that we're doing, at least what I've been doing, is actually issuing out government guarantees for certain private sector investment in order to crowd in private capital. We're doing that in the solar energy space, talking about the climate change opportunity, investing in solar energy. So basically, extending government guarantees on power purchase agreements. So I'm expecting to unlock about 1,000 megawatts in the next couple of years from that kind of arrangement. And there's just one way to be creative about government balance sheet when things are not so easy. There are other areas. For instance, the disruptions in global supply chains. It's also a call for making sure that we're self-sufficient in certain areas. For example, in the area of just wheat production, when the world cannot find wheat easily because of the global tensions, last year we were able to produce a record crop of more than 380,000 metric tons of wheat. The first time we have been self-sufficient in 50 years. Why? Because we accelerated investment in the dam construction. Making sure that we can impound the water, invest in irrigation and then on to the fields in terms of wheat production. So some very simple things in terms of how to cleverly use public sector investment to make sure that we are part of that global supply chain. The other area, talking again about supply chain disruptions and climate change and so forth, is the area of lithium in the area of lithium. We have actually imposed a ban on the export of raw lithium and process lithium to the rest of the world. Would one beneficiation to take place in Africa, in Zimbabwe, whether it's Zimbabwe, Zambia, DRC, South Africa, where you find some of this lithium? It should happen there. And then companies should only export lithium concentrate and go further. And then it produces batteries locally. Why not? All that is critical in terms of policy making. So I'm excited about the opportunity, about the challenge. Let me stop here for now. Thank you, minister. I wanted to tell you that I am going to take the issues that you have raised and your strategy to crowd in the private sector. I will put it to the private sector person that we have on the panel and ask if it's enough because you have to be able to win your confidence for here to bring in the capital that you need, that you are talking about. I'm going to leave it for last though. I'm coming to the governor here. Governor, from your perspective, you know, as consumers, as I'm calling myself, pseudo economists, this is us in the press who write about business and talk about business. We are struggling with tightening at a time when economies are struggling to grow. We are struggling with the logic that says we need to kill the inflation dragon first before we're able to resuscitate the growth that we require. How difficult a balancing act is it in this environment? Thank you, Godfrey. And good morning, everyone. Glad to be here and distinguished panel. I think the problem is set up by Vera and then the concerns that the minister raised are very much apropos. It's really on the money. But your question is about ourselves as monetary authorities. And the balance that we must strike. In effect, everything is a balancing act. There's no two ways about it. There's no one element that maybe should be considered without considering others. And inflation is precisely that. We know on the one hand the concerns of inflation, what it does. Among other things, it's it hits the poorest, the most. So if you look at the dragon, the people that it is consuming or the people that are adversely affected by it are actually the ones that have the least means for dealing with the various society concerns, etc. So that's one of the reasons why inflation is so important, dealing with it, slaying that dragon. At the same time, we also understand that the it really represents also a cost of living. So in effect, what happens is when inflation gets out of hand, the cost of living and the way people look at the economy and their behavior gets altered. And that in itself may end up taking us in a very inefficient equilibrium in the economy. So for these and other reasons, it's essential for us, the monetary authorities to deal with that issue. And that's why most central banks, most modern central banks, that is their number one priority. Inflation. In dealing with price control, price stability, meaning dealing with inflation, making sure that inflation doesn't get out of hand. And that mandate is something that you can see across our, you know, our region. The central banks across our region. And in effect, it is all the others. It dominates all the others for the reasons I mentioned. So the actions that we take as monetary authorities, of course, will end up in some sense reducing immediate growth. But again, and that is understood, that's the balancing act I was talking about. But you should also look at it in the long term. If we don't deal with it today, there will be what we make all, you know, an apparent growth, sort of increase in the short run. But in the medium term, you'll end up losing the medium term growth. So it is important to not be, let's say, to, well, I guess to appreciate that there's a balancing act and mid and the current growth levels that we may see, that we may in some sense give up in order to do with inflation. We'll come back much more strongly in the medium term. Social term pain, hopefully for long term growth and comfort. But also appreciating that there are other things that need to be done. Yes. For instance, the minister can talk and actually mention some of the things that they may be doing in terms of protecting the poorest, et cetera, et cetera. So everything is in terms of monetary policy. That's the point I'm making. Maybe we can jump in and go through on that on protecting the poor. It's quite easy to get into the, you know, this thing about giving out cash transfers. Just give them money to protect them against inflation and so on. But we can do better by adopting what you call productive social protection. If you give rural farmers in Kenya, in Zimbabwe, in Zambia, in South Africa, seed, fertilizer and agricultural extension so they can produce for themselves. So the same amount of money you'd have used on cash transfers switch to productive social protection. You deal with food security, the food, you raise their incomes. It is a better way to certainly intervene on the social protection front. It sounds good minister, but do we have examples of where that has worked? Oh, we are doing it in Zimbabwe. It's working very well. It impacted three million people in Zimbabwe. That way is fantastic. Yeah, yeah. Vera, I see you are nodding. No, I think since COVID actually, since 2008, almost 20 African countries today have social protection schemes in one way or the other, which I essentially work as schemes as well which produce more value. I think one of the big problems on the continent today is we would like for many more countries to have these kinds of targeted productive transfer interventions which grow value, create jobs and essentially protect the poor. Mkoo, let me come to you. I've made you listen to all of these people. So is everybody else? I wanted also to tell you a name that I gave you that you don't know that you are hearing here for the first time. Mkoo is one of South Africa's iron ladies. If you ask me nicely, I will tell you why she is an iron lady. Mkoo, you have listened to the policymakers, you have listened to the central bank talking about what, from a central bank perspective, the choices, hard choices that they have to make. I think we heard Chairman Jerome Powell the other day say, you know, sometimes the central bank governors have to take difficult choices, but at the same time, they have to be difficult, sustainable choices. As a businesswoman, I want to know if you are hearing enough to enable you to release your capital so it's comfortable. I remember years ago someone saying capital is a coward. If you do not look after it, well, it will run very, very fast. There are many corners where it can go. Thank you. Thank you very much. Godfrey, I think that we are on the way, the direction at least from what I hear in the room and what I see is correct. What for me starts to become a little bit optimistic about this time is African governments have come to a point of the absolute limit of their capacity to do stuff. You know, they do not have the means, they have to tackle debt as a matter of urgency, inflation is a matter of urgency. In a scenario like that, it therefore opens the window, small window, for a private sector led economic growth path. And I honestly cannot see how we accelerate African growth without that. It's one thing to think about crowding in the private sector, but that's not actually what I am talking about. I am talking about, it is the private sector that leads this time around, not as a matter of ideology, but a matter of pure pragmatic choice because that is where we find ourselves. So if we were to recognize that we all have this real interest in Africa's growth and development, otherwise we wouldn't be here every year talking about it and going back home trying to make it happen, what is the bargain that we together with the civic society government business can strike in order to make this thing happen? So I think that's for me a very, very big part of what I would like to see us do as we move forward. So I'm truly to spoke about the renewable energy pathways on South Africa has done that and done that very successfully where government said we don't have the means to go down that path but what we can do is to give you a flow. We'll give you some guarantees, you go and do this thing and it became one of the most successful renewable energy projects in on planet earth. Why can't we do that with everything else? So if you give us trade facilitation and some kind of protections there for x of public sector money you can get 10x in terms of value created because the private sector moves in. So this is really the idea, I mean it is exactly what the Chinese did where they just let loose the animal spirits in their private sector to unleash growth and literally just take off. So sadly across Sub-Saharan Africa that has not been the case, there have been many ideologically driven decisions taken including in my own country. I'm glad you're the one who mentioned that because I was coming with it. And it did seem at some point that governments really believed that development only happens if government drives development. Well that particular experiment has not yielded the hope for benefit. So let's do the simple things and so perhaps truly what I'm saying is government get out of the way a little bit. Well I can give you a practical example from just the conversation we've had. So if what you want to do is to beneficiate lithium before you bend x the export of lithium you better have spoken to the private sector to see what the appetite is, what the constraints might be, what will you actually achieve this or is this got just this kind of idea of a dream. Is not the wrong thing to say. If it's to sweet bond to private sector you know investors have come forward within three days. That would be fine but I'm just saying that's exactly what I'm driving to that you better have had this conversation and know that this is actually grounded on reality that can be made to or that can materialize. So just the last point God forbid before I give you back the mic. Clearly there's been sort of this buzz of excitement about the free trade agreement. AFCFTA. Don't worry I say it every single day. Yes now we all really support it at least I do and I know many business people who do and as difficult as these trade agreements are in reality to bring to life they will not also come to life without the private sector picking this up and operationalizing it where they are. We are not making a huge amount of progress and it is in my mind because there was this divergence between the public sector that went into the rooms to negotiate the thing say here it is off you go folks and now there's a scramble to try and see how we make this thing work. Had we then gone into it together right from the start we may be at a different place because perhaps it could have been tackled a little bit differently. So there's just a need for me to just rethink the way that we work together and you know this idea that there's no trust between the two just needs to disappear because it's really a 20th century concept. Governor you want to come in. Yeah two points thank you for the present for your intervention but I think two points I'd want to put on the table. First it means really clarity of rules more than anything else so the public sector needs to set rules whatever they are laws etc and then stick to them. So I think the issue of negotiating with government I have a lot of trouble with that. There's a private sector let's say a portion that loves getting concessions etc and they all come under the edges of you know subsidies more employment etc etc I think we all have many let's say cautionary tales like that. So I think for me the first thing is clarity about rules etc and sticking with them and of course they have to be. Secondly after the African free trade continent or free trade area. I don't know about my assessment of it would be as dire as we have mentioned a moment ago. I think it is true that on the surface we haven't seen that much let's say trade etc etc but actually there has been a lot of work that has been done in a sense preparing the ground you know and I'll probably say before this the private sector can move and do all these things first priority financial institutions the other ones that actually go and secure beach head right in case if you want to have transactions and all that and actually today and now you can see a lot of Pan-African banks that are moving around yeah we just had a few Kenyan banks move to DRC we just had any and the story is wider it's not just along that axis we also have across west south central and again other things that we have done you know the payment system also starting that so I think we are putting in place what I'll call the supporting infrastructure yeah but governor should that supporting infrastructure have been put in place before we did the celebratory party before we did the fund fair and I think it goes to the point that was raising about talking to us before you go and you pronounce not at all but for us to realize the Africa continental free trade area which we have to invest in it actually by investing in it you actually benefiting from it whether you stand at bank going Pan-African or equity bank from Kenya going Pan-African that's part of the story investing in one-stop border post investing infrastructure across borders launching cargo airlines that are Pan-African all that is time to do we are investing in the opportunity and harnessing the opportunity at the same time it can't just happen without investing in it I think listen that if one were to do a report card on the AFCF TA today how we certainly are doing very well on the institutional side and and when we look around at our neighbours the Europeans who've you know a free trade area agreement in the United States it's a building it's a building blocks the ASEAN but what we have done on the AFCF TA and and so the celebrated party was very important necessary and needed first of all it was to build the institutions and to bring the credibility to that idea which is for Africa our growth idea between the time when we started talking about the CFTA and today you know it was this conversation around you know the spaghetti bowl of African trade agreements and all we have reduced that substantially and by doing that a business that wants to come to the continent today at the very least knows that if you go to Central Africa you're facing the same things if you go to East Africa well we are now trying to do rules of origin huge fights that we had in terms of establishing we've won that fight there is no way we cannot say that that's a huge and then if you look at South Africa Nigeria these are the countries that essentially are our sort of industrial machines yeah and in Nigeria there was so much consultation in South Africa inside the Sadek region already quite an amount of consultation there will be more you just said yourself around sort of the energy sector how well South Africa has done and how the rest of the world is actually looking at you guys and saying we're going to use those examples to do more but I think we can say today with a lot of pride that the CFTA is on the move the payment systems where you can now trade between Zimbabwe and Algeria without sort of you know put in place by Africa Zimbabwe and there is a lot that's happening on that in that space what we need from the private sector because 80% of the growth in the CFTA is going to come from small and medium enterprises women and and the youth in particular as well is to begin to create sort of we're doing the big financial infrastructure the payment systems and sort of more access to financing for that segment I think there's a little bit more work we need to do so you're beginning to answer one of the key questions that I need to start to discuss here whether the CFTA is going to be the change maker that we are all have been talking about and they've been asking for but I wanted to go back to and talk about what she referred to as one of the other issues that we're not having to deal with today excuse me as you can see I have been around a little bit I'm a child of the 70s the 80s and in that period we talked a lot about socialism about communism and I can tell you today those are conversations of the past but is it universal in terms of the approach to policy making the point I'm making is that it may well be that we are not hearing these other words a lot but in terms of having to do business on the ground those that kind of thinking is still prevalent and preventing you from lending as much as you'd like to do I don't want to give examples but I can give examples of you if you would please because I'm a little bit lost I don't think in the way that certainly business is conducted in financial services in South Africa we get blocked from a socialist type constant not perhaps the governing party but I'm sure you are aware of course within the political space well look I think what is true in South Africa and I think in Africa on the continent broadly is that the social need is great and that people do have a view that banks in particular should do something about that and if you assume that the bank reports all these wonderful profits well why aren't they doing more to uplift communities that need uplifting I think there is in my mind much more of pressure and push in that direction than almost anything else now we do have that's absolutely true we do have still quite left-leaning politicians maybe trade unionists that still want to nationalize the central bank and various things like that that's always going to be part of the conversation it's a kind of bit of fun I suppose for some people it can be damaging totally but there is a center there that believes that the way that we're dealing with those those issues is correct so I'm not particularly concerned about that government yeah I think there's something maybe to add to what is just mentioned there's something that has changed I don't want to get into the sort of the isms right that you mentioned I don't think that's the business my business or the business that we are into it's for political economists to do it later when we are done but there is a certain now there's a clear acceptance of what I would call orthodox economics right so in terms of macroeconomic frameworks but it et cetera the orthodoxy of those policies is now widely accepted across the continent now it is orthodoxy but with what you call a slice of lemon in it and the slice of lemon is more the things that we need to maintain our social concern so we need to do things not just leave our let's say the most to their own devices and you could possibly also toss in a nice cube if you want concern of things like the SMEs et cetera so I think it is more a much richer orthodoxy that actually has benefited us the other point is just to look at what has happened during the COVID period if it were not for that sort of very clear let's say refined orthodoxy wouldn't be standing here we'll be talking of very complicated issues that we have somehow managed to overcome over the last three years yeah you want to come in a minute no okay I was going to move on because I wanted I wanted three policy actions that will do two things number one enable us to extract the value that we have placed upon the African continental free trade area number two in general help lift growth across the continent I'm going to start with you Vera three three I mean I think very quick point the first one the first one is trade we need to do everything that we can to trade more with each other to trade better but also and the second one will be to attract foreign direct investment because in some sense we need those resources coming from outside nationally or regionally or both sub-Saharan Africa no no no all of Africa all of Africa because we need his lithium has to be produced with the in the car manufacturing plant in Morocco and it's going to use some manganese from Central Africa so I think we do actually need to look at that that is the power of the continent there is no sub you know we are all Africa and I think if we pull that together we get amazing resource out of it but it's trade trade has lifted every generation across the world out of poverty and it's going to lift us as well but in this age again back to the supply chains the I think that sort of conversation that we don't talk about we all heard or sort of on the light of of the European Union and the opening day we heard from Klaus we heard from all those people talking about the need to find stable resilient sustainable strategic supply chains what are they looking for supply chains for it's palm oil it's your lithium it's cobalt it's manganese so it's not just to find the chain it's to create the product and the value on the continent and I think Africa has that potential to do that in the way that is sustainable the private sector across the world is looking to come and do that there is policy in other jurisdictions in other geographies in the United States the inflation reduction act it's the five billion dollars to find rare minerals which are lying you know on the subsurface of many of our economies I think if we began to look at that trade interaction in a different way we can really do something different the second thing that we need to make sure that we don't conflate is sort of geopolitics and economics and and sort of we're now talking about and I think the governor is familiar with this conversations the new financial architecture what is the architecture that is going to be appropriate for this century and to take Africa out of it is it an architecture that continues to rely on sort of grand aid and donor aid or is it an architecture that has Africa being part of the conversation that changes the financial tools that we have the financial infrastructure to take us out of that and I think I'm looking for deepening our capital markets trading more in domestic currencies so that when we have inflationary pressures from other jurisdictions they don't create debt constraints that we're not sort of part of policy decisions on the continent and finally it's about policies if we do not put the right policies in place and this is so the other two are kind of you know we all have to come together we'll trade you know we'll do supply chains but the policies are ours we are you know you make policy you decide whether you're going to collect taxes in a good governance environment with a little bit more transparency using digitization I think we can do a lot of that and the better our policies are so much faster we will get that growth where do we have that conversation around our policy reform because we are in the age where we're talking about the AFCFTA and here we are talking about trying to attract foreign direct investment do I as Somalia stand up and tell my own story or do I take that story to the AU and therefore we make it a reversal so if you are sitting in Singapore and you're thinking I'd like to go to Africa you'd know hopefully you are approaching a continent with uniform policies I think that conversation happens first of all you've mentioned at the at the African Union but we also have Wamkele at the AFCFTA secretariat but all of the finance ministers all of the trade ministers all of the foreign ministers are ambassadors of that conversation all of us should be ambassadors of that conversation actually when one business does well it crowds in every business right if one goes to you know Zimbabwe or Rwanda or South Africa when when South Africa did the energy reforms everybody went to you guys and then we all go oh god solar can do well and you guys had a little bit of a higher price so they were at four cents in order to jurisdiction so I think that's the idea is that they have to be leaders and then they become ambassadors for the continent yeah we're running out of time minister do we have those policies and I would like your three very quick things I would say I will focus on the beneficiation to harness the full impact of the African free continental trade area I've mentioned the era of lithium for example just beneficiation making sure that we can begin to export manufactured goods among ourselves within Africa rather than primary commodities and grow that trade level from average of 15 percent intra-Africa trade to a much higher figure 30 40 50 isn't that political minister why don't you rather have the private sector look at the opportunity thing can I do this year or do I need to incentives it is asked to I mean within sentence we have to give incentives we have to do that and when we're trying to do that the other area is investing in regional infrastructure I would say power is critical I see for instance in southern Africa along the Zambeza river Mozambique is a great source of hydropower there are four areas where we could build you know hydropower stations with off-take agreements from you know South Africa, Zimbabwe and the region where there's a deficit about 5,000 megawatts of power so regional infrastructure and then it keeps growing that also includes roads we may have to do some bit of acid recycling which really means where government is borrowed to build roads, airports and it's now drowning in debt which is what is happening by the way that could be concessioned those that infrastructure could be concessioned out to the private sector and then government receives some money and pays off the credit and the private sector runs it for 30 40 years or the only concession agreement I mean that's just some technical work that needs to be done there but regional infrastructure is key finally to speak to the point about trade that where I raised is really trade finance specifically trade finance because African banks tend to be small banks globally except Standard Bank Germany is here so we just need to support in terms of trade finance we need bigger banks we need I recall IFC AFDB during the financial crisis they actually come up with trade finance facilities where they were enhancing the balance sheets of African banks for them to support a trade finance because at the moment there is a situation where the are filing banks the confirming banks is let's say a German bank or a global bank but you don't have confirming banks within Africa because the balance sheets are small so that needs to be solved for us to realise the full potential of trade within Africa just three points I'm with you do the basics we need a better quality of governance across the continent thank you if governments just did one thing govern better we would probably take two steps three steps forward we cannot avoid I wish we were in a whole hour to talk about that one as part of that governance project we cannot avoid talking about corruption temp down on corruption it's impossible to get rid of it completely I agree or concede perhaps it is perhaps it's not but I concede that from where we are you have to start from where you are the best we can hope for for now is some focus on this and tamping down on it instead of talking about it the third one is around climate so I think we need to get serious both actually public and private sector about what we do in the climate change space as Africa managed to leapfrog landlines fixed line infrastructure in telecoms go straight into mobile we have an opportunity today to leapfrog fossil fuels for the most part or South Africa being a special case of of course but out of the 800 Africans alive today up to 60 percent perhaps more don't have access to reliable power supply how are you going to provide that you've got plenty full natural resources endowments are fantastic so leapfrog that can go straight into into renewables however I do have to also give a fourth we do have the commodities just instead of running let's first walk let's extract the commodities we do have and put the belts and braces and the rules from government around that in the gut rails in order to do that in the best possible way we could absolutely kill it if we extracted all the cobalt and the copper and the nickel that that this new new green economy needs but in doing so I think we also have to be very cognizant of the fact that Africa then has to increase emissions before we take them down because it takes energy and it takes emissions of methane and all sorts of things in the mining and the shipping of all of the commodities so we do have to be a little bit like patient on the pathway to net zero because in the initial phases I can't see how Africa doesn't increase emissions 100 percent I would have loved to engage you to ask you for what your thoughts are on the minister on beneficiation but another time another time Governor thank you first countries all our countries are not similar so we have 50 odd countries and today and now I thought we were all African Governor I'm sorry I thought we were all African but Africa is not a country I wanted Africa to be a country it will not it's not a country and the differentiation say between Tanzania and Kenya we share border or Kenya Somalia or Kenya Zimbabwe Zimbabwe South Africa Namibia we are really different that I think has to be appreciated and where we are today in the conjunction is also very different so I think we need to support the authorities to get over the conjunction whatever the situation is with regard to the current issues that is essential so there I'm not going to go into the details but it is important to appreciate that's number one second very important look forward 25 years where and see where we are going to be for instance we are going to have 60% of or rather 25% of the world's workers will be in Africa these are United Nations projections 60% of them will be under the age of 35 so we need to begin to think how it's not a problem just the next two years so the next three years long-term growth that's the point I'm making and then bridging that divide is number three which really requires seeing how we are going to move ahead in terms of let's say capital minister talked about that infrastructure but also social capital health etc but even education if these people are going to be 25% of the labor force will be in in Africa there's a lot of investment we need to do that and finally in terms of innovation innovation there's so much that we have done so far and this is really one of the elements that we can leverage so that is the bridge as it were the set of issues that bridge that today and 30 years from now sure thank you governor I'm being told to wrap up but I really wanted to give the audience a couple of questions so we can involve them as well yes sir if you can identify who you are Australian financial review Australian financial review based in Kenya the panelists are all sitting in front of a image which says reigniting growth in Africa with a picture of a mountain and some small holder farms what image do you think Africa should be projecting in terms of its growth and development besides farmers and agricultural situations like this thanks very much who'd like to take up the question well it's not besides I think what we want to project is a dynamic continent it clearly is going to be a continent that is more sustainable and it's going to be a continent that is more digitized right that's what we want to do but we want to do all and so I think it is an image of confidence it's an image of certainty in the direction that we're going which is a direction towards prosperity I would add the dynamism of the youth in this new tech driven solutions type approach when you work with VCs that work in that area you just can't not feel excited about the future and that actually is the future the youngsters some of them perhaps do on farm but a lot of them just want to engage with technology to solve African problems thank you very much one final question yes quickly sir good morning my name is Adibola Williams I'm a young global leader with quick question as a young man who's traveling the continent trying to do business from South Africa to Kenya I continue to struggle with access visa to connect how are you leading the charge to make our countries more connected the last time I was in Zimbabwe I was held up at the the immigration for whatever reason you know till I had to call my presidency to fix it so you know these are the kinds of problems to face and finally I run a communications company and I think that you know we need to do more in telling the stories of the young Africans who are doing a better job representing our countries around the world from music bonnaboy at Grammys our fashion our food how are you all also engaging given the technology to tell the stories of the young people who are changing the game and who are the new face of Africa that people want to invest in I'm so sorry to hurry you time is running out so governor very brief reading we have been telling those stories maybe we need to be louder for instance one of the things we've been doing is having a fintech festival every year now we've been put now we've had three years of covid so that didn't happen as we had expected but the idea of showcasing what is being what is happening in Africa is essential minister we're systematically removing the visa restrictions that sorry we're held up apologies but where we're taking care of that we'll remove those restrictions going forward in their own communication we can never overcommunicate we have to just do a better job we'll try to improve at it thank you very much and I'm very sorry to have to cut the session short but yeah we didn't have enough time essentially to talk about this I think we're going to ask the World Economic Forum the next time that we have a full hour rather than a truncated session because our issues are so many thank you Vera thank you our minister thank Kunku thank you governor for your time and thank you to all of you for joining us this morning and thank you to those who are watching on CNBC Africa Live here from Davos Switzerland until next year this time I hope goodbye