 Good evening everyone. This is for me a most exciting evening. Gathering right here under this roof are some of the most brilliant minds in our continent. Innovators, entrepreneurs, soon to become owners of billion-dollar enterprises. Creators of groundbreaking technologies in medicine, in education, in agriculture. And I'm told from 320 hubs across 51 nations. I doubt whether there is any other gathering anywhere in the world that can display such an array of talents, skills and creativity, such as we have here today. Our continent is indeed fortunate to have this incredible range of resources and resourcefulness, and those of you here today are only representative of thousands of other innovation hubs, incubators, accelerators, maker spaces, technology parks and co-working spaces. And of course, startups all over Africa. So also as exciting, and this is particularly exciting, is a large number of female innovators doing incredible work across Africa. Very, some time ago I read a publication called Africa. They recently published a list of female innovators and permit me to quote to their description of these female leaders. They said these innovators are building robots in Cameroon for waste collection, tackling freight logistical challenges in Ghana, addressing low insurance penetration in Kenya, bringing indigenous Paschalist knowledge from the Sahel into the global climate change discussions, training other women in tech, blending creative math design with fashion in Nigeria, addressing energy financing in Tunisia and investing in pre-seed funding across the continent. End of quote. All of these things, all of these happenings by women. And they're not only from the continent's tech and innovation hubs of Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt, but also from Somalia, Cameroon, Tanzania, Gabon, Senegal, DRC, Chad, Tunisia, Uganda, amongst other countries. So it's evident, even to the undeserving, that Africa is set to leapfrog into the front lines of the fourth industrial revolution. But ladies and gentlemen, I believe that you must see your roles as more than starting and growing successful businesses or social enterprises. We must also see and understand our place in history, our obligation to our countries and to the continent. And Rebecca just mentioned a few minutes ago that this is actually the Africa Union. This is a continent that still has large numbers of persons living in extreme poverty, a continent with the lowest levels of access to education, health care and nutrition. It seems to me then that history has handed you the task of fast tracking the economic development of our nations, creating wealth for the millions of our people living in extreme poverty. Barely 60 years ago, the first leaders of independent African states dreamt of a united and prosperous Africa. They spoke of one continent, one people, a people capable of becoming a political and economic powerhouse. As it turned out, that objective is yet to be attained. But today, that dream of Africans working in collaboration to create an economic powerhouse is achievable and is at hand. The key lies in a planned digital future, innovation and the creative use of technology for enterprise and for development. And our advantages are obvious. We are the youngest continent on the planet. The vast majority of our population are digital natives born in this digital revolution. Which explains why developmental constraints, despite all of the constraints, Africa is still on course to disrupt the fourth industrial revolution itself with a shared numbers of young talents and energy that's available here. And this has been proven with the disruption that we continue to see across various sectors. In 2015, African startups struggled to raise about two hundred million dollars. But in 2021, we have more than six unicorns. In FinTech alone, we have Flutter, Wave, PayStack, OPE, InterSwitch, all valued at over a billion today. In e-commerce, we have Jumia. And of course, we have Ashraf's Forbury and an Egyptian e-payments company that allows customers to settle bills online and digitally. And is now on the Egyptian stock exchange, I'm told, with about 30 million customers. There's MNT Hallan, Egypt's largest lender to the unbanked. And they also have about a million monthly active users. And they've disbursed so far 1.7 billion dollars in loans to date. Tala is a startup, I'm told, in Kenya that helps traditionally underbanked people to borrow and save and grow their money. And they've expanded to India, to the Philippines and Mexico and have disbursed close to three billion dollars of credit and has more than six million customers. And here in Nigeria, we have Pigivest, a wealth management platform that at the end of 2019 has helped about one million users to save about 80 million dollars. And in Senegal, we have Wave, a mobile money provider which became Schrancofone Africa's first unicorn. Now, and this was just recently, when it received a 200 million dollar injection of funds. And as Shah, this is a commentator observed, while Africa's fintech unicorns are payment focused today, in the future, we can expect more variety. Digital lenders, insurers, investors, people working in the blockchain are also likely to feature. Of course, we expect and we should expect unicorns to emerge in other sectors as well. Companies that will help to address the continent's key challenges in health care, in schooling, in trade and so on. Much of the growth of African startups has been organic. And I think that this is something that we need to address. Mostly operating as individual enterprises who, at best, are city initiatives. National effort is still usually missing. So there's a need for positive action, proactive and intentional policies by governments to create the environment for startups and technology based on what every country's policies may be. And I think that the general thing we've seen, as Alex Liu, who's a managing partner at Connie said, he says that what we need is regulation, finance, infrastructure, education and talent, all must come together. In an innovation ecosystem. But I think the major thing is that we must see government policy. We must see clarity in government policy and government policy is probably one of the most important things that we need to get right going forward. Which is why I'm excited about what we are seeing today. I'm excited about the fact that we are seeing a lot of collaboration with governments and I have seen in particular that part of the work that we've been able to do here in Nigeria is on account of the fact that young people who are innovators and who are working in the various hubs and all of that are not shy to come forward and say, this is what needs to happen. This is what we need to do. I'll just share very quickly some of what we've done in Nigeria, not because this is a perfect story, but more to show what is possible and what can be improved upon. One of the first actions that we took in 2015 as an administration was to work with development partners to conduct an innovation mapping exercise across Nigeria. And we did this by engaging the ecosystem across the country, including AFRILabs at the time. And the process led to a report which was titled Catalyzing Growth in Nigeria through innovation. Catalyzing Growth in Nigeria through innovation. In that report, we examined international examples of successful hubs to understand what factors drive success and sustainability and how these lessons could be applied to Nigeria with a specific focus on demand, supply and the enabling environment as drivers of innovation. So with these results, we supported more than 12 private sector-led innovation hubs across the country, through our social investment programs in particular. Then working with the World Bank and the Lagos Business School, we supported the establishment of the Nigeria Climate Innovation Center in Lagos. And then in partnership with the American University of Nigeria and the International Red Cross, we supported the establishment of Africa's first humanitarian innovation hub in Adamao State. We also established the Technology and Creativity Advisory Group, which I have the privilege of chairing, as part of our Industrial Policy Competitiveness Council. Now, this group, this technology and creativity group is very important because it's made up of members from the private sector, many innovators, people in entertainment and all that, and not relevant stakeholders in the public sector. And what they do is that they offer advice to government on various policies and initiatives. Some of the policy initiatives developed from the advisory group include the wide range of licenses issued by our central bank now for FinTechs because a lot of the FinTechs were already encroaching into banking, into banking services. Now, to get a banking license, you need a huge sum of money, 25 billion Naira. But these guys were already doing banking, doing banking services. So we needed to get a second, third, fourth category of licenses and it took this young people who were in the Technology and Advisory Group to advise on the sorts of licenses that could be granted. So we now have a wide range of licenses which are granted to FinTechs and to innovators in that space. This Technology and Advisory Group also helped to raise about 500 million dollars. This is a sum of money that we're working with the AFDB to raise. And this is to support technology, support creative startups, venture capital and investments. And all of this is purely on account of the fact that we're working with young people out there in the field who, you know, of course, are doing the heavy lifting in these various areas, but who also understand what the requirements and the needs are. We also took the view that government must be the chief marketers of startups. So we supported the tech ecosystem from the highest levels of government. In 2016, Mr. President, President Naira, hosted startups here in Abuja at the ASO Villa demo day. So we converted quite a bit of the villa where we are today for the purpose of a demo day. And we had Mark Zuckerberg as a guest at the event. And in 2018, we went on a tour of tech spaces around Lagos. We visited several startups and later in 2019, we also led a group of Nigerian startups and venture capitalists and angel investors on a tour of Silicon Valley and Hollywood. On that visit, our startups pitched their ideas to investors and engaged with giants such as Google and LinkedIn. And we also made considerable progress, you know, in several other different areas while we're out there. We are also, and I told me I mentioned this earlier, working on the Nigerian startup act. I believe that Mr. I know is one of those who is also working on that from private sector. In fact, there are so many people who are collaborating on the startup and we're expecting that very soon, the National Assembly should pass that act because it will offer protection for founders and investors of startups. Now, the truth of the matter is that there is a long way to go. There is, I mean, we cannot we cannot even begin to scratch the surface with what has already been done. You know, it's very clear that we have barely begun the work that begun that real work that needs to be done. And that is the case across Africa. I've studied very closely what African governments are doing in support of startups and in support of innovators. And by and large, you know, we're more or less about doing about the same sort of stuff. But most innovators and startups are still unable to access cheap capital locally. Many complain that the processes for obtaining financial support ought to be easier and more transparent. So there is still a need to train more, to develop more and, you know, to teach more, train more people on digital skills on scale. For example, I mean, we have a 200 million population that's growing by five million every year. So there's no way we're going to be able to catch up training if a couple of thousands. We just need to train in the millions. In effect, you know, and this is true of many of our countries in Africa, who are at a point in the odyssey of our technology and innovation in which the big challenge is that of how to create the institutional architecture to safeguard and consolidate the progress already made. And a few suggestions, I have a few suggestions. Just three suggestions as I close. First, our government in Africa must ensure access to support programs that are transparent and merit based. We must work harder on providing cheap patient capital with a view to ensuring that innovators are able to access this capital for its own part. I think the ecosystem must work with governments to determine the parameters of access to these programs. Tech and innovation cannot also be just for profit, but for the public good. Technology holds a part to create gigantic commercial ventures with huge returns. But the fullness of the transformative and revolutionary potential of the ecosystem will be achieved when we are able to address the issues that concern the public good. And this is absolutely important in Africa, given where we are in development and given the shared number of people who are denied access to the things that we consider normal, things that we consider standard. This means bringing our capacity for innovation to all the big developmental challenges, such as social security, financial inclusion, access to health care and access to education. And while we pursue this and begin to experience the power of technology to transform lives, we must also concern ourselves with issues of ethics and oversight. And as the debate around some of the major social media platforms is showing us, and I'm sure you are following all these debates about privacy issues and all of those things and about how social media can be not just a force for good, but also a force for evil. So those of us in the tech ecosystem must be alive, not only to the prospect of profits, but also to the social and public implications of our work and the technology. And we must impose, and all of these things, the access we have, the talents we have, impose responsibilities or not. In this case, it is the responsibility to design algorithms and design the sorts of things that are guided by the common good. That is a huge opportunity that has been opened up by the African continent of free trade agreement, and I'm sure that we're all waiting to see that come to fruition. The objective of the free trade agreement is to make Africa the largest single, seamless trading bloc in the world. The opportunities for technology and innovation to build synergies across borders and create African tech giants are obvious. But even now, fintech and e-commerce companies can extend their reach as they will be able to partner with other regional and international fintechs to facilitate payments and to make digital cross-border remittances. These are some of the big things that we expect to see with the free trade agreements, and I hope that we all will take advantage of the agreement as soon as it begins to work. The bright and prosperous future for Africa beckons on us. You're all the great titans that will take us there, and we are extremely proud of you and all of the work that you're doing. So, as I end, I must thank the federal ministries of industry, trade and investment, communications and digital economy, make it Africa and, of course, Afrilabs, and I mustn't forget my people at the office of the vice-president of the work that went into planning this event. Finally, I congratulate Afrilabs at ten, and once again, I welcome you all to a full-time experience. Don't forget to taste the legendary Best Your Love Rising Award. You're very pleasant to see. Thank you very much.