 Hello everybody. It really is a pleasure and an honor to join you today as part of the Africana Conference so thoughtfully put together by I'm told the students at Tufts Fletcher School. Let me thank my dear friend Professor Chidio Dinkalu for making sure that I'm a part of the conference this year and my very warm regards to the students and faculty of this historic place of thought leadership in diplomacy and international affairs. It would have been a great pleasure to have been with you physically on this occasion and I had indeed indicated that I would be there but for a clash with our precedents travel shadow and since both I and the president cannot be out of the country at the same time I of course had to step down my own engagement so I'm extremely sorry that I'm unable to be present physically and nevertheless I'm pleased to be able to interact with you through this platform. I've been asked to speak today on Africa 2050 making growth work. Africa 2050 making growth work. This is of course a challenging topic to address in a short speech but I'll attempt to cover a few of the critical issues. 2050 is important in a discussion about Africa's future prospects. It is a halfway mark of this remarkable century which has in a few short years seen great advances in digital technology, a global financial crisis and of course a frightening pandemic. 2050 is also the target date which many countries in the world have set to attain net zero carbon emissions and this is true of course for African countries as well. Also when we discuss global demographics 2050 is usually the reference date and Africa is expected to have just over a quarter of global population 26.3% up from 18.2% in 2020. It's also estimated that over half of the population the largest number of young people in the world would live in Africa by that date and as we know population size is intrinsically linked to economic size and inherent in the very notions of poverty per capita income and the size of the labor market which of course are related to growth. But what must be done in Africa to make growth work? What do we really need to do? On the one hand Africa is making steady progress on several fronts. Despite challenges post COVID-19 Africa is growing well compared to the rest of the world. The IMF World Economic Outlook for October 2022 projected that Sub-Saharan Africa would be the second fastest growing region of the world at 3.7% compared to 4.9% in emerging Asia, 1.7% in Latin America and the Caribbean 3.6% in the Middle East and Central Asia 1% in the United States and about 0.5% in the Euro area. Of course we can always make the counterpoint that Sub-Saharan Africa is coming from a much lower base but then that's an argument. We've also seen appreciable increases in socioeconomic conditions in Africa since the era of independence as well as improvements in economic conditions. The GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa was estimated to be about just 31 billion US dollars in 1960 and is now 1.71 trillion US dollars while life expectancy has risen from 42 years to 62 years in the same period. On the other hand partly due to the end of the commodity supercycle in the earlier part of this century and also as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic several African countries are facing debt crisis. It's been estimated that 60% of low income countries many of which of course in Africa are either debt distressed or at high risk of debt distress. This situation must be taken seriously for instance Africa lost two decades of growth and development in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of being ensnared in the international debt crisis of that era. So if we lose two decades again we're already knocking at the door of 2050. So for growth to work in Africa it's important to build on the progress that's already been made while averting another debt crisis. The economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic worsened and worsened what was an already troubling debt profile in the continent. High inflation and interest rate increases in the major economies have also led to higher borrowing and financing costs in Africa thereby increasing African debt burdens. The challenge though is that the old debt management process of the 1980s and 1990s may not work in the current era in spite of the initiatives put in place like the debt service suspension initiative and the common framework for debt treatments. To start with China is now a major creditor and China is not part of processes like the London club and the price club. Moreover the structure of most public debt has changed as much of it has resulted from borrowing in global capital markets and the ownership of results in debt instruments among private investors is now quite varied. So some imagination and of course political will will be required to help African countries stir their way through the current macroeconomic challenges including domestic actions to rein in inflation and improve domestic resource mobilization. There is certainly now a need for urgent action in framing a new institutional framework for debt restructuring that goes beyond the debt service suspension initiative and the common framework. What is needed at this time is a new international framework for tackling debt issues perhaps along the lines of the global sovereign debt round table that took off at the IMF World Bank spin meetings just this week. This is a framework that brings together all those concerned bilateral creditors including China, private creditors including bondholders, the multilateral development banks and indeed debtor countries. And I think this is the way to go if we are to address the changed nature of the terrain in terms of new prominent players and new types of debt. Let me speak a little about democracy and governance. In spite of recent reversals in a few countries, Africa has made steady progress with regard to democratic rule and improvements in governance such as multi-party frameworks. For instance the incidents of civil wars of course fell as high as from 18 in 1991 to 8 in 2008 and of course has dropped much further now to just certainly the lower single digits. Military coups also showed a similar downward trend and there is commitment to improving governance in the continent and perhaps this is best captured by the establishment of the African pair review mechanism whereby African heads of states and governments hold one another accountable for governance conditions in their countries and it's encouraging that even where there have been democratic reversals the African Union and regional groupings like Echoes have resisted such changes. They've imposed sanctions and insisted on a prompt return to democratic rule. What is required in addition is for serious and credible leaders to live up to expectation by deepening democracy, upholding high standards of transparency and accountability and having an unwavering focus on improving the well-being of the African people. And I think history and experience now teach us that democracy and its associated rights and freedoms must be fought for and defended at all times. By the way just as I was coming here I saw on the news that there was heavy fighting in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. I just wonder to what extent that is going to lead to a changing government and I hope that we're able to get some stability in Sudan as quickly as possible. The issue of corruption of course is always the elephant in the room and there's clear recognition that corruption not only ciphones limited resources required for development but also that it leads to perverse incentives and undermined social values. The African Union Convention Against Corruption is a signal that leaders in the continent recognize the negative impact of corruption and this has been complemented in many countries by the creation of anti-corruption institutions. In Nigeria for instance we notably have the independent corrupt practices and other related offenses commission the ICPC for short and the economic and financial crimes commissions amongst others. But official corruption and corruption in general remain significant and I think there and I must say that we cannot make concrete progress without dealing with corruption. Official corruption I think will reduce considerably with increased use of technology for government approvals and processes removing human discretion as much as as much as is possible and second an insistence on accountability and punishment for impunity and it may seem hard to do but the evidence from all over the world is that with decisive and committed leadership corruption can certainly be tamed. It's also evident and I listened briefly to I think it was Mona Idrisu in her presentation. She was talking about the necessity to create jobs and I think that this is absolutely important for growth to work in Africa. It must create jobs and provide economic opportunity. As we saw during the commodity super cycle in the early part of this century several African countries were growing quite rapidly without and without an accompanying increase in jobs or marked reductions in poverty, the so-called growth without the so-called growth without jobs syndrome. Ensuring job creation going forward will be even more challenging because we have to ensure that digitalization for instance does not lead to job losses. This was already a challenging prospect in the past when word processors replaced typists and automated teller machines displaced bank shares. The prospects are even more ominous with what we're seeing with artificial intelligence and robotics and we know of course that this will put millions of jobs at risk at a time when the labor force is increasing. We already know that robots have displaced workers in manufacturing assembly lines and more ominous is the likely impact of artificial intelligence. I was looking at a recent study by Goldman Sachs which showed that AI tools could impact on up to 300 million full-time jobs worldwide and some of the jobs that are said to be at risk from chart GPT alone are in areas like technology, media, law, legal practice, accounting, teaching, finance and trading as well as graphic design. Indeed the very coders who create the AI may find themselves soon displaced as artificial intelligence which uses iterative learning might work faster and cheaper than them. So what this means then is that we have to spend time on designing educational curricula in which young people and the current workforce learn to work with and complement artificial intelligence in a manner that increases productivity and I think just to say a little more on this point artificial intelligence and all of the improvements in technology can help Africa to leapfrog its way through the years and years that other developed economies have gone through. So there's a need to harness artificial intelligence to achieve that and I think we're seeing that in several aspects or several aspects of our lives from farming, from agriculture to education etc. So there is definitely something to be said about being prepared to take maximum advantage of technology in providing more jobs and more opportunities and of course better paying jobs. So I'll talk a little also about climate change and climate action. Like the rest of the world, Africa has to find a pathway to growth that is sustainable in the light of climate of the climate change crisis. The continent however faces a conundrum in that it is rich and many parts of our continent are rich in fossil fuels including natural gas but we are energy poor. In other words, Africans do not have power just by the fact that we have tremendous fossil fuel reserves. So while the world is saying, especially the global north is saying, that the safest thing to do is to decommission all our fossil fuel projects and machinery and have only restricted use of natural gas, we're saying that there must be a better way to undertake this transition especially as gas is not as polluting of course as crude oil or coal and is still essential for the purposes of industrialization and especially for us clean cooking. While Africa must insist on climate justice in the sense of common but differentiated responsibilities, it should also agree that there is a new way by which we can benefit from the processes of adapting to climate change. Africa has the potential to become the first truly green civilization, the first civilization on earth to use renewable fuel for purposes of transformative economic for purposes of a transformative economic journey. We have the lowest carbon emissions today and Africa can develop by deploying and using green energy effectively and by mobilizing our young population to promote green manufacturing on a scale that would make it a global green factory of the world. We can and indeed must do something revolutionary and something different. In other words, Africa can use climate action to underpin and increase in productivity and to create well-paying jobs. For growth to work in Africa it must also be equitable but right now eight of the most unequal countries in the world are in Africa. It's important to reduce inequality because it is negatively correlated with minimum with medium-term growth. Similarly, important is the need for gender for greater gender equality. The global gender gap index shows that on average females in Africa were 32% less likely to have the same economic, social, legal and political opportunities as males. It must be important therefore for African countries to prioritize the advancement of women by giving them greater economic opportunity and access to cutting-edge educational and health facilities. One area in which equality is important is in giving women voice especially through political participation. As encouraging to note in this regard that African countries like Rwanda, Rwanda is the first country in the world with a female majority in the parliament with 61.3% in its chamber of deputies. Now these things are important because Africa trying to develop without its women folk is like tying one hand behind his back while trying to climb a tree. Regional and I think that this is this is just absolutely important. We cannot, we simply cannot do much without doing something about gender equality. I think one of the critical things that we must do also is educational of girls and that is something that we've taken up quite seriously in Nigeria in the past few years. We've worked on not just a program but a curriculum for accelerated education of girls. That of course is challenged sometimes by cultural beliefs and sometimes just plain prejudice. But I think that those are surmountable and some of the programs that we're seeing, the successes of some of the programs we're seeing show that there is certainly light at the end of the tunnel. I talk a bit also about regional integration and I think regional integration is absolutely important for us in Africa especially to overcome the limitations of our small fragmented economies. The takeoff of the African continental free trade area in January 2021 is a step in the right direction. So the free trade area is expected to create a 2.7 trillion US dollar market by eliminating trade barriers and enabling economies of scale on the continent. This arrangement should be exploited in full to enable African countries make gains from trade not only in goods but also in services. It's also encouraging that the free trade area is being positioned to drive industrialization in Africa by promoting the development of regional value chains. The process of course will be aided by putting in place the necessary infrastructure to underpin production as well as an efficient payment system that overcomes the need to purchase third currencies before trade can take place between African countries. And of course we have a great effort by Afroexem, Afroexem has established an interesting payment system which seeks to deal with this obstacle of third currencies when African countries trade with each other and from what we see there is considerable progress being made in the way that that payment system has been working. Another great resource that will enable Africa make the most of his growth is our diaspora and I think instead of lamenting the brain drain which of course is costly, Africa should organize itself to take advantage of his diaspora. In addition to remittances which were told in excess of 37 billion U.S. dollars and 37 billion U.S. dollars in 2010 and now in excess of 96 billion U.S. dollars as of 2021. The African diaspora is a significant source of strength. The diaspora has established businesses in various sectors, they've offered themselves for public service and have provided cutting-edge services in medicine, in surgery and in medicine and several other areas. Indeed the diaspora is Africa's vanguard for keeping up with the rest of the world. So apart from the serendipity of getting the right leaders at the right time, the things I've spoken about fall within the purview of national governments. The reality though is that getting the right mix, timing and sequencing of development policies and implementing them successfully remains a major challenge. As the noble red robot solo said, ingredients do not make a dish. One thing that also matters in the drive for growth, but which is not under the control of domestic authorities, is the external environment. The global economic order matters because it frames the trade and development policy options available to developing countries. And I would say that the unparalleled success of countries like Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and China, more recently, and increasingly India and Vietnam is an outcome of the liberal international economic order put in place by the victorious past at the end of the Second World War. The liberal international economic order allowed for exchange of ideas, technology and know-how across countries and could be said to have peaked with the globalization that started especially in the late 20th century. The claim has been made that more people were taken out of poverty in the post Second World War period than in the preceding 500 years. Now this is not so difficult to believe if we consider the remarkable transformation of China and India. China is reported for instance to have lifted 770 million people out of poverty over a 40-year period, while India is said to have lifted 415 million people out of multi-dimensional poverty in the last 15 years alone. Since we are in a notable center for the study of global affairs, I think we should ponder a bit on the global economic order and ask ourselves whether the conditions under which recent late developers grew fast is still available and would still be available to support Africa's quest to make growth work over the next 27 years. To be frank, the Omens do not look good and it seems to me that those of us with an abiding interest in international relations must work together to ensure that it continues to enable global peace and security as well as economic progress. Indeed, the ability of Africa to make the most of growth depends a great deal on peace and security also in the rest of the world and within the continent. And the Russian invasion of Ukraine has appended that era of peace in mainland Europe, which many of us had taken for granted. The outbreak of that war led to huge increases in the prices of food, fertilizer, and fuel, which are required to feed people and power growth and development. Equally troubling is the fact that the resources being used to prosecute the war detract from the resources that could otherwise have been used for development assistance or debt relief, which have a role to play, of course, in propelling growth in Africa. On the domestic front, Africa continues to struggle also with imported terrorism. For instance, the 2022 Global Terrorism Index reports that the Sahel region of the continent has become home to the world's fastest growing and most deadly terrorist groups, and that Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 48 percent of global terrorism deaths. So given the scale of the problem and the fact that the threat of terrorism anywhere on earth is a threat to the whole of humanity, I think it's time for the global community to treat the menace of terrorism, especially in the Sahel, as a common challenge. And I think that it bears repeating that this is one area in which the great powers and emerging powers can come together, put aside their rivalries, and work together with Echoes and the Africa Union on an initiative to stamp out terrorism in Africa, especially in the Sahel. Let me conclude by saying what I think is cliché in discussions of governance, and this is that leadership is key. Africa's growth ambitions will surely need leadership that is committed, knowledgeable leadership, rather, that is committed to good governance. At the end of the day, knowledgeable leadership committed to good governance, I think, is key to achieving all or any of our ambitions. Thank you very much for your time today.