 Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. My name is Arif Ruzgar. I am program director for Economics and Trade at the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation based in Brussels. I'd like to welcome everyone in the name of the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation to today's webinar AFC-FTA Context, External Interest and Finance. I would also like to thank Seatini for her cooperation and partnership. This is the second webinar in a series of four on the African Free Trade Area. Two more are planned, one on migration and labour challenges on 17 June and another on agriculture on 12 August. I hope you stay tuned for the upcoming events and I wish you all an informative and exciting panel for today. I would like to leave the floor to Sylvester and the panelists and also to you all. Thank you. Thank you everyone and thank you Arif for those remarks. Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are. My name is Sylvester Bogorov and I'm a program officer at Tergo Network Africa and I'll be your moderator for this webinar. As Arif said, it is second in the series of the webinars on Africa's Continental Free Trade Area and organized by Seatini and Tupodeba Ruzgar Lazenbeck. And of course Seatini has been a long healer of the Africa to the Network. It's a Pan-African Trade and Development Complainment Network in Africa. The focus of the webinar today will be on financing the AFCFTA and exploring possible external interests. As you know, the AFCFTA negotiation processes and activities at all levels, whether at the union level, whether it's the regional economic communities or the national level, you know, they're receiving external financing in addition to any domestic funding. A special mention will be of Chinese funding and that of European and German funds into the AFCFTA, that the financing and negotiation process as well as projects at the implementation phase for those protocols that are concluded. You know, we have concluded that the protocols includes and so those that are concluded. If you take a look at the Treaty of Abuja in 1991, where when the member states of the then OAU African Organization of African Unity agreed on a roadmap for the creation of a common African market. The key among that roadmap was to establish an African continental free trade area to advance the aspirations of African people for a cross cross continent. I mean that was a thinking that trust if you look at that document of that treaty is production and sectorial linkages that African economists must ensure high productivity and sectorial linkages among the various sectors, minerals, agriculture, services. In order to create value within the continent, jobs and incomes for African people. Now central to that kind of production is the role of finance, and that is where the webinar is coming in, its ownership and its implementation function in the production and linkages. The source of financing of the interpretations of the AFCFTA could have an influence on the content in the rules of the AFCFTA. Also at implementation state, once RECs and member states do not have autonomous financing mechanisms, funds might be difficult to be directed to a sector that are of interest to Africa and Africa's people. Hence control of finance and financing mechanisms in the AFCFTA are very important and central to our development. To help us explore the issues of finance and the central interest in the AFCFTA, we have a panel of experts that have agreed to respond to questions that were posed to them by me, as your moderator, and you as a participant. And so this is the approach we're going to use is Q&A approach. Before the first round, we hope to create much more time for participants to ask questions. And so I want to quickly introduce the panelists, the panelists we have today. We have four panelists. This one is Frank Wojeni. He is a coordinator of the Africa Minerals Development Center. You know, is a center in charge of development minors in Africa. Coming out from the African mining mission that was adopted in 2009. After that we have, we also have Miss Young Wang. I mean, he is a PhD candidate in international relations. He's a research and program manager who's the last in the foundation of West Africa office. I don't have been a trustee. He's a researcher, Austrian research foundation for the national development. These are the people who help us explore the center financing and then interest on the AFCFTA. Just to not to speak about rolling. I would like you to go to Mr. Frank Wojeni, who is from the AMBC, and to ask you to have the floor and then what I want you to do is to tell us some of the African initiative in financing the implementation of the AFCFTA. I'm not only AFCFTA, I know the African Minerals Development Center, you know, all the initiatives from Africa and continent. I mean, our focus on AFCFTA. But do we have any financing, you know, plan, any financing plan for the implementation and even in the position. So, Mr. Frank, you have the floor. Thank you so much, Sylvester. And actually, at the time I was requested to come in as a panel of experts member of the panel. I was coordinating the institutional support project for the African continent of the area. It is actually an African development fund project for institutionalization and the implementation of the African Union continent of the data so it is actually just a few days ago that my role changed now to go back and coordinate the become the interim Minerals Development Center. So greetings to everybody and I'm really very happy to be here. So originally I was contacted in my capacity as someone coordinating an institutional support project for the implementation of the continent of the area. And thank you so much for the introduction. I'm so happy that you touched on the Abidja Treaty because the Abidja Treaty is one of the key Bibles that I think is is very critical is very important for for Africa. But it also comes from the Legos plan of action that we should be self sustaining self sufficient. So this question of financing our development is not in isolation with the initiatives that has been coming. And how Africa strategies strategizes itself in terms of achieving its goals its own own development agenda. And as of now we are into agenda. Actually, the African continent of the area is a flagship project for the agenda three amongst others. But also we have a framework for boosting intra African trade and African continent of the area is actually among that framework which was adopted by the heads of state in 2012. They said okay as one of the instruments for achieving intra African boosting intra African trade from where we are as a continent trading maybe among between 1618% of intra African trade to to at least raise it to 25 to 30% not even to where our other other partners, the Americas, Americas and the Europe and Asians are, but at least to take it from one level to another and knowing that most of our intra African trade is informal. How do we visualize it and make it formal through instruments that then can boost that intra African trade through a continent of liquidity. We may know that the negotiations which started kick off in 2015 and, you know, got concluded partly partially in 2017 and in 2018 we launched the, you know, the trading fast. The goods portion of the, of the, of the, of the FCFTA we launched the operational affairs of trading goods and now we're trying to conclude the negotiations of trading services. But along the way, you ask yourself, who has been financing this or this process. The FCFTA kicked in at the point that Africa was also negotiating with other partners other frameworks including the economic partnership agreements. So we, you know, most of the negotiations but we are supported by by our partners development partners, more particularly the European Union, who supported and still support the process of the African continent of liquidity. And now we are going into the, into the implementation of phase and I saw in the background notes, people talking about the 10 million from Ghana, the 10 million from Ghana actually was for supporting the, the institutionalization the creation of the secretariat. But by and large, we want to look at beyond the hosting of the African continent of liquidity and desire what are the frameworks that members states are going to put in place. And I'm sure that the implementation is homegrown and owned by Africa. As of now, we are still as African Union as African members African member states we are still constrained in terms of mobilizing resources for development, not only for a CFTA but for others. And I was happy that the introducer, the moderator talked about the Abudia treaty talking about those linkages those development linkages production linkages in fact, when you talk about chapter nine of the Abudia treaty, which looks at natural resources investment and science and technology, it doesn't ever talk about mining doesn't ever talk about agriculture. It talks about agro industries, metallurgical and you know cooperation industry in industrialization and industrialization policies. So we have that where we want to look at and how do we take it from there. And if I start with the member states at the secretariat level, the secretariat is what is in Accra, because the implementation of the African continent of liquidity area will take place at different levels. We have the secretariat, which is the, you know, the expert of Africa that support the implementation process supporting member states to put in place the CFTA instruments of origin in non tariff barriers and so forth. That we require to ensure that there is trading. We'll have a physical, you know implementation at the private sector because the private sector is the one which is going to be trading, you know, they are the ones who are going to be moving goods from one country to other. So they look when you go into trading, it is not determined by a policy at the African Union, or a policy of the continent of it's not an affirmative action. You have to make money, you know you have to move your goods from one point to the other, and those goods might meet standards, they might reach in time, and they be competitive in terms of price with other goods that are on the ground. Because Africa on that we still have to have really what is going to frame the, you know, the reducing the cost of production the cost of transaction within the framework of the African continent of liquidity. Then we shall have on the look at the harmonization of, of these instruments will have to have the harmonization of customs instruments, custom systems that have regional level at the international level, I mean at the continental level. Let me take you back slightly on when the thinking of the African continent of failure, you know. Before you go back to the thinking. I mean, the key, I mean one of the things you mentioned is the EU funding. Maybe I want to bring in the, the, the banner from the from the EU. And then maybe in the response, you can actually talk more about, about, about, about what do you, you, you're about to say. And so let me, let me just, you mentioned in, in, in your presentation that we, we are getting a lot of funding from the EU because we, we, we have the ET parts and the positions and so the European Union continue with that. Maybe, Mr Bernard, maybe you can tell us some of the, we can see we see, I just saw even Mr Frank said a lot of fun from the EU and Germany. So what can you say are some of the interest of Germany in this, if you can tell that within five to seven minutes. Yes, thank you first of all for the invitation and, as you said, I'm here to give you some idea how from a European perspective, and the African free trade area can be seen now and as Frank already mentioned that the EU has always been a very important partner for the African Union and African States. But obviously, the roles changed, especially over the last 20 years and I guess that this also came along with the different ideas that backed actually the economic partnership agreement that Frank also mentioned that have been partially established in some African blocks already. But what is important to understand I guess is, and that there is a specific understanding of for free trade and also regional integration from the EU side almost specifically from the European Commission side, meaning that that the EU is on the strong advocate for trade liberalization and investment liberalization, and it's thought as a mean for growth and economic development. So the basic idea is that you start off with free trade and it creates benefits it gets you cheaper inputs, cheaper inputs, then you go for specialization and you have this dynamic through more competition. That's something that also Frank mentioned to you, you're getting more efficient and you get higher productivity levels once you open up to trade. And that's the general idea as saying why the EU is emphasizing this and also welcoming the initiative on the African continental free trade area so much. And what the EU is also proposing is the regional integration, giving that the European Union has its own experience and somewhat positive experience with like also political integration on the continent. And what it also brings this regional integration is that it's a legal framework you have the same regulation same standards etc. So it creates a large internal market with the full freedom to move good services and capital and even people now. And then, however, I must say that this is like very limited or very narrow focus on trade liberalization. I mean, this comes then to the strong support for the African continental free trade area. And I think it as a trade liberalization as a development strategy. And it's also like going to the same direction, because the long term vision of the area is to have like a common union and having also the African Union as a equal partner with the European Union. But there are obviously then from my perspective problems that come along with it because the strategy to simply go for trade liberalization. And that's actually insufficient to particularly to address them the lack of industrial capacities so arguing that it's only a way to open up for trade and then automatically you will gain and dynamic that would introduce more dynamics in the private sector and you go to the most efficient firms and African continent will prosper just because it opens up its borders and limits and lows its tariffs that I guess is not enough. Nevertheless, the European Union was was a strong supporter and has is still a strong supporter going from to this way and there are multiple funds and financial support. And this started with the negotiations. These were supposed supported but there are other many other funds and sources for to finance something like what you could call aid for trade, so helping to update standards and regulation on sanitary standards or barriers to a technical barriers to trade, etc. There's this one thing and the other part is that the European Union also tries now to get their private sector getting more involved into the African market and this was raised You have a very important point that you are raising. I mean, when Frank was talking about the Legos Treaty and the origin of the AFCA is talking about autonomous nature of the AFCA. You know, European Union is actually having other trade agreements or investment agreements that are in contrast to the logic, you know, the logic because you may mention that yes, trade is good, but you have to make sure you have the capacity to be able to trade. So production comes first before before trade. And so you see that there's a lot that there's a clash of logic between some of the things that are put by the European Union in terms of mentioning the EFAS and stuff and all that. And then the things that Frank was talking about, how do we reconcile this because you can see that the logic you know much. Yeah, I mean the one indicator how this logic also changed. It was a change in perspective from the European side towards the African countries and partners, meaning that it's that they tried to stop their perspective, only focusing on the problems in Africa or having like Africa as a poor partner that has to be supported through aid and has to be supported through funds, etc. And so, but what they changed is actually then the view and the instruments and how to implement the development or economic development through trade liberalization and one important instrument has been the economic partnership agreement because what it ended is this unilateral preferential access so that African export could go to Europe more or less without tariffs. But this ended with the EPS and I mean it took a long time, almost 20 years to negotiate the economic partnership agreements with the African partners because there is obviously the problem that just opening up and getting more import competition from European goods in, that's not a, that's very problematic. Let me, for the sake of time, let me bring in this young Wang, I mean, we have the we have heard from from from from the EU perspective, want to hear from the China and Africa relations. I mean, if you check most of the African countries, you have a lot of relation with China. So can we listen to you. I mean, what are the implications of some of them, what are called the debt overhand, you know, from China and Africa channel decisions, what can you say are the implications for the ACF here. You have five to seven minutes to make your input. Yes, I actually prepared a presentation specifically dealing with a discussion concerns over China's debt trap diplomacy so may I share my screen right now, and I'll try to make sure I finish the presentation within my limit. Let's see. One moment. Share. All right. Is the screen share successful. Yes. Yes, please. Yes. Hi, so thank you everyone for coming today so there's Chinese loans to Africa has been growing very quickly in the past 10 to 20 years and that is no most of this most of this money are focused on specific countries with natural resources but there are plenty that tend to countries without natural resources and most of these went into infrastructure development and area sector that tends to be cash star because they don't generate their, they don't usually generate their own internal revenue so you think about how much money does your sewage system generate for you it doesn't quite work like some projects do so you think about telecom projects, or even power projects yes they do generate their internal revenue, but not always right. So this graph right here this is comparison of Chinese exit bank loans to the World Bank loans. I'm just double check. Okay, to the World Bank loans and you can see 2010 what happened in 2010 there's a divergent of where the World Bank provided more funny financing than the World Bank, I mean then China exit bank. You remember what happened that that was the great recession right so this chart should show you very clearly China exit and bank which is the predominant policy bank in Africa. So the question for the past 20 years is after all, it is an export credit agencies not a aid agency. So, this brings in the question whether comparing World Bank to China exit bank is even a useful comparison. There's, there's benefits to that but we'll see in the next few slides. I'm going to take you from the ground up to the top. Okay, so how do these Chinese loans happen what is the process by which these loans come about. So, the way these happen is for most projects especially medium to medium sized projects we're not talking about the really big mega projects like the standard gauge railways. The Chinese contractors themselves they scout out potential contracts on the ground themselves. They look for places where oh the local African government posted a bid for a certain contract. And they compete for the contract in the process of competing for those contract. They tell the host countries that well if you could have the contract to us be this building rose building power plants. If the contract to us there is a chance we can get you China exit bank financing. Okay, so if the contract do end up with the Chinese contractors the Chinese contractors and the host country governments together, they go to China exit bank and they apply for funding So this is a process now why is this important because this implicitly means that China exit bank loan finance project goes to Chinese companies. And I guess that there are an expert credit agency their mandate is to promote Chinese companies in competing for business abroad. And that is their that is their goal. So, there are a few exceptions where an exit bank loan finance projects goes to contractors of other countries but that those are rare. Well, here's the important thing to keep him out what are the alternatives I will worry about Chinese loans to Africa, but what were some of the options available to African government so broadly speaking there are three categories you can say okay there's China exit bank, and then you're you have your OECD financiers so you think about your world banks your European investment funds your Japan to Germany, France, UK, all of those OECD DAC financiers, think of them as one category. And then the other side you have the market these are the Euro bonds that if you want as much money as one you can always go to the market for it. So please compare. So, OECD financiers tend to have the lowest rate so the World Bank interest rates are very low. In comparison China exit banks look interest rate is comparatively higher, but it is still cheaper than market rate loans so it's still way cheaper than your Euro bonds, and in terms of size what are the, the amounts available right so progressively so for OECD financiers official flows tends to be smaller through the past, you know, 30 to 20 years they haven't even the World Bank which is a premier financier infrastructure projects in Africa, they're not going to for they don't have the budget to fork out two to three billion for a real project, even if they really want to they don't have the budget for it. In comparison China exit bank can they do have that money if they want to if they like a project enough they'll do it. And the same thing with the market right so you get the Euro bond, but you can get you can go into the billions really fast. Now, it's not that simple right think about well if OECD financing is that you know so it's cheaper why don't we just find it well we know they don't finance every their projects the World Bank simply would not finance their projects that European investment that would not so think about your co power plants. Right, even if they have good race you cannot access them for certain projects. In comparison qualifying is less restrictive for China exit bank in terms of projects, you want to co power plan you have a good, you know, plan for it, they'll lend you money and build it for you. And the same thing with the market. And the thing that the market is even is even least less restrictive than the exit bank on the types of project they will finance exit bank is not going to lend money for to finance to plug budget holes, right, they're not you can't really, they won't lend you money for paying your public employees salaries. The Euro bond is not care as long as you pay them back, we use it however you like. And then finally you have the political and fiscal conditions so more, same thing more restrictive for OECD DAC financing is less restrictive for exit bank and almost no restriction for the market. So this is these are the choice, right, there's some pros and there's some cons and there are some projects that is more amenable for one financing and there's some for others. So a lot of this comes from China's own development experience in the 1970s China was on the receiving end of the development loans, particularly from Japan. So you have these Japanese companies coming in, they want a set of a factory. Well, and China does it at that point you know this is you know early 70s they don't have any factories. And Japanese companies they say well, how about we lend you and lend you some money, and then we build this factory for you and we do some tech transfers, and in return, I we get to produce whatever product components in Chinese factories So for China said this is this is how we did this is how we did development loans. So it's not a it's not a new new policy for them. And more broadly speaking China's own development experience particularly with China's infrastructure development is a very supply side driven in the sense that they have these mentalities that build it and they will come you don't worry if you build a large say large housing project you don't worry too much, at least for China at the time, you don't worry too much about who's going to live there is a don't worry let we'll build it. And you know people will flock over and they will, you know, they'll fill in the empty apartments is not a problem. And finally there's China's own experience and development is very focused on gaining market shares and not individual firms so there's a great book coming out by Stephen Kaplan 2021 that talks about that. All of these worked for China because China had a very high savings rate but that also means that the same development pattern that China is used to and China is taking abroad right now doesn't work for everyone. So loans in the context of the Belt Road initiative and this is, you know, I get a lot of question on this you would think about the Belt Road initiative is a mix of economic and strategic goals I implemented by different range of Asians at different levels so you have your policy makers you have your state on enterprises that are in direct conversation with your policy makers, and then you have the medium to small companies who is also trying to go abroad right and they're always talk to each other they're not always in sync. And what are they so what is this BRI for BRI is not for an aid project is China's economic and strategic project so their goal is to secure trade and investment opportunities with the assumption that you know closer economic ties will spill over to strategic ties later. So you think about getting more support in multilaterals or building spheres of influence. And we're there are they successful in terms of loan financing or so loan financing you think about this is just one of one aspects of the ally and in that aspect they are, you know, reasonably successful right, they have secured trade and investment opportunities for their own Chinese companies. And you know this goes back to China's own development experience. They have a lot of state owned enterprises. One minute more to wind up so that we can go to the next. So they have been successful I'm happy to answer questions that another one is always access to natural resources, but is always good to diversify your sources and. But let's keep that in context right now this is from the observatory economic complexity petroleum in 2019 is $200 billion most of it is from the Middle East and Russia, you know some from Angola by no means the top recipient. The second largest imports iron ore Africa is still not the largest targets. So I think we need to put in context that well is this is this debt trap diplomacy trying to access, you know, Africa natural resources. Well you got to think about the Africa is one of the many places now there are exceptions manganese and aluminum and they're important for manufacturing purposes, but not for domestic consumption. So there's actually more of a creditors trap my happy to answer questions on that later creditors for China, as opposed the other way around. Okay. And then, this is not to say that it's not a problem. It's not a new problem it used to be that IMF was on the receiving end of being accused of debt trap diplomacy. You know, China in terms of the amount they lend to Africa. Here's a comparison OECD DAC financiers comparing to China is actually not that big. I've done field interviews with Zambian officials and researchers on the ground. A year ago, when I asked them are you concerned about the Chinese loan is this going to blow up in your face they're like, no we're not worried about Chinese were worried about the Euro bonds and your bond was the exact same thing that Brazil Mozambique to its knees, few years back. Thank you for that. And happy to answer questions later. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for your input. I'll bring in the last, the last speaker on the panel. I mean, even when Frank was talking about African Union and visioning and how to sell farmers, you know, Africa's initiative. I mean he made mention of, of the budget routine. If you are a researcher you've been researching in Africa, and maybe you can share with us some of the, the realities that you have found on the point of self financing in Africa, you know, five to seven minutes. Thank you very much, Sylvester. I'm really glad to be a part of this panel, and to have the opportunity to exchange on a very important topic. Before answering your question, I would like to make some quick points related to the relationship between finance and trade in Africa. Because what is sad is that well, how a way of thinking about trade is a 90th century way of competitive advantage and finance, unfortunately does not play significant role in this way of thinking. And the first thing I want to say about that is that there is an aspect of African trade which is really pathological. It's that there is a part of the African external trade that should not happen that would not happen in a sound development framework. The best example of this is the reliance on the continent on food imports. And there is a very telling statistic by the UNCTAT. Between 2016 and 2018, Africa imported 85% of its food from outside the continent, 85%. So that means there is no food self-sufficiency, no food sovereignty. So for me this is pathological, and the IFCFTA could not change this picture. It could Africanize the pathology, but it's not enough to get rid of the pathology because if you want to get rid of the pathology, you have to proceed to domestic structural reforms. For example, having an appropriate banking sector that helps finance agriculture, and that is not the case, let's say in most African countries, there is not enough financing for the agricultural sector. That's why most countries are reliant on imports while they could be self-sufficient, you see. And this could not be addressed by saying that you need more trade, you need more African trade. No, you don't need more African trade, you need to build domestic capacities so that you could achieve food sovereignty. And the thing is that when we reflect broadly, we know that this form of pathological trade is also due to a lack of trade protections because sometimes with trade protections, you could let's say stimulate your domestic capabilities, but that is not the case. And what is important to highlight in this regard is that the most dominant intellectual, let's say, industrial countries, for example, Germany, Japan, and China, those are countries where the banking system is dominated by national banks. You could speak of national banking sector. Why in most African countries, you do not have a national banking sector, you take the case of my country, Senegal, more than 90% of all banking assets are controlled by foreign banks, and that's why you don't have credit for production to build domestic capacities. For example, the older loans dedicated to the economy, only 1.7% goes to the agricultural sector, and that has been a general pattern, let's say, of countries where the banking sector is dominated by foreign banks because they are not interested in financing the real economy. But the sad news, and this is not discussed in the debates about this African continental free trade area, is that with the AFCFTA, African countries will have to open their banking sector. For example, HOPI has a highly protected national banking sector, but with the AFCFTA, the HOPI economy will have to be much more open to a foreign debt investment in the banking sector. And for me, this is a strength for, in fact, for countries who want to build domestic capacities and have, let's say, a Korean national banking sector. The second point is about the payment systems in Africa, because there is also a pathology there. You see, for example, when you look at the SHIFT data, in 2017, US dollar represented 45% of Africa, of course, bought a commercial payments, and the Euro represented 30%, around 30%. While in Africa, you have, let's say, the CFA Frank blocks, so the CFA Frank represented 7.3% of all payment flows, while the South African run because you have an informal monetary zone. And South Africa, the South African run represented 7.2% of these commercial payment flows. But what is interesting is that while anti-African cross-border commercial payments represented 25% of all cross-border commercial payments, only 12% of these flows were using African payment routes. That means that almost half of anti-African cross-border commercial payments are using extra African payment routes. For example, when some African countries trade with their neighbors, they will go through London or through New York to trade between themselves. So it is really important for, let's say, the success of, in fact, if you want to develop anti-African trade to have a Pan-African payment settlement system. And I think the good news is that the African African Bank is working to that end to set up a Pan-African payment settlement system. Its launch has been announced many times, but we do not have enough information about that. I think it would be important to have much more information about that. My third point and last point is that the volume and geography of trade flows are strongly influenced by the nature of financial relationships between African countries and their bilateral partners. So I agree totally with the presentation by Mrs. Wang, because in fact, if you see the geography of trade flows in Africa, you see that there is one generality. African imports first and foremost from their most important creditors. If you take the case of Francophone countries, most of the time we use to import from France because France has been for our first bilateral creditors. And now China has become a major, let's say trade partner with African countries because China has become one of the most important, let's say, financial, in fact, financial provider of financial loans to African countries. So that means that for powerful countries, bilateral loans and sometimes bilateral loans are a way to create export markets abroad. So as long as African countries lack strong development finance and export finance institutions, it will be hard to change the trade structure of the continent's trade in favor of a beneficial non-patriotic and intra-African trade. Because generally people think that you have just to remove trade barriers and so on and everything will go as you plan. But we are in a very competitive framework and people will trade with the partners which will give them, let's say, some financing facilities. So as long as the likes of China, the European Union are there to provide those financing facilities, it will be difficult for African countries to change the geography of their trade flows. And this connects with the interest the European Union has, let's say, with regard to the IFCFTA. You know that the European Union has a framework to cooperate with the African Union called the Pan-Africanist Program. And if you look at this document, there are things that are really shocking for us who have been fighting the economic partnership agreements. And I have the slides here, maybe later on I could share with you. But in this document, it is said that whatever makes the African continental criteria go forward will be beneficial to the European Union and to the negotiations between the African continental African Union and the European Union regarding the EPS. So it is clearly said that whatever makes the IFCFTA go forward will also be beneficial to the European Union. And that's why the IFCFTA has been funded a lot by the European Union, 72 million euro between 2014 and 2020. And even the African trade observatory has been funded by the European Union. And I think this is not only linked to trade, but there are also other aspects because we know that trade is not the most important thing, but competition policy and like your property rights and so on. So I leave it there. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you all the panelists. We have questions, a lot of questions from the participants, and I will throw them as they come in. I have two questions to Mr. Frank from the African Mineral Development Center. Afro data is asking that you are the head of the African Mineral Development Center. How can we leverage our mining to finance Africa development? That would this be a good model to find on the IFCFTA? That's the first question from Afro data. There was another question thrown to Mr. Frank. There was an initiative spearheaded by Fokadami on raising funds for the African Union. Can that work as a model to raise funds to the IFCFTA? So I mean, Mr. Frank, if you can combine these within the next three to four minutes, that would be useful. Then I can go to the other panel. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Just few comments, three comments from my last speaker as one is from our colleagues from the European Union. We appreciate all the support, but aid and trade liberalization will not support aid will not support trade liberalization. Trade liberalization has to be trade related and we have to trade ourselves to be able to reach where I want to go. Africa will not develop depending on trade. So the last speaker talked about the financing system. Yes. My master's degree was on finance, you know, financial liberalization in low income countries and in 1999 when I did that, I found out that this was going to happen because Africa liberalized its financial sector. The servings is very low. The national savings, the original savings is very low. So the investment relies on external source of financing. And this is why we have a challenge now with a debt trap from China. This is a fact. It's not like we are trying to to push it on the agenda. It's a fact. And as, as Ms. Madame Wang said, it is actually related to natural resource access natural resources, which is going to be the part of what I'm going to be discussing. And then, obviously, to have very expensive in in in capital economies, high profits go with high risk. That that's a fact. So if you go for high interest for low interest, high interest rates, less restrictive. That's why countries are going getting a problem. But it's not that we can't find our own resources. And that's the cost, the point I want to raise in terms of natural resource and mineral resource development. Most of the countries, Africa is 1.3 billion people. The gentleman that has just spoken from Senegal, we are, we have a high import bill for the good for the food we eat. And we don't have to go there. But at the same time, we have marketed our resources are natural sources to dates. And Madame Wang said, if you if you default, what then next, because you have mortgage yourself the moment you mortgage yourself, you are in that trouble. Now, we have attracted a lot of investment in terms of mining and mining and people most of the investments in Africa comes in for mining to extract our mineral resource sector is extractive. If there is not for development is not for value addition is very extractive. We have not, we have less regional value chains feeding to that I don't have a problem with investment, we can attract investment in mineral resource but we need add value on the continent. We actually as Africa do not need money from anywhere to develop our ingot them. Our project, which if you know completed, we reduce the cost of energy to less than two cents per kilowatt. You know, we don't need money from outside to do that. Africa is 1.3 billion people. We have a lot of natural resources. We have our own development banks. We have Africa's in bank. There is China for X in bank this Africa's in bank. So we actually need to look internal to look at the financing the model that financing model for development. And if you look at the mineral resources which I'm happy now to be heading and it's not the first time because I actually developed the African Minerals Development Center as an African institution between 2013 and 2016 when it was adopted by the State. Now it is going into Guinea as an independent autonomous institution to support member states how to develop the mineral resources. We need that. And of course this will be in line with the African Continental Free Trade Area investment protocol. The investment protocol should look at how Africa defends itself in terms of investment. Otherwise we are mortgaging the continent and we are not going to benefit. The model between China and Japan that Madame Wong mentioned yes it's fine. That was happening but Japan was a small country. Africa is a continent of 55 countries. We have 1.3 billion people and the countries that are coming in to invest for the safety are not coming in as continental support. We have a project or as a flagship project, a high speed train, which is supposed to be a continental, but the investment coming in is at the national level and it actually commits the country and therefore the integration in terms of development suffers because you have already committed between the bilateral trade agreements, bilateral investment agreements, then you cannot actually support the investment. That's why the project that Kagame was working on was having problems because countries are already committed to other obligations to China, to Europe, to wherever. So we need to relook and if you are going to answer the first question on whether the mining can leverage on this, yes, it's very important and we are talking about regional value chains. We are going to talk about how do we now move away from our resources going into raw materials by going into value addition. We want goods to be made from the next critical minerals of the world is not is the three T's is a those green green greener minerals that are going to feed into electronic cars and so forth. Africa needs and a lot of, you know, assembling plans for motor vehicles is coming into Africa. We have a lot of skillset people we don't have, we don't need to have our people flying our way down across their desert going to look for jobs everywhere. We have the jobs on the continent and we need to create the African continent of it today creates that opportunity to create jobs through regional value chains. But we also want to have an investment that is pro Africa, we want to development of investment which is development in Africa not for Africa, not development in Africa but development for Africa. So you get companies, they come here, they extract all the resources, they take them because the other countries are adding value and bringing those goods back to Africa, I think that's where we are going to be looking at so the investment that is coming and we have African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African African that looks at reducing the illicit financial flows. The illicit financial flows of companies coming on the continent and evading tax and we are losing in excess of $100 billion annually, which is too much more than ODA that we receive from everyone. So if we can reduce this loss of the hemorrhage through tax evasion, through investment policies at the national level that is attracting, you know, giving away, literally giving away 100% profit repatriation and non-tax payment for a period of time and so forth. The investment policies, investment laws at the continent are actually not conducive for Africa to develop and even to find itself. But within the framework of the Connect of Freedom Data, we have opportunities to go back and inform our members that you appended your signature, you ratified the Abidia Treaty, you have ratified the Agenda 263, you need to put your money where your mouth is and that's within the supporting the investment on the continent. So we are losing, we are looking at how do we move from that? Africa is focused. We cannot blame China for coming in because China knows what they want. They have said we don't want restrictions because we want your real natural resources. We can't blame them but Africa has to come and know what we want ourselves. And when we are engaging with our partners, we go for Africa first, not because China wants to give us money. No, we need to go for Africa first, America goes for America first, Europe goes for Europe first, China goes for China first. We have to look at Africa first and that's why Africa and the continent of Lithuania provides this. The Africa and member states has been a challenge in integration. But when you look at Lagos' prime of action, you look at the Abidia Treaty, they are quite clear. The heads of state then knew where Africa has to go. So it's incumbent on the experts at the continental level to go back to heads of state and members that say, this is where you have painted your signature, this is where you want to go. When you talk about the Kagame's resource mobilization strategy, it wasn't conclusive itself because countries were scared because most of it was going to be tied to tourism, which was not right. But if you look at telecommunications, just telecommunications, before you even go into mining, if one cent of a dollar of the airtime that people, my mother died at 90 and was still paying airtime, but all that money goes out of the continent. If we actually charge one cent of any dollar for airtime, for the network, that people come in and use our airspace and get all those resources and move on. If we get the companies that come to invest in Africa, put just five per cent or one per cent of what they make, you know, turnover, we shall mobilize resources for investing in Africa and we need to look to China, we need to look to Europe, we shall be able to internally mobilize resources for our investments. Thank you very much, Mr. Mabura. Just a follow-up question, you see, when you look into the AFCFTA, we allow export taxes. Countries cannot call a child export taxes or for a short while. In the E-path, we do not wait, most of the export taxes are prohibited in the E-path. As a financing model, will the African Union say, okay, any mineral has been extracted from the continent and you are living the continent, you impose an export tax. You see, that's a problem. You mentioned Kogami, because of the different, different, different regions that we have with different continents and countries, it becomes so, so making it becomes a problem. Will you, at the African Union, take a look at the issue of export taxes, for example, as a financing model? You see, we have, we have African Coordinated Free Trade Area. It operates within the wider world trade organization. We have to be looking at how we don't infringe it, because we are going into trade rules best, but there are innovative strategic means, because every country can have a sovereign wealth fund. We don't have even tax exports on whatever. If we add value to our resources and people put money into geological information, they put money into supporting the investment, supporting the continental, the people who want to invest in the diaspora. We have quite a lot. China has dependent on diaspora in terms of skills revolution, in terms of attracting investment. Africa has a huge lot of diaspora outside, but yes, we can actually do that in a way that is innovative. West African economic community doesn't, you know, depend on, on, on, on member state funding. It has a commodity, in a community level. So we have opportunities that we can look on and, and leverage on on the continent and say that, look, if you are investing in Africa, if an investor comes in and they are putting money into the mineral resource sector, at one point we were working with African Union Foundation based in South Africa that is mandated to mobilize the private sector financing to say, why don't we mobilize all the private sector in the mineral resource sector and say, we do not need corporate social responsibility. We need corporate social investment. We need corporate investment. We don't need you to come and put in money and say we are going to build a road. Give us the money and we shall build a road ourselves. We don't really need to tie our, our, our social needs, our, our government public, public needs to, to, to, to those who are going to do it for us. They can do it for us. Earlier on, Wong mentioned that, you know, a sewage cannot, cannot raise funding. That's unfortunate because you don't, West management is actually a lucrative business. You know, West management crossover, we are going into, into a circular economy. You know, people are looking at management and recycling. So there is a lot that can be done. West management goes into fertilizer. We don't need to import anything. So sewage can actually make money on the continent, you know, opposite to what Mr. Wong was saying. So Africa needs to put its house in order and then we can be able to finance our, our, our FTA. Otherwise, we shall have to, because anybody who's coming to finance us, as our colleague from Senegal said, is looking at the market. We have 101.3 billion people market. You know, the middle class is increasing. So we, we are going to have a, a convent of liquid area, big as it is across 55 countries with the goods coming in from China or from elsewhere, crossing the border when we are not even doing our own manufacturing, our own value addition. When we have the resources, we have the skills and all we need to do is put some investment to attract technology and technological know-how. That's all we need. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Frank. We have Graham from Politico, probably live on Facebook, and he's asking, what can we make of the parents and the increase in debt of Africa to China? How does this affect policy space? This is a question thrown to Jian. I mean, he's asking of the debt I, I saw Zambia and Mozambique, another country that you, you, you painted. I mean, he's asking the question about what can we do about the debt overhang, you know, to China. Your comments, please. Yes. So make sure I understand the question. You're like, what can we do with the debt they currently have with China, or what can they do with the potential to access? How does this affect the policy space? You know, if you have, if you have, you increase your debt to some, some level, it becomes the policy instruments clump. You know, it's a point I mean, even on the table, you have no power because you are, you are a debtor to China. And so China can have its own way on the continent. That's the angle you're looking at. Yeah. So it really depends on what type of loan, what kind of financial arrangement you have with China. So Frank mentioned earlier about resources. Yes, there are natural resource security to loans is something that China uses to reduce the risk when they lend to African, when they lend to African governments, right? So these tend to be large billion dollar credit lines. You think about Angola, think about DRC, they all have things like this. And most of these go into financing infrastructure projects. The argument being that, well, we need this, we're going to sink money into the infrastructure. We don't have, we need this money now. And presumably they will generate revenue for the country, then we pay it back. And from China's perspective, I think Frank makes a really good point that, you know, people coming into Africa knows what they want. What China wants is, well, either I get access to natural resources, or even if I'm not interested in natural resources, I want some kind of security for the loans that I am lending, you know, two, three billion dollars going to the Republic of Congo. How do I make sure, like, how does China expect them to make sure they get their money back? Well, let's put a resource security on it. Now, even within resource security, there are ones that are more manageable than others. So in Angola, they have a long history of doing resource security loans with China. They have a good relationship such that when oil prices tanked and Angola, you know, they're in a fiscal problem, China was willing to renegotiate the terms, extend the terms and, you know, reduce the interest rate with them. That is not true for all countries, right? You have to have a good relationship with China for you to pull that off. And then you have the, so these are the more aboveboard actually resource security loans. And then you have the more problematic ones, which are actually resource prepayments. So you see a lot of this in Sudan, for example, where they, where these are not even, this is not even China, this is to commodity sellers abroad. I mean, this is your Glencore, this is your Trafigura that wants to buy oil. And what they're doing is basically saying that pay us 500 million right now, you know, Sudan to say Trafigura pay us 500 million right now and we'll send you a tanker or seven tankers of oil next year. All right. So to a certain extent that is kind of a loan. And the thing is, those are really short-term interest rates are very high and very interest parents. So those are pretty dangerous. So in terms of concerns of, well, what do we do about these loans? From what I can tell from the Zambian government, they don't seem to be worried. Like I was surprised at their answer. I thought they would be concerned. And there, I think that was, you know, a year and a half ago, I think they were right at the edge of the Eurovon crisis. So everyone I talked to, they're just like, Chinese loans, they're not even that much in proportional to their debt profile, be they're really cheap, see what's China going to do to us if we default on it. They seem not concerned at all. They are very concerned with the Eurovon. Everyone's sweating when they're talking about the Eurovon. So this is bad because it's actually much harder to renegotiate the terms with the market with the Eurovon than you can with China. Now, the thing is, access to Chinese financing though, it has become an appropriate in the past 20 years. Think of it as a high stakes game, right? This is, as Frank says, you know, with high profits comes high risk. It's true for China. So China has a higher risk tolerance of where they're willing to lend their money even there. Even if there's a high chance they're not getting their money back. And on the flip side of that is a high stakes game for African borrowers as well. Yes, you have where formerly no one will lend you three billion to build a railway. Now someone will do it. Do you do it? Right? That's a really, it's tempting. And the thing is some countries come out the other end better off than other and it really depends on whether you have your policies in order or not. So it's an opportunity that comes at a great cost. Thank you. We have another question from a student at Hamburg University and is asking Indogo and Trosta. I mean, you can't respond to this. He's asking that how can ECOA's end the continued monetary policy dependent on France? You know, he's saying that current currency, Frank was in quotes. How about this water down implementation of the AFCTA and how can ECOA's end the continued monetary dependent you know, on France? So maybe Indogo, of course, I can see Trosta, any of you, both of you can respond from your different aspects. That's fine. Well, I did not hear you the question very well. How can ECOA's end the continued monetary policy dependence on France? What is the context of the year that they see the Frank? Well, in fact, the ECOA's is the Economic Committee of West African States. So it's a regional grouping of 15 countries, including the eight that use the CFA, Frank, which is a colonial currency, born in 1945, but still functioning like a colonial currency. And the ECOA's has a single currency project for let's say all the 15 countries. But we know that there have been many hurdles for this regional grouping. So they plan to launch it last year, but it was not possible. And for many, it seems that this could be an alternative to the CFA, Frank. But for myself, even if we had the possibility to launch this regional single currency, for me, it would not solve African development challenges. Because having your own currency is really important for nation. You have to be current about the policy framework. If decisions are taken at a national level, you have to have appropriate instruments at a national level. If you want to have, let's say, regional currency, I think the first step should be to try to move towards a federal political union with federal treasury. If you do not have that, we will be in the scenario of the Eurozone, which is for me really dysfunctional. That means you have the monetary responsibilities at the community level, where you have the budgetary responsibilities at the national level. This is not current at all. And when you don't have your own currency, you could not also design your banking sector as you want. You want to do it in a way that will help you build domestic capacities. So it's really important that African countries have national banking sector. If they don't have national banking sector, it will be really difficult for them to finance their development. I know that there are many hopes around the African continent of retail area, but the African continent there is no panacea. You have to have the appropriate instrument at a national level. Because for now, we don't have a single, let's say, African country. We are not, for now, let's say, a single country. We are 55 countries. So that means that we have to find appropriate instruments at a national level. And the banking sector is really important to that end. And unfortunately, in the CFA African countries, the banking sector, even if it diversified, because now the dominant ones are the Moroccan banks and so-called Panathican banks. But still, they are functioning during the, like during the colonial period, that means they are just on short-term activities, financing short-term activities and no credit for, let's say, no financing for long-term activities. Just one statistic. You take, again, the case of Senegal, 77% of all bank loans have a duration of less than one year. 44% of all bank loans have a duration of less than one month. If you have such kind of, let's say, banking sector structures, you cannot develop. It's impossible. Okay. Trosta, before you come in, there's a question that maybe you could guess from mine, that Germany has committed 15 million views to support the AFCFTA. Is this meant to make Africa accept the movement on the ongoing negotiations with EU on the post-continental and the compact with Africa? This is from the Pelo River, South Africa. Maybe you can combine with the first question that we find. Yeah, I guess there is ongoing debate, actually, to also from Germany and the ministry for development there to have another driver going towards Africa. The main point here is also the post-continue agreement or something, the negotiation, they have been finished up last year and the text, I didn't see the full text for now, but it's also kind of a framework that they agreed on and I guess it's much more on the political side. I guess we have to see how this will find out. But what is important that, especially the German government, tried to change the investment policy towards Africa, meaning that more private investors actually target the African country and invest in African countries directly. The European Union also envisioned that by the internal investment plan. But what is the problem? Meaning that beforehand, we heard about that it's like huge risk coming with huge profits, but obviously none of the very few European companies actually believed in the profits that are possible or didn't want to go for the risk. So what the government actually said is to subsidize the investments. Either you do public guarantees or you use the public development banks that erase funds and support private companies to invest in Africa. So it's I guess the narrative that it's that there is the prospects and the huge market with 1.3 billion people there. I think that many European companies don't really believe in that vision for now and they need government support and guarantees to start an investment. And then that's a sign for me that it's not actually too attractive for the private sector from the European side to believe in the prospects in the near future for the African continent. And what is also important here is somewhat then the contradiction with the economic partnership agreement. Because the economic partnership agreement, we had that before in the chat or something, the point is that once they should be signed or they will be signed, then the African countries have to open up their import sites. So European companies can export to the African continent without any tariff barriers or something. So it's like open up for it. So the point is that why should you invest and produce in Africa to sell them products in Africa when you can just ship it and export it from Europe and where you have your processes. And the European companies also invested in China and Southeast Asia. So their production also shifted to these areas. And potentially, if you open up then the whole trade on the global scale and you don't open up spaces where you can develop an internal African market, then it's not attractive to invest there and instead just trade. Okay. Thank you. We have another question from Frank of the African Union. I think three comments. Frank, the first one is Victoria is asking about inclusion, that we take decisions at the African Union AFCFD secretariat level. But how do member states ensure that there's participation for all stakeholders? So it's a question about inclusion, participation in the AFCFDA process. That is the first one. The second one is that in the midst of the pandemic, if you listen, we are asking companies and citizens asking states to come to their aid and to make sure that states can actually revamp and support companies and all that. With the notion that the process is, I mean, the picture he's painting about a European Union actually pushing a lot of private sector investment in Africa. In the kind of pandemic you call on the state. So what can you do? I mean, whatever you know, what can you do? Because we need a strong state in such a developmental state in a way that can actually support the cities when there's a pandemic. And the pandemic is a clear example of reminder of what is ahead of us. And the last bit is that you want to talk about the export practice. I mean, within the WTO, the World Trade Organization, there's no agreement that says you cannot import an export practice. What is causing the problem is the bilateral investment treaties and regional treaties like E-PAS and all of that. In fact, Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Ethiopia actually use an export practice to develop the later sector in Ethiopia. Those are some of the comments and then the examples on the continent that you can push from the sector as an African Union level. So make your comments on a question from Victoria. Mr. Frank. Sorry, I'm still muted. I think Africa needs investments. And definitely, we need the investments from all our partners, including more importantly, EuropeWare and others and China and other partners where technological advancement has proceeded as far as possible much more than in Africa because we need technological transfer. But we need investment come in Africa on our terms. That's what should be the most important part. We need investment coming in in our terms, not on their terms. Because the challenge we have here, we have a convent of free-to-ed area, so far almost 37 or more countries are ratifying or have ratified. But where investment laws and treaties are still being sovereign and all these people coming in, including E-PAS, are leaving the SCFTA on the side and then going on country by country. This is going to cause us problems in terms of advancement. So we need investment. We need them in region over the change. As I said earlier on, we have a number of assembling plants for motor vehicles and others. These need inputs. We can have inputs for inputs. Europe and China and Japan depend on small and medium enterprises who produce these small inputs going in. They don't depend on large investments. They come in, even don't pay tax in most of the cases, but we have our small industries which are suffering and being crowded out by these huge investments and they are not being catered for. So we need to put efforts to say we need investments, but when they come on the continent, they should be looking at the regional rather than national. If we continue to have these bilateral treaties, investment treaties, and we were trying to implement a convent of free-to-ed area, we should still have a challenge that my colleague Ndongo was referring to, that we are continuing to be an importer of food which we can actually produce on the continent. So agro-food value addition, yes, but it should be looking at, in a value chain, every stage of the value chain is a market for the other, for the previous one. Agriculture producing at optimal yield per hectare feeds into another sector for processing and for manufacturing. Mino resources feed into refineries and they feed into manufacturing in light industries are metallurgical. So we need, and they go into pharmaceuticals, so we need to have attractive investment, but into what we need, and this is manufacturing and value addition. And that's why I mentioned the Afro Champions investment framework that is looking at generating 1 billion within the next 10 years. That's about 10 million or no, 1 trillion dollars within the next 10 years, and that means it's 100 billion within every year, but that should be investment by Africans and diaspora, but also getting other partners, but who come in, join that framework so that we are generating financing on our continent. We have Africa's embankment supporting that process, and if we have to go to Africa's embankment, we shall generate, we have to attract domestic and regional investment, cross-border investments, and that will help us to move forward, but we'll still try attract investment, but we need to have it within the framework of the investment protocol that is going to be more conducive for Africa. Instead of saying, oh, put a conducive environment, attract investment from China, from Europe when these people come and take everything, and then you start crying for us. I think we should not move from that point to be able to achieve our agenda in the next three. Thank you so much. We have a few minutes ago. I have a number of issues that have been raised, and the first one is about a clear financing framework for the ALCFTA. Frank mentioned about the AFRU champions, framework. That should be on the terms of Africa. That is one we need to note. That is the need to direct funding to the real sectors of economy. In Google, Sheila mentioned about the food import in Africa, and that is fighting it. Of course, we have been with AFRU for decades, so we need to be able to control finance and then direct the finance into the sector that are critical to Africa. There is a point about that came up in terms of investment. Yes, investment might be on the terms of Africa, and so the investment rules must start from the reality that it confronts Africa today. African countries have commodity-dependent countries, and we need to be aware of that. Of course, external funding is on the increase, but that has to be in line with our priorities of Africa. These are some of the things that came up, and it's important that we also highlight some of the challenges that came up. One of them is the member state's interest. The issue about the program is a plan that is not struggling to succeed because of the different different wrecks and the member state's interest and the different regimes, whether it is the post-Cotonou, whether it is the regional agreement that we have, whether it is the bilateral agreement in the U.S., these investment agreements have a bearing on how Africa can develop. This is one of the things I was able to capture. We have about five to ten minutes to go. I want to now hand over to Jane. To give some closing remarks and then we'll thank the speakers and call it a day. Jane LaLuga is the executive director of Seatini. Jane will make some closing remarks, and then we can say thank you to the speakers and all of you at Patistan. Okay, thank you so much, and thanks, Sylvester, for a very good moderated session, and thanks also to our very able panelists. I'm speaking on behalf of the organizers of this webinar, that's Elosa Luxemburg-Stiftung and Seatini Uganda. It was a very good discussion. So many issues came up and issues around how to finance the CFTA, but also broadly on how to finance our development initiatives as Africa. But what also came out clearly was that we need to rethink the CFTA. We need to rethink liberalization before production. Is that a wise move? And we also need to rethink the way we organize our national and regional economies around reorganizing the financial sector, the agriculture sector, the whole issue around investment. How would we handle that? So I think as Africa, we need to do a lot more thinking, a lot of more reorganization of our economy. And I hope that the AU, the CFTA, and our national policy makers will be listening. But what we are going to do as organizers is to be able to write out the recommendations and issues coming out of this webinar so that we can be able to share them with the powers that be. Because it's important that we do implement most of these issues, the very good ideas coming out. I would like to thank the people behind organizing this webinar. Mr. Afrika Chiza and Sam Kassidie from LOSA Foundation. To Mr. Yatini and LOSA, we have been organizing these webinars to ensure that a trade in Africa and trade initiatives work for the people. And to ensure that people's voices are heard. And in fact, we are discussing here with our team that maybe we shouldn't have had these meetings, webinars before the launch of the negotiations of the CFTA. But that's what under the bridge and we hope we can be able to make a difference in the way the CFTA is being negotiated in the upcoming phases and also in the implementation. We have other webinars which are going to come up. In June, we have a webinar on migration and the labor market again in the context of the CFTA. And in August, we have one on the impact on agriculture. But what we're also proposing is that if anybody has an issue which is really potent and burning, we can also put it on the agenda and be able to debate it. Because at the end of that day, what we want to ensure is that all these initiatives and programs work for Africa, work for other people. So thank you so much once again, Mr. Vesta, our panelists and all other participants who have made this webinar really, really interesting and very beneficial. Thank you so much. And until another webinar, do keep safe. Thank you, Jane. And thank you, everyone. Stay safe. Thank you. Thank you for organizing the event. Yeah, thank you.