 It really is a pleasure to be here, and I have looked forward to this meeting of like-minded people who clearly see the importance of building the carbon markets architecture in Africa. And I'm just going to focus on the African Carbon Markets Initiative and what we can do, I'm sure, there will be several discussions today as we go along to just deepen the, to deepen our knowledge and interaction on energy transition generally. But I'll just focus on the carbon markets. I'd like to especially appreciate and thank the Rocky Fellow Foundation and the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet for their commitment and support to the initiative. I think it's an auspicious moment frankly for Africa to be participating more fully in the conversations, especially in the light of the slowing pace of green investment flows into the continent. This is the right moment, and the work that several of us have done, especially in the past few months, makes it clear that investments required to advance the energy transition in Africa is huge, and the World Bank, for instance, estimates that Africa needs $6.5 trillion US dollars between now and 2050 for mitigation action alone to keep temperatures below two degrees of warming. Now, while other sources are slowing down globally, carbon markets are growing quite rapidly. Now, Africa currently only has a small share of that market, a very small share. In fact, the entire carbon market industry itself is small in relative terms, but the current market can be scaled in a massive way to reach perhaps FDIs of up to $120 billion to $200 billion annually as we approach 2050. But for a continent that actually needs $240 billion annually in mitigation investments alone, this carbon finance stream could be the difference between transitioning and not doing much. And as all of us, I'm sure, in this room understand, the priorities of the African continent are not just to act decisively on the climate crisis, but also to create significant growth opportunities for our young and growing, fast growing population. Nigeria, for example, is growing at 5 million people every year. So, I mean, and this, of course, are very young people, 60 percent of our 200 million people are under the age of 25. So we just got to answer all of the questions around providing opportunities for them. I understand that in the next 10 years, the projects in the carbon market pipeline could actually create 30 million jobs and by 2050 have the potential to create more than 100 million jobs in climate-aligned projects. Even if we don't get all of those several million jobs, it really does sound nice to be able to create jobs and leaders everywhere are going to be motivated by just hearing what is possible. And frankly, if we were to do a good proportion of that, we would really make a quantum leap in terms of answering to all of the various challenges of development. So the combination of capital flows, job creation, and the avoidance of long-term climate destruction are critical drivers of the interest of African leaders in supporting this effort. So participating in the carbon market offers Africa the opportunity to pursue growth, industrialization, economic value creation with the right incentives for clean energy and climate action. I think within a very short time we've achieved quite a bit. We've very quickly built an alliance in the Staring Committee, supported effectively by GAP and C4ALL to figure out how to develop a real market-making initiative. And as you know, we developed a clear roadmap that's laid out 13 action programs for execution. And it's great to have Joseph Nganga and Damela Ogumbi, two dedicated African energy experts leading all the technical aspects of this global initiative. And this rapid progress benefited a lot also from the support of a very engaged Staring Committee with former President Ivan Duque, the UN, GAP, USA, and a range of other public and private sector actors, which resulted in the successful launch in Shamal Sheikh at COP27. The strong commitment and presence of fellow African leaders demonstrates the willingness and leadership that Africa is prepared to offer. We already have seven African countries, Burundi, Gabon, Kaya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Togo have signed up to develop country action activation plans. And we already have over $200 million in advanced market commitments, which we must continue to further advance. This is going to be critical, a critical driver of action on the continent. So beyond the initiative, beyond the carbon markets initiative, there are other initiatives, and this demonstrates that there is a growing acknowledgement of the role of carbon finance. One of the strong points of the African carbon markets initiative, and the way we must structure it also going forward in terms of governance, is the flexibility to smoothly work with other initiatives. And there will be many other initiatives. For example, the energy transition accelerator, which we'll be talking about today, announced by Secretary John Kerry at COP27. Two days to the opening of the COP27 center, John Kerry, and I had a conversation about the proposed energy transition accelerator. And we both agreed that once the details were worked out, we would develop a collaborative framework with the African carbon markets initiative. The key really in this brave new world of energy transition is synergizing, is collaboration, because there are going to be loads of initiatives. And I look forward to speaking to Secretary Kerry and aligning our efforts, and especially on power credits, which will be central to keeping up and delivering on the momentum that we work so hard on. As he noted himself at the launch of the accelerator, the single biggest thing standing the way of making rapid progress on emission reductions is the absence of money dedicated to the cause. And we surely can find that money, which is why today's meeting obviously is so important and so valuable. We all know, of course, that the hard part is what comes next. We've created energy and excitement and our collective reputations on the line. So we must take responsibility to ensure this exciting momentum is maintained and scaled. By COP28, I think we need to be able to show some results. And I would propose that by COP28, we should be able to deliver at least five things. One, five countries should have developed country activation plans. Nigeria, by the grace of God, will be one of them. Two, we should have advanced market commitments of over a billion dollars. We should be developing new projects. Three, on new methodologies and realities of Africa, like diesel replacement credits. Four, we should be scaling up more than a dozen project developers or carbon credit suppliers, as they'll be known then. And five, most importantly, by COP28, we should have retired more than 40 million of credits on the continent. Nigeria, for one, is committed. And we passed our Climate Change Act earlier this year. And together with C4L and GEAP, we've also developed our own net zero energy transition plan, which Wright spoke about a few moments ago. Carbon markets will play a critical role in the implementation of the plan in mobilizing capital that's required to move our net zero economy to a much wider and faster trajectory. I want Nigeria to have the first carbon market activation plan. Understand that there might be some competition from my Kenyan friends, and Willem and I will be talking about that in more detail. But I'm sure that the more important conversation is how we can jointly pave the way forward for our continent. I understand that GEAP and Rockefeller Foundation and C4L have already committed, and I really celebrate that. And today, hopefully, we'll make more progress in significantly scaling up and getting ready for what the next 24 months is going to look like. And given the positive benefits of the initiative, this feels like it should be an easy enough conversation, and I'm certainly available, I'm here to help, whatever way I can. Let me know what I can do to ensure that this is a pan-African effort and governments engage fully, advance market commitments come in, and this initiative continues to advance and, in fact, dramatically accelerates going forward. Thank you once again for bringing so much intent to this initiative, and to Raj and the Rockefeller Foundation. Thank you for hosting us today. In addition, thank you to GEAP and C4L for getting us all to this point, where we've created both hope and expectation. I look forward to our conversations today on how we can use this to create positive impact on the ground for Africa's climate and energy transition and economic growth for our continent. Thank you all very much.