 Good morning, good afternoon colleagues, friends and delegates and participants. My name is Victor Kondrii from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and I'm pleased to join you at this special event. I may say for the first time and therefore I'm pleased to be here and perhaps as the start point is just to thank Engineering for Change for extending an invitation to me and to ECA to take place to take part in this special event. 2020 will go down in history as a year when we were all called to action face to fight a health health pandemic that soon became a social economic environmental challenge that has affected everyone of us and every aspect of our lives. ECA has undertaken in this regard several efforts to support our member states in the fight against COVID-19. For today I'll be focusing on one of our efforts that looks at building the Burmett Engineering capacity on the continent. Over the last decade we have supported in the effort of universities and research centers across Africa to develop Burmett Engineering programs for undergraduate students, promote innovation and entrepreneurship among Burmett Engineering students, attract female students to schools of engineering. Many of you may know that Africa actually have a small but growing number of researchers but we have even fewer female students or female researchers. As of 2019 I'm pleased to inform you that our partner in visitives had enroled about 2,600 students within their undergraduate and postgraduate BME programs. We also had 328 students that had participated in our annual biomedical innovator Siamasco. This year was actually was a special one because we actually had this so special bootcamp and also a forum and therefore I'll try and focus a little bit on that. In June we organized together with the United Nations scientific and cultural organization UNESCO the Department of Science and Innovation of South Africa Engineering for Change and other partners to host the Africa Innovation and Investment Forum 2020. The main aim was to create a robust innovation ecosystem in Africa through increased private sector investment, drive growth of homegrown innovative startups and inspire especially youths and female researchers to pursue biomedical engineering innovations. The forum attracted over 600 participants and focused on innovations in testing, medical advice, BBEs, drug and trace government innovations in government and innovation in pharmaceutical production. A total of about 164 investment trade innovations were submitted within three weeks by teams from about 38 countries. Perhaps it's proof that an emerging engineering innovation ecosystem is imaging on the continent and perhaps we should all help to support. Alongside the forum a youth innovation competition and design bootcamp was also held to empower and inspire the youth to design innovative solutions and lay new and imaging techniques and interpret your skills over a period of two months, about 264 applied and were supported by 34 mentors and lecturers as well as 11 keynote speakers whom we were very grateful and therefore as we look ahead I hope you will join us in building the technical and entrepreneurial capabilities in Africa especially for pharmaceutical production, renewable energy, safe water and digital solutions both of which have become pretty important in the fight against COVID-19. There is a lot that you can do as engineers and change is needed now. As ECA we are ready to work with you to save the continent. Thank you for the invitation and I look forward to working with you.