And she also just there as dean of the Faculty of Science and later as a pro vice chancellor.
Those of you who know how to do that, of course, you have another career, a political career.
She served as the sixth president of Mauritius from 2015 to 2018 and being the first woman
elected as president of Mauritius and the first female Muslim president of the continent.
So we're really honoured to have you here.
She's done a lot of other jobs, including serving as a chairperson for International Council for Scientific Union Regional Office for Africa.
And she's really received numerous awards. The latest being yesterday when I sure to say something about that.
Some of them include the L'Oreal UNESCO's Award for Women in Science and the African Union Award for Women in Science.
Throughout her career, both in politics and in academia, she's been a passionate advocate for African science and innovation,
and she's particularly a champion for African women in STEM.
And so for me, as an African woman, it's particularly really honoured to welcome you to Oxford today,
and it's a really great pleasure for our folks and for the Africa Study Centre to invite you
to give us a talk on driving Africa's prosperity through sustainable and innovative practises.
Please join me in welcoming. Good afternoon.
Friends, ladies and gentlemen, your students. Good evening, good afternoon.
When I received this invitation from him to address this meeting of buffers, I immediately said yes.
When I mentioned to my daughter that was going to Oxford, she also immediately said yes.
So she's here with me.
Hosting such an event is an indication and a reaffirmation of Africa's prosperity matters and that we all share a common destiny.
Common problems, ideals and values. And we have a commonality of purpose.
Such forum provides an excellent platform to reflect on the challenges and how they would impact the dynamics of an emerging African continent.
These issues are also being seen from the vantage point of young people and in a context where the continent is
forecasted to become the youngest and also the second fastest growing markets over the next 10 to 12 years.
It is also agreed that globalisation, the integration of global markets with the resulting shifts in political economic forces,
along with the advent of new technologies,
particularly vital technologies informatics will continue to bring fundamental changes in both national and international trade and exchanges.
Ladies and gentlemen, the past decade has been tremendous time for innovation, technological and industry disruption seem to be accelerating.
Digital information networks are linking individuals, organisations and nations like never before.
The advance of artificial intelligence is creating even more innovation proportionate is for scientists and leaders alike.
In an increasingly globalised world, innovation is fast becoming a key differentiating feature that can define long term business success,
in turn leading to economic growth and hopefully job creation.
It is with no surprise that we find that the world's biggest economy, the United States,
has put a very high premium on science for achieving different economic and social goals.
Why we are awed by what new technologies can do and have the potential to do in improving our daily lives.
We must always be mindful of the impacts on jobs.
Naturally, such changes will lead to a revolution in doing business science research and development,
and with great emphasis on the intellectual property and the IP landscape.
Ladies and gentlemen. Intellectual property, on the other hand, plays a major role in enhancing competitiveness of technology based enterprises.
Whether such enterprises of commercialising new or improved products or providing services on the basis of a new or improved technology,
according to the World Intellectual Property Organisation Wipro in 2018, China remains the main driver of global growth in IP filings.
The paradox is that Africa in 2017 has been the recipient of only approximately 0.5 percent of the world's patent filings,
just under 15000 out of the global applications of over two million.
Asia, for comparison, received sixty five point one percent of all patents application filed worldwide.
So the continent pays more in terms of IP revenues that it earns.
These figures, therefore should help us gauge the crucial importance of IPR.
Ladies and gentlemen.
For Africa to sustain the growth momentum and indeed force people to harness the benefits through long term improvement of quality of life,
we need to rethink the definition of innovation. Formulate supportive policies do include all proprietary assets IPPs copyrights, trademarks,
formal and informal to include registry and valuation of unique African assets.
IP regimes have wide ranging socio economic, cultural, technological and political impacts.
That's one. There is an imperative need for public policy debates, coordination,
integration and the involvement of all stakeholders in order to free new ways to foster the development
of intangibles and to promote innovation and creativity in the rapidly evolving new ecosystem.
The strong IPR regime provides incentives for producers or researchers to develop new products and technologies.
But government support is needed. Ladies and gentlemen, to be able to understand how innovative practises can drive growth in business.
Let us look at a country like China and whose economy has been driven by innovative practises.
As this global view was set, the stage for what is happening or can hopefully happen in Africa.
China has understood the previous drivers of growth will no longer work.
The country has understood that growth has been based on few fundamental factors.
Market oriented institutional reforms, low wages and large working age population.
I think essentially.
Wages has risen and the working age was shrinking after the 2008 global financial crisis, external demand for products was beaten.
Companies in China have tough choices to make move inland for lower wages, outsource or close down or innovate and.
First up to the polls to indicate the net results between 2005 and 2014 has been
covering the following 38 percent annual growth rate and patents granted to China,
more than double that of South Korea and 50 percent higher than the.
Furthermore, spending on research and development in China has risen dramatically over the past 20 years,
exceeding the OECD average, and the share of researchers amongst the population has nearly tripled.
Still, there is room for improvement, despite his higher rate of growth.
China is still behind Japan and the United States, but China has clearly seen the returns of innovation and investing and is investing heavily.
So let us not turn to our continent. Africa. But countries in Africa are much further from the development frontier.
China. So if we go by economic theory, we should be able to gain even more from an investment in adapting and adopting innovation.
Yet investment in research and development are lower in Africa than anywhere else in the world.
Very few countries have invested the required minimum one percent of the GDP in the SDI landscape.
So what is missing? There was addition to the innovation paradox lies in complementarities.
There's a need to do this to be some other factors in place for countries to realise the enormous promise gains from innovation.
If an African firm invest in innovation but cannot import the machines, they need to implement the innovation, then the returns.
If another firm invests in innovation but has insufficient trained workers or engineers to implement it, then returns would be no.
And finally, if the third invest in innovation but lacks the management capacity to take advantage of it, then the returns.
Before China and India really started expanding innovation, it had two years of solid industrial growth and building form stocks on the human capital.
India, for example, one is often reminded of funded Nehru's vision of science and technology of 1958.
Both countries had invested in basic education and growing investment in higher education.
China scores quite well on measures of management. Yet many countries still struggle with each of these events.
Capital and management do not come out to see that they are dependent on some solid underlying economic policies.
The cost of doing business. The protection of intellectual property, trade policies, amongst other factors.
The returns to innovation are therefore dependent on all these factors.
And for us to increase innovation capacity, we can invest in at least three of the aspects of innovation policies.
First, we look into the managerial and organisational capabilities in line with Joseph Peters prediction.
Collaborative projects with high performing countries would be good start.
The second step involves the building of technological capabilities so that countries may adapt and create more of their own innovations.
The third step involves investing long term integration programme.
African countries need to invest in all three. Ladies and gentlemen, there are good examples of innovation in Africa.
Mobile money has been a good example whereby people with a mobile phone can deposit, transfer or withdraw funds without even having a bank account.
Countries like Kenya and Tanzania were the two countries that really saw a rapid rise in mobile money usage.
Mobile money has had a sizeable economic impact, especially amongst the poor and vulnerable sections of the population.
But what is the IP register? Ladies and gentlemen, for Africa,
which is fast becoming the youngest continents and countries need to start
investing in sectors where they have comparative advantages and create jobs.
A strong manufacturing sector is a good place to start, but we have witnessed only slow growth across the continent.
In low income countries, manufacturing now makes up only about seven percent of what is a weak business environment.
Together with due to high cost suggests that manufacturing may not be the
principal engine of growth on the continent should African economies innovate.
If we look at the pattern of growth on the African continent over the past two decades,
we find that growth has been closely linked to the production and sale of natural resources.
Whether it is oil from Nigeria, Cameroon, copper from Zambia or I am from a natural source of innovation and have been to improve productivity
of these sectors and move up the value chain in close partnership with small and medium enterprises.
One example would have been instead of exporting petroleum products, Nigeria would be making and exporting refined products.
Kenya could be processing and exporting processed foods as opposed to exporting ethanol products.
But that requires innovation and investment in the creation of new technologies,
but also the adoption and adapting of existing technologies for improving those industries again in some parts of Africa is happening in Sudan,
for example in agriculture.
Satellite images are being used to gather information about crop performances and then shared with farmers through their microbes.
In Nigeria, drones are being used to map out areas for potential future rice cultivation.
These innovations integrate new technologies with agriculture, and, in my humble opinion, Africa's most longstanding industry.
Ladies and gentlemen, with China making a film making accounting for a relatively high proportion of investment in Africa,
how can one leverage this partnership into innovative practises?
It is clear that the cost of trade fall when the infrastructure is improved, so the equation is.
This landing in feet can help African nations improve productivity of their industries and move up the value chain.
I can see a win win situation.
So as African nations process is mineral resource at the high level, China can further specialise in technological advances and high level services.
This could lead to enormous opportunities for high tech investments.
China's experience is interesting while investing in processes that allowed labour intensive sectors to increase their productivity.
The country has also invested in sectors where labour quantity is less essential.
And China has become a large producer overall. It has invested in high speed computers.
A new era is dawning when China is the object of intelligence and there will be huge structural transformation in the years to come.
Well, new language and new operating systems will be serving over one billion people.
There are lessons to be drawn from this for African countries with chronic budget constraints.
African countries have focussed on technology adoption, but should they not be thinking of huge technological changes that are facing us and help
us create the technologies of tomorrow with our young talents and voice Kurt Continentally,
we need to understand that research and development is not direction.
It demands long term funding and investment.
Those countries that we recognise this will be at the forefront of development and will be inventing the future.
Africa may not have the same level of domestic savings as China, but if Africa is serious, how do you see innovation?
Policies must join forces to promote trade,
something that the African Union Commission has started and many countries have already ratified the Continental Free Trade Agreement.
Africa must also remove the barriers that slow down the creation of regional managing.
Also, we need to subsume that innovation also means finding some of the time, yet we need to draw the lessons and pick up the source of learning.
Yet Africa does not have its own legal framework.
So, ladies and gentlemen, the innovation, as we all know, is the lifeblood of successful companies,
and not all innovations can be transformed into products.
The entire innovation is the producer of new jobs, whether the labs factory farm using the latest technologies,
with over 11 million graduates landing on the job market every year on the continent.
There is a fierce urgency to rethink our strategy.
And as Peter Drucker has said, innovation is a specific instrument of entrepreneurship, the act that endows resources with new capacity to create.
There's food for thought, you know, African leaders, thought leaders, you must simply agree that my message is very simple.
We simply cannot see yet another generation.
As I close, I would like to thank Kevin Steve for inviting me to share my thoughts.
So now both my daughters, the staff, we can say that we have been witnessing.
So well, because of all of us, thank you so much for the great things for me, and we're really delighted.
Get a chance to do this.
We'll just open up and then have a couple of questions and because time he agrees to be, yeah, let's be as discursive as possible.
If I could encourage that just to kick us off. You did mention a bit about the opportunities for prosperity.
And I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are about. How do we do that while thinking about inequality?
Because a lot of our society is a very clear gap between the rich and the poor.
And many countries that have prospered over the ones, are we looking at the development of being coupled with a lot of social inequalities?
How do we get there without replicating those models? Unfortunately, inequality is fast becoming the new normal.
Across the world, it's not just, you know, it is, it is something that is challenging because if we want to create a social safety net,
for example, for the poorer those who are the rung of the ladder, we need to see to it that precisely these institutions are properly capitalised.
And increasing inequality as we see it these days will not provide the resources which are needed for this to happen.
And if we look at, for example, the need to build infrastructure, we still need to relook at the tax system in any countries.
And I think part of the of all.
So I can see that taxation is something that we need to do because we need to get the resources and there is only one way.
We need to relook at the tax system. So definitely inequality will precisely increase the gap and it's already increasing.
But beyond this, inequality is not something that cannot be solved.
And if you look at some attendue, the example of Nordic countries which tend to have very poor fool proof women pro-family policies.
Again, inequality is one of the issues, but we need to relook at all the indicators in order to see things happening in the right direction.
They have shown that it is possible to have growth. It is possible to create jobs.
It is possible to have profound needs. Is possible drug problem policies and to work with the rest of the world.
So these are models that can replicate it. And I think the latest one that's Norway has come up with is going to be looking at this for,
you know, the way to have used something you don't need to.
All right. So take it there and thank you for your time.
Really interesting. I was just wondering because you gave you a few things, quite a bit of your talk on the African model and the Chinese model.
And I was just thinking in Africa, it's quite culturally diverse.
So you have to be very different from the western part, which is very different from the South and the east.
So that's complexity, competitive, homogeneous society like China.
I was just wondering how much other countries using the cultural differences has played in this.
In getting us to where we should have been and how do you think to the complex?
Yeah, I agree. I mean, China is one country, as you have said, appropriately homogeneous 90 percent of the population,
for example, would be one one group Africa's 54 countries.
Just use the Chinese Malays in terms of looking at the macro economic indicators,
for example, how they recognise the challenges and they have adapted.
And I have used to use this model to just explain the dynamics culturally.
Yes, Africa is very diverse.
But again, with the challenges that you perceive culture to be to be in terms of addressing the integration of of African countries within,
for example, the African Union, which technically should be driving the or the policies of those Africa.
I still think that this should not be a hindrance.
We are still talking about 54 countries. We're talking about 1.2 billion people we are talking about with that call increasing internal market.
Right. And if Africa cannot operate as a bloc, as one bloc, there are regional blocs where things can happen,
and this is where we increasingly talk about integration of the various economy, those policies.
For example, if we look at the tariff, we look at, for example, the standards that can be adopted across.
And if a country like we have countries like Tanzania and Kenya, which are neighbouring countries,
these two by themselves, they would be about 50 million people.
So already there is an internal market.
But countries have to relook at the mobility of goods for legal services and mobility of just about everything.
But unfortunately, when you look at Africa, we tend to see, for example, a very poor networking in terms of the airline.
For example, the visa problems where little people is is an issue.
So these are much more to me, much more fundamental issues than the cultural problems.
Unless I'm mistaken. Let's take the three and then go on.
So at the bottom here, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the talk.
So the splitting on that dividing China? What do you think about China's investment in Africa?
Do you think that kind of fuels investment in Africa? And, you know, does Africa go from that to more and combined?
Let's respond to this one because it brings up to this one. You know, in the late 18:00, we had the big scramble for Africa.
OK, you saw Africa with the borders, of course, at the moment.
Interestingly, people can say that there is a new scramble for Africa, but this scramble for Africa this time can work for Africa.
But we need to give up those rights cards, right?
And we need to put in the strategies, why we need to go, why we we can't as well said at the end of a speech.
We can't fail one more generation because the African continent by 2035 will be the supply of talents and human capital, which is still very young.
So leaders on the continent cannot afford to lose out on this new scramble for Africa.
Now you mentioned China again, I use the model of China because why is the model Chinese?
Precisely because Chinese investment is perhaps the biggest trading partner as well, because now these will be joining us.
But how do you make this partnership become a win win partnership as opposed to losing up all the time in the trade balance and all the rest of it?
So they need the resources, Africa needs the technology.
We know what we always talk about. Why are we right now? But we are very happy to talk about the rise of artificial intelligence.
And there are two big players in this world. There's America, and there's not and there's China.
So how do we use this partnership with China? Because China, through the FOCAC, they are investing massively.
They're providing in the last meeting they had with the disclosures of their 60 billion US
dollars and disposal countries for for use in the infrastructure in other things as well.
So these are these are the win win situation, which can be which can be put in place.
Having said this, there is nothing preventing in yesterday was a debate.
It was a we used to have constantly no use Xi.
Nothing we could say. Yeah, that was a thing that Turkey offering the UAE, also the Africa.
But how does how does this new scramble for Africa work?
That's what we have to look at. Thank you. So I was just interested on your sources,
on the idea of inequality and the constant loses out billions of dollars in illicit financial flows every year.
And I was wondering whether you feel that there's actually sort of political will to remedy this.
I sort of hesitantly points to the fact that the crisis in the UAE have recently been named as
corrosive corporate tax havens and on one side and then on the other in terms of natural resources.
What this political will either I just got back in Uganda and the government is essentially fashioned.
The most intricate system to both take gold out of the DRC through illicit trading networks,
but also to control its own gold network, which it's now, it's predicated a refinery on the idea that it's value addition,
you know, said contribution to that idea,
but it then gives a 10 year tax holiday to the company that's doing it and has to convene these sets of artisanal miners.
Oh yeah, if you said you'll go to us, we won't tax you either.
So the gold going in is not being taxed.
The gold going house is not being taxed, and then it goes via Dubai and into the European markets where it seems to be.
So it's very difficult to see how there's going to be political will then these flows?
I wouldn't say we have a tax haven the same. We have a little pragmatic tax system.
That's what it's like. Now you mentioned about these flows, the outflows of all these natural resources.
Right. This is where I spoke about when the speech said, we need governments, right?
And unfortunately, I have to say this very bluntly, where there is a corrupt, there's a corrupt.
So if this gold, if these resources are going out to Africa, is lending so much.
So what are the regulatory systems which are being put in place to see to it that the resources are not being taken out in an illegal money?
But you talk about political will, but who is going to distil the political?
That's the thing it's good to say, it's a very nice rhetoric to say that we need the political will,
but who's going to distil the political will to make it happen?
And this is where we see governments, when you regulators and we need the consumers to see to it that whatever they are getting is ethical.
They've done it.
They are models we've seen, for example, how but to some extent, how they have been able to regulate blood diamonds, for example, right?
How they have been able to regulate some of the forest utilisation of the wood, for example.
But we need to know where this wood where it is more, what is resources going to.
And I think this is where government regulators have a very important place just as a quick.
Not in but to go.
I'm not sure if you whether it's a company called Fairphone, and the premise was to have some transparent refineries and smelters for all that.
All the materials that went into this refinery in Uganda,
which is run by a guy who's been noted by the U.N. Group of Experts for running a vehicle build networks in the Congo.
He was a good friend of Kabila's father, not in the 90s.
They appear on Fairphone, the supply chain approved smelters list.
Because of this sort of intricate system that they've managed to fashion, and essentially they even attempted,
they even tried to bribe the regional trade bodies to self audit themselves so
that they could appear to be transparent in order to get onto these companies.
The crude smelting that works. So it's it's certainly going to be an uphill battle.
Well, again, you, you you've touched on a very important point.
Are the regulators, if these are people are going to be able to buy out, as you have said, who is doing it?
And very often you'd be surprised to see that highly respected companies offer to do that.
So this is the thing that we have to tackle is easy to just say, Oh, this one is the real simple.
Every character, there's a gravity and we need to address the problem of the voiceless.
How do you solve it? The always means, but we need to be able to do it.
And I think at the end of the day, the consumer and this should be, of course, a case for whistleblowing and often in many countries,
whistleblowers themselves, they are caught and they get into trouble for precisely whistleblowing.
So what do you the system being put in place? I mean, who? Who's going to do it?
At the end of the day, it trickles down to the consumer and they have a voice,
and we don't seem to be able to know that we have this power to make change.
So you take one more question down here. Yes, sir.
Hi, thank you so much. For talking to us about the ambitious and freedom time, and I also want to beg your forgiveness in advance,
which is my area of expertise is more or less so I see you very well.
Talk to us about the need for the mobility of goods and services in people and taxation and the pro woman and family.
That's necessary. So I suppose looking at some of your closest neighbours to me, Tanzania and Kenya, as you mentioned.
Looking at the 19th century history, is there any?
What is the biggest difference, do you think,
between militias and those other countries and how you've developed that contributed to your ability to get a hold of these things that you mentioned?
Thank you. Just quickly, just a few lines on the historical background who became independent from the British in 1968 and when the British left,
we were a monocoque economy with 92 percent sugar and the GDP.
The per capita income was 200 $US 1968, right?
And now we're over 10000. And what we have done is that in one of the three pillars that the government at the time that took the decision to ease,
first of all, to look at family planning, that began very strong issue.
The second one was to give Social Security net to people the vulnerable.
So we had a free health system. But the one that was really the the game changer was in 1976, when education became free, right?
In fact, if you read the Op-Ed of Joe Stiglitz album of 2012,
you mentioned that he visited Mauritius and said the country was either very rich or on the verge of bankruptcy.
And we know that. But there has never been a Mauritian miracle per say.
There has been a series of strong, pragmatic decisions are being taken and every 10 years there has been a diversification to the economy.
So we moved from agriculture based economy in the 1970s, where there was huge unemployment.
Education became freeze at precisely these women who work in the fields.
They will now be able to start with, you know, an embryonic industry,
companies time and then we move on the diversification of the financial services.
And then we went through it with the service and all the rest. Right now, we have to prosper because the economy is about 3.8 percent growth.
But in order to absorb precisely the young people, the youth in terms of job creation, we need to go beyond six percent.
But how do you get to six or seven? If we want to become a knowledge economy, how do we do that?
But something else which where would you market, maybe for many African countries, is that every five years when you the actions OK?
And they cannot tweak the constitution, it is virtually impossible then just to give you an idea, some point.
There were a need to change towards me and show you show or you mean it took them almost a year.
This changes to me. So these are things that which I think the fundamentals are there.
If we want to drive change, these fundamentals must be there so that the country then can share their resources.
I'm not going to say that we have reduced inequality,
but we will be very conscious because we have introduced the minimum wage and we still give free health service.
We still have free bus service to young kids going to school, the elderly, they are protected the pension and we have education.
So these are and I think, all these benefits account to nearly 35 percent of overall GDP.
Spending this conversation about free university education as it is free, is it already and is free up to graduate level?
So these are things that I feel have been the recipe to making into the meeting of the so-called Mauritian merit,
but it never has been made and has been a series of pragmatic decisions.
Thank you very much. My name is Christopher Conrad, I'm a student loan student at Oxford Brooks University.
My question is about Africa's education system. Why did you talk about innovation?
So, for example, from Uganda, where I come from,
most of the stuff that we step in is really no template for regurgitation that, you know, reproducing to pass an exam.
How does Africa put in place and education system that enhances and promotes innovation?
You know, to get to the China economies and stuff like that, how do we do that?
You know, the education I got when I was a child is no longer relevant to my daughter and eventually one day to my grandchildren.
So we really need to relook at education, which is which makes itself relevant, which makes it impactful.
And more importantly, empowers and the education system that we have inherited had served its purpose.
It is no longer applicable. So now we need to relook at a system where we have to reskill our skill and upskill our people.
And there are many, many good examples we see, for example, the finished method,
the finished method, exactly where Finland always goes, a very, very high in the ranking.
And but the way we are moving anywhere in the world on this Africa is we need to
to see to it that the education system we give to our kids still remain relevant.
And I think this speaks for itself because in many places,
kids are still being taught rote learning and it's no longer applicable because now this will have computers to be able to get the data.
So we need to be to be able to make them think critically do things with the.
And also importantly, with Africa being quite specific in this area of the number of kids reaching the job market every year,
we really need really to have a proper strategy for vocational and vocational training.
And so there's a huge task ahead of us. I think you just come back to the point you made about R&D.
And it seems to me that somebody's making much of this work. The 16 African countries have been meeting.
But only a handful of research.
We have always systematically and this is true for Africa, is true for many countries, and I will do I could buy here because people,
when we are scientists, we don't communicate properly to policymakers and politicians.
So when we don't communicate properly, they don't see the impact of of of science in the economy.
And I keep saying that every percentage of GDP, which goes into research and development is that many jobs are created.
And this enhances their scope of getting re-elected. So maybe this is the narrative we haven't provided to them.
Again, it boils down to what the strategy that, for example, South Korea had developed when South Korea came out of the war in 1958,
its per capita income was probably at par with better results in our country.
And what South Korea did for 50 years, it's invested his own people.
It's developed its tertiary education system, created the nexus between economy and industry and science.
And this is the kind of thing that we need to see increasing on the continent. And unfortunately, it's happening only sporadically across the country.
Only very few countries that have really recognised that there is there is the
nexus between investment in R&D and in the evolution of the growth of the economy.
And again, many countries still haven't reached the prescribed one or one percent of GDP in the in the research and development.
And this is the basis mean the basic minimum provided for by the African Union.
And then if you look, if we take now the other extreme of South Korea, again, I come back to this.
They are investing some seven percent. And yet this is a country with no resources and here we have a resource rich continent.
So what is missing? Yes.
Yeah. Thanks. I just want to follow up on that, we didn't always ask the same question again, but in a more personal way,
you referred to Nehru with Nehru famously when challenged way out for the poor country like India, invest in science.
That is exactly because it's poor that they can't afford not to invest.
And yet the one percent target which all heads of state decided to adopt could never be met, except for one small accounting trick with Malawi.
Well, but you're talking about we have to persuade them, we have to persuade them, but you will one of them.
And so when you work with them, that's not enabled. What were the conversations?
I mean, this somebody brought this up because these were intelligent people that people who increasingly come from non-military backgrounds.
If you look at the difference now, 20 years ago,
the biggest difference in leadership in Africa is the real reduction in people of the military backgrounds are coming from professional backgrounds.
So I think many of us still are at a loss even when we say, well, perhaps we don't communicate that well.
What are the conversations that go on at that level? Is it just not on the agenda for the people to say, no, no, can't think about that.
Got other things to deal with that? I think this is generally puzzling to people, unfortunately.
Well, there are a few you mentioned. There are very few people from the army.
Yes, there are very few. We have seen a migration of the 54, perhaps the 30 there now 30 plus professionals.
But this conversation is still not at the table.
It is still not at the table, unlike other countries in Asia.
I'm not going to mention China, but the other countries in Asia which are emerging, whether it is Asia,
is now three point seventy seven billion people on Earth, and this is changing there.
But in Africa, in fact, the level of the EU, it is still pay lip service to the need to invest in science and and we still
believe that development of human capital for Africa will come from donors.
And my narrative for that has always been if we are going to see changes on our continent, we need to start putting our hands in our pockets.
So this may hurt, but I think there has to be kind of very vocal and people to come up with that, and still this is how still has not sunk in.
But I think the way to make it to make it now we a sink in is to use the narrative of,
first of all, they need to be re-elected and they need to create jobs.
And one thing which is now maybe ringing a bell is the massive migration out of Africa.
We see people dying in the in the Mediterranean. People don't leave their homes because they are there.
They want to leave their homes and take the lives of heads and take the risk of dying.
I think there are too many things happening, and one of them is climate change.
Climate is impacting Africa biggest and the rural areas where people used to
harvest feel how there's no water change in the patterns or the weather pattern.
All these, I think, is now trickling to to to the leaders on the continent that something is happening there and take that seriously.
But again, I would say the same thing. Climate change, it is not a phenomenon that can be tackled nationally.
We still need the solidarity from countries that have been leading so far, and we still need that investment.
Now if you look at what the UNFCCC had mentioning, 200 billion by 2020 is still not there in terms of capitalisation of the Green Climate Fund.
Now these $200 billion, a lot of money when you talk about the global economy going right in trillions of dollars, right?
But we still need to decide that for the continent, the African country, countries leaders need to invest in that space.
And he insists of the word investment because it is not an expense, it's an investment.
We've done this since 1976, so we have a few models to share so we can share the experiences,
but the the the will to actually goes to actually invest has to come from the leaders themselves.
Should the conversation, probably from the leaders of EU levels and water go back to communities,
to the people who are actually affected when these people were affected, when the medicines don't work and so forth and have that conversation,
maybe from the, you know, academic circles down to that conversation because at the end of the day,
they are mandated to voting these people in power and probably making research a public good.
The level of, you know, the woman selling in the market at that point.
And if it makes sense to them, then they may be able to influence who makes the decisions.
Look at all the other things we're talking about something very fundamental here access to education.
How educated the people to be able to critically think that these are the conversation needed to have.
So again, we do need to look at the indicators in Mauritius we have with 92 percent.
What is the percentage to so many countries and these women who are sitting overseas selling vegetable in all these?
How are they able to think when the main priority would be getting the next meal on the table?
So these are things that we really need to have. And again, and quite honestly, it's quite disheartening.
When you go to this forum, there's a lot of talk, but factions of the.
And I think you need to vote with your feet. Yeah,
I was thinking about sustainable innovation and that that a large proportion of innovation
in the next 50 years will have to be in Low-Carbon Technology and green technology.
But it seems to be that there's a kind of new direction of these technologies generally
being generated in countries by advancing companies to invest in experimentation.
For example, the Nordic countries, which seems like a shame when, as you mentioned,
innovation has to be something that can empower countries like Russia.
So how can? How could climate change be made enough of a priority to incentivise green innovation?
And Africa, as well as you know, how can you stake a claim to green innovation,
by the way, it seems like it's that you could find some sectors of society.
There are many, many good, interesting things happening in India where there has been the the dry at Paris in 2015 for the Lions winners.
And already India is walking the talk.
I'm just using India as an example of a developing country with a who's also going to be the largest economy very soon.
But we have been able to bring down the price of energy and you now accessible in very rural villages where electricity was,
you know, was a luxury at some point. So it's already happening and they have many of the economic models they have
worked out has shown that it is cheap enough to go into solar into renewables,
that it is to go for oil and coal. And at the global level, I think all the works that have been published in the United States, for example,
have also shown that the progression towards renewable is going to be a lot more economically interesting,
viable than going in gas and the fossil fuel.
All right. I'm afraid we might want to close their own.
No, I won't. Maybe if you could give us a final word, if you had a magic wand to fix the world, what would that?
What would you do? Um, well, I wish I had fixed up because, you know,
invest in the young people and empower them with proper education and and invest in them, for example,
that they can access finance to become entrepreneur because it's something that has been
saying all along that we need to have young people become job creators and not job seekers.
And to be able to do that, they need to have good education.
They need to also have to have access to finance so that the ideas that they are developing can be used to create more jobs.
Invest in mines Africa's future is in the mines and not in the mines.
There you go. But please join me and thank you for joining us.
Thank you all for joining us, I hope you come to a lot more events in the future.
Thank you.