 Ladies and gentlemen, you're all very, very welcome today. My name is David Donohue. We're delighted to have with us as the guest of the Institute of International European Affairs, the president of the African Development Bank Group, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, who will join me in a conversation on the role of the African Development Bank in realizing economic opportunities for Africa. This is a very wide and fascinating subject. This is the third event in the 2022 Development Matters series, which is supported by Irish aid. First, some housekeeping points. You'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you will see on your screen. Please feel free to send in your questions or comments as they occur to you throughout the session, and we will come to them at some point. A reminder that today's session is on the record. Please feel free to join the discussion also on Twitter using the handle at IIEA. We are also live streaming the discussion, so a very warm welcome to all of you who are tuning in via YouTube. A word of introduction, first about our distinguished guest, often described as Africa's Optimist-in-Chief, Dr. Adesina has been widely praised for his visionary leadership and passion for the transformation of Africa. Since he took over as President of the AFDB in 2015, the bank has achieved the highest capital increase since its establishment in 1964. Ireland, I should add, joined the African Development Fund and the African Development Bank as its 81st member in 2020. I would now like to hand the floor to Paul Ryan, Director in the International Finance and Climate Division of our Department of Finance, who will deliver opening remarks. Paul, over to you, please. Thanks, David, and hello, President, and hello, audience. As well as lauding the President as Africa's Optimist-in-Chief, just like to also say to him that he is Ireland's closest friend in the African Development Bank and the continent of Africa as well, he's been a fabulous partner for Ireland in the last couple of years, really will be joined in February of 2020. And David, I think, is basically highlighted the capital increase, which is a very important thing for the bank and for the continent, but also I think the response by the bank under the leadership of the President to COVID and now to the Ukrainian war has been absolutely exemplary. A lot of future-proofing thinking has been done in relation to food security, renewable energy, economic development, and it's exactly in line with our development objectives. And we're very, very happy to join the bank, very pleased with the level of engagement and really, really pleased at the work that the bank is doing in the continent. The minister, the president was forming the minister of Raga Hosh in Nigeria for four years, 2011 to 2015. He's a bold performer, completely transformed the sector in four years. He's done exactly the same in the bank as well, to first elected in May of 2015 and then unanimously re-elected for another five-year term in August of 2020. As I said, we're very happy with the president our fellow colleagues in our constituency are very happy. And more importantly, the wider membership and the continent of Africa are very happy. Delighted that he's here on his first official visit, it's his second visit of his lifetime. And we've invited him back, as soon as he can to visit us in Ireland again. And we don't further ado, I leave the president no talk and just to thank him again for coming. Thank you again for David and his colleagues for arranging this event. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Well, let me open our conversation, Dr. Adesina, by asking you just a couple of general questions about the work of the bank. I mean, obviously there's a vast terrain of issues which we could and which I would love to be able to touch on in our conversation. You are responsible for having conceived the so-called high-five priorities, the strategic priorities for the bank. Could you tell us a little bit about how you see these priorities, helping African countries to take forward the work of achieving these sustainable development goals? I would have a particular interest in exploring that. Well, first and foremost, let me thank you very much, David Donahue, and also thank Gilles, great to see one of you again. Thank you for having me here at the Institute. But also to thank you and say how great pleasure it is to be together, of course, with Paul Ryan, who has done a fabulous job in helping us as we got to Ireland to join the African Development Bank. And as one of you rightly said, this is my first time of actually visiting Ireland. As president of the African Development Bank, I came much earlier. Actually, you were at that time the head of Irish aid when I came in 2001 to there about that time. And Ireland was at that time discussing the whole issue of the Millennium Development Goals and the issue of agriculture and nutrition and so on. So it's good to be back. First is that I would like to first start by saying how appreciative I am of Ireland joining the African Development Bank. Ireland joining the African Development Bank makes Ireland the 81st shareholder country for the bank. And of course, Ireland joining the bank for various reasons. First and foremost is that I always feel Ireland is one of the countries that have development from its heart and therefore has a lot of respect for countries, situations and therefore, something that I really appreciate about Ireland. And secondly, of course, is that Ireland, I wanna say, is investing in the right institution. If you look at what we've done as a bank with the high fives that you mentioned, David at the bank, I like five things. So the five things that we started off was called high fives, light upon power Africa, to feed Africa, to industrialize Africa, to integrate Africa and to improve the quality of life of the people of Africa. Well, it looks pretty simple like you're doing high fives for everybody else. But in fact, they are very, very powerful. The United Nations Development Program did an independent assessment. And they found that if Africa were to achieve these high fives, it will have achieved 90% of the sustainable development goals. And if it achieved these high fives, it will have achieved 90% of the Agenda 2663 of the African Union, which is the Africa we want. So in essence, David, the African Development Bank's high fives are the accelerators of Africa's development. Now, what has happened since we set this up? Six years ago, when we started, in that period, the work of the bank has impacted on the lives of 335 million people. And if you look at some of the key issues, let me take, for example, the case of access to electricity, we've been able to connect 21 million people in terms of access to new electricity connections. You take a look at agriculture, for example. We've been able to get 79 million people with access to, I mean, 76 million people with access to improve agricultural technologies for food security. Now, finance is very, very important. And so we do quite a lot of investments in investing companies on access to finance. And our work on that has improved the access to finance for 12 million people. Now, when you take of infrastructure, infrastructure is one of the big things that bank does. We've invested more than $40 billion on infrastructure in the last seven years alone. So our work on transport, for example, has provided access to 69 million people in terms of access to improved transport services. And when you look at urbanization in Africa, the yield issue of water and sanitation is a very big issue. And our work has provided access to 50 million people with access to improved water and sanitation in that short period of time. So in essence, we have banked our focuses on making sure that we translate, it's not just about finance, but translating things into concrete impacts on the lives of people. And I think that's one of the things that Ireland, participation with us as a shareholder is really excited about. The other part of it, of course, is more institutional. Last year, the African Development Bank was ranked by global finance as the best multilateral financial institution in the world. We have the concessional financing institution of the bank that is called the African Development Fund. It was looked at by the Washington-based Center for Global Development that found out that the African Development Fund that was ranked the second best concessional financing institution in the world, well ahead of all 49 concessional financing institutions in all 49 developed countries, including all OECD countries. So we're pretty excited about that. And for me, the other thing that I get excited about is the importance of transparency. We were rated as the fourth most transparent institution in the world. So when you look at it in terms of programmatic, if you look at it institutionally and in terms of relevance for Africa's development, I think Ireland picked its best in the right place. I have no doubt and I must say those are remarkable achievements indeed in such a short space of time under your leadership. Obviously, right now there are clouds on the horizon, I mean, big clouds and notably the impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. How do you see the repercussions of that conflict in terms of food security in Africa, food access? What scale of crisis do you think is heading towards the continent? Well, first, let me say that my heart, my mind and my prayers, thoughts and prayers are with the people of Ukraine. When I turn on television and I see the level of destruction that kind of just going on, it's just unacceptable. And I think first and foremost for me is this has to stop, this war has to stop. We have a common humanity here at stake. And so I really wanna say that we must use all means necessary to ensure that there's dialogue, there's conservation, we bring this war to an end. Now, I haven't said that the war is happening so far, it seems from Africa actually physically, but in fact it's not that far off because Africa depends on Russia and Ukraine a lot. If you look at in terms of wheat, both wheat supply Ukraine and Russia and Ukraine supply 41% of Africa's wheat supply, right? And if there's no wheat, basically for many places there's no food, right? And if you look at Ukraine, a small country though, it supplies 31% of the maize supply imports for Africa. You take, for example, in places like where you've worked before, you know, David and me in East Africa, you know, over 90% of all their cereals comes from those two countries. So when the war, Russia's war in Ukraine has significant impact. First is to look at how much maize of food was actually maize and soybean and wheat coming in from those two countries. So this year, there will not be 30 million metric tons of both wheat and corn that's coming from Russia and Ukraine will not be there. So you can imagine the impact of that will have in terms of food crisis, a potential food crisis, let me say. Second one, of course, is to look at the fertilizer side because, you know, Africa will not be getting two million metric tons of fertilizer coming from both countries. Now, if those fertilizers don't come in, basically what I mean, David, is that productivity on existing cultivated land in Africa will decline by anything between 20% and 50%. So you have the one of food not coming in and you have the reduction on your productivity on existing land. So whichever way you look at both of those two things, that confidence of those two factors will actually lead to a looming food crisis in Africa. But here is where we have been very, very quick to respond to this. I mean, when the COVID-19 situation happened, the bank was very, very, you know, off the block, we responded very quickly and launched a $10 billion facility that supported up to $10 billion facility that supported the countries, including, in fact, by the way, David, a $3 billion fired COVID-19 social bond on the capital markets, global capital markets, which was at the time but the largest ever in world history. So we respond very fast. In this case, we did exactly the same thing. We launched a $1.5 billion African emergency food production plan to help Africa to produce and compensate for what is not gonna be getting from those countries. Now, these $1.5 billion emergency food production facility will allow Africa to produce 38 million metric tons of food, right? Over the next four seasons. So basically two years, four seasons. So that would provide technologists in the hands of 20 million farmers, climate residents, agricultural technologists. They will produce 38 million metric tons of food, but that's largely going to be wheat. That will be 11 million metric tons of wheat. You're looking at 18 million metric tons of corn. You're looking at six million metric tons of rice and 2.5 million metric tons of soybeans. And that will be enough to mitigate any likely impact that this will have on the aluminum food crisis in Africa. You know, when we have this, my view is that Africa doesn't need balls in hand to go back for food. Africa needs seeds in the ground to produce food for itself. If there's anything that Africa should, in my view, add to solving global challenges, is to fully unlock the potential of its agricultural sector and become a major food supplier to mix the food needs in the world. And so in the crisis also lies an opportunity because, you know, it's not the last time we're going to have this kind of challenges, but Africa has today 65% the amount of all the uncultivated arable land left to feed 9 billion people in the world by 2050. And so what Africa does with food, with agriculture, it's going to determine the future of food in the world. So we do need to have a structural transformation of the agricultural sector in Africa. Now, what gives me this confidence that what I've explained to you is going to avoid the aluminum crisis? Let me just give you one, two examples. First is that we have a program that's called Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation, which we use to deliver technologies at the scale of millions of farmers. Three years ago, we started this program. He has delivered technologies for over 12 million farmers, primary resident technologies for 12 million farmers. Now these, including among that, is the issue of wheat. So you take, for example, Sudan, right? We provide a Sudan with 65,000 metric tons of heat tolerant wheat varieties. Wheat is a template crop, as you know, but now we have heat tolerant wheat varieties. We give those to Sudan. Now, to understand that, if you take an Airbus 380 aircraft, David, and you look at the total weight of it, both the cargo, the passengers, and the fuel, is 98.4 metric tons. So when I say 65,000 metric tons of certified seed or heat tolerant varieties, just imagine that like the equivalent of 666380 Airbuses on a land and street. That's just to keep you out of this. And in two years, Sudan reduced its wheat imports by 50%. Now, if you take, for example, Ethiopia, we did the same, we give them 61,000 metric tons of certified seed of heat tolerant wheat varieties. They started planting this in 5,000 hectares in 2018. In 2019, 2020, they went to over 167,000 hectares. Now they are in total at 675,000 hectares. I was in Ethiopia with Prime Minister Abe Ahmed just two months ago. You know what he told me? He said, I came this year, we did not import a single grain of wheat. Next year, we will grow 2 million hectares on that is heat tolerant varieties. And we will become for the first time in our history exporting country to export 1.5 to 2 million metric tons of wheat to both Kenya and to Djibouti. So that's what I'm talking about. These are real things that are happening on the ground. So I am confident because our plan is based on what has been working. We'll have to take back to scale, but I think it's also an opportunity for us to finally, finally do what we should have done a long time ago. A real deep structural transformation to unlock the full potential of Africa. Well, as you say, in every crisis, there is an opportunity and that's really a remarkable story. I mean, the potential to use the current crisis with Russian Ukraine to achieve real transformation as you are saying, it's absolutely fascinating. And I have no doubt that Ireland would hope to be able to assist and work with you in that area. It's obviously something of great interest to us, the application of technology to agriculture transformation. But you certainly give a very, very encouraging picture of what may be possible, what could arise out of this. You touched a moment ago on what the bank did in response to COVID-19 and the facility which you set up then, which in itself was a terrific initiative. What results did you feel you achieved with that particular initiative? As I say, in the COVID-19 context, is it your assessment that that has made a significant impact on access to health, on resilience of health systems? What was your sense of the achievement with the Azure Facility? Oh, thanks. Clearly, when COVID-19 actually hit, it was a real eye-opener for me because Africa did not have even basic laws. It didn't have access to personal protective equipment. It did not have access to testing kits. It did not even have access to laboratories. There was only one or two in Africa that will actually test for things. And if you look at the number of ICU beds that were there, they were very, very, very little. So Africa was totally, totally unprepared when COVID-19 actually hit the continent. Now, but that beat, as it may, we actually responded. As I said, we provided a crisis response facility like, you know, up to $10 billion, so four countries. Basically, these were fastest-bossing loans because the countries were not interested in projects. Everybody was interested more in these existential risks. And so countries were more interested in how to show up their population and assure our security for good reason. And so we were able to use this facility to do maybe three, four things. First is rapidly build up the capacity of the technical, the medical staff that they have, both the technicians in terms of also the medical doctors that will actually walk out across countries. Second is the number of ICU beds that in an ICU unit with beds in many, many hospitals went up dramatically because of the investment that we made. Now, in terms of testing, because a lot of the money also were to support countries to develop capacity for testing, I think way over 26 million people are able to be tested because of all of that support. But if there's anything that all of this actually also did was it actually helped to reduce the fiscal boardings on the countries because many of the countries then were facing potential high risk of their distress. So it actually helped them to expand their fiscal space that they badly needed in the midst of this crisis. But the issue is what next? We don't know what's going to be across the corner again. There could be another crisis just walking across the corner. Now, my view is that we must, Africa must learn some deep lessons from this crisis. And most basically say, in my view, have what I call health security defense system. So you're not caught unprepared. And this health defense system must have three areas. One is to build Africa's pharmaceutical capacity, manufacturing capacity. Second is to build Africa's vaccine manufacturing capacity. And third is to build what you were saying the whole issue of quality healthcare infrastructure. Now, these areas are fundamental to create a defense system in health just like national security for African countries. Now, the African Development Bank is working on all three fronts at this right now. So you take, for example, the pharmaceutical area. Africa imports about 70, 80% of all these drugs and medicines and so on, it doesn't make any sense. And so we've committed to spend $3 billion over the next 10 years in helping to revamp Africa's pharmaceutical industries. And linked to that is the issue of vaccines production. And secondly is our Board of Governors, our directors actually, approved for us a quality healthcare strategy for Africa. So the bank will be investing a lot in primary healthcare infrastructure, secondary healthcare infrastructure and tertiary healthcare infrastructure. Our comparative advantage is in the area of infrastructure. So we will basically be in those areas. And finally, just last week our Board of Directors approved the establishment of what we call Africa Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation which is a new brand new institution that is gonna help Africa to access the proprietary technologies that it needs, the know-how that it needs, the knowledge of the processes to be able to manufacture vaccines not only for COVID but also to other diseases in Africa. So basically to deal with the issue of how you take IP protected and patent protected technologies and processes and materials and make those available for Africans of pharmaceutical industries. So we have learned from that process. Yes, we helped, but we are now making sure that the building blocks to make sure that Africa is in a situation to effectively respond to any exogenous health shock is better bolster. No, certainly equipping Africa with capacity to respond to future shocks is absolutely vital and the bank is doing one of the work there. You mentioned yesterday, I think in another context that only 16% of Africans were vaccinated, have been vaccinated which is a very stark figure and obviously we here were all struck by the deep injustice of the vaccine inequity. But what sort of objectives do you have in mind in terms of building vaccination capacity? I'm just curious to know have you set yourselves with the foundation and otherwise have you set yourselves targets for the level of vaccination that could be achieved over the coming years? Yeah, I mean, the low level of vaccinations that you have, the 16% which is very, very low. If you look at developed countries, they are 80% and above and the reasons for that is actually several and that's what we have to make sure we fix with the foundation going forward. First is that the vaccines came very, very late. Secondly, the vaccines that were provided quite a lot of them were about to expire. So you couldn't really use them. And third is that the information on vaccines also, there was a lot of in many places, vaccine hesitancy because people were actually not very sure of how safe and effective the vaccines were. But of course also it's a very high cost of vaccine. So when you're looking at a situation where developed countries bought up literally all the vaccines three times what they ever needed but that wasn't enough actually for Africa. Africa was at the bottom of the pile on this. Now, however, when you take a look at what we need to do to improve that going forward, you know, in the past, everybody used to think that COVAX was gonna be the way to deal with things. So you bought by, you actually then reduce the price in which you got access to drugs and to vaccines. You know, and that because of market failure in Africa smallest of the markets, the lack of finance and lack of skills and lack of good infrastructure that probably Africa shouldn't have been, shouldn't be investing a lot more in this particular area. But, you know, COVAX wasn't able to deliver for Africa when he needed it. And secondly, Africa learned from the fact that, you know, it cannot outsource the health security or the student of his 1.3 billion people to the benevolence of others, you know, and that was a lesson that we learned from that. So what we're really talking about here now in Africa is that Africa produces vaccines, only 1% of the total amount of vaccine that it produces. If you look at it, David, you know, 135 years of walking vaccines, right? Africa, apart from the Institute of Pasteur, right? In Senegal, which is doing the yellow fever vaccine, the only one, Africa doesn't have any vaccines. And so part of the problem is technology, yes. But it goes more than technology. It's the technology know-how. It is having the R&D ecosystem that can support the processes, the understanding the processes of how you actually manufacture vaccines because that's something you take off the shelves in a supermarket, right? And part of the reasons why it's very difficult for African countries is that many of these things are protected on that it trips trade with international property rights. But you couldn't get access to that, but also because of the patents and copyrights on many of these things, which actually limits market entry, I mean, or raises the market entry costs for many of the African pharmaceutical companies. So what the foundation, the Africa Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, which we are set to know will do, is to try and deal with this particular issue. First is to try and deal with the structural barrier in times of actually being able to know which technologies exist, which platforms should you use, when should you use it, and how viable will the platforms be? So it's not just a technology, but which platform is it? So that's a structural issue on which technologies. The other one, of course, is to look at how to ensure that the African pharmaceutical companies can search for, they can transact and acquire intellectual property related technologies and know-how that will allow them to be able to develop vaccines today and for several other things. You know, it's like Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is based in Atlanta, Georgia, you know? They send it to you, wherever you are in the world, but you can't change the formulation. So you just have to, you know, you pour water, you pour gas, and that's it. It's the same also with vaccines. So a lot of what's been done in Africa is fill and finish, you know, but the knowledge of the technology and the processes, it's important. And the other structural barrier that I think is needed at the foundation we try to help to deal with is also how to create the critical linkages between the R&D systems in the universities and the industry. You know, anywhere in the world where you've had vaccines in developed countries, it's always been because there is a co-development, a cooperation between university R&D systems and the private sector. So the foundation that we are talking about will also help to deal with this particular issue. So it's not just about, well, here are companies that are coming to Africa, they are producing vaccines, but you will. It's not somewhat different from Coca-Cola sending me a Coca-Cola to fill, but we wanna move beyond that and be able to master the processes, the knowledge, the know-how that allows Africa to produce vaccines for its own epidemiological profile. No, that's an extremely exciting workload. I mean, you could imagine potentially a vast amount of resources going into it. I mean, I think the trips aspect is particularly interesting to me that you'll find some way of easing access to the market for the companies involved. I mean, will this become a major priority for the bank over the next few years? What you've described there really, because it is so comprehensive, it should really help to move things forward in relation to pharmaceutical production. I think you're muted. Can you hear me now? Yes, I can, yes. No, I imagine that it will, the foundation will become one of your top priorities from the way in which you have described the workers will be undertaking. Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, the thing for us as a bank, Africa has developed a bank is when all this conversation started, well, you know, there's movement in terms of translocation of production capacities into Africa by some of the companies, like whether it's Modena or Johnson & Johnson, or whether it is those that are now moving into Rwanda, you know, but at the end of the day, it goes beyond just simply that technology transfer. And so we're going to be working very closely on this with WTO, with the Director General of WTO, myself, and also Director General Tedro of the World Health Organization, are working very, very closely on this particular issue. And to your point on the WTO trips, trade-related intellectual property rights, you know, the actually the trips, the trade-related intellectual property rights allows for the giving both exclusive and non-exclusive licenses to developing countries up to actually, I think, July 1st of 2034. Well, the issue is, even if that exists, it's always existed, but it's never really worked because of the IP protection and the inability to negotiate, right, with the holders of the IPs to release that to you. So yes, it's going to be very major area for us because we think the problems in Africa and this area is not just about producing something today but dealing with some of the fundamental structural reasons why Africa has not been able to access the IP protected technologies and know-how. I mean, take a look at India, you take a look at Brazil, you take a look at Bangladesh, you know, they've been able to do this very well. So we're trying to use this foundation to tilt access to IP related technologies in favor of Africa. And if I might just add something here to give some of the people listening a context on this. You know, when I was in Rockefeller Foundation in the 90s, we had on agriculture a similar problem which was actually going to devastate all the cassavars and all the bananas of Africa because they were being really devastated by viruses. Right, you have cassava mosaic virus and that was going to blow out all the cassava and the banana bacteria willed. I was going to finish off all the bananas of Africa, was going to cause a crisis. Now one thing that the Rockefeller Foundation did at the time was actually work with others to create what is called the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, AATF, which is based in Nairobi, Kenya. And we started with IP lawyers from the top to the bottom for them to develop materials exchange agreements with the holders of the IPs globally because they wanted to release it but they didn't find a platform that was trustworthy, that was transparent, that was accountable, that they could release this to make sure it doesn't get in the total thought party countries. So that was done. And what happened David? All of a sudden all the IP protected materials and genes and so on were released for Africa. And we used that to develop the resistant varieties for cassava, anthrobananas and vala. We saved all of Africa from that. It's the same thing now. People need a very transparent trust with the intermediation agency that can actually do this on behalf of Africa. And we think that is what the African technological technology foundation will do for Africa on the pharmaceutical side. No, it's wonderful. Dr. Aditya, we might just turn to one of the many other things which the bank is doing and that is the action you're taking in response to climate change and the support that you provide countries with in combating climate change. Francis Jacobs, who's a former member of the institution, former European Parliament official, he asks, how does the work, for example, with countries in the Sahel which have internal political insecurity and might have difficulties in making the best use of the financing that the bank provides? But if you could tell us a little bit about the climate work and take up Francis's question, that would be great. Okay, now let me talk first on the climate side. I mean, climate change is a real problem for Africa. Africa doesn't contribute for more than 4% of the carbon emissions in the world or so far disproportionately from the negative consequences of it. You have on the continent today in Africa, we lose anything between $7 and $15 billion a year in terms of losses to climate change. Now, if nothing changes going forward, that's going to rise to $50 billion a year by 2030. So that's really going to be of almost 7% of Africa GDP going into that. So it's a massive problem that it has created. Now the issue is Africa needs to adapt to climate change. So a lot of focus has to be on climate adaptation and that's where our priority is. As a bank today, we have doubled our climate finance to reach $25 billion by 2025. A big chunk of that is actually focused on climate adaptation. You know, UN Secretary General Anthony Gutierrez said that, you know, the world's institutions, which are all focused on 50-50 in terms of adaptation and climate mitigation. Well, we've gone beyond 50% as African development bank. We are 67% of all our climate finance devoted to climate adaptation, which is Africa's challenge. So which is the highest of any multilateral financial institution you will find in the world. I was very delighted when the UN Secretary General Anthony Gutierrez listed the African Development Bank as the leader globally on this on climate adaptation and said, oh, that's your follow. So we'll continue to work on climate adaptation. Now we also are working very closely with the Global Center on Adaptation, which is chaired by the former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other fantastic CEO, Partiq Bakourjan from Netherlands. And we are mobilizing an additional $25 billion for climate adaptation in Africa. So all of that to say that we're helping Africa to adapt to climate change. Now, when I take a look at the issue of the Sahel, one more thing before I move to the Sahel, one of the things of course that you find David in Africa is you have frequencies of drought, you have floods, you have cyclones, you have all of these things. The issue is how do countries essentially insure themselves against this extreme weather pattern of states of nature? And what we have is we have something called the African Disaster Risk Insurance Facility. Now this Africa Disaster Risk Insurance Facility essentially ensures countries against this catastrophe risk event. So if they happen, you can get a payout on it. We work with the Africa Risk Capacity, which is based in an arm of the Africa Union based in South Africa. And it works so well. I mean, take for example, the case of Madagascar. Madagascar was devastated recently by the cyclone Bistrae, which left the whole place devastated. Now we had paid about $4 million to insure the country against this event. And when it happened, they got a payout from the Africa Risk Capacity of $12 million. And that $12 million allowed them to be able to support roughly 600,000 farmers that were impacted by that. So we do need resources to scale these kinds of things up because they're more frequent than others, more often. Now on the question that was raised in the Sahel, you know, I guess the question is, how do we walk in the Sahel? Is that what the question was? Yeah. Right. That's right, yeah. Well, you know, the Sahel, three things I want to say about the Sahel. The first is that Sahel needs electricity. You know, and as you know, Chalayan faced a challenge with regard to the issue of also insecurity, which is one thing. And the other thing, of course, is the certification. So if you take a look at the issue of access to electricity in the Sahel, the bank is implementing what is called desert to power. Turning these deserts harnessing the power of the sun to provide them electricity. It's a $20 billion program that we are working on. We're working on it together with the Adjansponsor to develop more in France who's put together 100 million euros support for it. We have the Rockefeller Foundation that's committed $100 million towards that. We have the global environment and the Green Climate Fund that has just put in $150 million towards that effort. The Swedish government has put in 20 million euros in support of that initiative. And the bank is putting well over $400 million to our sustainable energy fund for Africa into that. Well, what will the desert to power do? Not just for the Sahelian countries. For all the countries that share the Sahelian band in Africa, all the way to Djibouti, all the way to Northern Ethiopia, what will it do? It will provide electricity, 10,000 megawatts of electricity. It's the capacity we want to build via solar. And that will provide electricity for 250 million people, both grid-based and off-grid-based system. And when it is completed, it will be the largest solar zone in the world. Now, we have started this already. We've started already in Chad. We was called Jamea Solar Power. We have also started in Bukina Faso. It's called Project Yellen on solar. We've also started in Mali, which is called Segu Solar. So this is what we are doing because I think we need the light of the Sahel. Terrorists always like dark places. There's no electricity, they just have a field day. So the first thing is make sure they get electricity. The second thing is when you look at the issue of insecurity. Unfortunately, insecurity has increased significantly across the Sahel, as you know. Now, they are spending so much of their monies on security investments and a lot less of their money on development financing for education, for health, for water, for sanitation, what you and I and others care about in terms of development. So that substitution is happening. Now, the key really is this. How do we make sure that they have the resources to cope with this? Because that's the problem. I mean, the president of Bukina Faso was removed by the military because he couldn't pay for food for his military in the North of the country. And so I think basically what I'm saying David is that we have to now make a link between security, between growth, between security linking it to investment, to growth and development. We can't look at security anymore as an exogenous factor in that development process. We've got to integrate it as an endogenous part of that. And to deal with that and help the countries to have more resources to cope with this issues of insecurity that is now becoming a contigion effect in many countries, basically by effects. The African Development Bank is developing what's called security index investment bonds. And this security index investment bonds will be new instruments that we will launch on the capital markets that will allow these countries of the silent others to do four things. First is to build up their defense architecture. I don't mean guns, I don't mean APCs or anything like that, but just your intelligence, your human capacity, your ICT systems and so on, surveillance systems, which is very important. And second is to rebuild damage infrastructure in areas of conflict. Third is to rebuild social infrastructure, water health education in areas that have been devastated because if you don't have those, then you've lost the battle of the mind and soul of the population. And the last one is to also protect areas where you have strategic investments from terrorists and others doing that. So we are trying to do that to support them to be more stable economies. And lastly is the whole issue of the climate. And the issue of desatification is a big problem in the Sahel. And that's why I really want to applaud the work that's been led by President Macron in France and also with the United Nations Secretary-General and to the butchers and my sister Amina Muhammad there on the Great Green Wall. Because the Great Green Wall is the buffer to protect the Sahel from desatification. And the African Development Bank is a champion of that and we committed $6.5 billion towards that Great Green Wall. So at the end of the day all I'm saying is we've got to help the Sahel economies to be more stable, climate-wise, reduce desatification, but also make sure that they have more resources to cope with the issues of rising expenditures that are making on the military which will actually reduce it and displacing, let me say, the financing going to development. That's it. Thank you very much for that. I mean, there were many, many interesting things in what you said there in particular, the way in which the bank is directly addressing the security dimension in facing countries in the Sahel that you're not, as it were, bypassing it, but you see it as a challenge which must be addressed head on through, for example, the security bonds and so on. I find that a fascinating approach. The Great Green Wall, obviously, is it's very good to hear that the bank is also invested in that. We have perhaps time for two or three final questions. Let me just put one to you relation to the energy needs of the continent and how the bank is trying to address those and then maybe a word about infrastructure. Perhaps if I could just ask you to give your perspective on those two issues and then we might have time for one final wrap-up question. Okay. Well, thank you. Electricity is a life blood of any society. It's like blood in your body. If you have blood, you are alive. If you don't have blood, you're not alive. And so any economy without electricity is not a living economy. It's not a dynamic economy. It's not one that can create job or industrialize and things like that and become better. And that's why light upon power Africa is a major top priority for us in Africa. So what are we doing in this particular area? First, a couple of points. The first is that we are focusing on renewable energy. Today, 83.84% of all of our investment in energy in Africa is focused on renewable energy. So for example, we actually helped to finance the new Wasazate, which is the world's largest concentrated solar power plant, which is 510 megawatts, which is based in Morocco. The second one is we did it 310 megawatts, which is in Lake Turkana project, which is in Kenya, which is the largest wind power plant in Africa. I mentioned to you the desert of power that we're doing a $20 billion investment in the Sahel and countries to provide electricity. But we are also investing in geothermal. So geothermal, for example, in the area that you know in Kenya, in the Riv Valley area, that geothermal now supplies more than 60% of the electricity of Kenya. We are also investing in hydro. So basically, but as we look at energy, with all of that that I've just mentioned to you, we must also realize that three things are fundamentally important. One is access, second is affordability, and third is security and stability of supply. So for Africa, yes, we're doing all we can on the renewable side, but there are limits to what we can do because of the intermittency of the power supply. And so for Africa, natural gas is and must remain a fundamental part of the energy mix of Africa. What you need is an energy mix. By actually doing that, we ensure that we actually have a stable grid system that can allow us to take advantage of the maximum we can after renewable energy. And you can see also the other part of it is dealing with the issue of energy transition, the just energy transition. The African Development Bank is at the forefront of that for Africa because fundamentally, what we're doing is we are establishing at the bank a just energy transition facility, which will warehouse the heavy-foil oil power plants in Africa, the coal-based power plants in Africa, and transition them to much more grid-based, renewable energy-based that are less polluting for the environment. And if I might just give you an example, now we are working with the G7, and I want to applaud the G7 for their leadership in trying to provide $8.5 billion to the government of South Africa, that wants to get out to President Ramaphosa on the edge of coal, moving to a much more renewable energy-based system. However, what South Africa needs is not $8.5 billion, what South Africa needs is $40 billion. So how do you get $8.5 billion to become $40 billion? It's the big question. So that is where the African Development Bank came in again very innovatively. We developed a new financial business model, investment model, that will allow us working together with the G7 on their grants, on their concessions, and also on guarantees, to turn that $8.7 billion into $40 billion, which is what South Africa will need in hand to be able to actually do a just energy transition properly. And I must add, the business model we have will allow South Africa to raise all that money without incurring debt at all. So President Ramaphosa is very pleased with the work we have, so does the government. So we're working very closely with the government of South Africa and of course with the G7 on this. So I have two major issues that I wanted to say on the issue of energy. Great, infrastructure. Could you just tell us very, very quickly what your priorities are there? I mean, the work which the bank is doing to support the creation of infrastructure and indeed, what are your thoughts on the Chinese dimension? Well, infrastructure, it's like it's like your vatibre column, right? So vatibre column, if you have one, you stand straight. If you don't have it, vatibre column, you can stand straight. That's what infrastructure is to economies, right? And so infrastructure is one of the big areas of the bank. In fact, we have a great competitive advantage in that. In the last seven years we've invested in infrastructure well over $40 billion on infrastructure. And I just saw a, I think I looked about a study a few weeks ago that was done by Center for Global Development in the United States. But I actually found that our investment on infrastructure in Africa is over four times what the World Bank is doing on infrastructure in Africa. Over 2.5 times what the IFC, the National Financial Cooperation is doing infrastructure in Africa. That's because we focus a lot on infrastructure. And that infrastructure includes, for example, road transport corridors, energy infrastructure, digital infrastructure, but also water and sanitation to cope with rapidly urbanizing societies like we have in Africa. And including energy transmission infrastructure. So if I can give you one or two key infrastructure that is actually transforming the continent. Take for example, the transport corridor that is linked in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa to United Ruby. And so it provides, it's a $1.1 billion investment by the bank, over 1,100 kilometers. And it's almost completed. When it's completed, David, it will allow trade between Ethiopia and Kenya to rise by 400%. You take, for example, another type of infrastructure which is very, very important, which is port infrastructure. You look at the Welfare Bay Port in Namibia, for example. We put about $380 million into that. And that will reduce the cost of accessing port for the landlocked countries, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Zambia and all that, that are gonna use that port because of the increased capacity of the port. Digital economies where we are today. And so you do need to have digital infrastructure. The bank has invested a lot in this digital infrastructure of marine cables in East Africa and Central Africa. And the Trans Sahara Submarine Network to link us all the way to North Africa and then into Europe, which is very, very important for all the digital services that one is talking about today. And if I may also like one thing, it's just at the Africa Investment Forum that we had just this year. You know, the big corridor that's supposed to link Lagos to Abidjan going through Binin and going to Accra and all the way to Abidjan and of course, eventually up to Senegal, we were able to raise roughly 15.6 billion dollars of investment commitment from investors towards that project that will be landmark in the region. So there are many, many types of infrastructure that we are doing. But three things I want to say on infrastructure. First is that as we do infrastructure, we must recognize that governments alone cannot and should not do infrastructure because if governments get debt and the debt is, if you look at a lot of the debt Africa has today, it's quite a lot of it is infrastructure related debt. Okay, but if government is putting all of that in its own books, that's not necessarily good. So we believe that it's time to do a lot more public-private partnerships on infrastructure to make sure that we reduce the debt overhang that comes from infrastructure. Secondly is the importance of also making sure that infrastructure is quality infrastructure, not just any kind of infrastructure. So we have a lot of the G20 principles on quality infrastructure because you have to look at the lifecycle costs and maintenance costs of infrastructure, quality infrastructure. And that's why environmentally climate-resilient infrastructure and that's why the African Development Bank serves Africa 50, the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and several other agencies are launching and I don't consider developer in France. Well, we are launching what is called the Alliance for Green Infrastructure in Africa to allow Africa to raise a lot of green bonds to finance green climate-resilient infrastructure. And the last thing I wanna see on infrastructure which is particularly important is that if there is one type of infrastructure that I don't like and I will never subscribe to it, it's infrastructure that is built with natural resources back in the loans, right? That's very, very bad type of loans. You cannot mortgage your future just because you wanna get something in the immediate. And so we must make sure that investments on infrastructure are done transparently and done in a way that does not undermine the long-term financial viability of countries. You know, people can talk, people talk about, you asked me a question about China. China does a lot of investments on infrastructure in Africa. But I do wanna say that the issue you find in Africa is that Africa just basically needs infrastructure. It needs quality infrastructure. What I think we need to do, regardless of where the finance is coming, is agree on a number of common principles. First is that we must agree that there must be quality infrastructure. Two, we must agree that we must not let infrastructure lead to increased debt boardings for countries. We must also make sure that we also do local currency financing of infrastructure. Because if you do erode transport corridors or energy and your revenue streams are in local currency or you're paying for it with expensive foreign debt, well, that's a currency mismatch problem there. So we wanna make sure we do a lot more on local currency financing. And finally, it's a fact that look, Africa has today given $2 trillion of assets on their management, sitting with pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. Well, all these monies have been invested outside the country in money market instruments in which they are earning negative real rate of return. Well, look, if you're a pension fund and you are investing outside in those things, pension fund is supposed to give you annuity so that you can come back and have a great retirement. Well, if you come back and there's no road, there's no port, there's no hospital, that's a miserable retirement. And so I think that the pension funds of Africa and the sovereign wealth funds should be looking at infrastructure in Africa as an asset class. And therefore be investing significantly in that. So mobilizing private capital for infrastructure is very important. And my last word on infrastructure is we've got to be able to prepare bankable projects because the problem is not the money, it's actually having a lot of bankable projects. And that's why the African Development Bank held the establishment of Africa 50 as a vehicle that actually deploys private instruments to actually do commercially viable infrastructure for Africa. We need to prepare bankable project. We have at the bank something called the NEPAD Infrastructure Preparation Facility. Where we put in $18 million just to develop projects for Africa on infrastructure. But you know what it has led to? $26 billion downstream of infrastructure investments. So it actually makes a lot of sense to do that. And so at the end of the day, this is how we are going to do Africa's development so we can take advantage of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area, which is going to be the second largest in the world. Well, you can trade if you can't get from one place to the other. Absolutely. The last part of the job is Africa and the government. Very reluctantly, Dr. Havazine, we're going to have to let you go to your next appointment. We could have talked a lot longer. There are many, many interesting subjects. And thank you for the fantastic answers you gave to those really big questions. Much food for thought. On behalf of everybody who has been listening in, we thank you warmly for having come, having taken the time from your very busy schedule. We profited from it enormously. Thank you so much. Very best of luck with the future work of the bank. And it's obviously in great hands. And thank you for everything you told us today. Thank you so much. We see you again tomorrow. Thank you, Jill. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, Ryan. Bye.