 We're delighted that you have committed the time and made the effort to come to WIPO for this event. As you all know, it's a follow-on to the very successful conference that was held last year in Dhaka in Senegal, where we hope one of the outcomes will be an increased engagement of amongst others the regional commissions in Africa, as key players in the economic development of the continent. Your visit must be the beginning of a permanent consultation process, which in the end should allow for a better coordination of policies for a better promotion of the development of the intellectual property and for an increase of intellectual wealth, of hope, of activity, of hope in our country, in our respective countries, since you are the pillars of the Commission of the African Union. I sincerely hope that your study visit this time will help the regional economic communities raise awareness on the importance of intellectual property and lead to establishing a framework in which intellectual property rights can be adequately protected. Accordingly, we could expect effective utilization of intellectual property in order to ensure sustainable development in Africa. So the idea of these three days is to increase the cooperation between WIPO and your regional economic communities and in the countries in particular through WIPO, our technical assistance, technical cooperation. So if we're going to have a motto for these three days, it may be AIC, Awareness, Information and Co-Privation.