 So Ricky, d convinced, thank you very much for such a warm welcome and thank a particular thanks for you and your team, in London here at Germany for organizing such a... what looks like such a fascinating event. I'm really sorry I haven't been able to participate in more of it. I just got back from Khartoum I was saying to Vera, I hadn't actually been in Khartoum since the late 1980s and when I arrived there I thought I'd got on the wrong plane. I mean that is a city that has expanded, I would say tenfold. And for me it was a very appropriate metaphor for what we're discussing here today. Urbanisation is the future of Africa, where we are in Addis Ababa. I mean actually by African standards rather a small city, but expanding at an enormous rate, offering huge opportunities for the 70 million people in this country under the age of 30, but also huge challenges. And looking through your programme it seems to me that it's hard to imagine a more timely agenda than the one you have here. Cities are funny places, Vera and I are old colleagues from Washington and we were just commenting this morning that even though we live in the same city we have to come to events like this to bump into each other. I mean I'm a Londoner, which is actually a collection of villages. Those of you who know London, even if you're born and raised there you still get lost. The only way you can find your way around is to join up either places where you've lived or worked or where your friends live and then somehow to try and connect the two. And it often seems to me that coming from probably one of the greatest and certainly one of the oldest cities in the world that is constantly evolving as London is, that we have many many things to share, including the mistakes we've made in developing London. We have under-invested at times, made some very innovative investments at other times. It is a melting pot. It is an extraordinary place to live but also a very very challenging place to live. I mean five million people come into London every day and leave and as I have the privilege of getting in my diplomatic flag car every morning I just think how lucky I am that I don't have to squeeze on the tube which is what I have to do when I'm back home. So looking at your agenda and looking at the sort of very august gathering of people it seems to me that there are a number of things that you should try and take away from this. The first is that sense of community, those villages joining them up that what we do in big cities which is no matter how difficult we keep connections going, we make sure that we have partnerships that we share knowledge, share understanding and my sense from these kinds of events is it's often those friendships, those connections, those professional relationships that you make that are the most important. So instead of just e-meeting you can actually put a face to your colleagues around the world. I think the second thing is to engender a sense of urgency. Africa is urbanising at a phenomenally fast rate. Many people who arrive in cities live in the most appalling conditions and I think there is something particularly jarring about urban poverty, particularly when you see cities that have these increasingly swanky, middle class neighbourhoods, posh hotels like this, when you see people living almost next door with no electricity, no running water, no sanitation. That's a challenge but I think it's also an opportunity because if people like you who are the experts in urban planning can get this right, you can transform those poor people's lives far faster in urban centres than in rural areas. You can get services to them, you can provide them with jobs and employment and safety nets. I think the third thing is this idea of a global alliance for cities. It's fantastic that Vera has just come back from Korea. They've been through a lot of these transitions and I'm sure have good and bad lessons to share. If we look across Africa, I mean Nairobi for example is in a very different place from Addis Ababa. There are things that Addis Ababa has done much better than Nairobi but also lessons to be learnt. My own city London that has evolved over thousands of years has many things to share and positive and negative messages which is why having this kind of partnership is so important. In London School of Economics my alma mater are German colleagues, the Alfred Herrhausen-Geschelschaft who are also participating and critically UNECA. It seems to me like the perfect alliance in order to take this agenda forward. Your programme today is I think even more interesting than yesterday. I don't want to pre-empt what Vera is going to say but I have an inkling she'll be talking about the challenges and opportunities of urbanisation, how we can work together. My government has for years worked on urbanisation in Africa originally a lot on slum development but increasingly moving into really innovative areas like mobile money in slums which we pioneered in Danravi in Mumbai and now has transformed large parts of slums in Kenya and elsewhere, how to get the kind of financing in that's needed, how to get sustainable transport networks in. This is an agenda that is critically important for the UK. I'm delighted we can share our expertise as well and I look forward to hearing what Vera has to say and to seeing the readout of this important conference. Thank you very much.