 Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to our session on exploring the new frontiers of growth. I'm Robert Guest, I'm the business editor of the Economist magazine based out of London and I'll be chairing the panel this morning, which means I will try to say as little as possible and I'll try to get as much value as I possibly can out of our distinguished panelists. We have here Hans-Paul Bruckner, who is the Global Chief Executive Officer and President from the Boston Consulting Group in Germany. We have Luis Moreno from the Inter-American Development Bank based out of Washington, D.C. and then Bhaskar Chakravarti, who is a professor at Tufts University, the Fletcher School of Business in America. We have Mr. Gao Jifan, who is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Trina Solar. And we have Ashish Thakar, who's the founder of the MARA Group, a group with many and wide interests in Africa. So let's kick off. I'm going to try and ask, the subject we're trying to deal with today is where are we going to get new growth in the world? So we'll be looking at emerging markets, South-South economic cooperation, what we think about the various new development models and possibly a bit about fostering frugal innovation. Now I'm going to start by asking each of the panelists to talk for just two minutes. We're looking for very short presentations from you and then I'm going to throw in questions and keep it going. And we'll also allow some time for audience questions towards the end. So please think about what it is that you'd like to ask each panelist towards the end. Perhaps if we could start with Hans Paul. Now the Boston Consulting Group has just put out a rather sober report on China saying that the biggest, most dynamic companies here are going to find it a little bit harder in the future to rack up the same stratospherically high growth rates as before. What's happened? Is this a change of view? No, not at all. I think just because growth rates are coming down maybe from 30, 40, 50 percent down to 10, 20 percent doesn't mean that we are pessimistic. It just means that I think growth is always something that has to be earned and it's a challenge. But I think overall we remain very optimistic about the opportunities in China but also the other emerging markets and the world overall. I think that's where I would emphasize we'll see lots of opportunities for more growth. If we open up more opportunities for the private sector, I think we still have not just in China but in many emerging markets and by the way also some of the European countries, we find lots of obstacles for private companies, for private individuals to really engage, to take the initiative, to build businesses and I think that will be a major, major new frontier for growth in all kinds of sectors but also in places like healthcare, education and so forth. And then I think with more and more entrants I think we'll see also more opportunities for competition, for improving productivity. I think we should not underestimate that in many places, not just in China, I think there are quite a number of state-owned companies dominating things, dominating markets, dominating the credit market and so forth and thus I am able to really have a relatively easygoing. I think it will be very important to open up these markets and you know that's as I said not only true for emerging markets but also in Europe if you think of what the Troika suggests to Greece and other southern European countries, opening up markets, providing opportunities for individuals to take initiative to build their business. The Arab Spring I think is also a good example of what I think drives growth. We will see a lot more growth in the Arab countries because people are able to build businesses and we will see significant increases in productivity way beyond what we have seen over the last 20 years. Thank you very much. Let's move straight on to Luis Moreno. Your focus is on Latin America but presumably you have something to say about not only what the new growth is going to come from in Latin America but also about the links between Latin America and other emerging markets. We see Brazil and China for example in an embrace. Perhaps you could tell us something about your thoughts. Well thank you very much and I'd like to I guess compliment some of the things that Hans was saying in the following sense. You know if you look at the last 10 years a lot of the growth has been coming from emerging markets. A lot of the world growth and the trajectory coming certainly from Asia but it's also from Africa. It will be more and more from Middle East and Northern Africa. Other countries as things happen towards the future and certainly Latin America is no exception. So the big thing to me is the growth of the middle classes and this is a phenomenon that will happen not only in Latin America but throughout the emerging markets. In the very case of Latin America if we are to keep at the rates of growth that we have observed over the last 10 years and by the way these are not as sexy as the growths in Asia which are you know on average close to 10% but on the contrary Latin America has been trend growth close to 5%. If we were just to be close to that over the next 15 years we will not only double the size of the GDP in Latin America but perhaps the most important thing is that no longer we will have a third of our population in poverty would have a 10% of our population in poverty. That means that in essence in a generation you're going to have 500 million Latin Americans in the middle classes defined by $10 of income per capita a day at a minimum and that provides for a profound change in opportunities inside domestic markets it provides for a immense change for how governments need to deploy public services but more importantly the challenges in the areas that Hans was mentioning around productivity because this is going to be the fundamental key and we are and this is not going to be a smooth process I think this is going to be a process where you have on the one hand what we already observed high levels of criminality youth unemployment which is by the way a phenomenon across emerging markets we have a demographic bonus in Latin America average age of 27 that is very different than most countries in Asia by the way more certainly more different than in all very different from China not so very different from India true I think India has that same demographic bonus like Latin America average 27 so we have a time to do some of these profound changes the fundamental difference of Latin America to Asia especially countries like India and China is that already 75 percent of our population lives in cities and there's always a tremendously location that takes place in that transit from farm to factory and people coming into cities certainly in the experience that Latin America lived I think China is doing much better in that regard but certainly that provides for a certain amount of the location China is doing better in can you can you explain that well when you had people in Latin America in the 60s and 70s coming from farms to cities from the rural areas to the urban areas with the promise that they will find better jobs very quality jobs it didn't necessarily happen because there was not an absorption capacity and as much as that absorption capacity wasn't there all of a sudden you created these huge pools of poverty that were very difficult to change over the years and that created for a lot of social dislocation and that of course came in the case of Latin America in a period of 25 years in which we have 31 financial crisis and we all know what financial crisis is due to societies we learned the hard way and no surprise that the America with the financial crisis didn't get any effects other than the transmission channel that came from the collapse of trade as opposed to the financial channel excellent thank you very much Luis Bascar perhaps you could give us in a nutshell your perspective on where the new frontiers of growth are going to be well I will reinforce what my colleagues to the left have just said and perhaps just to kind of set the context I find it helpful to look forward and look back to you know set this discussion in in in the framing of of history and the future my old firm slightly less reputable than boston consulting group to mckinsey it's just put up put out a flag out there which says that by 2025 more than half the world's population is going to be in that middle class that Luis was just talking about is going to be living on at least ten dollars a day in in in purchasing par parity terms which is a momentous event if you if you just do the arithmetic associated with that transformation this coming industrial revolution if I may call it that it's going to be about a thousand times that of the industrial revolutions that we have seen that affected the the western world so when I look at that marker and then I look at history we have a number of economic historians who have basically declared the end of innovation the end of technology they are saying that there's no great technological breakthrough that's on the horizon there's nothing like the internal combustion engine or electricity or internal indoor plumbing that is up ahead so let's assume they're right I don't know whether they're right or wrong let's assume they're right so there's no great breakthrough up ahead I know that there are some enormous changes that are taking place as we speak more than half the world's population lives in cities in some parts of the world that for instance in Europe there are more people retiring than there are people entering the workforce in places like Latin America sub Saharan Africa India there are the problem is at the other end and the problem at the other end is that there are all these people who are waiting to get into the workforce and they don't have the skills now how do we close the gap how do we create industrial revolution a thousand times of what we have experienced in the past without some of the basic tools with us in terms of technological breakthroughs or you know the people that are required to make that happen and my sense is that we are going to live through a revolution in the next 10 or 15 years and the revolution is going to be a messy one it's not going to be of the kind that we've experienced over the last two centuries I'm happy to talk about that as we get into the discussion okay I mean that's an interesting in a way I mean I very much doubt that the people who tell you that there's not another industrial revolution is coming are correct but in a way for your purposes it doesn't matter because even if there is another industrial revolution coming there's still an awful lot of knowledge that we already have that's already out there that we want to spread to the people who don't have the advantages of it yet I mean you know the first few industrial revolutions haven't spread everywhere yet and that's that's a catch-up phase of growth that very much needs to happen I'm going to move brutally on to Mr Galjifan now you you you founded a large solar energy company I'm sure you have lots of interesting things to say about solar energy I mean how how much how much of a part of the the new growth that we're going to see in the world is going to have to come from breakthroughs in energy and what do you see happening okay sorry I speak Chinese I think you all know that the percentage of population in developed world accounts for 15 to 20 percent however the percentage of the country's accounts for more than 80 percent so in the future the growth of developing countries will have huge impacts on the future growth of the economy and the key issue in the development of the developing country is the energy structure and the resources limitations so that is to say in these areas whether there will be the same energy structure to support the growth which is similar as that of the developer country which is impossible because in developing countries in the future we will see a completely new energy structure to support the growth and in this energy structure solar and wind power will play a very large part now we see that the renewable energy the cost of the renewable energy is getting lower and lower just like solar as the traditional energy so in the new energy structure we can see that some countries have a lot of power and some countries not have a lot of energy especially for solar energy most countries have a lot of solar energy maybe some people will say that solar energy might not be possible to become a large proportion of energy mix but they're wrong I would like to give you an example for example in China in Xinjiang area at around 400,000 square kilometers you can harness solar energy and the energy produced can supply the home country and satisfy the need of the home country and I believe that other countries have the same potential in solar energy in 2010 and in the next five years we will see the cost of solar energy continue to decrease we will see the emergence of a new energy mix with solar energy as the majority and wind power will play a complementary role especially in developing countries and other developed countries so whether it's for urbanization or for the development of the industry the new energy will play a very important role for example in letting America we also see that there are some mining companies those mining companies need a lot of electricity however the electricity in those areas are kind of weak it requires 10 or more years to establish our great power if you use the solar energy in that particular areas you can satisfy the requirement of the mining industries as you all know that now there are one point there are a lot of people in China that do not have electricity so if you can harness the potential of solar energy you can better satisfy people's needs thank you excellent thank you very much for that extremely brief tour d'horizon of the frontiers of the energy market i'm going to move swiftly on to Ashish Thakkar who you have a view on you know the other big exciting new growth market of what's going on in Africa and okay it's not one market it's lots of markets but what do you know how significant do you think african growth is going to be over the next decade or so i mean in the past decade it's been the the fastest growing part of the world but from a very very very low base so it hasn't you know people are excited about it but it hasn't really started to move markets the way china does well what do you see in the next 10 years i am i'm i'm absolutely optimistic i think you know africa is is the next big thing and i think it's pretty evident everybody's getting excited about it if you look at the size of the continent you know the sheer size africa is larger than north america western europe india china put together physically we have over a billion people as a continent sub-saharan africa maybe 80 of our populations under the age of 35 so i think we have a very young population we've got a lot of natural resources so i think we're definitely headed in the right direction and as you rightly said you know you can't generalize the continent and out of the 54 countries that africa has if you take out north africa which is the eight countries you know you're looking at about 46 sub-saharan african countries so i mean it's a it's a huge continent with huge opportunity because every country has its own dynamics in terms of the growth models in our in our opinion you know i think foreign direct investment is obviously one key factor that we are looking at but again i think it's very important to have sensitive foreign direct investment meaning i think the foreign investors do need to be aware of what the local countries demands on the requirements are and you know kind of adding value to our local produce not just taking extracting our raw materials and exporting them obviously our governments are very very bullish on public private partnerships which is another key model of growth because obviously you know we've we have a huge requirement for infrastructure energy a lot of the other industries that have been mentioned and obviously governments have the resources but not not the right ability to in terms of management so i think the public private partnership mechanism is key but i think i also am very excited and very focused on the small medium enterprise section as well and our non-profit arm the Mara Foundation is actually focused on bolstering that growth. I'm wondering if i can throw the discussion towards a little bit to do with south south cooperation and by that i mean not necessarily people who are just in the southern hemisphere but countries that we think of as emerging markets and the extent to which they're really getting the links right with each other maybe if we could start with some thoughts on China in Africa and since you're the man on the spot i mean how do you see China's role there i think China China's role is obviously you know it is critical for Africa and China is playing a very active role in Africa i think we've seen a lot of great case studies and we've seen a few negative ones as well it's obviously important not to generalize and hence it's important to kind of pick and mix but this is why i'm saying that the great case studies are are few but very large right who have actually done it very professionally who are doing it extremely well one great example actually is the China Africa Development Fund who's very focused on on deploying funds in Africa and in the right manner but then you do get a lot of a lot of the negative side as well who are actually coming to do things in a manner where they're really trying to just extract the wealth and move on and i think we've seen this from China we've seen it from India we've seen it from quite a few different markets so i think that's that's a challenge how you kind of balance that and how you make sure that it's okay Bhaskar you were you were saying earlier when we were discussing things in the speaker's room that you've you've you've run into companies who want to do business in China and they're asked to surrender your intellectual property and they say no and then they're told well you know if you don't not only are you going to be shut out of China but you're going to be shut out of Africa because we're now the gatekeepers there um do you think that that's a bluff i mean that sounds like a bluff to me do you think how much of this sort of stuff is going on well that that is a that's a this kind of hard to speculate on and whether something is a bluff or not doesn't really matter as long as it works and uh and i think a lot of love works right yeah and and for a lot of particularly American companies this is a real challenge because Americans are not particularly comfortable operating on a global stage American companies have been used to essentially the United States being the center of the world and has a certain amount of comfort in the conventional western environments and some of these new markets that are opening up you know there hasn't been that historical connection that a lot of European multinationals have had with with the wider world and certainly the south-south connections that the the southern corporations have had so in response to your question the the the challenge for a lot of global players is to understand the cross-connect between operating businesses across borders and the geopolitical implications of what they are doing in terms of their entry strategies in terms of their pricing strategies and how you take products from one geography and replicate in another in a way that is representative of the needs and the usage context of these different geographies traditionally the American model has been to create a perfect product and then and replicate it over and over again go up the the the scale curve and and and bring down the cost and be enormously efficient at at essentially producing the same product around the work that that model cannot work when you have so many different south south markets and each market has its own peculiar idiosyncratic needs and and that's a that's a lesson that not not just American companies but European and southern organizations need to understand. Perhaps I could ask Lewis to jump in here I mean you've you've presumably seen a lot of the trade between Latin America and China you've seen how Brazil for example has has has made a huge boom on the back of selling you know iron ore and oil and various minerals and agricultural products to China. I mean how do you see the the relationship and how could it be better? Well certainly it's the the biggest story of the last decade in Latin America is the huge impact that China trade has had especially on South America. I don't see it being the same for say Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico which are still largely connected to the US market. In fact trade between Mexico and the United States is about 80 percent of total trade of Mexico. But they're quite close to each other. So that comes of course with Daft and everything else but it's also a question of real estate is location okay it's obvious that that Central America and and Mexico are going to be far more connected but that's changing yet the case of South America today you have Brazil the largest economy in all of Latin America it's number one trading partner is China it's no longer the United States that is also the case for Peru it's been the case for Chile for some time and at these growth rates it will probably be the same for both Argentina and Colombia in the next five years. So in essence China trade with South America especially has been of profound impact. The big question is can India be the next big thing for instance and here what you find is still that there is a tremendous gap in transportation lines in in levels of protection but I believe that India eventually will become a very important market for Latin America. You do see major Indian companies with tremendous presence throughout the region and so what in essence you're getting is a very different kind of mix combined with the fact that something that as I was was mentioning is the growth of emerging global companies from our region. Today for instance in Latin America you have over 100 companies that are listed in the stock markets in the U.S. which are global in nature not only do they have a strong presence in Latin America they are now looking at the huge opportunities that present themselves not only in Europe in the U.S. and increasingly looking at Asia. Plus Africa actually. And Brazil is that's a very good good point that that makes is there's a tremendous I think the one country and this is a lot President Lula who was really focused on on Africa and did a tremendous effort and today you have huge investments taking place from from Brazil into Africa when you think about it the the distance between African countries and certainly some of sub-Saharan African countries and Brazil are many places closer even than the the U.S. and others so what you have in essence is that on the one hand the Pacific side of Latin America has benefited from the Trans-Pacific trade but as Africa does better the east side of Latin America will do better with Africa and this is the connection to well we plus these companies of course understand from from other emerging markets from Latin America from China India and so forth they do understand the the needs and opportunities in emerging markets they're able to deal with infrastructure that is far from perfect much better they are able to deal with more difficult political systems judicial systems and so far better than maybe some of the Americans as you said and or the European companies and if they're Brazilian and they're going to Angola or Mozambique then they speak the language they used to dealing with oil and minerals they have a lot to a lot to say about agriculture I mean sort of Brazilian agriculture has amazing potential for for improving productivity in Africa perhaps I could ask Mr Gao what do you think other southern countries should be doing other emerging markets should be doing to encourage more Chinese investment and what do you think Chinese investors should be doing to make themselves more welcome for China in my opinion I think it is a very good thing for Chinese companies to cooperate with our companies from emerging economies especially from Africa of the last decade we can see that Africa has emerged into a relatively more developed market than 10 years before so the presence of Chinese companies in Africa has played a very helpful role in boosting the local economy because Chinese companies can bring in new thinking new ways of production new ways of doing business into Africa by doing business with Africa with African counterparts I believe there are a lot of complementarities to tap into between the two continents so we could generate a lot of wing-wing results through cooperation with African countries and at the same time I believe for Latin American countries and for European countries they would have a lot of cultural and even language links with African countries as the fellows because I've said they speak the same language and for us I believe Africa should become more open to economies like China and especially they should open further open up their doors to Chinese companies to Chinese investment so that they could absorb even more expertise and knowledge to improve the quality of their development I think that would be a very positive influence on African economic development so my view is we are very optimistic about the further future cooperation between African companies and Chinese companies we believe we can play a big role in Africa thank you May I ask if this is not too simple and stupid a question Africa a lot of very sunny areas where not many people live you know the Sahara desert how much potential for solar power do you see there I mean could you be powering the whole of Africa with solar panels on the Sahara What are the characteristics of the African continent there are three characteristics first the energy structure of Africa right now is rather weak and Africa is still underdeveloped but at the same time that means the potential for further development is huge and also secondly solar resources are very abundant in Africa so I believe the next 10 to 20 years Africa's energy structure will be totally different from that in China in America in Europe I believe in Africa they should build an energy structure that is solar dominant of course they need to develop energy saving energy conservation technologies as well as develop a small proportion of fossil fuel based energy to complement their solar dominant energy structure unlike other markets which have to shut down conventional coal-based generation to open new energy sector I believe Africa could start from scratch by first and foremost developing its solar energy sector so I agree to the moderator's view it is a very realistic for us to install solar panels on the Saharan desert there is actually there is actually a big project underway desert tech by a number of European particular German companies in in North Africa to use the the Sun and Sahara to produce energy for Africa but also for Europe I mean one of the ideas we're supposed to be discussing here is frugal innovation and you know we've all heard the the story is about the incredibly cheap heart monitors from India and the the the great progress that's being made in both India and China in coming up with consumer products from cars to fridges that are an order of magnitude cheaper and therefore are appealing to the the new middle class that Bhaskar was talking about earlier I mean what what are the new ideas out there that people have seen does anyone on the panel want to volunteer particularly good cheap ideas that they've seen or particularly good ways of fostering cheap ideas do we have a volunteer Bhaskar yeah I I guess there are examples the lots of examples that one can pick from from across the world one class of examples that I find fascinating and this is tied to the point about urbanization which is that if you visit a slum in Brazil or Venezuela or India or in Kenya they all sort of look the same and somehow when you think about the global citizen the global citizenry looks incredibly similar in slums no matter where you go and I've also found that not only do people who live in extremely congested parts of cities in developing in the developing world look the same they're also have similar needs because they're all human the way they solve those needs are also quite similar they use available materials available technologies available communities to solve problems in ways that are incredibly creative so something as simple as in in in a slum in Manila which was basically a tin box with no light in in in the living quarters the slum dwellers have taken a plastic bottle something like this filled with water stuck we created a hole in the roof and stuck the bottle up there and that generates during the day the equivalent of about 40 watts of light just a bottle of water inside a tin box that's pretty frugal now that's just one example of a number of different innovations that have come out of slums such as particularly innovations that relate to public health sanitation availability of water and there's similar solutions being tried out across the world and they're being tried out in a in a microcosmic setting now what we need is the ability to connect all these ideas because essentially people are trying to solve the same problems in different parts of the world using indigenous techniques so I think that's one of the most fascinating developments of frugal innovation that I've seen anyway now the ones that I talked about a little more frequently like the Tata Nano frankly I think the Tata Nano so far has done better in the pages of the Harvard Business Review than on the streets of India so we do need to look at the deeper more embedded example the frugal innovation to really get a sense of the kind of differences that I think the fact that the Tata Nano has not been as successful as it might have been is I mean you've got to expect that I mean when people are trying to innovate some things work some things fail but I mean and it's very encouraging that there's lots of people out there trying to ask the question I mean perhaps a rival of yours at a rival business school Vijay Gavindarajan at Dartmouth Tuck School of Business and sort of posed the question you know can we build a proper house with modern amenities for $300 and it's got lots of ideas coming in trying to think of ways of making everything much much cheaper which which which maybe it will not work at all but if it does work the the consequences for for for people in the new emerging middle class the people who are making $10 a day could be immense before I threw it open to questions in the audience so if you're thinking about what questions you would like to ask our esteemed panellists think of you know a question and who you would like to address it to but before we do that do we have any more thoughts on particularly good frugal ideas that need a better airing? Hans Paul? Can I just I mean I think we say the Nano has not been a success but actually there have been many actually automotive companies have really introduced now low cost cars not of course not quite as low cost as the Nano but I think they're all coming up and trying to really play a strong role in the emerging markets with much you know more frugal cars the same is true when you look at furniture when you look at all kinds of of white goods and so forth so I think I think the the whole idea and it goes back to what Baskar said about the middle class or you know the people have in the emerging markets have this aspiration to really build a standard of living for them and to have for their children a better future and that drives enormous efforts in all kinds of ways of course you know as consumers but also as workers as as entrepreneurs and I think that really and you know that's still what four to five billion people in trying to enter the the global economy and I think that is the major driver of many of the changes that we're going to see I think just re-emphasizing what what you said earlier and I think we should not underestimate you know how much change that will bring to every city every even every village you know around the world and involve so many more people than just the one billion that are living in in North America Europe and and then Japan and in Australia okay Luis real quick I think one of the more interesting things as we talk about these middle classes is the role of women and how they change consumer behaviors I think it's extremely important and how that is changing in in emerging markets because it is woman behavior that begins to to change the habits and the tastes of families and the kinds of desires that family has in it in all kinds of services from traditional public services to things like public goods like education the other part is the innovation that is taking place in consumer goods and again I would go to the point that Mars car make is here there is a lot of disruption taking place and a lot of companies that are local in nature have an opportunity to become global because they basically are seeing opportunities that global companies are not seeing and here in consumer goods there's extremely interesting examples finally there is all this is happening at a time we were we have tremendous connectivity I mean I think Latin America today is the the region of the world with the highest penetration of cell or telephones yes we Latinos love to talk and there I think the apps that will be developed to run on these systems that will take some time is going to be another source of all these disruptive business models that Vasha was mentioning so this is not going to be a time where these things are going to happen orderly because we have the tools to begin to close those gaps finally on the traditional things you know take the case of energy energy we will need in the case of Latin America between now and 2030 about 1.8 trillion dollars in investment that's not going to happen from governments that's going to happen in some sort of public-private partnership that is going to have in all kinds of different models like give you the case of solar a country like Nicaragua with finance projects for people in a rural area where there's no electricity at all have a solar panel they go and charge a battery every day and they get lighting for for two or three bulbs in the house and it's the difference of having light of not having light at all or having something and is these kinds of things is the example of the world that that more and more we're going to start to see that have a capacity to change people's lives in ways that we don't even understand. I know just Mr Gao you're nodding that you want to say something about possibly about how to make energy cheaper or things you've seen yes I find this topic very interesting we are talking about how to do innovation in a cheap way I think this topic would be very beneficial for the low income people so that low income people can benefit from the results of innovation. I believe my fellows because those who live in urban areas with income very successful career but there are millions and millions of people who live in the countryside with no access to water or electricity and if all of you have been to those underdeveloped areas for those underprivileged people if we could do innovation that can create value for these poor people that would be doing something meaningful for example in western northern provinces in china over the last 20 years has been a very good cheap innovation experience called the cheap solar energy house but building such a cheap solar energy house well during winter you can heat up the room through your solar panels installed on the rooftop then you would not feel so cold in winter so for those rural villages scattered around western provinces in china they would have access to solar energy, your thermal energy if we could do innovation and provide better access to electricity in those areas I believe we could actually improve the quality of living in those poor areas so I believe if you make best use of solar energies and other rural energies then it will create a huge social value for those people Thank you. Ashish quickly before I throw it out. Sure I think you know I think just echoing what Lewis mentioned I think the tech innovation side is another huge angle I mean in our nonprofit incubation center we've got an innovation side which you know you could see so many apps coming up from medical apps to you know local logistic apps and everything else but one of one of the most successful innovative things we've seen in our region is obviously the mobile money angle which has been absolutely game-changing for us the number of transactions on a mobile money changed the way people manage themselves so I think I think there has been a lot of innovation space in that. That's completely transformed the way things operate in in Kenya for example it used to be you'd sort of give money to a bus driver to take to your mother in the village and it would get there eventually and now you just ping it on a mobile phone. Which is now a lot of sub-Saharan Africa. Yeah I'm going to throw it open if you can remember two things firstly introduce yourself say who you are address your question to a particular member of the panel and please make it a question not a speech if you can raise your hand if you'd like to ask something yes have one over in the back there. Good morning I'm from phoenix business my question is for Mr Gao currently there's a council villain case from your opinion union to the solar industry in China so what kind of approaches that you have a job to counter that besides do you think there's a ore capacity in the solar energy in China thank you thank you this is a very specific question yes indeed we have seen that your opinion union has established some cases targeted solar energies in China as a matter of fact on 30 August the leaders from both countries have had a meeting and they also talk about this issue and they think that in every expat of the business of the industry and the economy also include the solar industry there should not be such kind of contravailing actions so although they're saying the european side have established such a case however because the at government government level the leaders are communicating with each other and relevant departments are communicating with each other so i hope that in the future they can solve this issue in a sort of manner of course in terms of the solar industry in China in the past few years we have seen excessive rapid growth and we also need to reflect that reflect on that to think about how can we have a much more sustainable development in the future how can we better promote and stimulate innovations in this industry so as to make China the largest manufacturing country in solar energy but also the largest market in solar energy we welcome competitors companies in this industry from north america and from europe and to gain their market shares in china and also we hope to see that the chinese companies can have complementary relationship with those companies from north america and europe's all in all international cooperation and free trade is the key for the development of solar industry because what is the key for solar energy it is to make it much more accessible to make it cheaper to make it much more even cheaper than the traditional energy so in the future without government subsidy it can become the dominant energy so every people can enjoy the benefit of green energy so in these in europe i've seen that some companies have established the kind of long cases against chinese solar energy however i believe that in the future the companies will have a rational thoughts about that well as a matter of fact i've already seen there's a coalition consists of a hundred companies in europe that are against these contravailing cases thank you okay next question in the middle there perhaps can we get a microphone down there please lady with a raised hand thank you morning my name is immobulo johnson minister for communication technology in nigeria my question is for thacker you uh mentioned the fact that you've seen a lot of innovation coming out of your incubation centers and my question is how do you or how have you scaled up that innovation beyond the incubation centers thank you thank you we we actually have an entire program which we're actually going to be looking at launching in nigeria as well early next year but we do from mentoring to incubation to the venture capital so we kind of handhold them throughout the entire process to make sure that they go up to a certain level and in terms of the tech innovators um our our mara foundation our nonprofit side has actually announced that we're setting up a an incubation center in silicon valley end of next year so we're going to be looking at all of our hubs across africa where we can pick out amazing tech entrepreneurs and actually take them into silicon valley and scale them up even further is that with a view to bringing them back to africa afterwards it's it's a view to kind of take african companies and plugging them into silicon valley to give them a global platform so it's really right and a sense of the ideas that are coming out of them correct great um there are lots more questions out there yes gentlemen on the edge there good morning i'm from hushin my name is fudong i have a question i have noted that we've just discussed the developments in emerging countries and developed countries however why is that the development growth rate in developed countries emerging countries also including africa are still relatively slow so relatively speaking countries that have the growth rate such as china is far and few between so can you explain to us why is the reason for that thank you okay who'd like to have a bash at this one actually africa's growth rates have been very similar to those of china in not everywhere but in many places so i think it's not quite true what has been said so there is enormous momentum in africa certainly not my not quite as much in in in in south america or latin america but certainly africa is rivaling for this growth rate china or parts of china yes seven of the fastest growing countries in the world are in sub-saharan africa i mean if the question is why why do most countries not grow at 10 percent i mean that's that's just the law of large numbers if everyone was growing at 10 percent we'd all be doubling every every seven years and and and that's just not sustainable over a long period of time lewis well that reminds me that i was in peru couple months ago and here's a country that grew at an average rate of 7.8 percent over the last 10 years not that and people were saying is there well we're only growing at six well i would say two are chinese friends not everybody grows at the rates of china i mean there's no nothing in economic history that shows the kind of growth that china has had over the past few years i believe on growth the most important thing is to have consistent growth i mean what's terrible for any country is the ups and downs and we live that in latin america for some time there's a number of reasons why some countries grow faster than others and that is as they are able to break down some of the things that prevent the growth for instance lags in infrastructure are extremely important in preventing growth gaps in education all of these gaps that basher was mentioning and and everybody in one way or another has mentioned all in one way or another contribute to the slowness of growth certainly country that came from from behind have a big impact like some of the african countries will see some of that big growth but that was not sustainable over time so that's i think the big issue that one needs to look at you know basher i'm going to throw it open to more questions because we don't have a whole lot of time left so can we can we see hands again maybe there's something from over here yeah gentleman there can we can we get a microphone over there please thank you thank you i'm from tianjin newspaper i have a question it's concerning frugal innovation frugal development because the moderators have talked about an interconnection that is to say can we establish a house at the cost of three hundred dollars however in china in that kind of scenario the first thing we'll think about is that the quality whether the college is good enough so when we talk about frugal innovation one of the big costs is in human resources the human resources human cost is quite high also the cost for the raw materials increasing so my question is that when the costs are increasing how can we achieve frugal innovation so to what extent is frugal and what kind of cost can you further decrease thank you okay maybe bascar would you like to go bascar if the english translation could just repeat the question i couldn't pick up well maybe if i summarize it the cost of raw materials have been going up he's saying in china you know lots of materials cost a lot of money and also it's all very well to have a very cheap house but people in china will say is the college nearby good enough so you know how can we have frugal innovation when you have those two constraints yeah i think it's a really really good question and no matter no matter where you are whether you're in china or in in any other part of the world whether it's in sub-saharan africa or latin america or south asia as there is greater and greater pressure on available materials and resources and it's not just the materials to build a house one of the most scarce resources is clean water and as the cost of clean water or any material goes up you know the costs of frugal innovation are going to go up and here we do look at the international implications of some of these some of these developments so what we are seeing is the cost of cost of material cost of water cost of food is going up more and more people are consuming meat as a result we need to get more meat we need more land the cost of land goes up so eventually this this revolution that was talking about you know does have the messy implications that spill beyond the boundaries of these individual countries and goes back to the south-south connections so we are beginning to see a race for land for water for fuel sources for commodities and minerals and that's primarily happening on a south-to-south basis so you see the China's the India's the Saudi Arabia's the Indonesia's of the world going out and seeking partnerships in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa in order to relieve the pressures and eventually this is going to be a problem because when the sub-Saharan Africa those countries are going to look for their source of water and materials where are they going to go and this is a phenomenon that I call the pyramid scheme at the bottom of the pyramid and eventually I'm concerned that this messy form of revolution could lead to a crisis that will need some creative solutions but frugal innovation really is about using less resources no matter how I mean the more expensive they are of course we try to use less resources and yesterday evening I sat next to Peter Frequent who is going for drip irrigation and of course that's the best way of one way of using water more frugally that's a great answer we've got time for one more question over there please thank you my name is Ting Yan from China Business News Taijin Yubao I have a more general question so as we know many Latin America countries are caught in a so-called middle income trap now and China has entered a stage where many people are worried China might follow the same path so my question is what can China do to avoid getting into this middle income trap and are there any lessons from Latin America countries that we can learn thank you very much okay that sounds like one for Luis but this is an extremely important question there was a recent study that was done by the World Bank that looked I think was the last 50 or 60 years that looked at how many countries were able precisely to get up that out of that middle income trap and of a total of if my memory doesn't fail me it was about 110 countries of which only 13 were able to in that space of time break the middle income trap two of those countries are in some trouble these days one is Greece the other one is Spain so I mentioned that because this is an extremely difficult issue and the one issue that we think about all the time especially in some of those countries in Latin America because today Latin America has many things it's tremendously heterogeneous but there are some countries that are starting to get to that point where they can make that break the one country in Latin America which is closer to breaking out of that middle income trap is Chile and in Chile which is you know in every indicator is one of the countries that has been able to advance significantly has recently had you know a lot of challenges in the question of education and in a number of areas where you begin to get to that level where they can break it I'm sure they're going to make it because it's a country with a tremendous good institutions what are the things that the variables that are important certainly institutions the quality of government the quality and the competitiveness of the business sector these are all elements that help a country make it through and this is the case I'm certainly of Chile I'm sure that it's probably going to be the first Latin American country to break that trap that would be great well we've learned an awful lot today about the many wonderful ideas that are out there of trying to do more with less but unfortunately the one thing that we've run out of is time so it just leaves it to me to thank our distinguished panel Hans Paul Bruckner Bascar Chacrovati Luis Moreno Gao Jifan and Ashish Thakur if you could join me in thanking them very much indeed