 Assalamu alaikum, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests and passionate advocates for a sustainable future, welcome to African Tapestry, Climate, Crops, and Culture, a Moroccan perspective, a joint event between SOAS and the Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco to the United Kingdom. Today, we embark on a profound exploration of the intricate interplay between climate, agriculture, and cultural identity through the lens of Morocco's rich heritage and forward-thinking perspectives. My name is Brooke Beardsley, and as a SOAS alumni, a SOAS global ambassador, and a resident of both Morocco and the United Kingdom, it is the greatest honor to be your emcee tonight. In an era marked by unprecedented challenges and opportunities, the significance of the global South, and particularly Africa, has never been more pronounced. Amidst the complexities of our global landscape, Africa stands as a beacon of resilience, innovation and hope. Morocco, with its deep-rooted history, vibrant culture, and commitment to South-South cooperation, exemplifies the potential for collective progress and unity in addressing the critical issues of our time. As we delve into the themes of climate action, sustainable agriculture, and cultural harmony, let us draw inspiration from Morocco's journey and envision new pathways for empowerment, cooperation, and peace. Before we proceed, a few logistical notes to ensure our day is as enriching and smooth as possible. We encourage active participation tonight, so please feel free to engage with our speakers through the Q&A session. Breaks and networking sessions have been scheduled to allow for deeper conversations and connections. We invite you to take full advantage of these opportunities to meet the speakers and ask them any questions you like. Now it is my complete honor to introduce our esteemed opening speaker, Professor Adam Habib, director of SOAS. A distinguished scholar, a fervent advocate for social justice, Professor Habib's insights will undoubtedly set a compelling stage for today's discussions, so please join me in welcoming Professor Habib. Thank you, Brooke. His Excellency, Mr. Kimo Jui, Ambassador of His Majesty, the King of Morocco, to the United Kingdom, Dr. Ahmad Abadi. Of course, our President, Zainab Badawi, I love the ring of President Badawi, and then my colleague, friend, brother, Magus Tavaile, and there are many, many other colleagues in the room, so let me welcome all of you to SOAS. You know, we've really excited to host this event with the Embassy of Morocco, and there are a couple of reasons why. As Brooke suggested, we're bringing together the fundamental challenges of our time, climate, food, security, and agriculture, and culture. And the reason we do this is because it seems to me that we live in a moment where all of our significant challenges are transnational in character. These challenges don't have only local manifestations, they have transnational manifestations. Climate change doesn't require a single country to resolve it, it requires the entire world, the entire continents of our world, to find a collective solution to the challenge. The same goes for food. We're living in the 21st century, and our single challenge of our time is how do we, in the midst of such wealth, in the midst of such wealth, how is it that we have people starving, that we have children starving in this world? It is a truly unacceptable situation. And that's not simply happening in the poorer parts of the world. People are starving in very rich parts of the world as well. So the big question is, how do we create, we begin to address these two challenges? Of course, the question of cultural identity is as important to our world today. There are some manifestations of cultural identity that lead to people killing each other. And yet, there are other manifestations of cultural identity that enable people to come together in powerful ways. Last night, I was having dinner with the colleagues, and we spoke about how is it that in some part of our world, in Jerusalem, for instance, there were centuries when people of different religious communities lived in peace with each other. And yet, we now are confronted in a moment when people are killing each other, and 11,500 children, 12,000 children have died in the dawn of the 21st century. What has happened to our context, our world? And so, one of the things that SOAS is trying to do is to serve as a bridge, a bridge, a university that trains students and professionals. It wants to do research, but what it wants to also do through its teaching and research is serve as a bridge between different parts of the world, between the UK and Africa, Asia and the Middle East, but through the UK, between the West, and what I call the majoritarian parts of our world, because that's where the majority of the world's population live. And we need to understand, if we're going to find solutions to the challenges of our time, then we need the ability to start thinking through both local solutions and global technologies. You can have global science, you can have global technologies, but you need local knowledge to enable those local global science and technologies to work. Think about this. Just two, three years ago, we had COVID. We had a vaccine, but that vaccine played out even, it was firstly unevenly distributed. So the continent that I come from, Africa, it wasn't adequately deployed because the weight was brought up and ordered in other parts of the world, we went to that. But secondly, even when it was deployed, its effects were fundamentally different in Tokyo to New York, in Seoul to London. And that's because local knowledge matters. The local architecture, the local culture, the local political institutions, how power is constructed in a local context. And so if we're going to address the challenges of our time, we need global science, global technologies, and local knowledge to intersect with each other. As much as we do that, we need, everybody talks about science being a global project. But science can be only global if it takes the concerns, the issues, the challenges of the people of our majoritarian world. We take knowledge, we apply it to our local context, and in the process, we innovate it and hand it back to the world. That's what we mean by global science. And so when we have this event, African tapestry, climate crops, and culture, we not only address the three challenges of our time, but in a partnership between science and the embassy, we symbolize a partnership between an institution in the UK and an institution on the African continent. An institution that is located in one continent, reaching out across the sea to an institution in another continent to say that can we collectively think through the challenges of our time? Can we collectively teach the people of our world? Can we look and do the research from the perspectives of the innovations on both sides of the Mediterranean and in the process, begin to think through how we find solutions, collective solutions to the challenges of our time. See in the end, ultimately, if we don't fix climate change, if we don't fix food security, and if we don't fix the deep, deep cultural visions that have emerged in our world today, we won't survive as a human species. We are on the last track of humanity's existence. And if we want to survive as a collective humanity, we better learn to live with each other. But we can only learn to live with each other if justice becomes a part of defining who we are and how we live with each other. And so this event is really about celebrating all of that. Yes, we'll speak about climate and there'll be a conversation in a minute around that. We'll speak about crops and we will speak about culture. But ultimately, all of this is meant to symbolize a partnership, a relationship amongst people, amongst institutions, amongst higher education and government, amongst higher education and civil society, between government and civil society, between different peoples of our world, on how to reimagine the challenges of our time, how to re-croft solutions for the challenges of our time, and ultimately, how to begin to make this a better world. And that ultimately is the mandate of SARS. We're in university to train people. We're in university to do research. But most importantly, we want to be and serve to be one of multiple bridges, intellectual bridges for the human community. And that's why you're here with us today. And that's why we're so excited to have this, this relationship. And so I'm going to, with those few words, because I tend to go on and on and on. And I'm watching my colleagues say, it's time to get off the stage. So I do want to say, very quickly, we are going into the first panel, led by Dr. Wayne Dooling, who's the chair of our Center for African Studies here at SARS. And the first panel discussion is going to be on harvesting solutions. What role can Africa play in climate action and in the agri-food systems transformation that is sustainable for the world? Dr. Wayne Dooling. Thank you very much, Adam. And I'll just add a welcome to Adam's very inspiring words and welcome to all of you here. Welcome to SARS today. We are very honored to have been asked by the Embassy of Morocco to co-host this event. And an enormous amount of work has gone into making today possible on both sides of this new partnership, our side and the side of colleagues at the Moroccan Embassy. And I am absolutely sure that today will be a great success and we hope that it's the start of an enduring partnership. I won't have any further words to say. I'm yet to welcome our very esteemed speakers, our panelists today. We have one panelist who is not here, who is about to join us on Zoom from Kenya, who couldn't come to travel because of these issues. But I will start straight away. I've asked each of our panelists to speak for 10 minutes. The idea is very much to give yourselves, people in the audience, time to engage in the discussion. We certainly don't want it to be a kind of one-way sort of dialogue, but rather an interactive panel today, both panels, we hope. So without any further ado, I'll introduce our very first speaker, who is Dr. Zikrini Dada, who is the UN expert on climate change, food security and sustainability. Great. Okay. Well, thank you very much. And first of all, let me express my gratitude and appreciation for his Excellency Ambassador Hakim Hajwi and for Professor Habib, for convening us and for organizing this event. It's a really great pleasure to be here and share with you some thoughts on the global challenges that are facing us and what are the solutions that we really need to deploy to come out with these challenges. And as you know, the world has been going through a succession of crises, climate change by the diversity loss, COVID-19 and also the wars in Ukraine and in Palestine. And all of these, they affect global food security. So in 2015, all leaders from around the world, they got together and they thought about what is the future that we want for humanity. And they agreed the sustainable development goals, 17 goals that cover all aspects of our life in terms of economy, environment, but also social aspect. And at the same year, the leaders also agreed on the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change to keep the global temperature below 1.5 degrees C. That's the goal. Why? Because if we stay below 1.5 degrees C, we avoid the danger of climate change. Unfortunately, today, we are not achieving any of these goals. We are going actually backwards. The Sustainable Development Goals were only on track to achieve 15% of the targets. And we are far away from achieving the 1.5 degree C climate goal. Because all efforts from all around the world, they're not enough, unfortunately. And I don't know if you've been following the news in terms of climate change. We've just seen floods in California, state of emergency declared, and also forest fires in Chile, where two days morning have been declared. And what the scientists from all around the world are telling us, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is that these events are going to continue. And those are going to become more frequent and more severe. So we do have the solutions. We are just not deploying them fast enough that the scale required to meet the two goals 1.5 and the SDGs. In terms of food security, hunger is also on the rise, unfortunately. At the moment, we have around 730 million people who go hungry every day. So climate change and food security are there so interlinked. They do affect each other. Agriculture is the sector most affected by climate change. And it is a sector that is very hungry in terms of the use of natural resources. Agriculture uses around 70% of withdrawn water, 30% of global energy use. And then the whole system, the agri-food system from production to consumption, it emits around the third of global greenhouse gas emissions. So we do have so many challenges, so many problems in relation to climate change and food security that are interacting. So agriculture, it is a problem, a big problem. And at the same time, it's a key part of the solution if we know how to use it. Because we can use it to reduce emissions, to become more efficient, to reduce the impacts on natural resources, particularly the loss of biodiversity. So we do have a problem, but there are also solutions. So what we need is to raise ambition. We're not doing enough. All countries from around the world, they're not doing enough to meet these objectives. We also need to invest more on adaptation. Why? Because we have no choice, no, but to adapt. We left it so late, we haven't reduced emissions to the level that we need to, that science from around the world are telling us that we have no choice but to adapt to the impact of climate change. And even adaptation, the whole climate finance all around the world, only 10% goes to adaptation. And the event I mentioned in California and Chile demonstrate the fact that we're not adapting because it's not the first time that we see hurricanes and forest fires and floods and droughts happening. So we need to wake up to this new reality and do something about it. And just last December, COP28, for those not familiar with COP, this is conference of the parties, leaders from all around the world and all sectors of the economy attend to see how we're doing to tackle climate change. And it has been encouraging, I would say, because the first time we've seen actually food on the agenda, and it was an Emirati declaration on food security and resilient food systems. And this is very much relevant to Africa, the recognition of food security. There was also investment in adaptation in loss and damage. The first time we've seen money actually poured into loss and damage. So these are encouraging steps going forward, but what does it mean really to Africa? Where does Africa fit in? And since we're talking about the solutions, what are the solutions? So there are many contrasts in Africa. Nine out of the 10 most vulnerable countries are in Africa. And Africa is also the hardest hit by hunger. There are 282 million people who go hungry every day in Africa. And it's almost 40% of the world undernourished people are in Africa. And there are many other statistics in the 60% of the Africans also live in poverty. This is the negative part. But Africa is blessed with the wealth of natural and human resources. It has 30% of the mineral reserves in the world. Africa is the youngest continent in the world and has a huge capacity on renewables as well. And in terms of impacts of climate change, Africa is very hardly hit because it's been affected a lot. And according to the government on climate change, agricultural productivity decreased by 34% since 1961. And it doesn't make sense because 60% of the world's uncultivated land is in Africa. So the point I'm making here is that we need to start talking about Africa as not the continent of problems and challenges, but actually the continent of solutions. And this is how I want to to end my intervention. How do we get there in terms of solutions? I did a paper recently in aluminum and talking about transforming Africa from the continent of challenges into the continent of solutions. And what I elaborated there is the principle of rise of Africa with pride. What does rise mean? R means for Africa to reaffirm its leadership in tackling these challenges of hunger and climate change. And here I want to bring in the example of Morocco, since we're talking about the perspective of Morocco and leadership that has been played by Morocco, particularly for the issue of agriculture and adaptation. The Morocco hosted COP 22 and it set up the adaptation of African agricultural, the AAA, and it has ministerial meeting every year to voice the needs of African in terms of adaptation and to attract financing for adaptation. It also launched an initiative to deal with the sustainable development of oases and to protect the cultural aspects and the existence of oases. And it has also been investing a lot in renewable energy, including hydrogen. I stand for invest, investing in transforming the agri-food systems, investing in research, in innovation, in renewable energy. But more importantly, as I said earlier, that Africa being the youngest continent in the world, we have to invest in young people. We have to build the local capacity to be able to benefit from those natural resources in the continent. And investment also, just to give the example of Morocco, Morocco has been leading investment in renewable energy. The biggest solar panel, the solar panel station is in where it's at in Morocco, nor. And also, you will hear probably someone talking about the University of Muhammad 6 Polytechnic, who's really a model in terms of building local capacity and encouraging South-South cooperation, bringing in African students to benefit from the knowledge and share their knowledge. The third point is S, scale up, scale up investment in adaptation and resilience. Why this is important? Because Africa spends 50 billion dollars a year importing food. And yet I mentioned the potential of Africa becoming not just self-efficient, but feeding the global population as well. And my last point is E, is for Africa to embrace ownership or and shaping its future by itself. And to share really the experience and the lessons between the countries and the South-South cooperation. So just to finish, I want to leave you with three main messages. To tackle this global challenge and particularly climate change and food security, there are three takeaways that I would like you to note. So the first one is to start talking about Africa as a continent of solutions for the three points that I mentioned and the rise for Africa to rise with pride to face in these challenges and providing solutions to the world. And the second point is the importance of political will and country leadership and the example of Morocco that we've been given. Now I've been working in the the UN for 11 years and we're trying to support countries to build technical and political capacity. One thing that has always made a difference is the political will and the political commitment. Then things happen. And my third point is that if we want this transition and if we want to tackle these challenges as one global community, we live in one planet, then we need a just and inclusive transition. Transition has to be based on justice that everyone benefits from the technology, from the advancement in knowledge, that it has to be inclusive and unjust. Because also the challenges we're dealing with, they're interconnected. The world doesn't happen in isolation, climate change by itself, we can not just focus only on climate change because it's linked to food security, it's linked to health, it's linked to sustainable development. We have to think about things in a system approach and deal with synergies and pay particular attention to trade-offs, not try to resolve a problem in one side and create a problem on the other side. So I hope I didn't go beyond 10 minutes and I hope this helped and these are my three points. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Ms. Caroline Turanira, who is the country manager in Kenya for OCP Africa. Thank you very much. If you could speak for 10 minutes, Caroline. Thank you. Your Excellencies, faculty, distinguished guests, good evening. It is my pleasure to join this distinguished panel. When we talk about the African tapestry of climate, crops and culture in the context of Morocco, I think of the natural centrality of OCP in this discourse. Morocco has access to 70% of the global reserves of phosphates and OCP has the incredible responsibility as the custodian who is vertically integrated in the phosphate value chain. I know many might be wondering what is phosphorus, but phosphorus is a critical macro nutrient that is required by plants for root development. Therefore, of course, be a key anchor when it comes to agriculture and of course production. OCP therefore has a steadfast commitment to catalyzing circular growth whilst addressing challenges of small holder farmers now that we're in this agriculture space. Small holder farmers in Africa face a lot of challenges, which, of course, we're talking about limited access to information, pests and diseases, limited access to inputs, markets, weak financial resources, climate change, of course, etc., etc. So these challenges, when we are the custodian of phosphorus, we cannot be able to play a big role in the development of phosphorus when we are not addressing these challenges of small holder farmers. On this therefore, OCP leverages its expertise to customers' plant nutrition solutions, champions sustainability through water and energy efficiency and innovation through research and development to contribute to the sustainable economic development in Africa. Next, the first slide please. So this is the industrial journey that encapsulates OCP's experience in phosphorus and its derivatives. OCP started off mining and selling phosphate rock and the organization over a century evolved to the integration of the entire phosphate value chain from mining to production and commercialization. Across this journey, OCP has leveraged on partnerships through, of course, as you can see, joint ventures. Here we'll talk about jack ops engineering, IBM and others, of course, to deploy the best engineering designs and technologies to ensure that sustainable management of phosphorus at industrial and research levels is maintained. On this also, what is also very critical to note is in 2016, as OCP was actually still in its journey, OCP Africa, the subsidiary of OCP Group was created. And this was specifically to address the needs of the continent. There is no way we can address or OCP could have addressed the challenges of smallholder farmers when not dedicating subsidiaries that are physically in specific countries to address these needs. To also support this, I believe you can see that within 2017, UM6P, the Morocco University was also inaugurated to also build capacity for research that would also support OCP. So this is the journey of OCP over a century, of course, while incorporating innovation at the heart of OCP's strategy. Next. Okay, so this map shows the industrial and commercial footprint of OCP Africa. As an African country, our commitment to the African continent is naturally strong and ambitious, I must say. And of course, OCP plays a critical role of responding to the challenges of African agriculture in order to provide sustainable solutions. OCP created 12 subsidiaries that are physically present in the continent. And these subsidiaries actually also act as logistics hubs for the entire continent. Of course, in countries where we are not physically located, these subsidiaries are able to to support in the provision, of course, of supplying inputs to this market, and of course, supporting the pharmaceutical initiatives. So within these 12 subsidiaries in OCP Africa, OCP Africa has a talent pool for over 300 employees of 17 nationalities. And it is important to note that we do have many more indirect employees because these subsidiaries, of course, some have blending units, of course, which run the industrial. And of course, the ones that import, like the ones in Kenya, so of course, they support the commercial activities of supplying inputs. OCP Africa's initiatives are entirely dedicated to strengthening the socioeconomic impact of smallholder farmers, especially, of course, supporting their integration within their ecosystem. And that's why these subsidiaries were incorporated, to ensure that OCP is nearer to the smallholder farmers, and therefore, any initiatives that we are able to have in those countries are able to, of course, to run efficiently. Our ambition is to reach every African farmer with the right agronomic solution next. So we understand that the unlocking of challenges for smallholder farmers is key for agricultural development in Africa. And our offer to smallholder farmers goes beyond, of course, the supply of fertilizers. Agriculture, as we understand as OCP, is really a complex system that requires multisectorial solutions, like, of course, enhancing access to inputs, building farmer knowledge, soil health management, farm access to information, of course, usage of digital platforms, amongst many others. And that's why these key strategic objectives for OCP Africa are very important. Now, this, well, it's important I also bring out the point that OCP works to contribute to the realization of the SDGs. Once we acknowledge, of course, the holistic complementarity of the SDGs, especially in Africa, we do these through our farmer-centric initiatives to address the constraints of agriculture in Africa. So I can, I'll just highlight very briefly what those key objectives are and say what we do in that. So on the first one, we're talking about customized agronomic solutions beyond fertilizers for sustainable intensification. Here we talk about, of course, providing agronomic solutions to smallholder farmers and ensuring that there is linkage to players, to other players in the value chain. Now, this helps us to, of course, promote a holistic approach in ensuring that we're providing solutions to our farmer from end to end. On the second objective, when we talk about integrated soil health management, innovative soil mapping and related initiatives, here we talk about tailored nutrient recommendations. We cannot be able to address the situation of food insecurity without addressing the issue of our soil management. Therefore, tailored nutrient recommendations are very, very important. On the third one, we talk about digital platforms. We do have a digital platform called Udongo that has been rolled out across Africa. Now, this platform, of course, involves, of course, having an ecosystem of smallholder farmers on the eat who interact with value chain players just at the click of a button. Now, we cannot talk about sustainability and agriculture when we are not incorporating, of course, new technologies. And therefore, that's why digital platforms are very critical to OCP. The other objective that is critical to OCP, of course, is the bottom-up approach to enhancing farmer-centered intimacy. Here we are talking about, of course, relying on the indigenous knowledge that the smallholder farmers have in Africa and developing solutions with them so that developing solutions while we are involving them in the process. Another key objective that is very important also is the environment and climate smart agriculture. On this here, we're talking about developing new approaches. What are we talking about? We're talking about ecosystem recovery. We're talking about enhancing soil carbon levels. We're talking about carbon sequestration. So all these, of course, towards the climate smart agriculture. Now, we can talk about all these objectives, not talking about our soil integrated health management projects that we run across Africa. So we have more than 20 research and development projects that are running in 16 countries within Sub-Saharan Africa. And this one, I'd like to highlight that the reason we're running these programs is actually to build capacity of African researchers. We can only build the capacity within the continent. So if we're able to build the capacity of the researchers, then they can be able to add value onto the solutions that are required for the continent. Next, as an OCP, we appreciate the power of partnerships and the bulk of our efforts within OCP are collaborative. We have a network of more than 50 partners who are generally from, I'll talk about extension, technology, manufacturing, government agencies, universities and research institutions, and previous players too, who make for a healthy ecosystem of partners. So we continuously build this ecosystem with partners with varying expertise and experience in order to achieve a thriving food system in Africa. We cannot do this without, of course, partnership. So I'll end my presentation here. So next, I'll hand over to my colleague. Thank you. Thank you very much, Caroline. That's an incredibly ambitious project and gives us quite a lot to talk about. Our next speaker complements our, the talk you just heard very well. Our speaker is Dr. Donald Madukwe, who comes to us from Nigeria. He is the head of Agronomy at OCP Africa in Nigeria. Thank you very much, Donald. Thank you very much, the moderator. And thank you, the organizers of this forum. I think these are the type of discussions we should be having this time around because we really need to build a sustainable food system for Africa. I would not take much time but intensify on what my colleague Arimi said. And I would like to take you through some of the pharmacentric projects OCP Africa has been doing in Africa to support rural farmers build capacity of some local research institutions such that we can have a more sustainable process of producing and also having hunger in Africa. So first of all, in 2016 when OCP Africa was created, what we did first was to understand the challenges within the smallholder system, farming system. And we understood a lot of problems limiting their efforts to produce more food. So we created some intervention programs which are centered around this farmers. First of all, was the school lab initiative. Understanding the importance of soil. Maintaining good health of the soil is key to producing more food. So we started the school lab initiative which as the name implies is teaching and the laboratory activities in terms of soil testing institute and recommendations that are tailored to farmers field in rural areas. So we're not focusing on commercial farms, we're focusing on the smallholder farmers with at least 0.2 hectares to one hectare. These farmers oftentimes use the fertilizers wrongly. They know the name fertilizer, they actually don't know what MPK is in the fertilizer and why and when they are required. So the school labs tends to teach them good agronomic practices, teach them the essence of soil testing and also recommending appropriate fertilizers. And the soil testing services was actually provided free of service so that everybody could participate and understand what the need for this is. Beyond this, we also found out some key challenges which include education. Yes, they have been farming for a long time. They have some traditional knowledge. However, the linkage between the value chain, what happens at what time, and not clearly planned out. So they do their practices as traditional activities. Most farmers who have access to more land could not even make living for me because it's just a traditional practice. So what OCP did was to create the Agri Booster project which created an ecosystem within the farmer, bringing together financiers, bringing together aggregators, off-dakers of the produce, just creating the markets within them because most times they have the challenge of selling what they produce and at the end they are discouraged of producing more. So we created markets within them. They sell at a competitive market price and we also brought around them banks who can offer them loans to get imputes. When I say impute, I mean quality imputes, okay, hybrid seeds, quality fertilizers, good agrochemicals and then and around this we have trainers who train them how to use these quality imputes and the right time we had to get them and what quantities to use for these imputes. That is what the Agri Booster was doing. We piloted this in Nigeria and today we are running this across all the subsidiaries in Africa. So it is a program that has sent over 580,000 farmers through and they are embracing a lot more of this program. Moving from that, the most challenge of rural farmers in Africa is logistics. When I say logistics, I mean distribution of farm imputes was actually a very difficult thing to do. So some farmers are in core agrarian regions and they do a lot of agricultural activities but they lack access to imputes, not even the quality impute, they lack access to any form of imputes in those areas. So what we did was to create a hub. We called a farmer house around these farmers. The hub was to facilitate the aggregation of imputes early before the farming season so that they could have access to these imputes and have assurance of quality imputes within them and the communities. So creating this also we found out that yes, because we're piloting in Nigeria as wide as it is, there are communities that are further away from these hubs and so we need to create the agri promoters. The agri promoters have knowledge of agriculture. They are young graduates and all they do is act as extension agents for the farmers, train them as well as well as extend these farm imputes to them in communities maybe 20, 30 kilometers away from the hub. So these farmers have access to imputes and they have the agri promoters. The agri promoters are actually trained as entrepreneurs so they make us living from their work daily and they are happy doing what they're doing with the farmers and the farmers get to learn new technologies every day. Beyond this, my colleague mentioned about soil health, soil mapping activities because we actually want to understand the soils of Africa so that we can provide tailored solutions. So we set out to map over 100 formulas by 2030. So far we have 44 formulas, specialty formulas. When I say specialty formulas, we mean fertilizer formulas that are inclusive of micronutrients and not just the macronutrients and these are based on soil tests and other factors like yield indices. So we've also gone ahead to map over 50 million hectares across 10 countries in Africa and we are continuing. We are hoping that we reach more countries by 2030 as well. All these we do through collaboration because at the heart of these achievements we have collaborations, meaningful collaborations with institutions, local institutions, international institutions, donors and also ministries of agriculture in each of the countries we are present in. She mentioned of Udongo. Udongo is also a digital, it's both up and a web-based application that enables the farmer to interact with extension agents, imputes, dealers, as well as market place. So on this app, the farmers can reach out. They can find resources on how to plant particular crops. They can find where they can get imputes, okay, beyond the farmer hubs. If they don't have any present, some can actually locate one you can place order and you can get some imputes delivered in good time. And beyond this also we are advancing the Udongo to have some presence like training of extension agents where they can take some short courses, okay, just to revalidate their expertise to be able to solve the farmers very well. And we are looking at some offline trainings. Okay, beyond what we're doing closely, OCP is vigorously collaborating with institutions like Rotam State Research here in the UK, we have the Greenfield University, if you saw the partners map showed earlier. So what we're doing is to deliver tailored technologies to African farmers. So in this partnership, we try to incorporate the local knowledge, not just to dump foreign innovations to them. We try to look at what the farmers are used to, what they can quickly adapt to. Otherwise, when you struggle to bring age long research to them, they dump it if it is difficult to adapt in the first year. But when you try to improve on what they know already, what they do, like the director also has said, it is easy for them to adapt. And so this is the approach we use in OCP Africa to reach out to farmers by extended minister. I'll just show some pictures just to Bortre's partnership, building capacities of local market lives and manufacturers in different African countries. We provide them trainings to understand the importance of incorporating micronutrients into fertilizer production, not just for soil health, but also for carbon-hidden hunger in humans. So all this will dump over the years to support a sustainable food system for Africa. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Dr. Mengester Paile, who is the regional director for the World Pool Program in Southern Africa, came to us from Johannesburg. Thank you very much, Dr. Mengester. Thank you very much. And the colleagues and ambassadors, diplomats, students, professors, good evening to you. I would like to start by thanking us in the Moroccan embassy for giving us these opportunities that we come here and talk to each other. I want to start with a very brief personal journey of my own. You all remember 1984 in Ethiopia, we have that terrible family. And I was a physics student in a university and we lost our cows. We lost our resources. And since then I have, you know, at that time I said, what can I do to fight this, I mean, this drought and so on. So in 1989, I came here to the UK and I did my PhD in meteorology in Reading University. Then I went back. I joined WFP and I have been with WFP for 25 years. So climate, drought, I mean, all are interlinked. Now, colleagues have explained about small holder farmers. Now, as a regional director, I covered 12 countries of the SADAC. And when I took the position, I said, what are the things that I should do to help the countries? As Professor Habib said, you need to understand the local challenge. So I traveled to the 12 countries and I met with more than 15 ministers and I met most of the presidents of those region. And essentially to consult and listen to what they see is a key problem of food security. We agreed on four areas and I will give you those four areas. Number one, Africa is dependent on small holder farmers, rainfield agriculture and mostly women. That is, except to a couple of countries, every country that you have in Africa, it is the women using traditional tools trying to produce. Now, with the population growth, with urbanization, those women are not going to produce enough food for the continent. Even if there is no climate change, even if there was no COVID, that means of production is not sustainable. It cannot feed the continent. Therefore, agriculture must be transformed. How? That is where colleagues are discussing. That's problem number one. Problem number two is an employment. Every president you talk to, every minister you talk to, unemployment, especially for the youth. So on one hand, you cannot produce enough food and on the other hand, you have huge unemployment. Now, the third element is interlinked. The young people are not interested to work in agriculture and I cannot blame them in the traditional agriculture. And I was discussing with the president of Zimbabwe and we were discussing this issue and I told him, Mr. President, imagine a young person today on one hand will be holding a mobile phone and on the other hand holding a hoe. It doesn't go together. So agriculture must be transformed so that it can attract the young people. The fourth element is evidence and data. Most governments are planning in different ways. There is no comprehensive data that each government, each ministry can use. Despite the technologies of this world today, with the satellite data that we have, you can look at every household or every house and so on. It's not even expensive, but it is not there. So this is something that needs to be interlinked. So these are the things that can transform the continent, transform agriculture, make it attractive to young people. And what I have heard from colleagues are the right steps and we hope we continue. Now, in the title it says, the solutions and what is the role of Africa. I was attending the COP28 and I was interviewed by VOA and they said, yeah, for what you are representing the SADAC region and what are you taking from this COP28. And my answer was, no, we actually came to offer the world a solution, a solution that the world needs to take seriously. And those two are, the Congo basin is in Africa. The Congo basin is one of the most efficient carbon sinks in the world. Now, we are destroying it. The communities that are living there because they don't have food security should assure deforestation is happening. Now, instead of thinking of planting trees, we need to start protecting those, but those people must be paid or must be compensated so that they can keep the forests for us and for the world. So that is what Africa offers to the world because if we don't, we are going to lose them. A second offer is in the entire world, where do you see lions, elephants, giraffes going around biodiversity that is in Africa? Now, a number of you must have seen the lion king. Well, the lion king will not be there if we don't support those communities and help them to transform their livelihoods. So we need to think of alternate livelihoods, but Africa has, there is no other continent that has this opportunity, this biodiversity, but we are, and yet these people are not producing. Now, it's good to hear about enhancing production, where smallholder farmers and then so forth. A smallholder farmer today would produce about two metric tons per hectare. Now, what they do is in order to have more production, then they burn the land or expand their agriculture, which is a challenge itself. Now, if we increase the productivity, which you could easily have 10 metric tons per hectare, then you don't need to plow that land. You don't need to destroy that forest. Now, last, I would like to conclude by talking about energy. If you go to a rural village, and I have traveled around in the continent, you go to a village and you see no energy and you see no water. If there is no energy and if there is no water, you have no hope of transformation. So, this is where we come with green energy putting there. So, in those villages, we don't even talk about energy transition. We talk about in COP, we talk just energy transition. Well, there, there is no energy. So, it is transition from no energy to green energy. And Morocco is doing a great work on green energy and you are working with youth. Now, these are things that we could, we could put. As WFP, we have an example we call it rapid rural transformation, and we can share with you. We have four villages in Madagascar, in the worst affected villages. We just took a solar panel and we dug water. We have water. We have digital school. And from that, entrepreneurship starts. And those villages, they would never be hungry again. They would never be hungry again. Those rural women, rural young people, they do work. They want to change, but they are not getting the opportunities. So, I stop here, but I would be happy to continue this discussion, especially with young students that are around here. And I would be happy to share with you our addresses so that we can continue this discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let's go straight on to our last speaker, who is our very own Dr. Annabel De Fries from SOS, who is a Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Development here in our own Development Studies Department. Thanks very much, Annabel. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. I'm really delighted to be here at this really wonderful event, which seems to bring together the essence of life really. It's the environment, food and culture, specifically music, which we'll hear later. And I hope to be able to kind of synthesize some of the words and really interesting speakers that we've had this evening, because really all we're talking about is food security and food systems. And this idea of conceptualizing food security within a food systems framework has been acknowledged at very high levels recently, particularly the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021, which is just one example which brought together stakeholders with the aim of delivering progress on all the 17 SDGs. And it was done through a food systems approach, which has seemed to be interconnecting food systems to global challenges such as hunger, climate change, poverty and inequality. And this term food systems sort of invites us to think about the broader set of valued outcomes such as nutrition, health, livelihoods and planetary health and to think about the broad factors which influence these outcomes and where there might be synergies and where there might be trade-offs. Key to understanding the complexity of food security is that food security is not just about having enough food to eat. It's this combination of being able to afford nutritious food consistently and having the functioning supporting systems such as water as we've heard, but also good sanitation and good health systems because these are the things that allow people to eat and utilize the food so that they're not sick and lose the nutrients that there have been so hardly fought to achieve. Whilst the majority of the population of Barocco, which is where we're focusing on today, is lucky enough not to experience high levels of food insecurity. Key problems such as obesity in adults is rising as it is across the whole of the continent. Currently just over 26% of the adult population are obese and over 50% of adults are overweight. So we have a thing that's turning on its head a little bit here. We have got this idea of a nutrition transition which brings together new challenges and it's going to carry on like this as Africa urbanizes becomes wealthier because as that happens people will be able to access more food but it's the type of food that we need to be careful that people are actually eating and this can cause non-communical diseases like diabetes and hypertension and heart disease. And whilst I believe Morocco has made incredible strides in reducing stunting and micronutrient deficiency, all three forms of malnutrition continue to exist. As we've heard this evening, Morocco has been identified as having great potential not only producing sufficient food for its population but also driving food security throughout the whole of the continent and particularly through its phosphate resources. However, it's important to remember that whilst developing these capacities in one area we can understand and ensure that particularly something like phosphate mining which is water and energy quite auto-intenergy intensive. The use of phosphate fertilizers can also leech into water bodies and damage ecosystems further impacting food security. So this is a clear example of why we need to think more broadly about how we intervene. So one of the key things about a food system is that it's not the product of its parts it's the interaction of its parts and it's really important that we ensure that one part actions in one part of the system have beneficial outcomes in the other for people and for planet. And one of the key factors here is this relationship between those parts and I think hopefully although you've all spoken very very clearly about so many different parts it's so hard to connect those parts and when you're studying you know we are so used to being in institutions which kind of focus on specialities we focus on our own subject it can be really difficult to understand those relationships and understanding those relationships is really key because in seeking to understand the whole system we need to understand different perspectives and in order to be able to do that we need to be able to consider the boundaries that we are the boundaries of our thinking. These are all connected and they're connected to value judgments because the values we hold direct those sorry direct the drawing of boundaries around the knowledge that we believe is relevant what's included and what's excluded in our analysis of the system so understanding these were interrelationships the perspectives and the boundaries within the system is a preoccupation of systems thinkers I'm going to say that in the food system the activities that people do and what they get from the food system is intricate sorry intricately linked to systems of relations and this is the relationship that people have with food what they grow and we all have a relationship with food think about culture where we're from our family it's it's how we see ourselves and how we see the food that we eat that caught that kind of is related to our identity but food systems are often determined by this system wider systems of relations that determine how people grow food and what they choose to eat and how they eat it and of course who gets to eat what and do what and in what way in my own research many years ago in Mexico into the relationship between cultivation and the milpedal farmers I found it wasn't just about growing food it's the cultivation and the maintenance of that relationship between farmers their land nature their history and their status and I think this is really important as you were talking about this connection with the farmers and understanding local knowledge because it's not our knowledge we don't understand how people perceive their own cultural agricultural systems so these social and cultural institutions do play an integral role in defining the food system and it's also quite evident when we look at how gender relations determine women's access to land and inputs as well as the benefits that women can derive whether as producers or as consumers and whilst there is quite a lot of variation across Africa in terms of female labor the majority averages around the average is around 40 percent so women significantly contribute to Africa's agriculture and rural enterprises but they also do so in doing so they fuel local and global economies and they play a key role in food security at the household level both preparing growing food preparing food and caring for their family's health but quite often this prevailing patriarchal systems which limit women's access to inputs and land such as technology and finances we've heard here can really have a big impact on the food security of an area and a region and so without establishing equitable relations women and children will continue to be most affected by the shocks and stresses that occur in the food system and this could be as a result of climate change or global food price hikes therefore I think it's really important that we need to make an effort to understand each other's perspectives in order to do this we need to identify the actors in the system we need to work out how they relate to each other what elements of the system affects them and their ability to act and derive benefit from the food system and finally we need to understand and quantify the impact of those relations on each other and those outside the system essentially we need to kind of map the system one excellent example of systems thinking is work being done by researchers by CGIAR and they've done incredible work in mapping the interrelationships between climate hazard agriculture and gender inequality and they've created a map of hot spots where they look at national and subnational levels measuring projected climate risk such as drought and extreme weather events women's participation in agriculture such as the share of women's labor and exposure and what we mean by exposure is their exposure to risk so analyzing social institutions such as restricted civil liberties discriminatory discriminatory about family code prevalence of gender-based violence and by doing this it's possible to get a better picture of the intersecting factors that affect food security this type of understanding of the system interrelationships boundaries and perspectives is vital to ensure that climate smart approaches are accompanied by institutional change another way of strengthening this approach is to become better systems thinkers and we definitely need training to do this currently our education and research institutions national and multilateral governance systems often work within the scope of their expertise and this is really valuable we really need expertise but when we're working in silos we can't understand how those interrelationships work so a program called interdisciplinary food systems teaching and learning if style has been trying to change this i'm part of this program as so as is a partner and what we do is we work across universities government departments and food industry actors the program provides training and systems thinking and a space for people to work on systems problems together the program is quite a unique experience and so far we've had 200 participants attending in Ghana Indonesia Uganda Vanuatu Fiji and what this does is it brings together ministries sector workers food retailers small enterprises with students and what you have there is you have a multi sectoral multi multi interdisciplinary in addition to that we have young professionals speaking and interacting with people at the top of their game CEOs new new entrepreneurs we have this sort of synthesis of knowledge and experience and we also run a year-long program in the UK which brings together master students from so as oxford warwick and the royal veterinary college school of hygiene and tropical medicine and so far we've had over 2000 students come through the through this program we also deal with food systems problems and that is the crux of the business that we're in and what we do is we get students to do field visits we do field visits with NGOs and charities and the government and we get those people to set the students problems we get them to tell our students what they need to work on and here you've got this connection between being a student and the real world which is really vital if we're going to solve some of the really complex problems that we see in the food system collectively we map the system bringing together these different perspectives this opportunity to interact and problem solve with individuals from different disciplines and sectors is key we'll have doctoral students and academics from environmental sciences from crop sciences anthropology economics politics working with NGOs and food sector professionals this sharing of perspectives and transgressing of boundaries requires some effort it's really difficult because we don't define things in the same way but that's the key we need to understand how these different organizations and people define the problem what it does do is it facilitates a holistic understanding of the food system which hopefully has the potential to bring benefits to those seeking to intervene to achieve all these these solutions to transform our food system to a sustainable and just one thank you thank you very much we've had an incredibly stimulating set of papers we have about 20 or 25 minutes for discussion I will take perhaps a collection of questions but before I do so and while people gather they thought perhaps I can just highlight one or two things that some of our speakers have said so to a greater or lesser extent all of the talks reminded me of a pair of articles that the economist ran the journal the magazine the economist ran in 2000 and ran the set of articles side by side the one was called Africa the hopeful continent and the other one was called Africa the hopeless continent and it started with the first article was the hopeless continent started with the hopeless continent and so central to that article the one on the hopeless article on the hopeless continent central to that article was issues of food security had very much emphasized the continent's history of food insecurity and hunger the article on the hopeful continent emphasized democratization and each of these each of each of our presenters have spoken about democratization to some a great extent and and in that I include the sort of issues of gender equality and we've heard a number almost each of our each of each of our speakers spoke about the fact that that women are primary agricultural producers and that issues of gender equality clearly have to be central to issues of food security almost all of us because I've mentioned small-holder agriculture I'm spoken about the importance of small-holder agriculture if I can give a little sort of history lesson from my own part of the world Southern Africa I think one thing for the African continent as a whole we can certainly the main point to make about small-holder production is how resilient it is small-holder agriculture has survived against the odds against the odds of agribusiness and commercial agriculture and I think that's something that's worth saying and with noting in Southern Africa small-holder agriculture was certainly during the colonial period 19th century first part of the most of the 20th century small-holder agriculture was absolutely decimated African agriculture was decimated black black black peasant production effectively decimated that's the case in Southern Africa but also the case in in Zimbabwe and it's also true for parts of East Africa certainly the case in Kenya and what secured the success of big agriculture big business commercial agriculture I mean in these settler colonies that I've mentioned of course is speaking about white agriculture what secured the success of those industries was the intervention of the state kind of massive state intervention the big tobacco farmers of Zimbabwe the biggest farmers of South Africa have all benefited massively from state intervention in instances where states were less supportive of agriculture small-holder of settler agriculture small-holder agriculture survived the cotton farmers of Malawi for example completely destroyed settler agriculture small-holder agriculture in Malawi during the colonial period so that is something that I think as we're thinking about exact you're pretty likely the role of the state how is the state honest to we've heard about the sort of technical challenges of reduction cost rates and so forth but I don't think any of that can really be so realized their potential without the discussion of the state and what the state brings to smaller small-holder agriculture in agriculture in general those are just a few of my kind of random thoughts so I'll open the floor to questions and now perhaps I'll take two or three and allow us because to address them in common yes please if you don't mind so just introducing yourself yes please thank you the name is Ali Bahajub and I would like to ask a question of Dr. Zittuni if I may you mentioned that 31 percent of the food production is actually decreasing in Africa since 1960 if I remember rightly but that's not actually attributed just to climate change it's attributed to several other factors and I also remember just just as an example the cocoa prices for instance are not actually fixed in Africa they are fixed somewhere else in London in Chicago so that's just one question and the other if I may Dr. Donald you mentioned about the farmers not being able to distribute their produce isn't the government, the Nigerian government helping out creating for instance cooperatives so they could actually put their products together and then they will be able to distribute them to a governmental agency and also is OCP expanding in Africa apart from the the 12 subsidiaries that were mentioned today thank you thank you very much I'll take another one of one of two questions please yeah hi guys um my name is El Kavir Lamarani um I had a question so before so I have a question for uh Dr. Hailey Hailey I'm sorry if I mispronounced it so before you spoke I had this issue in my head which is uh we need to make agriculture more sustainable which might come at a cost the financial cost but when you spoke you introduced another issue which is unemployment and you know I think of these countries where they have a lot of people doing hand labor and picking things by their hands and so there's a double need for these things because we need first of all a sustainable agriculture but then on the second hand we need a more adapted agriculture for a larger population so my question is how do you convince a head of state or a government to not only pay more but also suffer in the beginning a dip in employment because you're gonna scale up by bringing more machines and stuff so yeah my question is basically how do you make them pay more and have less employed people we'll take about one last question which was over there just back it um very thought provoked um my name is Jonathan Tudor I'm a climate technology investor an agriculture precision agriculture is one of our big themes and I was just wondering what the region would have to do to leapfrog North America and Europe with the use of natural biologics microbial coatings for seeds for example which displays I know some of the phosphates but also then displays the emissions associated with fertilised production but encourage greater soil health and I just wondered what you collectively could do to adopt those fast and the rest of the world I'll allow our speakers to respond to those questions perhaps I'm starting the first question thank you thank you for your question on the decline of food productivity in in Africa so I've given that example since 1961 34 degrees and you're right I think one of the key messages to take from everything you've heard so far is that food systems are complex and complicated and that decrease is true in reality it's not only due to the impact of climate change there are other factors linked to that including you know access to technology access to finance and I think based on that I was referring to that experience from 1961 and now we've seen the trend of the impact of climate change by diversity loss on food product productivity not just in Africa but around the world last year even in Europe we've seen so many crops affected by drought in early spring olives for instance you know olive trees in in Spain have been affected at that stage and then later on in the summer we've seen another heat wave in Europe that affected that and as a result the harvest was affected and the prices of olive oil have gone up as well so you're right and this is the key messages from here is the interconnectivity of these factors there are many factors into playing of the agri-food system that are complex and complicated and related to so many factors environmental social and also economical okay um thank you very much for your question um about what the government is doing to a distribution or aggregation of produce yes the government is actually working in various countries however the efforts of the government alone is not enough the private sector need to play a key role to support um what the government is doing basically the government creates um the environment for all the key players to come and support agriculture for efficiency there is really need for companies like ocp Africa to provide support especially in the aggregation of produce in the sense that there are a lot of challenges um resulting to loss of food after harvest most of the losses are post-harvest losses and time is a critical factor if you wait for government probably we don't have as much food as we have because the government system doesn't really work as fast as the private sector does so there is need to collaborate support what the government is doing to reach a faster end that is number one number two um is ocp expanding beyond the 12 countries the answer is yes ocp is actually trying to reach us to other countries for example we have um Tanzania trying to extend support to drc to borundi we have Kenya supporting Uganda we have Nigeria supporting uh Niger supporting um togo and other countries within surrounding and there are concerted efforts to make sure that there are there will have physical presence in some of these countries especially in central Africa so the activities that are ongoing um for the uh third question about um smart agriculture right what are you talking about so um at the heart of what we do as ocp Africa is innovation is research and development um companies like yours we see collaboration to make sure that we bring um value to what we add yes we're talking about phosphorus we're talking about soil we're talking about um efficiency of our nutrients in soil so as to feed the crops so there is need also beyond um adding fertilizers we need to fortify the um organic matter of the soil so as to create efficiency for the use of this nutrient yes there are a lot of activities going not to say it's enough we can stop collaborating we cannot um uh stop sharing knowledge and expertise and so yes we invite you if you have proposals let us discuss them and see what we can do together thank you okay well thank you and for that question let me take the opportunity this opportunity actually to say uh to highlight um professor Habib talked about covid and and how the the vaccines were not reaching people well there is something that the region has learned from covid and ukraine and so on is that it cannot depend on external supply so every country that you talk now in the saddock region they want to produce their own food and i give you example boswana and angola are very rich in terms of funds and every food that they have in their supermarket was coming from south africa but when covid came south africa blocked and there was no food going to angola or no food going to boswana now that triggered those governments to do whatever it takes to actually produce that's one area where governments are working together to find a solution the second is young people are changing governments so if they are unemployed and they are idle they are changing those governments therefore governments want to stay in power and therefore they must create a mechanism to employ and and and and so so because of the covid because of even ukraine and now the red sea um governments are wanting to produce at the same time they want to stay in power therefore they must help the young people to be employed so it's a good time for all of us to work together and use this uh to to move forward but what he said it indeed governments are ready to do what it takes because of their their survival is dependent also on what they do thank you okay um just i've probably just got a couple of comments um that probably interconnect um this idea of employment and also of kind of smart technologies um i think um understanding how first of all with employment there are there is work being done in africa particularly from governments that run youth agricultural programs um and i've had words with in conversations with people in uganda who um are entrepreneurs and are encouraging uh the the agricultural sector to employ youth and to make it exciting and i think a lot of the time this is where smart agriculture and we're talking about yet you're talking about biofure purification um but also this like this connection between technology and agriculture on the one hand we can't forget the farmers that work subsistence subsistently and indeed that that has been persistent no matter how hard it is people want to work on their own farms actually that it's really important and i think that goes back to some of the you know a lot of work being done on this this relationship between farmers and the land is a really intricate relationship but i think that that this idea of um employment and um attracting young people into the the farming business as young enter entrepreneurs i think there's a lot of scope there and certainly um i've seen it in uganda with young farmers wanting to become what sorry young students wanting to become farmers and be entrepreneurs they see it as an entrepreneurial thing rather than something that they go off into the rural areas and and do in isolation so perhaps there's some synergies there thank you thank you very much i'm i'm going to have to apologize to um people who have questions um i've seen a few hands and i'm really really sorry but i can't take that but we are running quite far over time so i'm going to double the session to a close um because again quickly although our second panel offers a unique conversation between Dr. Zena Bidawi and Dr. Ahmed Badi on building bridges of understanding Morocco's unique interfaith and multi multicultural dialogue their discussion promises to enlighten us on the power of dialogue and understanding and fostering peace and unity so please welcome me that join me in welcoming the doctors it's very good to see uh so many of you attending this event that's been organized jointly by us here at SOAS and the embassy of Morocco so i am in a very privileged position of having one of the islamic world's great thinkers sharing this platform with me Dr. Ahmed Abadi is somebody i had heard of for some time and i was really delighted to at last meet him in person he has a real phd unlike me mine is just honorary you see i'm very honest um in islamic studies and um he has been um engaged in post-doctoral studies at the Sorbonne university he's had a stint um as an adjunct professor at the university of chicago and he's also um taught at seance po in paris as an adjunct professor there also and he's director general of the um mohammadan league of religious scholars and he's a professor at the Mohammed VI university in um morocco you describe yourself as a passionate peace seeker and so much of his work has been dedicated just to that and also you like playing chess i understand you like playing it but are you any good at it that's what i want to know and if you are then i'd like some tips and um and you know Dr. Ahmed Abadi in this session is going to bring his own huge wealth of knowledge and scholarship to our conversation and he comes from the city of fez in um in morocco and of course that has been a real center of enlightenment and um scholarship and research since the eighth eight hundreds i think when a university was established there so um it must be something in the water of fez that it has managed to maintain the strong reputation and tradition for so many centuries but um dr abadi of course is also a representative in a sense of the great country of morocco which of course has a mediterranean as well as an atlantic coast a people of just under 40 million who of course have a triple heritage really arab african amazigh actually four and you would say also some european influences because of that mediterranean coast and that whole you know melange it's a wonderful mix that has really made morocco the great country it is today and as somebody who has really enjoyed traveling around the country and examining so many of its historical sites from the volubilis which is built you know by by the um morocans when the um romans were influencing that part of the continent right down to all the wonderful you know kutubi and mosques and and and all the rest of it it's really quite overwhelming it's a wonderful country to see every city um really just um you know seeps with great history and um dr abadi you are somebody who um takes your citizenship of the world very very seriously as well as the fact that you are of course practiced in in matters of faith and again morocco has a great tradition to draw on because you've had for many many centuries a jewish community of course predominantly muslim country and um you have brought that together in the work that you do by trying to promote you know a dialogue of culture between people who are not necessarily um engaged in conflict as a result of their religion but where religion may be an you know exacerbating factor or at least a contributory factor but what i'd like to do with you and i'd also like to invite converse comments from the floor um is to just say adam habib said at the outset that we all face global challenges and they have to be solved um by the involvement of the global south and and moroccos very well placed as i said to do that so it just outlined for us perhaps not dwelling on the environment so much because we've had a very substantial panel on matters of climate change um but to to look beyond that and to just perhaps sum up for us briefly what you see is the you know some of the great global challenges so just start with one and then tell us how you feel morocco perhaps can help solve these problems thank you thank you dr zeynab and i would like first to express how honored i feel tonight to be among you to tackle those issues uh that i qualify as being burning issues of our time because at the end of the day we're on a little tiny pale blue lot suspended in a sand beam this is what earth is and we're so ephemeral but we tend to forget it we are a very noisy species and we are very egoistic egocentric even and we miss our lives because this is the capital capital life those breads and if we do not learn how to transcend and how to look at ourselves and to our planets in a global way we would then keep on missing it for the rest of the days weeks months years decades and centuries that's our passing on and would be just dwelling in in our places where is our ancestors have spent so much so much sweat so much blood so much tears to bring us where we are today um we are suffering from many problems zeynab and dear esteemed audience but the way we are looking at those problems the drives that are driving us to tackle those problems because some of us have grown up to be just like walters i see a problem then it's a an opportunity for me to make money it's an opportunity opportunity for me to grow my business i do not go beyond this deeper to my chakra and draw from love for life and for the rest of my brothers and sisters and even my brothers and sisters to come to not call them out of pitery my daughters and sons brothers and sisters and to see how waste which is one of the most burning issues waste while wasting too much opportunities or wasting too much time and just as an example each year around the planet we discuss over 80 million teases but are those teases synchronized or are they just you know loads of ideas and paper that's wasted what problem could stand in front of 80 million person years of cogitations if it was engineered if it was algorithmized and if it was channeled towards our big problems waste of water waste of assets waste of opportunities name it because the drives are not well enough i was advised by one of my dearest elders once Ahmed never be friend with someone whose mind is male always be friend with someone whose mind is female i said why is that so said because those whose minds are male are always looking to fertilize other minds they cannot get pregnant with a new idea and they cannot give birth to a new idea yeah and this is our case at the end we are tending to have male brains and minds we cannot get pregnant with new ideas not give birth to new ideas we like that i think yes we like that very much that women are the originators of of life of life creativity yeah well yeah we'll go with that let's let's let's think let's think of the possibilities if those teases were synchronized how many problems we can sort and we can solve if the drives are the right ones so you're saying that there are 18 million 80 what 80 yes million phd theses being written yes globally yes and that the that they're duplicating material they're not synchronized they're not working called they're not to solve the big idea even in the same universities they are not and because we don't have a sense of what are the priorities look let me just enumerate some of the most burning problems of our era one environment who can debate this who can not recognize that this is a burning problem to the titans war imagine a nuclear-headed rocket hitting the bottom of the pacific and magma coming out game over that's when you say the titans war you mean Russia the US China the big guys the big guy yeah guys three ways or before you go on to all of them because you know we're running to catch up here hang on you know we've gone through the titans war let's stop with the time the titans war for a moment so yours what is the point you want to make about the titans war the us russia china these superpowers do you feel that a lot of the conflicts in the world are either that they're engaged in them like we're seeing in Ukraine with with Russia or they are present somehow using proxies all over the world and if that is the case which a lot of people think it is what is it that can be done then what can we do because you can't just give a council of despair can you you must try and give us some ideas as to how people like you or countries like morocco are positioned perhaps to try to engage in some kind of activity i'd like to quote here a matt loser king who once said let's live as brothers and sisters otherwise all of us are going to die as fools and this is the case when we do not have this have this holistic image of our reality when our thoughts are so refractioned and we do not live within our minds and psyches and emotions in the real world we happen even to not know what is the real world we're living in imaginariums as thomas hopes once said and those imaginariums were trying to impose them upon the rest of us and it my way or the highway we need to highlight the fact that now it is almost the apocalypse if we don't go back to reason if we do not manage a way to talk to each other to sit and to live as a unique family uh uh and there is in south africa this ubuntu uh matter which is a very beautiful matter how many of you know what is ubuntu yeah could you root please explain what is ubuntu yes please i exist because of you or something like that i am because we are i am because we are and this is so beautiful we need to go back deeper than just material interests to see what the future would like if we managed the way to have female minds and brains and psyches and managed a way to dream to have marvel's ideas like peter pan that would allow us to fly once again in neverland so okay so that's the titans war and that's the way you feel that to try and promote a culture of peace so you talked about waste yes and uh we touched the importance of the environment the titans war so give us another challenge them addiction addiction well i've grown up to be a very addicted species like addiction to what social media drugs everything all my goodness to voyeurism to digital matters to food to entertainment to sugar yes so we are an addicted species because we've lost the capacity to say the magic word which is no just two letters no no how to relearn again how to say no and here comes the role of religions because religions are not just operating the discernment between good and bad but also elevating the will to say yes to good things and no no to bad things and uh if we work it and sort it together we would reach a level where this capacity to say no is not sold anymore because if you go to a desintoxication center you need to pay tons of money just to be able again to say no to alcohol or to drugs or to food or to anything so we need to have it for free again and to reteach ourselves how to and this lays on the facts to reconsider the facts that were not unidimensional humans we are not unidimensional we are having a belt on strong cosmological dimension existential which is not addressed as it should who am i where am i what is life what is death we're afraid even to operate thoughts about what is death what is success what is failure we don't have enough conceptualizations of those dimensions two we don't know the emotions that we host within us bernie brown the author of dare to lead and atlas of the heart has spotted one of four emotions and we need to be friends with those emotions otherwise they would get to us three intellectually what are those four emotions do you want to enumerate 104 oh no no we haven't got time for that sorry io number one there was a broad categories and the buddhists have have discerned 108 agonies of the soul just the agonies of the soul 108 but we are so ignorant about who we are and this noise within is what pushes us to use substances and drugs and and become addicts because we are fleeing from ourselves all the time we cannot manage to live within and we just escape towards all those matters with enumerations so you're putting a lot of emphasis on the individual here individual responsibility and you said that we must be taught to say no how do we get to say no to the bad things and yes to the good then just if you allow me to finish the nine dimensions of us so one existential two emotional three intellectual we do not teach our children how to observe how to compare how to triangulate how to anticipate how to decide how we do not teach those capacities in a clear and accessible way through gamification and so on and so forth for society it has become a leviathan we don't know this leviathan and we're so scared to live within it because we feel persecuted we are so afraid from society because we do not know what it is and nobody is telling us what is if i want to go to social sciences it is too intricate too complicated and nobody is bringing me accessibility clarity and beauty to get acquainted with this being which is society i'm living in and five we have the international dimension we don't know what it is universe we don't know it psychometricity we don't know it memory it is a fragmented memory and it is an ill memory with narratives that are not true with a lot of villages and vindictiveness and last but not least the nucleus of all those electrodes it is so beautiful to imagine it this way when you have the dream in the center and all the other electrodes are rotating around it this capacity to be able to dream again and bear to dream this we have lost we need to elevate it once again and once we start looking at ourselves as multi dimensional we would deal with ourselves in a different way and then our educational systems would follow they would change because they would realize how scattering we were when looking at humans as just bodies and intellects and pushing in oblivion all the other dimensions okay so you've told us what we ought to do but do you have any tips on how we might do this grand project and you're saying that we as parents are failing to instill the right values in our children or and there are societal pressures and societies to blame as well wouldn't like to look at us as failure no the majority of us have never even had the time to think about it and once we realize we're a very daring species just go for it and this was the case I dared once to go to the minister of education in my country in Morocco and spoke to him about those nine dimensions then he asked me Ahmed if we're not doing this in our educational system what are we doing then and we started program and this is not running moreover Norway discovered the program and they came in and they started financing it Japan realized that there was such a program and they came in and they gave a very handsome fund to to to encourage what is it sort of civic values it's awesome it's about guides you know when you come to a youngster and asked them do you want to be popular yes of course do you know how no do you want me to accompany you to learn how i'm not going to teach you just a come yes so and we've developed programs how to have a tv how to run it how to have a radio how to run it how to develop cartoons and how to run how to gamify and how to run this in sustainability how to become a good influencer and they just they're buying it and the lists we trust we trusted the project and we went to test the robustness of it in one of the most prestigious universities in in in the country at Akhawain University in and our students were competing and we could not take all of them and now they are educating themselves because it's a system of peers education when it is appealing when it is gamified when it is bringing new popularity and then when you have an enough rate of likes you will start making some money as well and you'll be eligible to good universities such as selves and and then you just take in it sounds like a great initiative and it clearly works so it's a very practical application there of what you were saying but in your mentioning of addiction and you know you talked about various addictions so let's just hone in on one which is social media and AI artificial intelligence everybody's talking a great deal about that now and the need to ensure that it doesn't you know run amuck it's a bit like fire isn't it it's very useful if it's controlled but you've got to make sure that there are controls and it just doesn't run wild so what are your reflections on the need for it's it's a global challenge after all it is it is and it's also an opportunity we need to get rid of this rotten fear within us because this rotten fear within us is what has caused the global trust disorder we don't trust each other anymore and this is why we invest yearly basis 17 trillion dollars on weaponry we use in time of war no more than 13 point some dust percent hopefully thank god but if you take this amount of 17 trillion you divide this among us eight billion and some it would give you two thousand dollars a year each imagine a family in any deprived part of the world receiving a family of 10 receiving 20 000 dollars a year how can we close such a window of our haemorrhage to rebuild and trust but trust cannot be given it needs to be it needs to be snatched so you have many venues in which you can invest and you realize that this is a matter of functionality we are not in a combined structure but it's something functional that would have returned on investments if you invest in those regards you would have returns on on investment so it's not a failure we just need to see and this is what is called in our religions and especially in christianity amazing grace once i was blind now i can see once you see the light and you start being able again to see then you go for it more over you would appropriate it it would be yours it is not something that would be dictated to you and as for artificial intelligence yes it is a very big player that has come in the scene and an unexpected one and the time of corona of covid was a good time for the initiators to develop those tools and see and verify their robustness now they are within it is bringing with its addiction to it it is bringing with it some leading against it and not doing what we shall do to sharpen our inner capacities because then we'll be relaying too much on artificial intelligence so we need to manage this newcomer to render is our friend and not fall in all what has been instigated in terms of terminator and the machines taking over and all this this this those narratives we need to be optimistic in the hopeful world and not hopeless world and take it integrate it in our educational system manage the plagiar risks and so on and use it for the best of the rest of us interesting you you said there in your answer you talked about a global trust disorder but just to narrow it down you know we heard in the earlier panel about the efforts that morocco is doing through its agricultural initiatives to to combat food insecurity in africa and obviously historically morocco has always been at the crossroads of what is called sub-saharan africa and north africa you know very much at the crossroads of trans-saharan trade so i wonder if you feel that that lack of trust also extends within the continent of africa in other words should africa trust africa more do you think not before gathering the conditions because then we'll be asking people to be naive and this could be very dangerous we need to have our conditions and if those conditions are fulfilled then we need to bear to trust morocco just as like england and adax zayn knows africa better than the majority of us because she wrote some very interesting books about africa she was presiding also the royal society of african studies and so she you are the one who tell us what it is about but this is about you thank you but morocco was always in a place that allowed its people to have this transcendence because the atlantic ocean used to be called uh then uh the sea of darknesses and the in the old imaginarium there was nothing beyond it was the end of the world nothing beyond so we were there looking all those tsunami waves erupting from the epicenter then of the world which is the middle east and they would take time to arrive to us all we will go through pilgrimage to see what it is about and then we would digest them through the enzymes that we've developed through milleniums england has the same characteristic and maybe maybe another asset which is being small morocco is not a big country so if we use this asset to speak to everybody else as england and especially i've said brixitz if we use those assets we have no ambitions beyond our size and people who are ambitions beyond their size suffer and generate suffering for the rest of the world so there is also this um must of ambitions management since we have the asset to be small we can contribute in spreading this awareness all over the place and then we might aspire to have maybe some platforms that would allow us a cogitation that disconnects itself from benefits and from just matter and matter and gain so just one more question from me before i open it up to the floor i mustn't after all hog this all and uh just to say you've said several times you've mentioned fear and how we mustn't fear this we mustn't fear that and so on so i wonder if you could elaborate a little bit more on that because we're seeing particularly within the context of migration and immigration and so on you know fear of the other and how that's fueling um various political movements um particularly in europe and so on so just perhaps expand on that a bit doctor so allow me to say a little bit more operation in that regard if our nations are entrapped in the political time then we would not have the opportunity to process in a systemic way and you were emphasizing laxanabel on being systemic and addressing intricate issues and if it is just five year four years time term i need to start my campaign before those four years or five years are over we need to develop in our nations and continents um structures that would have the responsibility not just the opportunity the responsibility to think in a transcendental time that goes beyond the political time the royal societies here in england have allowed such a cogitation and reflection and this is what has led great britain to what it has become to what it is right now in morocco we are doing about the same we are trying to generate institutions that would have the charge and responsibility to think beyond the political time and it is not a matter of democracy because democracy asks for such institutions in the united states of america as in the rest of the world they are trying to solve the problematic through launching think tanks but what could is a think tank if you don't have decided do tanks to verify that there are no collateral damages if there is no cognitive philanthropy uh for for those regards so we if we want to transcend this fear need to bring light not just in our minds but also in our hearts and emotions and psyches and this is what has been proven by someone who's been doing 13 years of footage with heinous with sharks in the ocean and with other animals ferocious animals but he's been working on building trust again and being good to those creatures they started trusting him even to snakes so the majority of the extermination because we ended up exterminating 99.99% of our brothers and sisters of all the species on this little tiny payroll dot and you have us uh david ottenberg who has supported since 1937 the year of his birth up right now how we have damaged our mother earth so when you suck away the venom of fear but rotten fear everything would start changing but we need um stakeholders and champions that would follow up with this matter moreover it is beautiful isn't that so isn't it beautiful yeah what was it about hyenas sharks and the rest of snakes living with them oh no no no no I'm building trust again you had you had me totally agreeing with you until we got to that bit but no joking all right let's see um what what questions a lot of um very very fascinating thoughts so I'll take two or three so okay let's take this young lady here I like you because you're wearing a big so-ass sweatshirt yeah thank you um my name is Mokondro and my question is to Dr. Ahmad Abadi and um my question is do you feel as though the interconnectedness of the mind and the soul is exactly what our society needs when people say that the authentic part of the soul is something not needed and also how long do you think that the transcendent force will take to reach different parts of the world especially the young people who are not ready to hear that let's take those because there are two questions in one okay thank you I'll let you off do you want to take the first one first yeah youngsters are more thirsty to those things and matters than we think they're very open to such a discourse they're takers they are brave in it and if you look at the success of so many series of cartoons that we're highlighting those dimensions it is yoked to the fact that there is this hunger and thirst among our youngsters but we need to present it in an empirical way we need to allow them to put their hands in the bakery paste and make them bake their paste before themselves and and consume it and see what it is it is not just um as if I was trying to make someone being satisfied food wise by talking about food you know what a pizza is especially if it is in alarm you know it tastes such and maybe it would increase hunger it is the same with spirituality if we just talk about it and how beautiful it is without sitting with those people and trying to keep silent for one hour and then tell them how you could process your thoughts and your impulsions during this hour and assist them to serve again to regain the capacity to serve within themselves talking to them about their inner dimensions the emotions they have within and how to be friends with fear because fear could happen to be one of the best friends ever it's she's very wise fear is very wise even she has purple hair but you know she's beautiful and very wise when you talk this way about spirituality to youngsters do that here but they need to practice you know and this is something that we we do not do with us okay thank you uh microphone yeah to the chap next to the young lady and just put a microphone here yeah so and then do you want to give the microphone to him so we can just do them in rapid succession any more questions yeah great yeah go ahead introduce so hello everyone my name is anduka i am a student and co-founder of motherland along my fellow co-founders and students at soas so before i give my question i will set some context motherland was founded to rechannel the african talent within the student diaspora the african diaspora in the uk towards solving and building solutions for the african markets towards powering african growth and just last year actually over here in the brunei gallery we launched the very first inter-university entrepreneurship summit for founders solving african problems and funded different entrepreneurs from different universities from cambridge lsc to local colleges and my question actually is for you dr zaynab i don't know no no this is and dr amit actually because dr amit mentioned something about the uh about africa and also talked about your book with um an african history for africa and i think it's extremely important just going off of the spirit of that um to shape and control narratives because i think that has a powerful play towards influencing culture at the collective level and so for both of you what would you say is the role of institutions in this shaping of culture and what is the role of institutions particularly in bringing attention to initiatives stories that can shape culture in a positive way because so many times especially being a minority in the uk where we don't necessarily control the main agenda of media maybe the bbc or what have you not there many competing agendas it could be difficult for people who have good ideas good initiatives to because on one end build the initiative is useful but on the other end bring the attention that is necessary to transform culture so what would you say uh institutions what role do institutions have uh to play in that that is my question okay thank you and then the microphone to there and then there's the lady behind you go ahead dr abadi on the role of institutions in promoting a more inclusive dialogue islandry composes me to ask you to start first well i mean i think it depends you know which institutions you're talking about educational institutions obviously you've got to ensure that your curriculums do have you know perspectives i i'm a great believer in in giving people the the courtesy in according to them the respect of telling their own history which is as you said the premise of my book an african history of africa i think that it's important to get the perspectives of the local people themselves because you know if you're dealing with poverty in i don't know you know in somewhere in asia it's going to be a different approach from how you approach it in the you know a part of africa and even within the content there are differences so i think you've got to have local perspectives and institutions must ensure that that is reflected amongst their you know teaching staff their um the research facilities and so on and then again you know you've got to have a diverse culture within um institutions like you know media and so on and um governments really have to facilitate that so it's just i think to ensure that those people who are involved and who are driving the institutions have that diversity of perspectives is what i would say this is very inspiring stories are wonderful shapers of culture and novels as well as songs as well as movies could shape whole identity if well dealt with and when we um ask the institutions about what are the capacities that are building and how functional are those capacities and how do they ordain them to be like a necklace those capacities to free know hows and free efficiency in reaching out the dreams collective dreams that we have agreed upon then you would see that the majority of the capacities that have been built in our institutions are to respond to the markets and not in virtuosity the market is just the boss and it is asking you to shape to produce human beings that would be able to do this and that this way and that way period i am ordaining you to give me such profiles such human beings period we need to flip over this request and to look at our context and what are our real series threatening problems and what are the capacities that would help us to solve those problems and then ask our institutions to build up those capacities because they have so many craft men and women that are able to craft those capacities to have them respond to the problems of the context and this is a whole new perspective and stories also could play a role in that thank you good so we've got one question here and then the lady at the in the bay shore go ahead good evening my name is namdi and i have a question actually for dr abadi my question is can you list the 104 different feelings i'm joking i'm joking i think we've all enjoyed this session that's been organized by soa so thank you first of all to the organizers and thank you to ida who actually invited a few weeks ago randomly soa at the reception upstairs but my question is for you dr abadi please last week i was speaking with a friend of mine and he said that if i can try and quote him i think the main thing that's holding africa's economic development is that we're holding on to religion and i told him i think we need to be careful of trying to always make the other argument and i'll explain what i mean by that we are what we are i come from nigeria it's about 55 percent muslim just under 40 percent christian we are what we are the people who believe in this faith i'm i'm a christian i have many muslim friends what can we do with what we have how can we not just get along but work understanding each other to advance our economic potential although i didn't agree with the premise of my friend's statement it is true in a sense that if you will it multi-faith multicultural dialogue and interfaith dialogue is linked inextricably with economic advancement in some way in africa at least in terms of as you said earlier do we trust each other or do we not trust each other how can we despite our differences in faith and culture trust each other and work to build the economy of africa which is something i very much want to contribute to thank you thank you very much and the final question the lady behind you there in the show thank you we'll do those two together as your closing thoughts but briefly if you would i think hello i'm kauta um i have a question for dr. ahmed um so going back to the interfaith point that you made um that you that with it you we are able to say the magic word no um have discipline and also um you later mentioned that um in time of darkness it can bring light and hope um etc how can the leaders in morocco and institutes in morocco um facilitate to the moroccan society either being in morocco or abroad um help basically decolonize the moroccan mind um and bring us back to who we are truly are as moroccoans uh before colonization because you know they left they colonize a country left but they still till this day colonize a mind a lot of moroccoans live a lifestyle of the west and how what what is the role or what should the institutions do to bring us back to who we are um you know thank you thank you very much indeed i think morocco became a protectorate in 1912 didn't it and then its independence in 1956 so in that time clearly a lot of colonization of the mind as the young lady put it took place so maybe do the first one first about how to promote interfaith dialogue was it you the your friend thinking that religion has helped back development in africa that was your question and then the one about recolonizing the moroccan mind yeah the worst thing about colonization is that the colonizers have a male mind unfortunately but you know what's happened in the whole world the colonized people could snatch some know hows and capacities nevertheless and this is something that could be um put in the positive dimension of what occurred uh not uh being positive about colonialism but some positive measures have occurred uh now we're sitting in london we're speaking english communicating uh regardless of our nationalities and uh countries of origin this is to install and instill uh french in uh occidental africa or english in the rest of the world it has taken a great effort so those are some of the positive dimensions as well or religion you know my late professor michel mela in sorbonne wrote a book that he has entitled for a religions science to deal with religions has been a sense and in sorbonne there is a very old tradition of comparatism within religions and especially the late mercia iliad who wrote offices in in in those regards you know what is the bottom line in religions what are religions here or when you try to explore the majority of them this is to bring us happiness to make us happy here and for those who believe in on the hereafter in the hereafter as well happiness is the finality of finalities of religions but what happened is that the codifiers and legalistic people came and took over and religions have been rendered to be codes of dos not dos licit illicit demoniac divine and name it a binary system that is quite comfortable and everybody would just go and fit within it forgetting about the other dimensions statistically wise nothing more than 45 percent of religiosity is about codes and dos are not dos licit and and the rest is about love is about transcendence is about doing together living together but we've forgotten this to prove this we have elaborated an index of within the realm of Islam Islamisity what is an Islamic state because you know the many Islamic groups that have erupted and we're talking about Islamization of the state the sharia implementation and so on and so we asked ourselves amongst scholars from all over the muslim world even from Iran from Iraq from Bahrain from Kuwait from Egypt from Morocco Malaysia Pakistan and the rest of the muslim world we gathered in 208 in Kuala Lumpur and we asked ourselves those questions and we found that there are six finalities to each religion to every religion and Islam is not an exception in this regard one preservation of life two preservation of morality three preservation of continuity of the species four preservation of dignity five preservation of reason and six preservation of property and all the dos and not dos would just serve those finalities the forbidden of thefts for instance is to preserve property the forbidden of adultery in religions is to preserve the continuity and so on and we have tried to deconstruct each one of those finalities into sub finalities and we ended up with 300 finalities that allowed us to develop the criterias indicators and indices to measure this islamicity and talking about the preservation of life it is not just the preaching dimension preservation of life is to have good medical schools good nurses good hospitals good medicine factories and all the capacities and trainings that would go with with this and Habib was was talking about the vaccine and how people did not have access to it accessibility to medication food water and if you apply those indicators and indices you know at the end of the day when we've applied for the first time this index to measure islamicity but worldwide you know what is the country holds the most islamic in the world in relation to those indicators and indices and criterias or sweden oh yes because it's about contestantiality it is not about just the appearances to have mosques and to have you know or churches or synagogues or it's about the quintessence it's about being good to yourself and to the rest of the people it's about beauty and when we forgot this and we fall in the trap of codification then what stays in terms of religiosity is just imposition and despotism and compulsion whereas there shouldn't be any compulsion in religiosity when we free our religiosities from all those shackles of binary systems and go a little deeper into the quant essential dimensions then religions would serve the purpose you've you have stated it well dr. Ahmad Abadi you truly have woven a very intricate tapestry of thoughts provoking ideas for us we've been through environment waste the war of the titans global distrust there is fear is there another question yes i think though we yeah just just a word okay just a word because we're out of time you know yes okay if you make it brief who was it no no no it was yes the lady about colonization very deep question as well yes i just teased the audience talking about that the colonialism have a male brains and but the core of the question how could we be inspiring to the rest of us when i respect my own planes when i live up to the morality i subscribe in when i give away when i show generosity not just generosity of material donation but generosity of the smile generosity of the word generosity of the presence generosity of being interested because interested is interesting and when i succeed doing so towards the rest of the world the rest of us then the mayonaise would take very inspiring conversation i'm sure you agree with dr. Ahmad Abadi you've i think given us a bit of a spiritual reboot and we're going to emerge with a stronger attachment to ideas of sisterhood and brotherhood and i'm sure that all the women in this hall will agree with me that we like the idea that the female mind is far superior to the male one we like that one dot that bad it's been a great pleasure to have you with us please give me a round of we are almost coming to the end before i introduce our final incredible speaker just know this is a marocan event so there's food outside and marocan tea waiting in a minute and and music as well which i'll talk about in a bit but finally his excellency mr hakim hajwi ambassador of his majesty the king of morocco to the united kingdom um now i don't know we'll we'll deliver his remarks his excellency bring up your insights good evening your excellency ladies and gentlemen i have the very difficult task to summarize the unsummarizable but i hope you enjoyed the conference as much as much as i did and i personally wished the conversation to go on and on and go through the 104 emotions but maybe for uh for the break but just let me start by saying how fantastic it is to speak about morocco here in soas and we have been working on this event with professor adam habib and his colleagues for almost a year now so we're delighted and we're particularly delighted because we speak about africa which is a priority for morocco we're very proud of our african roots and we feel very much grounded in our continent a continent of solutions as we like to see it and as was recalled many times and i would like to share with you a few thoughts starting with this photo um so this is a monumental uh installation by the moroccan artist emin el guthebi that he called illuminate the light and he was showcased in somerset house during the latest london edition of 154 which is one of the biggest african art fairs uh in the world founded by another moroccan to riel glowy and emin came up with this artwork after a long and immersive journey throughout africa and his sculptures as you can see represents the seeds of a pomegranate reman as we say in arabic to depict the diversity and yet wholly interconnected of the richness of the african continent and the light projected in the next picture where the lights projected is a metaphor for him to foster positive stories about africa and to counter the frequent stereotypes of the dark continent and i think the the work of emin illuminate the lights captures very well the essence of this conference so we need to reimagine the narrative about africa we spoke about the narrative and the point what made was made many times africa is not a continent of darkness it is a continent of lights and the the world light was used many times as well it is a continent of solutions which huge untapped potential to tackle some of the most pressing global challenges of course without dismissing the burning issues and dr abadi has eloquently addressed some of them in his conversation but always with an optic optimistic global perspective and a genuine message of hope but to succeed in that we need a holistic and systemic approach was made in the first panel i think that was highlighted very clearly as well in in the second conversation the first final showcase how africa can not only feed itself but be a bread basket for the wall while playing a tremendous role in mitigating climate change and creating many exciting opportunities for african youth let's bring the agriculture sexy back again but it requires believing in africa's opportunities and it requires also investments clear investments and win-win partnerships and this is the spirit of morocco's unwavering commitment to the sustainable development of africa and it is driven by the enlightened vision of his majesty king mohammed six for the continent which places south south cooperation and human development at the core the last point i would like to make is to emphasize diversity and unity and he was brilliantly covered as well in the the two panels and it's particularly relevant to today's discussion morocco's diversity is enriched by 13 centuries of history at the crossroads of many civilizations we're proud to be africans arabs burbans we're proud of our cultural diversity sahrawi amazeer sephardic and we embrace all this diversity as a richness that we nurture and cherish vividly and that is enshrined in our constitution it is an illustration of how diversity when embraced can become can become our greatest asset and africa is a huge continent as there are many geographies clubs and crops and climates there are thousands of civilizations and steering clear of a cliche if we come closer together and combine better our energies for a more stable and prosperous africa skies the limit and it is also through knowledge sharing exchange a mutual understanding and uh professor them have you mentioned bridging that will break the perceptions and create new solutions together and this is exactly why our collaboration with platforms like so us is essential to embark the new generation of leaders so i hope the conference has been insightful sparked your curiosity to delve deeper into morocco's model as per further research and interest in africa and we at the embassy look forward to many other initiatives with so us and we're very proud to have more and more moroccan students here yes and alumni as well i hope they're here so to conclude and i would like to thank it's the oscar moment okay okay um first of all uh president doxa zaynab had that we for reigniting this relationship between morocco and so as and zaynab has done tremendous work on the history of african she has been too humble about it but her book an african history of africa will be published on april 18th pre-ad and and as we said this uh i'm delighted if there's a fabulous section about morocco of course the s team dr abadi for being our guest of honor and for such an inspiring talk all the speakers as well for their insights and for making it to london from all over africa and the arcanian brand could not come because she didn't get her visa on time right just uh thank you professor adam haveib and the whole so us team for being so excited about morocco and for hosting us wonderfully tonight and there's some rock and food afterwards and we look forward to building more bridges together with ocp and africa and um6p our great sponsors as well uh for tonight we're doing a truly remarkable work in africa um and last but not least uh the team of the embassy and uh adnan and haja in particular and i'm sure we'll be so depressed at the end of the event so much they will feel a huge void and no irony of course uh finally and i will really stop here um today's conference aims to celebrate our african roots so what a better way to immerse ourselves in the mesmerizing and mystic rhythms of the gnawa music with its deep african vibes and sufi spirit it's a symbol of the multicultural diversity that morocco embodies so please enjoy our artist a berber diffusion uh after the break and thank you again for joining us and let's celebrate thank you