 Good morning everyone. Honourable Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment represented today by the acting CEO of the Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission, Mr. Emeka Ofo, the Chairperson of the Nigeria National Advisory Board for Impact Investing, Mrs. Ibuku Awoshika, the United Nations Development Programme Resident Representative, Mr. Mohamed Yahya, HEDO Project, GIZ, Nigeria Competitiveness Project, Ms. Anna Denambres, members of the Nigeria National Advisory Board for Impact Investing and Impact Investors Foundation President. Distinguished panelists, honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen, first let me thank very much Mrs. Ibuku Awoshika, Chairperson of the Nigeria National Advisory Board for Impact Investing for the kind invitation to join you at this fourth Impact Investors Foundation and all convening on Impact Investing and also to say a few words on the theme of the meeting. I know that Impact Investing was very close to the heart of my dear friend and brother, Innocent Chukumau, blessed memory, who in his capacity as the regional director of the Ford Foundation West Africa helped to establish the Impact Investors Foundation. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to his memory. Innocent was passionate about development and about building a better and a more equitable society. So it's not surprising that he was very closely associated with this noble idea. I also think that the entire membership of the Impact Investors Foundation deserve our commendation for keeping the flame alive. Certainly the very ability to attract several notable and highly respected Nigerians and institutions to serve on the advisory board for Impact Investing is a testament at once to the importance of the subject matter and to the commitment that you all have to promoting Impact Investment in Nigeria. Liberal economies assume that growth, including a decent standard of living for the people, will be driven largely by commercial entities motivated by profit who create jobs and pay taxes. But the evidence suggests that even in the wealthier nations, too many are left behind and inequities continue to grow. Of course, this is worse in societies such as ours where poverty is significantly higher. Population growth rate consistently exceeds the capacity of the economy to produce efficient jobs. I think it's also quite evident that some of the most lucrative businesses in the economy, oil and gas, banking and finance, simply do not produce jobs, commensurate to the profits they make. And only a few, relative to the population that is, benefit from the huge dividends that are declared. So glaring inequalities in wealth and opportunity in the face of poverty, misery and social alienation in any society is simply asking for trouble. Such a situation is neither sustainable nor wise. The sharp drop in standards of living caused by the COVID-19 induced shocks to our economy, and of course, economies worldwide, have not only further deepened existing inequalities, but pushed many more into extreme poverty. Neither governments nor businesses can afford to ignore the huge social disparities and environmental deterioration for long. But because the logic of the profit motive as being the driver of innovation, the driver of wealth creation and growth is unassailable, the real question is how to ensure that it accommodates a moral compass, or put differently, that a more sustainable business model is one where intentionally we build into the profit motive, or the profit-making objective, the means of attaining society's social and environmental goals. The notion of doing well, as they say, by doing good, or harnessing the forces of innovation, entrepreneurship, private capital, to achieve both profit and social and environmental good. So impact investing is an eminently sound approach to balancing these inequities by catalyzing social and environmental impact for long-term structural change. I think some of the current models of impact investing that we are seeing are not only inspiring, but also point in the general direction that policy and regulation should go. And I'm sure we've seen several examples today, we'll be listening to several examples today, but I'll give two examples each, two from the private sector and two from government, to demonstrate the point. There is the digital agriculture company called Farm Crowdy. The company has a platform that allows individuals to securely invest in farms online, enabling them to participate in agriculture without necessarily ever seeing the farm going there, or even knowing, I mean they will of course know where the location of the farm is. So how this works is that investors' funds are used by Farm Crowdy to offer rural farmers improved seedlings, farm inputs, training, and a market for their produce. The investors get their investments with an added percentage return. So Farm Crowdy's processes include, just to explain this in greater detail, the investor registers on what they describe as farm shop, either through the company's website or a mobile application. The investor picks a farm that they want to invest in, and they get information on investment duration, return on investment, harvest period, etc. The investor is also able to track the activities of the farm via the mobile application or website, even with images and videos posted to their dashboards. After the farming cycle and harvest, Farm Crowdy pays back investment amounts and returns into electronic wallets on the investors' dashboards. Farm Crowdy also uses a profit sharing model where it splits the profit revenues among the investors, the farmers, and itself. And the company retains a 20% portion of those profits. All initial investments are ensured. Now, this is a model of impact investing in agriculture, using, of course, digital technology very effectively. The other example in the private sector that I will give is Andela, the highly successful technology company that recruits and trains local software engineers at little or no cost, who in turn work remotely for Andela for various global companies, thereby generating good-paying jobs for thousands of young people. Andela in September of this year became a unicorn, that is, a company that's valued over a billion dollars. When it raised 200 million dollars from investors led by the softbound group, a Japanese tech investor. So profit and sound social and environmental benefits can actually coexist. Governments, of course, can be facilitators of impact investments. And I'll give two examples. The first, in 2017, government launched the first green bond in Africa and the fourth in the world. Proceeds of the bond, as the name implies, can only be used to finance climate or environmentally friendly or enhancing projects as approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Government's action in this particular case was important because it took the risk of investing in a debt instrument in the locally and internationally uncharted waters of environmental finance. And this is as it should be. A government bond is probably the one confidence-enhancing mechanism for encouraging climate finance because, obviously, I mean, this is relatively unknown territory for most investors. The second example of government leadership in impact investing is our Solar Niger program. Solar Niger is the name of the program. And this is a major component of our economic sustainability plan in response to the severe economic fallouts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The program was designed to provide 5 million homes with electricity through solar systems, solar home systems and mini grids. The program has three core objectives, expanding increasing energy access to 25 million individuals. That is five million connections, assuming that each household has five members. The second is increasing local content in the off-grid solar value chain and creating a minimum of 250,000 new jobs. The program is targeted at three players, including assemblers or manufacturers, distributors and vertically integrated off-grid companies with a provision of four main interventions. And those interventions are important here because this is really where government comes in to facilitate the finance. Those interventions include concessionary debt funding to all players, the CBNFX window to manufacturers and assemblers, tax relief through import-duty reduction on raw materials or semi-nockdown components and leveraging complementary programs like the World Bank, NEP for grants to distributors. So there are two proposed mechanisms for the disbursement of this low-cost funding to component manufacturers and off-grid companies under the program. And this includes for component manufacturers direct lending through selected commercial banks or local development finance institutions to manufacturing entities backed by an off-taker agreement with solar home system distributors or mini-grid developers. And then for off-grid companies direct lending from local government, sorry, from local DFIs to solar home system distributors and mini-grid developers. And this is through a CBN credit facility collateralized by pledge revenues and repaid through cash sweeps. So it is clear that there is a great deal that is possible in impact investing, both from the private and the public sector. But there's a long way to go. From the relatively random investment landscape that we have for impact investing, we now must move to a more orderly space where, for example, government regulations and incentives are clearly worked out with stakeholders. The point in the spectrum that is occupied by impact investors between the not-for-profit and ESGs and the for-profit entities is still essentially virgin, is still essentially a virgin space. So questions are how can we incentivize these investments and how can we properly measure impact in order to assess what fair incentives would be? There's clearly an opportunity here for collaborative thinking between government and the impact investing community and other stakeholders on policy and regulations. So in closing, let me state that the impact investors foundation is certainly, in my view, up to a very good start. And one must commend partners like the Ford Foundation, Bank of Industry, the African Capital Alliance, Business Day Media, Daalberg and advisors for their efforts to establish the foundation in order to promote impact investment in Nigeria. I can see from the lineup of presenters and panelists also that the concept of impact investment is gathering the required interest and momentum from important stakeholders. So I extend my very best wishes as you discuss how to expand impact investing in the economy. And I certainly look forward to receiving the outcomes of this convening. Thank you all very much.