Africa's Development Pathways in a Fragmenting World: Youth, Regional Integration and Sustainable Growth (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)

Good afternoon, everyone.
Hello.
Can I hear the energy in the room? Hello.
Fantastic.
Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the United Nations Conference Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for this global policies dialogue, which we're going to be discussing over the next hour and a half or so.
My name is Yvonne Dega and I am your host and moderator for today and I'm very glad to be a part of this upcoming conversation.
Thank you to all of you who are seated here in this wonderful hall and those of you who are joining us via Zoom, we are on Zoom, so you are on camera and on UN webTV.
We also have many people who are following the conversation on social media.
We're delighted to have you here today for this dialogue that has been convened by UN DSA, that's the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs, and in partnership with UNECA, that's the UN Economic Commission for Africa, who are hosting us here in Addis Ababa.
We're especially glad and pleased, as I said, to be here in Africa Hall, which is a landmark of multilateral cooperation that has been beautifully restored in recent times and stands as a powerful symbol of Africa's role in shaping development conversations.
Today's dialogue takes place at a time and against the backdrop of great uncertainty, profound global uncertainty, rising geopolitical tensions, economic fragmentation, climate risks, and technological change.
Are reshaping development prospects worldwide, especially here on the African continent.
It is against this backdrop that today's conversations and discussions will focus on three key areas, how Africa can advance inclusive and sustainable growth.
The next issue we're going to be looking at is how youth employment and skills can be unlocked as engines of transformation.
I see a lot of young people in the room.
Put your hands up if you consider yourself to be in the youth.
Who's in the youth here? Some of you don't need to raise your hands.
I know.
We did invite many of you from the university and it's really wonderful to have young people, the future generation in the room with us to have these conversations.
Then the third issue we're going to be discussing is We are very honored to have members of the UN's high level advisory board on Economic and Social Affairs who have been here in Addis Ababa for the last couple of days discussing and deliberating on some of their issues.
Their perspectives will help to ground today's exchange in forward looking policy thinking whilst connecting global dynamic to regional and national realities that people are facing.
Before we begin our dynamic discussions, I would like to express our sincere appreciation to the UN Peace and Development Trust Fund, which has made today's dialogue possible.
Thank you also to all of you who took the time to submit some of your questions, some of the issues you want to discuss in advance of today's discussion.
We received all your questions and have tried our best to incorporate and have our panelists address them in as much detail as possible.
We have a lot to cover in just 90 minutes.
This is all we have.
And on that note, I would like to return now to the lectern so that we can get started.
I would like to begin today's dialogue by I'm still here.
I know you cannot see me.
I would like to begin today's dialogue by inviting our very first speaker, Mr.
Lee Je Noi, who is the Under Secretary-General for the United Nations for Economic and Social Affairs.
Mr.
Lee, if you could please come to the lectern and over to you.
Please give him a round of applause.
Welcome him as he comes up to the podium.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, van.
Our distinguished high level advisory board members, my brother Claver that, Executive Secretary of the ECA and also distinguished members from the UN.
And dear participants.
Good afternoon.
Sincerely welcome you to the global policy dialogue on Africa development pathway in the fragmenting world in this very historic building conveyed by my department, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs in close collaboration with the UN Economic Commission for Africa.
So delighted to see many young faces to join the policy dialogue, which actually generated much more hope for multilateralism I guess we all share one conviction that Africa's development and its success are central to advancing global sustainable development.
Africa stands at the pivotal moment as home to the world's youngest and fastest growing population, this continent possesses extraordinary human capital, a powerful foundation for accelerating progress towards the SEGs.
Yet, the persistent inequalities, a deficit of decent work opportunities for young people, and accelerating impacts of climate change reminds us that the progress is never guaranteed.
These local challenges are unfolding against a complex global backdrop marked by geopolitical tensions, conflicts, and economic fragmentation.
This discord is disrupting trade investment and international cooperation, significantly containing the policy spans and weakening collective actions.
For all countries, especially in Africa and other developing regions, navigating this moment demands a renewed commitment to multilateraliism and people centered development.
Our sense of urgency is unforgiving.
With the 2030 agenda as our campus, we have just about four years remaining to accelerate action on SDGs.
What do we achieve or fail to achieve in this narrow window will shape the development pathway beyond 2030.
This is why today's dialogue is so critical.
Across the three panel discussions, we were explored how Africa can navigate global discorse to advance the social inclusion, empower its youth, and drive sustainable growth.
The diverse insights of the members of our UN high level advisory board on economic and social affairs underscored our shared belief in evidence based policy, open dialogue, and collective solutions.
I extend my deepest gratitude to the ECA for its close collaboration and to the UMP and Development Trust Fund for its vital support.
In closing, let me just emphasize this core message.
Fragmentation may define global moment, but cooperation must define our response.
The next four years represent a decisive opportunity to translate commitment into action and ensure that the promises of SDGs are delivered for all.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Under Secretary.
For those remarks.
We want to really delve into this topic, Africa's development pathways in a fragmented world, youth, regional integration, and sustainable growth.
Let's move to our first panel discussion on the topic of global fragmentation and Africa's development pathways.
I would like to welcome our high level Advisory board members to the stage.
Starting with Eudne Bart, Eudne please come on up, a Mita Professor of Gender and Public Policy at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.
She's also a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against women.
Mr.
Clav Gate, the Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and our host.
Please welcome him as he comes up to the stage.
Miss Novi Medici, excuse me, President of the Union of African Population Studies, please take your seat.
Jose António Ocampo, professor at Columbia University, and last but not least, Mr.
Danny Shrskandraa, who is the Chief Executive of the New excuse me, New Economics Foundation, and last but not least, Coy Udoviki, head of the Center for Advanced Economic Studies.
Corey, I did not forget you.
Please come on up.
Now, during this discussion, we're going to be examining how rising political tensions, conflicts, economic fragmentation are shaping Africa's development prospects whilst exploring with our esteemed panel policy pathways to strengthen resilience, advance social development, and support inclusive growth across the continent.
Let's get started.
I Thank you for allowing me to take my seat.
Welcome to all of you.
We appreciate you all being here today.
I want to start with yourself, Executive Secretary Claver.
Thank you, first of all, for the hospitality.
The question is around which two levers trade facilitation, regional value chains, debt finance, or energy food systems resilience are most urgent in your mind for Africa to reduce its vulnerability to these geopolitical shocks that we're seeing.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
I would say the quick answer is all of them.
Let me just give you a context.
Maybe for the Middle East crisis as an example because there'll be many more.
When the Middle East crisis hit, we realized that actually almost 48 countries out of 54 were exposed to importing fuel from outside.
And then none of the governments had three months reserves in terms of f, which is very serious.
Then at the same time, because it was hitting Middle East, we are getting actually remittances equivalent to $28 billion per year.
We have 6.5 million Africans living in the Middle East.
Everything stopped.
The fuel stopped.
And that had a huge impact because we're all imports, net importers of shel.
With that 48, we are net importers of fuel.
Now, how do you drive it? Because it was coming, it impacts transport, it impacts industries, it impacts everything.
The other item that was affected was fertilizer for agriculture and of course, which is the harvest that is coming later.
It's not immediate, but it's going to be hit later.
Now, at the same time, you had the logistics and trade that have been delayed, which is also another impact.
At the end of the day, it affects inflation, which is direct immediate.
Meaning if you have fewer inflation combined with agriculture inflation, which they call underlying inflation, it is so serious for any country.
Secondly, there is macroeconomic disruptions.
You don't have reserves of the fuel and also this time for any readjustment, you definitely have to use the facilities of the government, which is the reserves of the central bank, which is going to become another problem.
Now, in terms of that, then you are saying there are two stages, one quick wins that have to happen.
In this case, the first quick win was actually how to find an alternative way of getting the fuel.
That means the countries were now this time importing from the strait of Hamaz but this time going through the wrong route of Red Sea and coming to the Cape of Good hope.
That's why we see so many traffic going to Dban and also going to Mozambique.
We saw so many of the ships also refueling in Namibia.
Then we saw amport booming, something we never saw before.
Now, at least they are bringing in fuel and by the way, we need petrol, we need diesel, and also we need gas for cooking.
These ones, they all go together.
That means the impact is almost the same.
Then we say, what do we have in stock? We have Dangote who produces 650,000 barrels per day and has been distributing to neighboring countries.
But this time we need to go further deeper, and then we find that actually there are no logistics that are in place.
There are no pipes, but also transporting by road becomes very expensive.
Secondly, we also know that they have fertilizer and has been exporting actually to the Caribbeans and some few countries in Africa.
They are doing it.
They don't have all the elements, they lack some.
As we know that for Morocco, they have what they call OCP.
It's a company that brings fertilizers in so many other countries, have done it many times.
They also lack some elements like ammonia, and then we say, okay, how can they join hands to supply the African countries and they all go together.
We have particularly talked to both to actually work together and they all agree.
That's one.
Then for fertilizer there, that's for fertilizer, that's both of them, because on the fertilizer part, they are good, but also in the fuel part, that's why they're doing it.
Then what we are doing now is looking at country by country.
Are countries that are not getting fuel from the Midwest, they are getting it from Europe and elsewhere.
Those ones are okay.
Then we are saying which country, what is the impact? How do we this time customize to their own needs so that we can do country by country evaluation.
Then we are saying for these countries, for example, if we go to Maputo, if you go to Dubban, if you go to Ram Port, how do we bring these things now to the Hinterland, to other countries because they never used to do that.
Then the logistics part also comes in, which becomes another expense.
But then in the long run, What we need, these are just for short term that we are going to do in terms of fertilisers, in terms of sure.
But in the long run, we have our market in the Africa continental free trade area where we have agreed that this is one market because what we need in Africa, it's two things.
It's trade, it's investment.
And then creating conditions for that to happen is what we're working on.
You cannot do it in the current situation which we are in.
There has to be a way of focusing on specific areas.
One is infrastructure, the road, the rail on how to transport goods in all the corridors, the northern corridor, the southern corridor, the central corridor, and so forth.
Now, secondly, you focus on developing industries, not necessarily only at the country level, but also at the regional level, and that's what we call the regional value chain.
And in the ECA we have identified 94 of them in many areas from agriculture to critical minerals to all other items.
Why is it regional value chain? It's making sure that you start from the production, you develop industries in a special economic zone or industrial park, and then you deri and then attract investment to come in so that you can establish industries on the African continent to make sure that what we are exporting either in Africa or outside Africa has a very addition, and that's what would happen going forward.
So the rest now is making sure that we address all the other issues.
Tariff and non tariff barriers and other logistics.
That's why I was saying that all of them are needed.
All of them are needed because you complement each other.
That's why we're saying that we need to look at the short term, what needs to be done, and also the long term, what needs to be done.
But at the same time, you have to customize it to make sure that each country is not the same as the other in terms of capacity, in terms of the impact, there are some countries that are unlocked.
There are others that they have more capacity.
I wanted just to stop here by saying is that this is something that can be solved and we're working with member countries in this.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Clever, for that response.
It absolutely sounds like there's no short term solution and depending on which country there is different strategies that need to be put in place.
I'd like to bring in António.
António, given your experience with international cooperation, what specific reforms in the global financial architecture are most urgent, do you think to promote Africa's development within this context? Well, thank you very much.
Let me start by emphasizing that the best outcome of the Conference on financing for Development that took place last year in Sevilia was the agreement on the strengthening development financing.
In that regard, of course, for Africa, two important issues is the growth and strengthening of the African Development Bank and of course, the continued cooperation of the World Bank Group with Africa.
But at the same time, equally important or even most importantly, strengthening the national development banks.
That has to be one of the major tasks going forward, even creating a network of national development banks to support each other.
That's a task that I think, let's say the World Bank Group and the African Development Bank should try to coordinate as well as the cooperation among the national development banks.
Very importantly also, given the past history of Africa, depoliticize the development banks.
They had to be technical institutions with no political attachment of any sort.
The second issue is, of course, debt and debt restructuring, which was a weaker agreement in Ceviia but it's very important, of course, for several African countries.
I mean, the common framework of the G 20, which is the mechanism that is being used, has been used by four African countries, but is weak.
Very weak in my view.
There has to be a new mechanism to strengthen development financing and possibly creating an institutional framework for future processes of debt refinancing.
Third, monetary cooperation, which in this area, I think involves two things, one in which there is some progress already in Africa, which is cross border payments, good mechanism of cross border payments.
But equally important balance of payment financing during crisis, which is something that is still not in place in Africa.
I think it has to be very important in a sense as a complement to IMF financing.
I think that has to be one of the major tasks thinking going forward.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, António.
Yes, please come in.
Just for people here to understand and I think Professor Cam has made a very, very important point.
Now Africa has $1.2 trillion in debt, 64.2% in terms of debt to GDP ratio.
And as I was saying the other day, the payment of debt.
What matters is not even the size of debt.
It's the combination of the debt.
Some of the concessional debt is very cheap, 0.75% or less than 1% for 30 40 years with ten years of grace period.
The other one is very expensive, which is private sector debt, the one that you issue a Eurobond.
And now when you have this kind of combination, you find you are paying a lot of money out of the budget that you do every year.
There is very that is left to divide among the activities that you are talking about and some of them like social protection, education, health have to be ring fenced.
Talk about development, when you know that you are highly indebted and you have 16 countries which are almost close to really debt distress and we have seven that are already in the debt distress.
And having a framework that does not work, as we mentioned, we used to have the Paris clap, which was working properly, but now the people who are lending have become so many, and now we are trying to see how the common framework can be able to be improved to cater for our needs.
There used to be private sector debt that will be handled in London, we use London Clap and then the Paris clap for the others that were doing it.
But now they are facing a problem.
Just to give you an example, one thing that is costing them, it is taking a long time.
Some countries have taken 20 months to do that, others 18 months.
When you're under stress, how do you wait for 20 months? As you said, the mechanism does not work properly.
I just want you to comment on that very issue, which impacts almost everything.
Thank you so much, for raising that point.
I want to bring in Cory.
Cory, we know that global fragmentation disrupts trade, and But it also offers near shoring opportunities.
How can the continent capitalize on shifting investment flows without falling into new forms of economic dependency? By all means, one does need all the capital that one can get to develop and it doesn't have to lead to dependency.
If we look but what it does require is good, careful governance.
When I say good governance, I mean Two things.
Usually people first think of corruption and indeed, there shouldn't be corruption and clear goals have to be driving the decision making and goals that are well embedded in a vision and a development vision for the country.
But the second an issue that is much harder actually to accomplish is what is necessary is patience.
Let me unpack a little bit this question of how to get foreign investment to work for us.
What do we want from capital? We want the capital itself that it generates employment.
We want it to bring know how We want and hope that it will also bring us connections and markets abroad.
That might be actually the hardest thing to transfer to the country to owned capacity in domestic capacity.
But these things we might be able to get directly from the investment by targeting what companies do we attract? When I say know how, this is very This is a very complex issue.
It's in fact building capabilities.
There is no way that by bringing a foreign investment into the country that's theoretically going to do something extremely sophisticated and technologically advanced, you can actually learn from that unless there is already a ground ready for learning from such investments.
In fact, you're unlikely to attract them because they themselves cannot build all the know how that is necessary to deliver immediately the most sophisticated thing.
In fact, what the biggest challenges is that usually what we see and especially in any country that is starting from a very low development level, is that you have two kinds of opportunities, maybe the investment in textile or the investment in mining.
Neither of those are going to create a lot of learning and knowledge.
Some, yes.
But that shouldn't dishearten us.
First of all, they will still bring employment and they will generate income and they will generate taxes.
In the case of mining, there will be less employment, but there will be a lot of taxes if the contracts have been negotiated well.
There will be big capital that most countries and know how and technology cannot develop by themselves.
And on the side of textile, there will be some income generation spending.
Now, if one cannot build independence based on somehow directly learning from these two kinds of investments, one can build it by taking the opportunities that these kinds of investments create.
First of all, one should never lose sight of the importance of the development of local, small and medium enterprises that can in a way take advantage of the income that is being generated.
But in order to give direction to this sort of work and to actually guide how these small and medium enterprises might actually be moving up the ladders of capabilities and know how and eventually maybe be inserted in more sophisticated value chains, again, one needs to have planned carefully the vision.
Where do you think that the advantages of your country can be? Where do you think that the talents and the culture of the country can take you? At the same time, you need to be sequencing.
As I said, one of the biggest errors that happens with investment, whether it is foreign or even more in the case of public, is that we want to hurry, we want to show progress.
There is too much mortar and bricks in that investment, or we want huge numbers of employment.
But again, a textile industry is going to generate employment.
It's not going to generate the knowledge that is necessary for the next step in the development ladder.
So what sequencing envisioning is, again, good governance.
This is hard to accomplish.
But back to what I said at the beginning, yes, you can build and develop and after all, look at the experiences of countries like China itself, you need to concentrate at first.
That's another difficult political choice that you will need to colocate industries so that they can generate enough demand and enough economic activity so that you can be creating your own industry next to them.
When I say industry, I mean in a broad sense, it doesn't have to be industrial production, it can be services as well.
Finally, let me just use the example of the part of the world that I come from.
I'm from Serbia, my center is in Belgrade.
In Eastern Europe, when we switched uh, when we switched from socialist or communism that had been building deliberately industries, sometimes maybe not necessarily where they would have been most optimal.
We all suffered a deep recession.
We all depended on foreign investment to be rebuilt.
But lo and behold, the rebuilding of those industries was again in the areas that the Communist period had invested in as well.
Of course, many other especially services boomed as well, that hadn't been developed enough and that were necessary to raise the productivity of the industries in the sectors that had been there before.
So The only discouraging aspect of my story is that it takes time and it takes patience.
Thank you.
Indeed, it does take time and patience.
Thank you so much, Corey.
Daniel, I want to come to you.
I see you have your laptop there.
You are busy jotting things down.
How can African governments then in this climate of fragmentation, protect investments in social inclusion, health investments? How can these investments still be relevant and valid when rising global interests and fragmentation driven inflation are seriously tightening fiscal spaces.
Thanks, Yvonne.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Can I just start by saying how wonderful it is to be in this room? I've seen pictures of Emperor Haile Celesi opening the session that signed the charter of the Organization of Africa Unity in this very room and Kremer, Nara, NASA, all the greats have been here.
It's amazing.
History might also help us answer the social inclusion question you've just asked.
Because it was in this room in 1963 that for the first time, Africa's economy and planning ministers came together to look at the challenges facing the continent.
Imagine if we were here 60 years ago, The challenge I think was relatively straightforward.
How does Africa catch up to the world? How do African nations deliver economic growth that would create jobs, that would create dynamism, and help catch up in the model of the economy as we know it today? But today, if we think about the world that we're facing, I think our challenge is not for Africa to catch up using the current model.
Because what we know about the current model is that growth at all costs leaves us all poorer.
Those were the words the UN Secretary-General used just yesterday to critique this obsession with GDP as the only metric or the primary metric of economic success because we are increasingly aware that growth at all costs has devastating environment and climate impacts.
We know that growth at all costs is driving inequality across all societies.
For me, I think the challenge facing us all and facing the continent is really about social inclusion.
How can Africa lead the way in doing development differently to be genuinely inclusive? We know the demography, the environmental and other characteristics that are going to shape this continent's future and mean that this continent will be unique in global terms and there'll be eminent demographers coming after us who can explain that.
I think the opportunity is to put inclusion at the heart of the policy agenda to say, look, it can't just be about growth at all costs, it's got to be about investing in young people and ensuring that we close the gap on gender inequality and so on.
I think that's the opportunity.
I know the context is incredibly difficult.
The global context, geopolitically, economically is incredibly difficult.
But the last thing that we need leaders to do is to just say, we're just going to keep going on this current track.
We need to find a new way and inclusive development has to be what that's about.
Thank you, Danny.
I want to come back on your response with the question, how? What is the how? Yeah.
How long do you have? I think it has to start with investing in effective state institutions that deliver social protection.
No successful country has increased or improved human development without substantial investment in states to be able to invest in health services and education in welfare, social benefits.
Yet the economic orthodoxy tells us that that's not affordable, it's not right, and so that's an important how.
Secondly, I think a increasing the resource base, domestic resource mobilization, whatever you want to call it and not I think there are important points have already been made about making sure the continent taps into global financial flows to attract investment and so on.
But it's got to be as much about back to the unity point that this room is all about, is what can the continent do here and to increase local supply chains to increase cross border trade.
It's those sorts of things to support and nurture inclusive development and dynamism here.
But I can keep going if you want.
I'll have to stop you, Danny, and we will be discussing regional integration and its role on this topic.
Thank you, Danny.
Let me bring in Eu Dene coming all the way from the Caribbean, which is fantastic.
In the context of rising global fragmentation and new shocks to food, security, remittances, household resilience, how can Africa accelerate its development by treating gender equality? As a foundational economic strategy rather than an add on to growth and industrial policy.
Thank you, Yvonne.
I am very optimistic about Africa's capacity to weather contemporary economic crisis if if the countries reconceptualize issues of gender equality as strategic, foundational, cross cutting pillars of economic and social development.
Before you ask me how, I'll tell you how.
One, incorporate and operationalize the provisions of the CEO Convention, the Maputo Protocol, and SDG five to unlock the underutilized potential of African women to accelerate sustainable development.
Women's labor power is underutilized and must be increased in formal economic activities across multiple social sectors.
Two, harness the political will combined with allocating resources and implementing policies to reconceptualize women's full integration as active agents of economic growth.
Women must not be viewed as only consumers of state welfare transfers.
Three, women are central to all demographic trends and expanded labor force participation.
Target women in policies in all policies, but especially in industrial growth, artificial intelligence, and renewable energy.
Four, incorporate more than a human rights approach, as vital as it is to include women in economic policies, poor conditions of work, restricted labor force participation, inadequate access to specialized training on equal pay for work of equal value are all forms of economic violence and they contradict SDG four, five, and eight.
But more importantly, they restrict macroeconomic activity.
My fifth point, I have some specific strategies.
Provide supportive legislative frameworks for women and employment and remove remaining legislative and cultural barriers.
Provide women with digital, technological, and analytical skills by expanding education in digital literacy, STEM, artificial intelligence, and financial literacy.
Eliminate the persistent digital gender divide across Africa, hinders, hindering women and hampering economic and social growth.
Increase women's leadership across all industries, but especially in science, technologies, renewable, and traditional energy.
Expand childcare, provide free or heavily subsidized daycare and early childhood education.
It's an investment in the future.
Provide paternity leave where it does not exist.
Cumulatively, these strategies offer children a solid educational foundation, they prepare future workforces, and they create valuable, engaged citizens, while freeing more women to enter the labor force, and all of them create stronger human capital formation.
In conclusion, I'll say to have progress on economic growth and sustainable development, analyze population trends, this aggregate labor statistics, remove workplace inequities, expose the differential impact on women and men of existing economic policies and how these policies conceptualize women's relevance and contributions.
Gender equality constitutes an equal pillar of sustainable development.
I thank you.
Thank you, Ste.
Thank you.
Sorry.
Thank you so much, Dean for those very clear and powerful sentiments and strategies you've explained.
We're running out of time for this very interesting panel on global fragmentation and Africa's development pathways.
But we have one last speaker on our panel.
Last but not least, Navalny coming from Malawi.
Building on udne's reply just there, how should African policymakers, in your view, therefore, adjust social investment priorities, for example, in health, in education, nutrition, social protection, when fragmentation disrupts prices, migration, and service delivery so that human capital gains that have been made over such a long time are not completely reversed? Thank you so much, von.
Very interesting question.
Most of you may have heard of social protection fs.
This is a concept by the International Labor Organization that encourages countries to come up with nationally determined protections for healthcare, education, but also income protection for children, women who are pregnant or nursing babies, and also the elderly, some form of support for people who are unable to work, but also includes people able to work, who are unable to work with disability, et cetera I like to think of not just the social protection floor, which is at the lowest level, but I would like to think of it as a shelter because when you have just the floor, rains can come and make you wait and the winds can blow you away.
The shelter is important.
For people mostly older people who've been in debt will know you go for debt counseling, the counselor tells you, whatever you do, make sure you keep your home.
Make sure you have an address because when you don't have an address, you can't get access to loans, you can't get a job.
It's important that there's something that's really stable.
I feel that it's political will that governments can still maintain these social protection shelters for their vulnerable for the young people as well as for the elderly.
When I was at university, I read about the English poor laws of the 17th century.
That was fascinating for me because it was part of how we came up with all these SDGs millennium development goals, it's about protecting one another.
They had five components.
One was progressive taxation laws, making sure that if you were rich, you contributed more to the port.
If you were not so rich, you contributed what you could.
The second one was to have a civil registration that make sure that they could record births, deaths, marriages, just to make sure that they knew which people belonged to which parish and so that that parish could take care of these people.
The third one is interesting and very relevant.
They had the justice of the peace to make sure that they addressed corruption and prevented corruption.
Then there was the settlement laws, make sure that there wasn't land grabbing, et cetera and then finally, social and legal protections for everyone.
The more I think about those things now, I think the more relevant and every country can aspire towards protections in this way.
You asked the question how the governments can continue when we are buffeted by wars and winds, et cetera.
One thing that I think we have or one area we've not really tapped onto is the private sector.
I think we need to be thinking about how the private sector can support development and can support social protections.
We also need to make sure that we use our progressive taxes effectively and making sure that there isn't that wastage.
If all else fails, I think we can have things like levies on luxury goods to make sure that the most vulnerable in our society are protected.
My final point is that government can't do it all alone because we do have in our own societies that concept of togetherness, we are one.
If my neighbor is hurting, I need to support.
We can have things like this household, the father isn't able to till their land, community members come and help.
Let's be in it together, support one another and make sure that we leave no one behind.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Navani.
I'm very sad to say we've come to the end of our first discussion.
Can we please thank our panelists? It was extremely insightful and I think lays a great foundation for the next two discussions.
Thank you so much.
Please make your way back to your seats.
I see there's a group photo that needs to be taken.
I'm being invited for the group photo.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much.
All right.
I think the microphone is unhappy.
I hope I can continue.
I have not touched or changed anything.
Can we have to help? I'm going to try to continue.
Can you still hear me? Great.
Let's keep going.
The mic seems to be working now.
That was a fantastic discussion, and we want to move on to our next discussion on Africa's youth dividend, pathways to employment skills, and sustainable growth for all.
I'm going to introduce our panelists.
They're going to come and take their seats, and we're going to play a short video to lay the foundation for this discussion.
Let me start with Mr.
Paff dug.
You're going to kill me, aren't you afterwards.
I hope that was the correct pronunciation.
Professor of Global Development and Brooke School of Policy, Cornell University.
Please, if you could come up, Paff Alex Es, John Cif Professor of Global Health and Associate Dean for Human Rights Global Health and Human Rights at Dexter University, former Executive Director of African Population and Health Research Center.
They are such accomplished speakers.
They have very long titles.
Let's keep going.
Anastasia, please come up to the stage.
Professor of the Department of Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences, School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University and last but not least, Raya Mutk who is a professor of demography, at the University of Bologna.
Whilst they get comfortable, I do want to take this opportunity to recognize all the young people in the audience today.
Thank you so much for coming.
We know that Africa's young people will be inheriting a dynamic continent and we all want to see you set up for success.
Before our next panel that will discuss Africa's youth dividend and how to leverage and harness Africa's youth dividend, let's see a video about youth mental health and population trends.
I'm hoping the video is working and we can hear the video.
Please run the video I Thank you for running the video.
The sound was a little bit low, but I hope everybody was able to capture the essence of the video and read the subtitles.
Let's dive straight into these questions on Africa's youth dividend.
I want to start with the man to my immediate left, parfait.
This is a question and a topic very close to my heart as a parent of a young lady.
When many African countries have seen increased school enrollment, youth unemployment remains so terribly high.
How must we redefine education to ensure it matches the actual needs of the green and digital economies? Thank you very much for this Difficult question.
I would like to start by recognizing all the youth in the audience.
It's really a pleasure to be here and to have this conversation.
I say it's a difficult question and an important question because the topic is youth unemployment really, and it has enormous consequences for our society, and it has enormous consequences for youth and their family.
It's also important because it's complex in solving.
It has many causes.
I will start with the consequences.
Why do we need to worry about youth unemployment? To answer this question, I'm going to borrow from French language, and I'm also going to borrow from Amharic language.
I just took a crash course from my youth friend here and he taught me something that is actually very powerful.
Let's start with the French.
In the 17th century, Francois Voltare, a philosopher, a French philosopher said, I am going to speak in French and then translate Travle lo no Trois Gray Lou Vise et Bejin.
In other words, when you give somebody a job, you don't only take care of their economic needs, you also give them meaning, and you keep them out of trouble.
If we turn to Amharic now, the term job in Amharic is said Sirrah, and it writes a little bit like S and if you add an A, it gives the gender dimension.
I think it's a very powerful metaphor.
In other words, to give somebody a job is to enable them to be called a S or a madam to become a respected person in a society.
Giving somebody a job is to give them dignity, not just resources.
So I'll start with this platform.
I can also speak to the Under Secretary-General here who is really interested in meeting all his sustainable development goals.
If you start with and youth employment, by this factor, you would have met many of your other goals, peace, poverty, education, health, and so forth.
So youth unemployment is extremely important for societies and for African societies in particular.
Now, let's think about the causes of youth unemployment.
Why do we have so much youth unemployment now? Any youth here who does not have a job, please raise your hand if you don't have a job.
We have quite a few.
How do we get you a job? How do we create meaningful jobs for everybody who needs one? Meaningful job that meet the criterion of Voltaire? The ways to do this are very complex, but to make it simple, we can just take the word youth unemployment and split it in half.
We can think about things that youth can do themselves and the education system can help them do and things that states can do.
That is on the employment side.
Now, Yvonne asked me to speak mostly about what youth and school systems can do.
But let's start by acknowledging that in addition to what you can do yourself, the state has to begin by creating job opportunities, working in collaboration with the private sector, as somebody said here, or civil society, or even by providing incentives for entrepreneurship.
Now, as far as the education systems and what you can do, there are several adaptations that are going to be needed.
We need to profoundly change the education system in many dimensions, not just what we teach, how we teach, when and where we teach.
If you want to consider what we teach, there's a need to change the curriculum and to teach topics that meet the needs of the labor market of today, digital competencies, vocational education and so forth and so forth.
We have to keep in tune and aligned with the labor market.
In terms of how we teach, we can no longer be satisfied with just theory.
We have to have training that puts young people in job situations where they actually learn how to work, how they learn near more experienced workers.
When and where we teach, a lot of the training is going to be lifelong.
Even when you are done with your education, you have to be prepared to keep learning and learning and learning, and we have to invest in peri educational institutions that are not necessarily universities and schools, but are located in communities.
I'll stop here.
Thank you so much, Pff.
I just wanted to come in on your response there.
What is it going to take? Briefly? What is it going to take? Because I think the problem is well established and many know that what is on offer now is really not fit for purpose.
In summary, what is it going to take? What are the one, two, three actions that need to be taken? Yes.
On the school reform side, it's going to take just creativity.
Many universities are now pressured into adapting.
On the labor market side, it's going to also take creativity in addition to political will.
Creating jobs is not as difficult than we supposed it to be and creating jobs for youth does not mean neglecting adults.
In fact, we can take advantage of some of the changes that are happening now in the demographic structure to find new employment niches, Yes, we have a large population of youth, but we also have an aging population that is in need of care.
That is a sector in which we can invest.
We have younger mothers who are entering the labor market and they need help with domestic care and there's an industry that we can build there in childcare and so forth.
The state can proactively build and exploit new niches of employment creation that exist.
Creativity and political will.
Thank you, Pff.
Ray, I want to bring you into this discussion.
We're talking about how to translate this youth dividend that we're always hearing about into real opportunity now at this time.
How should African countries in your experience and with your knowledge plan for the climate risks reshape issues such as migration in order to support a resilient and skilled youth population to remain competitive in this very competitive global landscape.
Thank you.
Before going deeper into the question on how climate change or climate risk may affect migration and then employment opportunities, I want to bring everyone up into the same page about how climate change shapes migration nowadays.
We tend to think that when people faced with climate risk, droughts, floods, that would increase migration.
It is true in certain contexts, but another way around, in fact, facing climate risk or other type of risk can be conflict may also suppress migration.
I would go back to the skills issue later because why do we see that migration may actually decrease due to climate change? Because migration is a costly process.
Let me ask some questions.
If you please raise your hand if you're not from Ais Ababa originally or most of you here, From Adis Ababa.
Who is not from Adis Ababa apart from from outside.
Quite a few of us.
Only a few people or maybe I asked another question.
Maybe in the next five years, some of you are you intending to move outside of Adis Ababa, maybe go abroad somewhere? A show of hands if you intend to move young people put your hand up if you'd like to leave your town.
Yeah, quite a few of you.
Probably almost half and that correspond with the surveys that we have about 20 to 40% of people from Africa mentioned that they would like to move permanently abroad.
I bring this in why? Because migration, I was saying earlier that climate change may suppress migration because migration is a costly process.
For those of you who planning maybe to move abroad, what do you need? You need some financial resources.
You need some social resources, social connection to because you may want to move to where you already have friends or family.
Um, so what climate change does is actually may reduce your ability to generate income because it disrupts employment.
So that's the first point that what does climate change do to migration? It may increase in some part, it may decrease.
So that is a message you can take home.
But to go back to our question, so imagine, um, Now go back, let you imagine people who live in the rural areas.
They rely on agriculture for their livelihood.
That's the main source of income.
Now, the family experience drought the first time, first year, the second year they face drought again, and the third year again, they may start thinking, can we use migration as an adaptation strategy? We may thinking about sending a young person in the household to go to work in the city to generate an extra income in other job that doesn't rely on agriculture.
Who going to be that young person that the family wants to send? Typically, it's going to be the people with some level of education because you want the person who are able to find a job as well.
Typically what we find is climate related migration is actually concentrated on those who are not the poorest not the lowest education, but those with some level of education that would enable them to use that capital that they have to adapt to climate change.
I'm going to stop soon, but I want to come back to what type of policies that we can think about? I think two things.
When I was saying that people who migrate due to climate change tend not to be the poorest.
Meaning that some people who need and may want to migrate, they may not be able to do so due to climate risk, due to conflict risk, and other things.
So In scientific term, it's not such a nice term, we call them trapped population.
We have to think also about those who are vulnerable, what kind of adaptation options that they may have in the place that they could not leave.
Think about other type of income generation activities.
So the first bit.
But the second point we see if people would choose migration as an adaptation strategy and you may think of maybe more and more people may come into the city, think about Adis Ababa already attracts so many people, some of regulation, infrastructure services have to be in place and I'm going to stop here.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ra.
I was very interested in your responses on how African countries can plan.
Maybe a few more thoughts on how they can plan for this type of change we're seeing.
Yeah.
I think as we know, we live in the world climate impact our Africa is one of the most vulnerable regions.
We can already anticipate what type of the climate impacts and what kind of area and who is vulnerable, who would be able to adapt and who is not.
We emphasize quite a lot on investing in all kinds of human capitals also, changing the skills, equip people with the ability to if you want to use migration as adaptation strategy you have, ability to do so.
But if you don't, you also have ability to adapt and that's the most important thing here.
Ra, thank you so much for your response.
I want to bring anstasia into this conversation.
Again, an issue I'm very passionate about and concerned about, which is gender.
With experts on gender and public policy on this panel, how can we ensure that this demographic dividend that we keep hearing about isn't simply a male dominated economic shift? What structural barriers to young women's labor force participation must fall and how will they fall? Thank you very much.
Let me start by saying that it will be impossible for Africa to fully realize the demographic dividend without women's inclusion.
And what is the demographic dividend? The demographic dividend is when a country has a large youth population which can contribute to the labor force and contribute to economic growth.
Young women are very important to this process.
If you think about girls' education, it helps to lower poverty and young women's labor force participation can increase family income.
If they have smaller healthier families, that can improve economic growth.
But as we all know, young women have greater barriers than young men to entering and moving upwards in the labor market.
This makes it very important to have gender equitable policies.
You might be wondering what barriers do young women face? I made a list and there are lots of barriers there.
If we think about limited access to education, and that could be because of the cost of schooling, it could be because of child marriage and early childbearing.
It could also be a factor that has to do with unpaid care work.
You know, Families depend on women to do a lot.
Take care of children, take care of sick people.
You also have that.
Then there are fewer job choices for women in high paying fields.
If we think about the STEM field, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, you have to think about what proportion of the young people in these fields are women.
We also have to think about gender discrimination.
There are some employers who think that men make better leaders and better workers than women.
You might find that women may be passed over for promotion or they may have lower incomes compared to male counterparts who are doing the same job.
You also have lack of safety and transportation.
When I talk about lack of safety, I'm talking about harassment.
Girls going to school, girls in school, girls at work, you have these issues of violence which can limit their participation.
Then we also have limited access to money and resources.
If a woman wants to start a business and they come from some family I know who says, girls cannot own land, we are not going to give land to women, then women have no collateral.
And if we also think about the cultural expectations, there are some communities which expect women to stay home and look after the family rather than build a career and that can be quite limiting.
So when we think about all these barriers, which of these barriers should fall first? I would say it's limited access to education because once women are educated, it sets up a chain reaction which helps to reduce all the other barriers that they face.
But education alone is not enough.
And Africa, I don't think will fully benefit from its demographic dividend if governments don't also improve the following things, healthcare access, job creation, women's safety, childcare support, and transportation as well.
If these issues are not addressed, we run the risk of the economic growth that might come from a demographic dividend, benefiting men more than young women.
Thank you.
Thank you so much Anastasia.
I really enjoyed listening to your responses and truly what needs to be done.
We are, I'm being told, running out of time.
Time is going a little bit too fast and you all have such amazing insights.
I wish this panel could go on for slightly longer, but it can't.
But Alex, you will still get to speak because you are here onstage.
Final question to Alex.
With rapid urbanization, What do you think are the most critical investments to make cities and informal settlements engines of youth opportunity rather than inequality traps? How do we build the institutions that can actually deliver them? Thank you so much, Yvonne.
To start off with, I think that the investments that are needed in cities and the formal settlements are not different from what you need in any other setting to ensure effective transition from being dependent to being independent.
For young people, that's really what you need to what we are looking to achieve.
We've talked about education.
We've talked about creating opportunities and jobs and opportunities and creating an enabling environment for young people to actually make those transitions more.
We've talked about some of the things that constrain access to education, whether it's early marriage or early childbearing, all those factors are important.
When you think about cities, there's actually something that's quite unique about cities.
One is the fact that the young people in cities are a lot more interconnected.
And that makes it easy and possible to mobilize.
And you look at all the movements and things that have happened more recently.
They largely start in cities because of the connectivity of young people within there and they have greater access to education in many instances.
But when you look at cities, Informal settlements within cities are actually uniquely disadvantaged, especially for young people.
Those disadvantages also stem from some of those key factors that drive opportunities for independence.
If you think about education, in many informal settlements, access to education is largely in the informal school systems that are often do not offer the national curriculum and which means that young people growing up in those settings lose access to those things.
Some of the work we did in places like Kenya and the slums around Kenya and Nairobi suggests that young people who grew up in the slums actually start sex three years earlier.
They have their first child almost three years earlier.
When you look at the age entry age childbearing, it corresponds to low access.
If you can ask among the young people here, how many of you did not finish secondary school, maybe not even one person here.
When you don't finish secondary school, it limits your access to even be in a place like this.
You ask, how many of you had a child before age 17? Maybe none.
Because those things become hindrances and how do we then remove all those? That's where effective policies could actually address those things that they don't cost a lot to be able to do that it takes political will to reduce and eliminate child marriage in many of our societies.
For informal settlements, these are some of the constraints that are there.
Beyond that, also, the other major challenge young people informal settlements face is The discrimination because place matters.
When you put up in your job application that you live in one informal settlements, that already creates some disincentives among employers in many instances because of the biases that exist there.
We need to deal with all of those in order to ensure that young people, irrespective of where they are and where they are growing up, actually have access to effectively transit from dependence to independent lives.
Thank you so much, Alex.
I didn't want to interrupt you.
I wanted you to finish your point.
Please, can we thank our panelists for this very interesting discussion with a round of applause.
Thank you so much.
We're going to have a group photo, please put your best smile on.
Stand up, please.
Group photo.
Great.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
We are running out of time.
All these conversations are so interesting.
We're running about 10 minutes late.
I want to ask our final panel members to join me up onstage.
We're now moving to the very interesting topic of regional integration, climate action, and Africa's role in a changing economy.
I'm thrilled to invite ASA, P strategic advisor, KTH, Royal Institute of Technology and Senior research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute.
Elizabeth Sidiropolis, Chief Executive of the South African Institute of International Affairs, Mr.
David Christopher Smith, Director for the Center of Environmental Management at the University of the West Indies, and Isabella Texerra, a former Minister of Environment in Brazil.
Very happy to have you.
Like I said, we are slightly against time, so please collect your thoughts as we dive into these questions.
I'm going to start with you, Elizabeth.
Now, how can regional integration, for instance, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, which we heard a bit about earlier, serve as an effective buffer against global fragmentation, which we discussed in panel one.
How does Inter Africa trade specifically build climate resilience over to you.
Thanks and good afternoon, everybody and very good to see all you young people here.
I've long past graduated being a young person, so it's always refreshing to see you in the audience.
Let me start answering your question by saying, well, what defined African trade in the past? It was colonial extraction.
Colonial powers mined minerals and built roads and ports to take them to the north to the global North.
After independence, of course, a lot of that ha arrangement continued to persist.
What happened with many African countries is they went into a commodity boom and bust cycle.
When commodity prices were up, that was great, when commodity prices were down, that was really bad.
I think there has certainly been over the six decades since decolonization began, I think a real effort to build regional integration.
We have eight regional economic communities, and interregional trade has picked up a little bit, but what has really created a significant amount of momentum and impetus is the establishment of the African continental free trade area, which is really supposed to be a use the regional economic communities as a building block to increase intra African trade.
But as the executive secretary said earlier, it's not just about increasing trade, it's also about increasing investment because at the end of the day, I don't want to sell my copper to you so that you can sell me your copper.
I need to be able to sell you something that's value added and you sell me something that value added that I don't have in return.
In order to do that, we need more investment, we need to be able to produce more things and so on.
In fact, intra African trade at the moment is about 17, 18% and a lot of that is actually manufacturing.
Although that manufacturing is concentrated in a number of countries, obviously, South Africa, my own country is one, North African and a few others, Kenya, your country, and so on.
The initiative is intended to really build regional value chains.
We heard about that earlier from the executive secretary because our markets are small, our individual markets are small.
What that does mean is that we actually have to recognize that we can't do everything ourselves in our countries, that we actually have to pool in some ways, economic decision making to build up regional value chains and the potential as the initiative is rolled out is to reach intra African trade to the value of 275 billion by 2040.
Let me just talk a little bit also reflect very briefly.
What is also very useful in this context is the Pan African payment and settlement system I think it was referred to earlier, which allows for payments in local currencies, reduces the volatility of foreign currencies if you're paying in dollars.
Lastly, let me just say a little bit about climate resilience and intra African trade.
Of course, if you're building up regional agri processing systems, et cetera, if you're building up your fertilizer production, you're improving your regional food security.
In the process, you're also hopefully shortening supply chains, which is good for the environment.
You are also promoting green industrialization, and that is one of the priorities of the African Union.
And of course, the fact that you've got the Pan African payment system reduces exposure to currency volatility anywhere on all of these issues.
On Greek and industrialization, for example, lithium batteries, you have to import everything from overseas or can you create some of that regionally and cooperate? There are really some good initiatives in that regard, Zambia, DRC on lithium, libita corridor and creating infrastructure hubs, and so on.
But let me stop.
Thank you so much for that, Elizabeth.
I would have loved to have heard more, but we are, as I said, against time.
Let me quickly bring in David.
David, drawing on your experience of small island developing states, David is coming all the way from Jamaica and disaster risk reduction.
What in your view is the most important design feature Africa should build into regional integration to improve resilience to climate and disaster shocks while sustaining growth.
In two or 3 minutes, please.
I think the most important thing is to pool as many technical resources as possible.
What we've done in the Caribbean is recognize that individual countries can't do the job of preparing for climate or any of the problems that climate cause.
Climate affects our agriculture, it affects our health.
60% of diseases are made worse by climate change.
We've set up an Institute of meteorology and hydrology that helps us to understand what the next three months are going to be like in terms of weather so farmers can understand that.
We've set up a center for climate change because we need to build resilience, build resilience structures, both economic and physical.
How do we make sure our hospitals and our schools are not badly affected by climate? The other thing that we do is we've created a regional disaster response agency because not only is climate a problem, But volcanoes are a problem, earthquakes are a problem, and it's beyond the capacity of any individual country to deal with all those.
We've embraced the fact that we stand better together.
We share our resources, we allow people to move from one country to another and do work.
We share our resources, we share our data, we share our information, that makes us stronger.
If you can do that as well, you will be stronger.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, David, for the very succinct and powerful answering statement there.
Isabel, I'm going to move over to you and your vast experience, of course, in Brazil.
What are the key conditions for making climate action a development and competitive strategy, and competitiveness strategy so that green priorities, again, translate into jobs, investment, and credibility in international partnerships? Okay.
Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, everyone.
I will share my thoughts not only based on my experience in Brazil, but also as the head of Brazilian delegation of the key players to have Paris Agreement internationally.
I think that it's important to three things.
The first thing is that climate change is not an issue that will drive in the future.
We need to drive this today because this is happening.
And not only because the global economy, the power politics, et cetera, everything that everyone's mentioned here, but because nature changed.
The first thing to be observed.
The overshooting of 1.5 degrees means that everything's changed.
Don't wait to try to control nature.
It is a huge mistake.
We are behind nature.
First thing, the second thing the question says this is development issue.
We cannot promote or have an ambition, consider development, economic growth, social inequality, everything that have been discussing here without considering climate change as part of the pillars of one of the pillars of development strategies.
It's very important not because this must be managed based on tragedies, but because mutation must be based on new requirements for development.
Green is not green because we have dollars.
It's green because we have nature as a key partner.
We are full dependent nature.
To provide climate solutions and to come with a new perspective development in the world.
My third point here, it's important to understand climate change is one of the pillar of our national, regional strategy to develop, but also our relevance to be part of the world.
Countries must be relevant because you're able to provide solutions and provide solidarity, understand the regional inequalities and vulnerability to climate change.
Why? Because we have managed this age based on security and risk sharing.
We need to understand this.
If not, we are coming to put apart some important players like science, like technologies, like the diversity of economy, like resilience and bring climate change mitigation and adaptation together.
Ten years ago, we separate things.
Today, we need to bring things together.
Finally, my last comment here, it's important to understand our national capacity to build up industrial innovation policies.
It's really critical if you want to change things.
Second, good regulatory system and a new efficient relationship between private and public sectors.
This is very, very tricky and efficient way to bring development banks, national development banks, and central banks align with its ambition.
Finally, of course, I have another thing to highlight here, but two things important human capture.
Human capture is critical.
Please avoid denialism.
Avoid it.
It's a waste of time.
Don't ask for the privilege of ignorance, study, work, and kiss your love, of course, because it's a barry way.
Finally, I think that trade international, not on international market, pay attention on national markets.
Hey guys, pay attention.
It really matters if we want to have really a fair inclusive development and less vulnerable countries in the future.
My understanding is that we need to bring the new generation the rooms to discuss the solutions because you will not be part of the solution, my generation.
Come on, fight a lot for your political rooms.
Be part of this, and let's build something really new, consider the future because it's important to kiss your love, your family and going back in order to be based on wars.
This is the old way to explore political power.
You have the decision to change things.
Let's change things together.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Isabella.
That was great.
Thank you for outlining those conditions.
We are almost out of time, but of course, Al, you're sitting right next to me and we have to, of course, get you in with this very important question on CP 32.
Ethiopia will host the Cop 32 climate negotiations next year as the first ever LDC to host a CP.
As CP President Ethiopia will help set the agenda and shine the light on issues that matter in this region.
What could this cop mean for Africa? How can it be best prepared over the next 18 months or so? In two or 3 minutes, please, Asa.
Thank you.
Thank you, Yvonne, and wonderful to be here.
Normally, I would also talk about climate science and so on, but I think it's actually very appropriate to end this panel discussion looking at a very concrete opportunity coming up.
For Ethiopia in 18 months time when you will host the climate negotiations.
In my experience, these cop meetings, climate negotiations are much more than a single meeting.
There will be tens of thousands of people coming to Adis Ababa.
The world will be very interested in what Ethiopia has to offer not least young people of Ethiopia.
But more than that, it is an opportunity now to start working on this leadership that Ethiopia can take showing climate solutions.
Also, of course, as students, you know, it's good to have a deadline to do that homework.
I just before coming here to Ethiopia for me, I was aware about the big investments being made in land restoration, forestry, renewable energy, energy access, electrified transport, now even decarbonizing the cement industry.
This is impressive.
It's a hard sector, but Ethiopia wants to get engaged and contribute to innovation.
I think, again, I just feel this is very exciting.
Again, the first time that a least developed country will host a cop meeting.
So we look forward as part of the climate community to hear the voices of young people in Ethiopia, what you expect from this and what solutions will come out of this.
Just my final comment is that I think trying to integrate everything we heard in these panels, it's impossible, but I think more than trying to go for a big win for Ethiopia, for Africa, for the climate.
Let's go for a smart win, really trying to integrate all these issues that we have discussed on economic development, industrial strategy, gender equality, social inclusion, and really designing these very smart strategies going forward.
Thank you.
Can we have a round of applause.
Thank you so much to Asa, Elizabeth, David, and Isabella for coming up here and being so focused and succinct in your feedback and in your forward looking approach to these very complex issues.
Thank you so much for traveling.
What is the last.
Guys, we will host the world next year, embrace the world.
We need you.
Don't forget it, because the rest of the world is a piece of something that we cannot buy.
We can buy young people hope, creativeness, and trust.
Let's build something new next year here in Ethiopia.
I invite you to join us not only because of climate change, but because of hope in our creativeness to be happy.
Let's do it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Isabella, for the passionate call to action.
Thank you so much.
You can return to your seats and again, thank you.
Oh, of course, sorry.
We must have a photo to prove we were here.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Please return to your seats.
Thank you so much.
That was a really interesting and wonderful discussion.
Unfortunately, we have reached the end of the global policy dialogue for today.
Just a reminder that you can explore all of UNDSAs reports on population trends and economic analysis at un.org forward slashSA that's DSA Delta elephant, Sierra, Alpha.
That's also where you'll find information about the UN high level political forum on sustainable development that will take place in July in New York this year.
It's where countries will report on their progress towards achieving the sustainable development goals.
We're also excited to let you know we're planning another global policy dialogue on July 9th.
You can bookmark the policy dialogue website for more information about that.
That's also available, as I said earlier, un.org forward slash DSA.
A massive thank you to the UN Economic Commission for Africa and our colleagues at UNTV.
You have been live on UN webTV all the technical team, those managing the Zoom, all who joined on social media for their participation and support.
Have a wonderful rest of the day or night depending on where you're going, what you're doing, and where you are in the world for those of us joining online, and we certainly hope to see you again from me and the rest of the team.
Thank you so much.
Goodbye for now.
It's been a pleasure moderating this dialogue.
Have a fantastic afternoon.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I think you are free to stand up, stretch, talk to each other, interact.
Thank you.