Well, thanks very much. I just want to introduce our panel first. Next to me is Xavier Duvelle, who's the Vice Prime Minister of Mauritius, previously the Finance Minister. Anyone? Still the Finance Minister. I'm still the Finance Minister. I'm an African Finance Minister of the Year. Sorry. I think so. Touch wood. Hopefully. And next up we have Rich Lesser, who's the CEO of Boston Consulting. And Wale Tanubu, who's the CEO of Ohando. And then we have Tabitha Karanja, who's the CEO of Karachi Breweries. And over there on the far end is Anand Singh, who's a producer, Oscar nominee. And we're going to be talking about, can Africa tap into local innovation to launch globally recognized brands? So is there a point of doing this? Do we want to go global? And is it necessary? And I think just to take a step back, it's worth thinking that here in South Africa, we have one of the most globally recognizable brands. A very valuable brand, potentially. A brand so valuable that it inspires pride and love and respect. And it's a brand that is recognizable from Beijing to Buenos Aires to Bloemfontein. And it's a brand built on consistency, on principles. A brand that has fundamentally changed the landscape of this country and fundamentally changed the lives of not just every South African, but many people around the world. Now, what is that brand? Nelson Mandela. So, you know, he is many things to many people, but he is one of the most powerful, lucrative, recognizable brands in the world. And Anand Singh has just produced a movie on him, Long Walk to Freedom.  Why did it take so long and what were the real challenges in telling a story about a man who simply is quite fantastic to many people? You know, I think certainly the idea that Mandela is a brand and an African and South African brand, it's probably the most significant brand in the world.  So, you know, it's been a fantastic honor to be granted those rights and to make a film of it, but with it comes responsibility. So the function of making Long Walk to Freedom into a film has had many challenges. It's an amazing life and you're trying to encompass it into a two-and-a-half-hour film, which in itself is a mammoth task.  So, you know, I think when I was granted the rights, I thought, well, maybe in five years I'll make the film, but when I think back to his journey and sitting in prison in Robin Island for 27 years and, you know, I feel that the responsibility that comes with trying to make that film and do it as an African product, is that there are 1000 people working on the film through the period. There are probably 20 foreign people on it. So, you know, we needed to create something that is inherently African, that we as Africans can own, but at the same time be able to take it to the world and stake our claim, which comes back to the first point you made about global and, you know, we want to try and be global, but coming out of Africa, emanating from here. And that's the key, because when I looked at the sort of theme of this, I thought, well, is global necessary? Isn't it good just to be regional or even really good in your own backyard? And I think it's a question I know that outside looking in, Rich Lesser has got an opinion on. I mean, what is your assessment of innovation, particularly African innovation or products or brands, and the need to make them world recognizable? So I think I would start by saying there's just enormous opportunity here in Africa to build over years and decades to come, that we look at consumer spending that's going to go from a little over $600 billion to over $1 trillion, over a relatively short period of time, and that there's an enormous amount of untapped opportunity and aspirations among consumers and businesses here in Africa. And so we would say that the first priority is about building strong, robust businesses here in Africa, that historically, for too long, Africa was viewed almost with a trading post mindset that you take resources out and you send finished products back in. And what we really want to achieve is Africa as an ecosystem, Africa where it's not just about the resources, it's about investing to build manufacturing infrastructure, strong brands, high quality educated workforce, and to really create robust businesses, and that that will take time and effort. And when you look at China or other places, you see that it started by building strong businesses there and then over time taking them to the rest of the world. And I think the key to that is Africans themselves. They've got to be able to say, listen, this brand is African and it's not substandard or, you know, I'd rather buy an international whatever because I think it's better quality or I trust it more, I know it more. I know from a beer point of view, you've set up your own brewery and you're selling Kenyan beer to the area around Nairobi. But you know, you've got to trust the Kenyan consumer to say, listen, I would rather buy homemade, you know, local Kenyan beer than, you know, Budweiser because I think it's better. How do you ensure the consumer, the African consumer, supports the idea of an African brand? Okay, yes. When we talk of getting into the manufacturing and starting brands that will go to Africa and the global market, we mean any time we are introducing a brand, we must make sure that it means the international standard because even if you don't, the other brands that will be coming in to your local market with Kenya, if it is Africa that are international and they will come to compete with you. So every time you're making a brand, we must make sure that you produce a brand that even is better than what you expect that will be coming in from other parts of the world. And that's what we did with our beer. We made sure that our beer is naturally brewed better than what was there after breaking that 80-year monopoly that was already there. Making it better, but it just needs to be good. Does it just need to be consistent? Wale Tanubu, what's your experience in terms of creating your own empire in West Africa when it comes to oil and gas? It's been a tough road, hasn't it? It was tough, but I think one of the first things we decided earlier in building the business was that we wanted to think local but act global. We wanted to create a business which had global standards in all we did, down to something as simple as our business cards and the directions of the letters we wrote or the service offering we gave to people. And it was a mentality which we drove right through the company.  Somebody said to me that whenever they're stuck in traffic and they're looking for a place to go to the toilet, they go to an Oando station or an Oando location. In Africa, you don't really find a lot of public toilets around there because he knows it's going to be clean. And that was a mentality we drove right through the company. We've been able to take that brand and utilise it in driving the business in terms of our quality, our safety, our operations and duplicate that in every business which we've gone across. And I think that what I actually look forward to seeing is the continent brand itself as a place for investment, a place for good returns, a place for good corporate practice such that we can at least get that soft barrier broken and we can actually start to trade within ourselves as one trading group, build local brands and then face the international community because we do need to be good at what we do locally first before we can drive those brands externally. Absolutely. I want to talk about this a little bit later but before we get there, Mauritius in a way has become the poster child of a place to ease the ease of doing business. It's a regional economic hub when it comes to South African companies trying to set up businesses. You in a way have very, very blatantly rebranded yourself away from being just a high-end tourist destination. How did you do it and what was the real key in terms of trying to change the narrative? Yes, I think a country's brand is in fact what it lives, what is the reality. It's not just hiring a PR company and saying this and we've got a strategy. As they say, it's not what people say about you. It's not what you say about yourself, it's what people say about you. So we've actually diversified the economy considerably and over the years we've actually been consistent in what we do, consistent in achieving political stability, consistent in the rule of law, in a low crime rate, consistent in educating our people, consistent as you mentioned in easing the cost of doing business in Mauritius. And now with diversification away from sugar which was our main crop at independence now into tourism, textiles and now into high-end like education, medical services, financial services, BPO, etc. We see that Mauritius is expanding and of course the truth is always coming out and people realise that Mauritius is making an effort and I was very pleased to see in fact recently that in the country brand index published by Future Brands, Mauritius gained two places and is now in the top 20 of the brands in the world, exactly. First in Africa and ahead of many, many large countries.  I mean, give me some sense in terms of making something bigger brings its own sense of problems and are there any lessons any of you can offer our audience and how you manage that in terms of upscaling? I'm just leading on from the point you mentioned. I think branding is not really about hiring a consultant to say this is what you should be. Your brand really is what you are, right? Now, so if you made the point about Nigeria being large and unwieldy, yes it is but what is interesting about Nigeria is that you have centres of excellence in everything. So if it's the telecoms market, for example, the 100 million lines the first class companies have developed and interestingly enough, African brands, you know, MTN is African, GLU is an African brand, all offering world-class services. AirTel before was V-Mobile, I was an African brand with a Zimbabwean technical partner and all the services were the international quality and those centres of excellence have been built up in different areas. For example, we've gone from 2 million tonnes of cement production to 20 million tonnes by indigenous entrepreneurs offering world-class services with world-class standards, first-class plants built with the latest technology. So effectively what you see is a very large, to a certain extent, unwieldy country with centres of excellence which are gradually being duplicated and converging and aligning a nation in a new direction and I think that's what is clear and that's effectively what Nigeria is increasingly beginning to stand for today. We've talked a lot over the years and in many ways one of your big bugbears in terms of sort of kick-starting African innovation or small African brands to make them bigger or better is the issue of capital.  I don't know if you want to say anything, Rich, about, perhaps this outside looking in perception, is it just about people thinking, you know, I'm hearing better stories about Africa, do you think it's based on real appetite? So I'd just like to start just to build on one point that you had just said which is there's this tendency to decouple the brand from the offering and they're inextricably linked and the offering becomes the brand. When the offering is built on high service and product quality when it's built on talent and people, then that can be the starting point for defining the brand and I think what we're seeing now is innovation and companies and more of a spirit of entrepreneurialism that's starting to emerge across Africa that in part is because of the progress on the governance front which is not all the way there, but boy there's been enormous progress over years to create more rule of law, more stability and more opportunity and now you see businesses starting to form and so we look at a company like M-Pesa started by SafariCom which offers mobile banking in Kenya and now starting to take it elsewhere. I mean it's creative, it's entrepreneurial, it's a real service advantage and then that defines the brand and there is capital, there's frankly more capital in the world than there are investment opportunities and so the challenge is to create an environment where investors who see the growth potential, who see the potential to be a part of a growing vibrant economy feel comfortable with the risk end of the equation to want to invest around businesses. I think you know certainly from a standpoint of our industry what we've tried to do and I think it's true to every industry is over the last 20 years tried to do quality work even if it's at a ministerial budget by global standards you're establishing the quality, the capability of what you can do in this country or this continent and then as you grow so whether it was Sarah Fina or yesterday these little movies that we made that got attention but you know it never went to the half a billion dollar box office level you just keep at it and you keep doing good quality product you build a reputation and with that reputation now we have a film which is Mandala which is telling a story which hopefully hits into all of the boxes that you have to tick to go and compete with Iron Man 3 because they're spending 250 million dollars making the film but you know what intrinsically people want to hear stories and be moved by it and that's what we as Africans have great stories so how we tell that and how we put it out there and how we compete is also reputational and I think that is something that exists with every business you know irrespective of how it starts when it starts you have to just build on the blocks when we talk about this potential and the possibilities and all of that isn't there a sense of urgency though we can all agree everyone here can agree there's potential a billion people, new consumers but isn't there a risk that this is potentially going to all not fulfill its potential because a billion people perhaps are not as educated as they should be that there is a tendency to try and downplay the risk now perhaps because it's not fashionable do you sort of how do you balance that? If I can intervene here I think what's happening in Africa is that we're seeing a number of role models taking the lead and that's very important because once the role models succeed then the rest of Africa, the rest of the populations in Africa will require other governments to do the same so I think we're in fact going to see a snowballing effect the reforms bringing prosperity in some countries and other countries being forced to follow but there is a sense of urgency isn't there I know the IMF has just said you know if South Africa doesn't deal with growth rates and inequality there's risk of instability and that plays into the brand it affects a country like South Africa and the last year violence strikes severely affect the image of a country no matter how hard they try or doing well I think building a brand and economic development happens a block at a time you can't rush it it has to happen it has to be linked with education it has to be linked with training it has to be linked with the development of infrastructure it has to be linked with reforms in doing business low corruption etc but I really believe that growth in Africa is here to stay I think that's the global thinking nowadays but obviously countries need to get together to make it happen we sometimes rely on trade with outside in the rest of the world whereas in Mauritius we believe that there's a huge potential in inter-African trade and we're not really tapping it we have infrastructure issues but we're also cost of doing business issues and these do not cost a lot of money but they require a lot of effort and in Mauritius we've joined a group of five countries to try and accelerate the reform because we think that reforms are not going as fast as they should do Just to bring in Tabitha from your point of view East Africa is being quite progressive in trying to create some sort of economic zone how important is that for you as you look forward in terms of expanding your beer company but also it's difficult isn't it just trying to distribute in Kenya as its own set of problems never mind trying to cross the border for me I believe that we can do it we as Africans we can do it and we need to believe in ourselves that we can do it we need to know that we have enough for the African continent whatever we will do whatever we will put forward but we need to the support from above the law let's say our leadership the governance must be set right that anytime anybody who wants to take a risk and invest in the whole country and build up brands that can that we meet in the international standard that has the support of the local government and the support as an African brand even as we are going through a lot of difficulties and all that even to distribute in our country in the East Africa we may say we just need to understand that the market is there and we will get that enabling environment created by our government that we will be able to take the risk and put up capital so that we can start these brands that we meet in the international standard and with my small starting I've seen even starting up a beer breaking that monopoly that has been there for the last 80 years I can say the support I've gotten I'm ready to move and even do the because you can see the banks are ready do the financing and all that we just need to believe in ourselves then the world will open up for us and we'll be ready to move I mean how important is that a sense of self-confidence I mean is it an intangible ingredient to all of this is it as simple as that? I think it's certainly absolutely necessary to have self-confidence but I think self-confidence comes from the realisation that your product or service must really be of a global standard consistent good quality and then the brand starts to speak for itself and then the next thing you start to deal with is penetration regional markets like you said how have you managed to deal with that because the issue of breaking down barriers whether they're physical in terms of crossing borders or whether they're on paper in terms of regulation and that I mean that over and over again seems to be the real impediment to all of this really Well I think it's important to note that we need to stop looking at breaking barriers down as something which our governments ought to do for us I mean I figured it out in building a business very quickly that half the time it hasn't been thought of by them and you do need to spend time in educating them as to the reason why things need to be done so if we wanted to break a government monopoly for example because we could offer a service we would spend time educating the government taking time through we oftentimes have to draft the MOUs ourselves explain what we're doing and understand that look if we can cross the border here and shift those goods here for example we could make an extra amount of revenue for the state this is what the state gets and this is what we create and this is the number of jobs we do and oftentimes we succeed in doing it so all of a sudden regional trade now is a priority we've had projects like the West African Gas Pipeline done in the oil sector where gas is taking from Nigerian to other countries for example we've been able to expand our business service offering across the border and as opposed to a situation where the continent used to wait for foreign investors to come into our continent to do it now it's been done by a lot of indigenous players who've succeeded in delivering quality goods and services in their own local environment and now confident enough to take those services next door I think it's also managing failure managing risk because as in any business you have to do things be taking risks and how you do that vis-a-vis whether it's beer or movies or a country you've got to do things try to be innovative in one way but also manage it in a way that if it doesn't work that you can reconstruct and keep going so I think starting with your question about why the movie took 20 years because it was very much that it's one piece falls in three pieces fall out three pieces fall in one piece falls out and how you manage all of this and likewise if a big brewery company in Kenya has monopolized the country's beer logistics of getting delivery and how do you get that how do you do it it's all the same thing I do think we're in a transition period where there was a period of time where it was about just rebuilding underlying confidence and belief in Africa and its potential and I think we're now in a transition to a real focus on how do we unlock the potential particularly the human potential that exists here and I would point to four elements one is around infrastructure connecting the continent addressing some of the huge issues that exist in power, water, transportation information technology a second huge one is around education getting to really have the billion member workforce that's coming along feeling able to contribute we have to continue to invest in education and that will mean both traditional ways of education but leveraging new technologies as well to be able to reach more people to give them access to the world the third is around health and having de-risking for individuals and having a stronger health foundation and then the fourth frankly is around empowering women I mean it's half the population but if you look at literacy rates education, other elements there's a huge opportunity an enormous opportunity by investing to help women achieve their potential and be able to contribute at the same level and all sorts of research that says that it actually disproportionately contributes to both stability and economic growth getting those four elements is really the next step in unlocking the potential to have businesses feel confident to want to invest here and have entrepreneurs and others want to grow and create we know that in a way I mean I think every African would agree with you and governments know that the question is why aren't they doing something about it quick enough or are you doing something quick enough and do you feel like governments are on the right track and more importantly it's so crucial there's a sense of urgency that those very basic things have to be done in the next 20, 30 years because this potential is never going to flip over into reality unless the talking stops and governments actually get their hands dirty is it governments responsibility? Absolutely, I think governments have a lot to do in fact to encourage their industries to obtain good brands, to brand themselves because a country's brand invariably reflects on an industry operating within a country's borders Just to interrupt, but it's also about isn't it the Mauritian health department also has to create its own brand is that what you're saying I mean at every level government needs to perhaps rebrand itself Let's take our financial services and why for instance the Mauritian commercial bank is successful around the region because I think in Mauritians we have created a well-regulated financial services industry which is based on law which has a good reputation itself therefore banks operating from Mauritians can enjoy that reputation and the same perhaps for our tourism industry where the environment of the country is conducive to not only the development of a good hotel industry but supports the fact that when you market yourself as a high quality hotel that is supported by the brand of the nation itself So I think governments have got to do a lot they can do a lot to support its export industries generally I think the question is are governments capable of doing it and at the same time is there a responsibility on the private sector I know Wale we've talked about it with leaders before you know do you have to do what Tabatha did and literally sort of keep on poking your finger in the eye of the monopoly is it the responsibility of the private sector to really be tough and to break down these walls and help government in the way you say you literally got to take them kicking and screaming holding their hand I mean how is there a moral responsibility to do that well apart from it's obviously financial apart from moral responsibility it's just good business in the sense that we've come from a lot of the continent 30 years ago was involved in civil strife there was military rule there's been a lot of democracy I mean most of like I think 80-90% of the continent is now democratised good governance is kicked in because as you had democracy you had people recognising the needs to deliver to the promise and there's been a lot of liberalisation of the economy so all of a sudden having a government position doesn't guarantee you access to resources like it used to because population explosion has occurred and the government simply cannot cope so a lot of the liberalisation has actually been driven by a government's legislation that it needs to relax the restrictions on trade but be also the private sector realising that it needs to capture the moment and expand its own service offering improve its quality so we've had financial services groups springing across Africa supposing small scale industries medium scale industries as well as large scale industries and we've seen an evolution of trade particularly indigenously grown businesses which operate at global standards and are able to employ hundreds and thousands of people and create a better quality life for African citizens I think that it's a collaboration certainly from our industry we've learnt that ten years ago it was a miniscule industry in South Africa and we had meetings with government talked about incentives that were available worldwide the department of trade industries then introduced an incentive programme the film industry has exponentially grown in the last ten years from maybe 100 million rand a year industry to almost 8 billion rand a year industry and I think now Mauritius has introduced their incentive programme these things take time to grow but it was a collaboration between industry and government and government has recognised that the biggest benefits that they have generated in programmes that they've created in South Africa the film industry is one of the most tangible so you know which is really quite something when you think back in a short period of ten years that it's grown so well so I think it is definitely on the responsibility is on the private sector to work with government in trying to get to a place that we can build for the country and the continent the issue I know but while I discussed it pockets of excellence within Nigeria I mean when you look ten, twenty years ahead in terms of the African continent the world's workshop or the potential to be the world's workshop is it again that sort of model of there going to be pockets of excellence and there is going to be this sort of perhaps disparity or this inequality of excellence or any of you this is sort of a general question I don't think so it's a multi-play and you start moving in one direction I mean you're in the movie industry let's take the Nigerian movie industry initially it was young people with a home camera shooting videos with a lot of noise in the background and changing scenes behind them the quality was very, very poor gradually the quality has improved substantially the number of films being generated has improved and now we see those same movies across Africa because the sound quality is good picture quality they're shooting on better quality locations they even approach corporates like us to say we'll shoot a scene in your petrol station and we want X amount of we want you to pay X amount because it's advertising for you these are the statistics showing that this movie will be shown in Kenya in Ghana in Uganda, in Tanzania and I've traveled and turned the TV on in different parts of Africa and seen Nigerian movies on there and even a local industry has come with them being able to create subtitles albeit by pirates they now put French subtitles on Nigerian movies and they're selling it in Frankfurt, West Africa so it's really developed and the standards and now we have our own version of the Oscars we have our own stars and we're doing so well financially who've actually become African brands and with Mnet being there to distribute these movies all of a sudden African movies which were something which was shot in the corner 10-15 years ago are things that are of world class recognition today You touched on the issue of pirates and I think for you early on in your chatting that was one of the barriers you felt that in terms of getting your movies distributed in Africa the issue of corruption, piracy this even parallel and formal industry can dilute the brand? Well look just adding on to the point of Nigerian cinema I think it's a matter of time that there'll be a great film coming out whether it's commercial whether it's artistically but it's one enough, doesn't it need to be a whole lot every year? Exactly, because you're building on that starting in a sort of back room making these soaps and then learning your craft and developing and continuing and it will happen you've seen it in other countries in the world you've seen it in India and then Slumdog Millionaire comes along and does enormous box office a little film with the heart wrenching story so it's going to happen it's just a matter of time but I think the barriers like piracy is a big problem when I did Sarah Fina several years ago I mean I was shocked when I arrived in places in Africa to screen the film and it's already on then video and we get no revenue on it so I think if you make films and you look at regulation around the world and copyright protection it's basically stealing people don't think to go into a store and steal a carton of milk but they'll be happy to buy a pirate video off the guy on the street which is essentially the same thing the creative community that put that together they're being robbed but we need to develop from a governmental level that all of these things are done in a proper way it'll develop the cinema industry again which is slowly happening but there needs to be more action I mean even in China with piracy that's something that's being dealt with now because it's an enormous revenue stream both for government of the country because of the taxes because they've got each movie ticket sold you get a piece of the action the government does so it's something that we have to get our hands around talk to government and we're doing that certainly from South Africa and I think on the products that are created in Nigeria and they come here at least those are being sold legitimately we distribute some of the Nigerian films on DVD and it's amazing how well they've grown over the last four or five years but this issue of piracy and corruption in the greater scheme of things for someone like you starting a business trying to deal with the big monopolies and work within the Kenyan environment I mean did you have did you have trouble trying to make your way through any issues around corruption and how important and how much of a barrier has that been to you as I said from the beginning that belief you know the lack of that belief is what made us somebody like us now going through those problems because you're saying you want to make a beer you've been having a beer for the last eight years so who are you to tell us that you can make a beer because you're African but the minute now we have that belief we won't have good people going through those problems but it is true we went through a lot of barriers and that's what keeps on me every day believing that we Africans we can do it and we have that will and all what we need is that we can do the business that will enable us through the business and every time in every part of the continent we are talking of job creation every country is suffering from job creation but the problem is you wonder why is it that everybody is not understanding that all these can come through creating businesses that will create those jobs so many we need to encourage more Africans so that they can make more industries they can risk in their own continent and after they create those employment we will start seeing even the poverty level going down so going through these difficulties and all that I believe is because even us maybe our leaders and ourselves we don't believe that we can do even better in the world how key is the issue of transparency in terms of you as a country presenting your brand to the world I think it's been very key hasn't it absolutely I think the question of honesty transparency, good governance is essential to a country's reputation and to citizens as well we all need to be proud of our country and that obviously the more that we apply the rule of law and transparency and etc the better we feel and the better the more we are able to attract foreign direct investment we have seen in Mauritius that adopting a rules based approach to licensing of investments for instance those bring certainty and those attract investment to our country particularly outside looking in particularly American companies have often said to me there is still this fear this sense that they are going to pay a bribe and they can't obviously Foreign Corrupt Practices Act puts a whole another level on that but that perception and perhaps the reality that this is a corrupt continent has in a way limited and broken down the African brand as a whole never mind individual companies or individual countries look the main challenge and the main opportunity is to continue to create an investment orientation and some of that is companies that want to invest in feeling that their stability and rule of law that makes them confident to want to invest to develop not just sales operations but develop whole businesses here and put the capital in and invest the talent that's required to do that and create an investment orientation inside the country where entrepreneurs and people with ideas and passion feel like that they can take a chance and they can do that and there will be enough of a level playing field that if their ideas are powerful that they can make it work and then lastly investing and that's where you keep coming back to health and education and infrastructure that really enable people to grow themselves personally and be a part of the global workforce because the competitiveness of the global workforce you're coming early about you have to operate to a global standard it's completely real and so we need to develop the talent here that can compete not just with people in the neighborhood or in the same country but around the world in order for it to be a workplace for the world and that's the opportunity I mean I think a lot of the things that we've been talking about a lot of it is touchy-feely in a way it's about confidence it's about changing narratives it's about a sense of telling your own story I mean we all know that but do you think from again from an outside looking in perspective I mean has that worked how important is that that perhaps Africa's story has changed in the last few years I mean is that as important as trade barriers or visas being dropped? Perception always lags reality a bit but the reality and the way international companies perceive Africa today is just so much different than five years ago or ten years ago I go around the world I talk to clients you talk to them about their priorities and many of them now consider Africa one of the core areas of growth and some of that frankly is the challenges and the rest of the world growth isn't so easy to find in other places but some of it is I think people really feel like Africa if it hasn't completely turned a corner is really in the process of doing that and there are so many people thrive off of stories and that's true for individual entrepreneurs but it's true for bigger businesses as well and when they watch leading companies come in and build businesses and able to operate here and able to make it work then they see the potential and they want to do that as well so I do think the narrative matters but the narrative has really changed a lot you know this was the decade ago was the hopeless continent and the economist that's not the way anybody thinks about Africa right now which doesn't mean that there are issues to work through there are plenty it's a big change well I think it's certainly indicative of the summit this is the largest attendance in 20 years of the forum summit in Africa when you look at the list of people not only African people but from the United States from Asia from Europe and its CEOs you know so it's very interesting to see that shift happening so obviously as Rich indicates the you know the potential and the other markets and now you know whatever the challenges are if Africa is being has been identified as a place to be in, investigate get into business so even if it's a one to two year period, one to five year period whatever it is let's go see for ourselves which is the most important thing I think and this is only occurring because there are good case studies to talk about every time there's a success it resonates across the continent it gets copied in different countries and then people support it I mean we've seen us I mean in the developed world the way I see it this is only going to be driven by innovation because they've got everything everybody has a house, everybody has a car there's public transport so you've got to be Apple and creates version 5 version 6, version 7 every week to get an increased market in our markets you're satisfying demand that is pent up and there's never ever been service and I think the only barrier is this the right enabling environment to invest in and every time we get it right it means even more business coming I mean a classic example was the mobile phone explosion in Nigeria we had 400,000 phones before government would not be starved of capital you had to wait five years for a line and you were in a waiting queue even if you paid $5,000 then you would wait three years to get a line and then the government had the will political will to say we want to hold a transparent auction they held a transparent auction which was done on the internet everybody paid $20,000,000 to qualify and there were about 20 people who started the I was involved in one consortium we were called the Iglets because Nigeria national team is called the Iglets and we were at seven or eight people under the age of 35 who formed our consortium we reached out and we were able to bid because it was transparent was done on the internet we won our license eventually today we have close to 100,000,000 mobile phones in the country $25 billion would have investment and it's an incredible success story in which foreign companies who didn't look at Africa as a growth market avoided but local brands were created in the process and now I see companies like Vodafone selling their mature markets and saying we want to go to the emerging markets, we want to go to Africa we want to go to Asia because that's the only way we see growth because it's completely saturated in the developed world so I think with increased transparency we will get the right brand created, we will get the right message across and no wonder that they are coming here so the innovation that is there, the entrepreneurship is there it's just and the need is fueling it in a way but the trick is how to convert that into bigger, sustainable, larger brands, opportunities can I say just one thing perhaps we also have to realize is that the growth of the consumer markets in Africa will also bring a lot of competition which will in a way threaten existing companies operating in Africa so even though you may not wish to export you'll have to get better just to stay in the game, we see that everywhere in terms of the shopping for instance the local shops are being threatened by outside groups coming in this is happening also in IT in different areas so in a way the whole environment will change for companies because not only will they have opportunities to expand regionally and globally maybe but also they will have to get much better just to survive in their own markets because all this FDI that we are going to attract will create additional competition for all of us. Absolutely and to build on that we've done a lot of research on African consumers and one of the things we observe is they're very quality oriented they are loyal to brands but you have to get trial and you have to do it reflecting the challenges here lower income for many people structure challenges and so the people that can innovate and develop quality offerings and really differentiate and then get trial are going to be the ones that can win and they're not just African companies if you look at Indomie, Noodles, and Nigeria if you look at Bajaj motorcycles from India you see companies that came in invested to educate the consumer invested to get trial and then have built loyalty and share and have been able to really grow over time and I think that story is good for the African consumer they just want quality products at a price they can afford and choice it's a good thing it is an opportunity for African entrepreneurs but it's an opportunity to compete at the global standard where you are at the beginning and it's completely true Do you want to add does anybody want to add to this I'm going to open the floor if anybody wants to say something before I do that Does anybody want to ask a question about any of our panelists Hello my name is Ato I'm from the Accra Global Shippers Hub in Ghana and I actually wanted to direct my question to Mr Singh so you know I think you guys actually started talking about Northerwood and some of the different moving industries so I wanted to kind of do a quick comparison so in West Africa I see a lot of movies being created you know from Northerwood the Ghana movie industry from Ivory Coast etc and I feel like there's a smaller percentage of really quality movies like big budget movies and in South Africa I see a lot of big budget movies that are you know like winning Oscars like Totsi some of the work that you've also done how can we get a balance between having to tell a lot of stories versus getting you know maybe a few stories that can really travel very far do their film festivals etc so that's my first question the second question is how have you navigated some of the challenges around distributing your movies because for instance I would really love to watch a lot of South African movies but I always have to wait to come to South Africa before I buy them so I just wanted you to touch on that okay look certainly the budget and the scale of a film doesn't necessarily reflect you know how an audience will respond to it the first movie I made was done for under $10,000 as a whole feature film and I released it almost everywhere in the world in movie theaters and it was an anti apartheid movie being on the run from the police now the little movie that we made that was nominated for an Oscar yesterday was again a movie that was made for $400,000 so it's first and foremost it's about the story and how you tell the story so you know this myth that you've got to have big budgets to make stories that will engage the world is you know really in my experience not true of course you can make a big movie you get big stars and you probably will do decent business but you know it all adds up it's coming back to the point of risk but I think that as Africa and as a continent what I would like to see is a collaboration between countries like we have co-production treaties with France and Italy and Australia you know we should do more within our continent so a Nigerian South African co-production from Nigeria incentives from South Africa and create African product on a bigger and better scale and learn from each other so certainly those are the two things I think on the distribution side that is a big challenge on our continent that you know they aren't enough movie theaters they aren't the whole machinery of getting films out there whether it's movie theaters or DVD or television you know the restrictions that exist and I think again coming back to the idea of having corporates being involved you know sponsorship being able for sponsors to say I'm associated with this product it's an African product we are an African company let's try and make this an experience that every person no matter where you are in a little village or in an urban environment that you can all share the same experience but that is a big challenge and then taking our content and bringing it to the world is the next phase but you do have again it comes back to quality it comes back to the ability to have audiences and critics respond to the material because we have unique environments, unique stories great performances you know we made a little movie in Kenya we used all local Kenyan cast and again the film won awards around the world, won prizes because people want to know more about our continent and if you tell it in a way that they are engaged emotionally, entertained then you've won half your battle thank you can you hear me my question is actually to the Honorable Vice Prime Minister from Mauritius so I have two questions I represent the Financial Times Foreign Direct Investment magazine and so my first question is much more general there's a lot of this optimism in WEF but one of the things that I can't help but question is what's to say that this boom that Africa is going through is it cyclical so post independence 1960s Africa went through a massive boom and then it dipped so that's the first question is this just another cyclical trend and the second thing is could you identify to me some of the bottlenecks and some of the risks within Mauritius doing business environment that prevents local businesses from innovating effectively and also growing so could you also maybe talk about the risks that you have identified thank you I don't believe that it's a short term growth cycle that we're seeing in Africa I believe that it's not just a commodities boom and the prices are going up and then African countries are doing well I think firstly the quantity that is being extracted is much more than before firstly and secondly and importantly this is all being now linked to good governance so we see reforms all over the continent which will embed the growth I think this is happening also and as I think previous speakers mentioned it's hard to find high returns around the world at the moment so people are investing in Africa also because they see the higher returns there are higher risks involved and that's where we see Mauritius coming in in a way because countries like Mauritius can also help by sort of going via Mauritius you can actually reduce some of the risks associated with investing across the continent because of these factors in terms of innovation in Mauritius itself I think that was the question I think that traditionally we've been more of a manufacturing base we haven't been able to generate the sort of research and development within our citizens itself that will bring innovation but we are now realizing it more and more and in fact for instance taking the textile industry as an example we were just making suits and shirts for everybody else but we now set up a fashion and design institute and we're seeing actually young people in Mauritius beginning to design clothes and local brands coming up and becoming regional etc so there is to be a real effort in terms of the government itself fostering research and development fostering innovation and that has to be for countries like Mauritius it will not come by itself it has to be fostered and encouraged by government I know you wanted to say something Nechana YGL for this year the question the panel is the theme of this panel is made in Africa and I'm wondering the panel's thoughts on how does Africa brand itself as different from other regions so what is different and unique about Africa versus let's say Latin America or Europe or Asia and what's unique about the Africa value competition who would like to take that one I'll just start the starting point first of course is Africa has assets that in many ways give it an underpinning and a source of financial resources that can really help support more investment in terms of natural resources in terms of agriculture where 60% of the world's uncultivated lands it's here and really creates a foundation to be able to reinvest that should be very helpful for years and for decades to come I think second the workforce that's coming along will be the largest workforce in the world over the next 20 years it's a little bit of a mischaracterization to describe it as a single workforce the Africa's very diverse there's hundreds of languages but even then there's a very large workforce that should stay relatively low cost for the rest of the world for a long time to come but the challenge of course is then to differentiate beyond that and that's where encouraging more entrepreneurial culture taking advantage of some of the challenges that lack of infrastructure creates in terms of sustainability in terms of doing creative ideas it's going to be quite important and frankly the quality of the workforce will ultimately matter as much as the quantity of the workforce and that will require the investments in education and other elements so the truth is there's a much better starting point than there was a couple of decades ago in terms of the stability and the confidence people have in the region and there's an underpinning of the ability to invest financially in infrastructure the way Angola has taken $40 billion and put it into building infrastructure that the natural resources and agriculture offer beyond that that's the next challenge for African leaders is to not just go off of what's there naturally and the quantity but to invest in quality that will attract companies to want to be here and that story is not yet written just to add to that I think but it's also doing it responsibly so I just give you some very very basic examples this is boom time for the continent and rather than hear stories about religious corruption they're hearing about governments who are now balancing their budgets paying off their national debt like Nigeria did they pass laws like the fiscal responsibility act stopping them from spending it's very tough for an African government to actually limit its own ability to spend in Nigeria saying we wouldn't spend more than 3% over and above what we budgeted for they created policies for savings within the country created a compulsory pension scheme to create long-term capital available for businesses to borrow that long-term capital that has been kept has created the ability for people to get long-term funding to finance infrastructure projects and all of a sudden the private sector in Nigeria is actively financing infrastructure projects the government is privatizing it's pretty much privatized everything the thing that we haven't left to do is the past sector and there's already a past sector roadmap which would see the country in the next 24 months sell all the generating companies and the distribution companies to the private sector and it's an indigenous driven private sector it's not something that is driven from the perspective of saying we are seeking foreign investors most of the consortiums are run driven by local entrepreneurs from international financial partners but the international financial partners are not coming in to do it on their own they realize that to navigate the treacherous waters of doing business in Africa you need a strong local partner which ties them to the point she made regarding confidence and the ability of people to realize that as a continent we have to first of all do it ourselves and then be branded as a place where things do get done Ghana for example they've discovered oil they passed the law I think it's called the Heritage Stabilization Fund which compels them to save 30% of the newfound wealth of future generations now I think that the mere fact that we've done self-help solutions to our issues is really what it signals to the world it's a place that the growth cannot be reversed I know you wanted to say something sir just to add to that while the mic is getting over I've got the mic sorry to add to that you've got look at India and China 20 years ago and the consumer power that Africa represents 10 to 20 years from now which is an enormous potential to businesses all over the world my name is Henry Ekbiki, Eston Young my issue, the point I want to talk on is on perception, the perception cap and on the branding the impact that has on the branding of Africa I think there is still a perception gap between what people see outside and what the reality is on the ground and recently Eston Young did a survey on reviewing the issue of perception gap, what we found was that those who are already doing business in Africa are very positive about the attractiveness of Africa in fact the rated Africa are second to Asia but those who are not doing business in Africa who are not already in Africa actually so Africa is the most unattractive place to do business and this is about perception and how do they form this opinion it's about media, it's about what they hear what we find is that the international media focus more on negatives about Africa rather than the positive so my question is what is the role of media in changing the perception of Africa and actually improving the branding of Africa I'll jump in there, I think 10 years ago 20 years ago you could have argued that point but I work for CNN and I think the African story is pushing a lot of CNN's coverage from a business point of view and from a news point of view I present a program called Marketplace Africa each week telling African business stories to a global audience that wasn't 5 years ago that wasn't a story that was being told and it's an incredibly popular show and I think from CNN's point of view there's a responsibility from us, from the media to also tell the real story warts and all and I think there is that's why I was so interested in the narrative because the narrative is so powerful we all satir and agree that the value of what is made in Africa does come from perceptions I would dispute the fact that there is only bad news coming out of Africa I think there's a lot of good news and in fact in some countries perception in fact has gone beyond reality and you would expect things to be better than they actually are because there's such a lot of good news coming out of Africa I don't think that in fact bad news travels fast we all know that good news is no news at all but nevertheless I think there's a lot of good news which is probably dominating the bad news coming out OK I know you sorry OK they've switched it on now Hi my name is Dr Ola I run an air ambulance company and I'm YGL 2013 and my question is actually directed to Mrs Tabatha I just wanted to ask I think diversity is very important in business I think the more personalities the more creativity the more different skills you can bring into a business setting the better the business I also believe in Africa our attitudes to women in business lags behind the developed world so my question to you is did you face any unique challenges that you thought perhaps when you were setting up your business that you think that you experienced because you were a woman and also since we're focusing on made in Africa how do you see us creating these global international brands when we seem to be leaving 50% of the population behind maybe maybe I can say because of the type of business I started it didn't matter whether it was a man or a woman so I can't say that what I faced or what I went through was because I was a woman because it was a competition war and it was a monopoly that was there for 80 years and it was people had to protect so it didn't matter whether it was a woman or a man but I can say the second question is about the African women in business the attitude on women in business I can say in Africa we all know that women are taken person in anything that we do whether it is any type of relation is it in politics is it in business but what we've tried to do now being an example we are trying to show that even we women we can even do better and what men can do and I think it has been proven we have so many now women in Africa who are proving that we only need now us as women maybe to work a little bit harder and prove the world that we can do better than women than men not only in Africa even in the developed world but we've done it and we can also do it I think we have started doing it I think for our industry in South Africa the film industry is if not dominated by women it's actually quite significant to see variants from there can we take more questions or do we have to wrap up with Maxwell start wrapping up one more one more question if that's okay who can I go for? I wanted to follow up African financial group on the film the issue of branding and the message and I just want a quick comment from you and having you're not in film but maybe from the Nollywood experience you were referring to earlier how do we shift? because some of the movies that are making it are still promoting the victim issues of HIV AIDS which is fine because we're showing how we're dealing with some of this but how do we begin to shift this use film as part of the branding into messages that present beyond the struggle and the victim issues around some of the big challenges that we're experiencing to begin to present a new hope story that is linked to that because I'm becoming worried with some of the films that are doing well which are very good but on the other hand you listen to the message and just believe that you perpetuate the stereotypes look, certainly from my standpoint I agree with the point you're making the films that we've made whether it was the HIV AIDS story called yesterday which was an uplifting story but very emotional in the journey of a woman who gets inflicted and the stigma that comes with it but the film I made was a teenager about an 84-year-old man who goes to school to grade 1 to learn to read at 84 so you try to make stories that appeal to me as an individual or to any other producer or director but we cannot prescribe to people go make your movies, go do this do that, creativity is in the eye of the beholder and if they want to make an action movie if they want to be violent then everybody comes with public broadcasters when they put out a soap series every day and these issues are steered away from because they're afraid that's a big mistake these are issues that affect the lives of everybody every day and they should tell it in a real form but you know broadcasters are afraid so you know it's a very big dilemma because nobody can come and tell me well you should make this movie you want to make it, you go make it you pay for it, you do what you want but at the end of the day as an individual you assess your own responsibility, your own morality and your own ethics and you go do what you feel you should be doing so it's a very difficult one I think to interrupt, in a way you bring up a good point is that in branding your country or branding your company as world class or quality do you have to be honest about all the negative stuff that has to be very much perhaps part of the brand you've got to be sincere and true to yourself in that way if the brand is going to be honest so there are issues there are challenges there are faults here do you include that as part of the story I think transparency in today's world is such a premium it is so different than it was with social media and all the things out there that the thing that you can hide issues and people won't notice it's not the world we live in right now and it is far better to be direct obviously to portraying a positive light the steps that are being taken to address things but to try to instill quality wherever you can and be transparent it is the world we live in and it's critical I think for a brand to be sustainable you have to be based on the truth you don't have to necessarily tell all the truth it has to be truthful it has to be something that people will experience when they actually come to your country and without a doubt the brand would really and truly reflect what the product service or ethos is so I mean the point was raised about are we leaving women behind in Africa if we take somewhere like Nigeria and the public sector at least 35% of the of the ministers are women are formed by the cabinet the coordinated minister for the economy is female the minister of housing is female the minister of petroleum is female minister of finance is female so effectively the key powerful parts of the economy are driven so when we want to brand Nigeria from that perspective is it a gender sensitive country it is actually proven it's in its actions and there's no doubts in terms of saying what they represent in society because the reality is this and that truly is our brand today I think I'm going to start wrapping up I just want to ask our panellists sorry I'm getting the tick tock signal when we talk about made in Africa is there one word that each of you can give me about what you think defines made in Africa and how important is that and is it something you can put into one word so a label on the back of my shirt saying made in Africa what is the description perhaps underneath originality made in Africa I say the same for you confidence we create confidence to African people to the world that we can also do it and we've made it I say success in the challenging environment one word one word well it certainly will be success okay got you opportunity I think I'd say diversity Africa has 54 countries so it's not China there will always be differences around Africa we shouldn't look for one word one thing for Africa so that's it I mean diversity opportunity success confidence and originality so that make made in Africa a label that we want to buy into and that Africans want to buy into and I think that's the key for everybody doing business what's your one word exciting that's good thank you everyone good short dinner


Okay, the calling is on. Good morning. Welcome everybody to 314, a course of Media and Technology and Ministry. Let's pray and get started. Could somebody please pray with us and we'll get started. Anybody? Siddhant, why don't you pray? Please. Thank you. Father, in the name of Jesus, we thank you for everything, Lord. Thank you for this time, for this class. Lord, help us to understand and receive the things which you have kept us. Lord, let your spirit of wisdom walk in us. Thank you for everything. In Jesus' name, Lord. Amen. Thank you. Alright, so we, in the last couple of lectures, we talked a little bit about print media. We talked about radio, television, and films. Just looking at, you know, all of these different ways and forms of communication, mass communication, and how we could reach people or influence people that thinking through leveraging these channels of mass communication. Just in passing, I want to mention entertainment and gaming. I was going to mention that just to keep that in front of our minds. And then we'll move into what I want to really look into going forward is the place that the internet has in the things we do for ministry. So, when you're talking about entertainment, I don't know what, you know, what your thoughts are. And I'll try to put all these few points and notes and give the PDFs out. But the fact is, you know, as people, as, yes, we are Christians. We are believers. But we also like to have some forms of recreation. Let's just do some fun things. And, you know, all of us will have different forms of recreation. Maybe you like to go out for a meal. Maybe you like to, you know, watch a good movie or just whatever. Different people have different forms of recreation. And entertainment then has its place there to provide a form or a means of recreation. So this is my personal opinion. I don't know how you would look at it. So I don't think it's wrong for believers, Christians, to have entertainment as one of their forms of relaxing and recreation. What do you think? Is it okay? It's not okay? It's okay, sir. Okay. All right. Pastor, it's okay. Depending on the context, you choose to relax in. As a Christian, you cannot entertain yourself with secular music or with anything that is worldly. There can be Christian entertainment where the thing that is involved is not secular. So it is okay, but the context should be mindful of the context. Thank you. That's right. Good. Good. Thank you. Anyone else? Yes. No. Yeah. Say, go ahead. Yes. I believe there's nothing wrong with entertaining ourselves. The Bible says that there is peace, joy, righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost. That's the kingdom of God. And if our entertainment is a product of the joy of the Lord and not just basically to gratify the flesh, I see nothing absolutely wrong with that. As long as the intention is primarily and foundationally to point many to Jesus, to point people to the person of Christ, his character and his ways, to show people the kingdom. If that is the basis and our intent and goal at the end of the day, at the end of every type of entertainment, whether it's even you just coming out to talk on a joke or just a playlet or any form of entertainment, as long as that goal and purpose is there, there's nothing wrong with entertaining ourselves. For the moment it's gratifying the flesh, the moment it's pointing others to ourselves, to exalt ourselves, or it's trying to even deviate people from the part of righteousness, then there is something wrong with that type of entertainment. That does not spring from the Lord. Everything should be intentionally pointing to Jesus from the basis of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that gives us joy. Thank you. Good. Thank you. I think we could agree that as long as entertainment is godly, it's clean, it's righteous, pointing to the Lord, God glorifying, there's nothing wrong. We do need to relax. We need to do some fun things and glorifying God. So what I wanted to get to is, there is this whole space of entertainment, which we as people, meaning God's people, can, of course, we engage in it for ourselves, meaning we find it as a form of recreation, but it can also become a means for us to connect with people from outside. We can invite people, come and see, come and enjoy. Something that's clean, something that's godly, something that's pure, and we can become a touch point for people. From there they can experience Jesus Christ. So there are many different expressions of this. I think some of you touched on it. We could have a comedy show, a clean comedy show, making jokes, but it's clean. It's nothing vulgar, nothing indecent. You can have comedy as a form of entertainment and so on. I just want to point us to one or two things. I'm not spending too much time on this, but there is this whole idea, especially in the United States, and there is some replica of it happening in India. There may be things in other parts of the world. I'm not very sure. But this idea of teen parks, where you can come and just have a very relaxing time, but it's also a very engaging, meaningful time. So can you all see my screen? I'm just sharing the whole screen here. Can you see this? Yes. Okay. So I'm just pointing us to one or two things. So in the United States, there's this one called the Ark Encounter, and you can go to their website if you want to know, and you can watch their videos and all of that. But again, some Christian ministry has, they have created a replica, an actual size replica of Noah's Ark, and it's like an experience that you go in, and it's almost like taking you back to, how would all of this have happened? How would all of this have unfolded? And you can have some videos and all that you can watch here. What is it about the Ark? You can watch these videos and see. So it's a fun thing. But in the process, they're reaffirming biblical truths to us. So you can probably spend a day or two just going around the place and looking at it and learning. Well, this is how it would have actually happened. I'll give you a tour of the Ark and how it most likely would have been built and so on. So this is one kind of interesting thing that people are doing. Similarly, there is a museum called Creation Museum, where they again reaffirm the fact that, you find all these things, but all these things are pointing us to create a God. And they reaffirm the truths of the Bible and so on. So here's another museum where the things of the Bible are affirmed in this theme park. So just pointing us that something like things like this, where these are very, very engaging, and yet there is meaning. And you can go with the family, spend a day out as a part of recreation and so on, but yet there's these beautiful things happening. And just pointing us to the believers who are engaging in various ways and because people do spend time to relax and people do spend time in entertainment, that is a space that the church can tap into very meaningfully and provide something for the church and even for the world to come and see and experience and in the process, hopefully they will encounter God and at least be made to ask the right questions to learn about the true and living God. So just mentioning that in passing, I see a question here from Christopher. Can believers listen to secular music where the content is not ungodly? Yeah, I'm just giving you my opinion and we could discuss this. As long as the content is not ungodly, it's not provoking us to do wrong things, evil things, but it's an example. There's a lot of classical music that is not necessarily from a Christian producer, Christian musician or composer, but the music itself is rich and I don't see anything wrong in it. I personally don't spend a lot of time listening, I don't see anything wrong with that. It's almost like education, right?  Well, our teachers are not Christians.  And so much of our lifetime in schools and colleges, getting education, being taught by people who are not believers, we don't disregard that. No, that's part of our life journey. So, you know, in a similar way, and of course we filter things out in the sense that if there's anything that's contradicting to God or then we challenge that, but it's in a similar way in comes to music, you're not disregarding everything just because it doesn't have Christian content in it. We are careful. If it's ungodly, explicitly ungodly, pushing us away from God or into unrighteousness, we avoid that. But if it's otherwise clean, there's nothing wrong in that. So the next thing that I just want to quickly mention is about gaming, which again in the recent decades has become something that has caught the attention, especially of the younger generation. And nowadays people have games on their phones and so on. What I want us to think about is that gaming, of course there is the wrong side of it, where there are games that are violent or explicitly evil. Of course we need to avoid that. But gaming itself can be used and is being used, I should say, is being used for education. So that means this whole, the word gaming sometimes can be very misleading, but actually it is basically a very engaging interaction with media, whether it's on a computer or on your phone. And if it is being used for education, it's media being used for developing certain skills. So you can find that gaming is used to train medical professionals. So the whole gaming software has been so designed that surgeons are walked, or surgeons, or different medical practitioners, different specialties. The physician is walked through scenarios that almost look real life and then they have, they can diagnose, they can perform surgeries, they can do various things, but really it's a gaming engagement. And it is developing there, them in that particular field. Similarly, gaming and simulation can be used to train pilots or astronauts for different industries. So what I just want to again put before us is that this whole gaming space can be leveraged for very good causes, very good purposes, either to, you know, it could be a simple Bible quiz, just to engage your mind about the Bible, or it could be a game that creates real life scenarios where you are forced to apply the Bible while you're engaging with that digital content, right?  Like you need to know the Bible and you need to apply it to a real life, a situation that's presented to you as you engage with that media. So I think this is a space where God's people, I'm saying believers, we can do a lot more to create some really challenging, meaningful content. Now, there are already, you know, there are already people who've created, you know, various Christian-based games like, you know, playing games to check your knowledge of the Bible and quizzes that's very interesting just to play and answer these questions. But, you know, we can extend this into a lot more, in a lot more creative ways, all with the object of building people up, right? So we're using it in a very positive way to build people up in the Word of God and how to apply the Word of God. So just mentioning these two things, entertainment and gaming, because these are also things where people are engaging, people are being involved, whether it's from a believer's perspective or from people in the world who don't know God, don't know the Lord, they're all involved. And if we as the church can do nice things, very creative things and produce them, it'll definitely get the attention both of the church and also of people outside the church, administer to them, serve them and be a blessing to them. Okay. So that's all I wanted to say about entertainment and gaming. I'll put a few notes together and share that with you. Any questions before we change topic? All right, Ash has a question. If an unbeliever friend invites us to their home and have a movie time, if they put their choice, like which we never grew up watching, that is not appropriate, how can we raise it out of our mind? Pass it like our eyes are like a window to our soul, especially when you're trying to reach them out, reach out to them. Please help. Please. I guess you're saying to understand this. Okay. So now, so I think, yeah, so suppose you're going to go to a friend's house and they're about to place something, you know, watch them, they say, watch a movie. Now, of course, they are friends, maybe, you know, in school or college or workplace, whatever, neighbor or something, and they're not believers. And they say, come home. And suddenly they say, hey, we want to, can you all want to watch a movie? Now, of course, you do have one thing you can do is to kind of present your choice. You know, obviously, people are going to ask what kind of movie you like, or would you like to watch this? And then if it's something that's violent or, you know, something that's indecent, you can obviously say, hey, can we watch something else? Or I'm not so comfortable with this kind of movies. It doesn't suit my preference or something. So basically, in a nice way, we are guiding the choice of what movie is to something that's clean, neutral, and that you can watch. So that's one thing that we can do.  You say, in the name of Jesus, I reject all of those evil things, ungodly things that gain entrance into my mind while I was in that place or rejected. I give it no room to stay. And you don't recall.    God's word is what cleanses our minds. We read the word and being in the word and refusing to recall those things, our mind will be cleaned out from those images that may have, you know, gained access in. Is that okay? Anything else that anybody wants to discuss now about entertainment, gaming? We just mentioned them in passing. All right. So now I want to kind of move into some a little bit more serious practical content. And I want to start talking about basically we're going to now move into this whole thing about, you know, how do we leverage the Internet for the things that we are doing? So chapter 11, this chapter, so I need to give you some notes on the previous chapters that I've just spoken to you about on print media and radio, television, films, then entertainment and gaming. I'll put some thoughts down on that. Now, we want to get into some serious stuff because these are things that all of us would be using on a day-to-day basis. And we are beginning to, or we leverage the Internet and do these things. So I want to talk about digital communications and engagement and then we kind of get into additional topics all centered around how the Internet begins to play its role or plays its role in how we do media, how we do ministry today. So for all of us in Christian ministry, you know, whether you are going to be setting up a church or some other form of ministry, we will have to engage with people digitally, right? In times past, you know, we would write letters or we would send people printed mail. That was a big thing, maybe 20 years ago or and before when you post letters to people and things like that, send magazines, newsletters, so on. But these days, that form of communication is almost obsolete and a lot of communication is happening digitally to various channels. So we call it omni-channel communication. There's multiple channels that we have to engage. It's almost become, you know, I would say a requirement for ministries to engage with their people who remember you're serving through multiple channels. We can't say, this is the only way I will engage with you. That usually becomes very difficult. So you have to engage with people and so many channels digitally. So I just want to cover some of the major main ways that we engage with people and just share some guidance on it, some information for many of you. Maybe this is common knowledge and you're already doing it for some of us. Maybe it's things that we can take into the future when you set up your ministry or you start pastoring or you start your ministry. You can think about these things. So we'll be talking about websites and emails, messaging, virtual meetings, digital content platforms, having an app, doing podcasts and those kinds of things. And I just want to share some lessons, some things we learned, what we should do, we should not do, we made mistakes and we learned through the process of all of that. So to begin with, we need to have strategy, meaning some sort of a thought-out plan. How are we going to engage with people inside the church and outside the church? Because the way we engage with people inside the church and the way we engage with people outside the church is going to be obviously different. The content we create, for instance, is going to be different. We don't necessarily put out the same content for both inside and outside. Sometimes it can benefit both groups. But most often, how the content is going to differ because those outside may not understand all the deep things we say for the people who already are familiar with the scriptures and so on. For people outside, we may need some small steps, like maybe they may want to join an email list in a particular area of interest. They may want to ask for prayer. They may want to see what is this church all about. They may want to look chickens out on social media or you can give them an helpful resource, like on parenting or marriage or overcoming certain things. So things that are of interest to them. You will deal with them on that. Whereas on those inside the church, the digital communications, the digital content is usually on discipleship. And how to make them stronger in their faith, how to get them equipped for ministry, and then to be part of certain activities in the church, whether it's a small group, whether it's getting serving in church, whether they may want to get baptized, things like that. So the needs that we are trying to address and the way we address people inside and outside the church vary are different. So at a very basic level, when we need a photo church or for your ministry, you need to think about how you're going to do this. And so here are some basic questions that we can ask. Okay, so who are the people that we are trying to reach? So people inside the church, who are the people inside the church? For example, if I talk about APC in Bangalore, then I would say, hey, 60% of the people inside the church coming to our church are youth, or 60% are below 35. So that's a big chunk of people. And then you've got the remaining 40% that make up 35+. So the majority of the church are young people in the church. Then I would say these people are mobile, upwardly, professionally mobile. That means, and I'm just describing our congregation. I'm not saying this is true for everybody. I'm just saying you need to understand the people you're ministering to. And so I'm just giving this as an example. So I would say the other thing I would say, the people that are ministered inside the church are professionally mobile. That means they are going to be in our city in the church for maybe an average period of five years and five to seven years. And it's very likely at the end of that period, they're going to relocate and they're going to move to some other part of the world. That's just a trend within our congregation. They're an upwardly mobile congregation. It's the other segment. That means those who are on the other side of 40 who most likely may stay on in the city. Again, they are not sure. They also could move, but that would be the general trend. But everyone below 40 is highly likely within the next five to seven years, they're going to be moving. And I would say the third characteristic of the congregation is there are always a steady inflow of new people. So there are people constantly moving out and there's also people moving in because a lot of people are coming into the city, mainly for two reasons, education and profession. So people are coming into the city constantly, then they find us, they come to church. So there are new people coming in. People generally after a period of five to seven years, they're ready to move out, they get married, or the job changes, they move out. Now outside the church, okay, here whom should we meet, whom should we target? Because the composition of the inside of the church is a certain demographic, our immediate response would be, hey, we want to target a similar demographic outside the church because that they will, the ones would make an easy connect with the congregation inside. So therefore, who are these people? They are people who are in our city, who are either in schools, colleges, working professionally. They are in these areas, in these marketplace segments. And so we begin to target them. And of course we need to know where do they spend their time in the digital world so that we can reach them there. So like that, we can think through on some basic questions. What are their needs? So think about your congregation. What are their needs, the needs of these people? And you understand it. So then the content that we develop should address those needs. So of course in the teaching and the preaching, you should be bringing God's word, explaining God's word to them in the things that matter to them. Another question we can ask, you know, where and how are they going to interact digitally with the church and ministry? What are their likely touch points with the church in the digital world? You know, so you should understand that, hey, the majority of our congregation, they like to interact like this. People outside the church whom we are trying to reach, they would interact like this. Now again, people outside the church could be believers outside the church, meaning because this is a digital space, you're not constrained in any way geographically. So when you say outside the church, you can look at the church outside the church or you can look at the world outside the church. Look at both segments, right? Because the digital content that you develop could serve both these spaces. So it's okay, we are developing digital content and this content could be useful to the church outside our church, our congregation. So that is a global reach. Some of the content you develop could serve the world outside the congregation. That is those who don't know Christ yet, right? So think of both. Then think of what channels would you use to serve them. There are these people likely to consume the content you develop, what would be the best places, right? So then that would determine how you distribute your content to them. What are the objectives? What are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to equip them? Are you trying to bring them to faith in Christ? Are you trying to get them to engage with the activities of the church? Are you trying to get them to come to certain outreach events? So there are different objectives that you can think of, right? And so then for those objectives, there has to be specific content that's developed. And then of course we also need to think about what's going on, evaluate the progress, modify, keep changing, and then go through the whole evaluation process again. So this thought process must be, it's an ongoing thing, right? Something we decided three years ago may no longer be relevant today because things have changed so fast. So we need to rethink. And sometimes we may need to change. We need to modify this whole digital engagement strategy. We need to rethink, redo. And there's nothing wrong with that because things are changing around us. So this is just a simple table for thinking through on a digital engagement strategy for your church or for your ministry. Ask these basic questions. Nothing complicated in relation to the people that you're going to sell. Let me pause here. Let me just see if we are all together. Everybody's with me. I know I've kind of shifted direction. Yeah, everybody's with me so far. Any questions so far on this? Just introducing the topic. Let's move forward. Now, it's important in what we are doing digitally to evaluate progress. And that means how do we know that we're actually being effective? So, for example, you produce some video content or you produce content on your website. So many things you can do. Sometimes some people may write blogs. Some people may create a podcast. Some people may produce digital books or so many things. How do we know it's actually being useful to people or it's making a difference in people's lives or that we are achieving our objectives? So we need to evaluate progress. Now, the thing is we need to differentiate when we talk about measuring value, the difference between what we would refer to as vanity metrics and what are the real things we need to ask, be looking at. So sometimes these metrics, meaning number of views, number of likes, number of shares, maybe, shares are useful, but views, likes, they sometimes could be very misleading, right? They may not be actually reflecting the accomplishing of our objectives. So, for example, we know, right, when you put out a video or let's say, you know, whatever length of video is, a view often is just if they watch a few seconds. This depends on what kind of content you have. If you're putting out an ad, if they watch the first five seconds, it's counted as a view, right?  It doesn't mean that many people actually watched your video for entire 60 seconds. All it means is it's giving you some, you know, actually we don't know exactly, but it could give so many, they watched at least five seconds of that 60 seconds. That's counted as a view. Now, they watched five seconds. It's counted as a view, so they've missed major part of what you'd put out, right? We don't know how many seconds. Of course, you can look at the metrics and say, you know, what percentage, how much they watched. You can get some averages, but it doesn't reflect in the actual view that you see the view count. So those kind of things, you know, are not a correct picture. So for example, how many people are, how many subscribers we have on your channel? Well, you may have so many subscribers. Does it mean all the subscribers are watching all the content you're putting out? No. It's nice to have a large number of subscribers, but there's no guarantee that they're going to be consuming everything you put out, right? But then what are the questions, some real questions we need to ask, you know, are we reaching new people? How many people are taking the first step? So how would you know you're reaching new people online? Well, of course, you can look at the number of people interacting with the content, but then from there, are they coming to your event? Are they coming to your service? Are they connecting to the church or whatever? Are they going past that view, past that first initial connect digitally to something that you can say, yeah, this is a person that we have reached online, right? Are they taking the first step? You can then look at the names, you know, that being added to your list or the database. Are people finding us online? So, okay, you have a website and so on. How many people are coming to church? Because they saw you online, right? So then that gives a good reflection of the effectiveness of your website or the ad or the content that you put out. And are you helping people move along their journey, you know, from the first step to the next step? So these are some tough questions to ask because this kind of gives us the real effectiveness of what we're doing as opposed to just like, okay, I got so many views and I got so many subscribers and so many people happen to, you know, see the website. That is good. I'm not saying they're bad. Yeah, it gives you some idea, but that may not be giving you the true effectiveness of what we are doing. The real effectiveness of what we're doing is in our people moving forward in their transformative process in their spiritual journey. So while we look at both sets of numbers, we need to understand them correctly. One is giving you some idea of what's happening in the digital world. The other is giving you insight into what's happening in people's lives. And these are two different things. I hope I made myself clear. Are you following me? Everybody's very quiet, so I don't know if I got the point across. You're following me. Okay, all right, fine. Any questions? Okay, so just an example, you know, we'll talk a few examples and then we'll close. So let's understand, you know, these metrics that YouTube, Facebook and Instagram gives is telling us, okay, in the digital world, this is what's happening. But what we need to probe and find out is what's happening in the lives of people. And that's a true effectiveness of what we're doing. How would we do that? You know, I mean, you could just think of something here. Suppose you had, okay, now, you know, in the past we used to give out physical cards for people to fill out.  But then there are people watching us online. So what we do is, hey, go online and, you know, connect with us online. So if they do that and they give you a comment saying, hey, this message blessed me. I was watching your sermon and, you know, this, this has happened in my life. Well, that one person is telling you how they were affected. So that's a count. You can say, hey, so and so was truly affected. That's a tangible real life transformation happening. Or if you are doing, you know, a webinar and so on. And say, you know, and especially this, this was true, you know, during the pandemic when we, when people moved a lot of things online and people started connecting online and you were doing on topics that were very relevant, especially during those days. And some of it is still relevant, you know, in now that we've come out of the pandemic. We're talking about these things. And okay, people are connecting. So there you can see that these people are participating in something you're offering. That's a real number.  That's a real, that's a real number. So some churches, you know, they read their website to preach people into positioning their website as something for their church. They position their website for people who are seeking, you know, and they want to begin their journey of faith. So now you can, they read it, read on their website. Now you can look at, okay, are people actually using this resource in the journey of faith? How many people are actually using the resource? Okay, that's a measure of lives that are being touched and the effectiveness of this repositioning that has happened through the website. Okay, that's a real measure.  So are new people listening to it and then connecting to the church? Okay, that's a real measure of a life change. A life transformation, right? And if so many couples participated and a third of them were new to the church, then you can say, hey, this online retreat or seminar actually helped us reach new people, about 300 new people, new couples. So you can say, yeah, this is a real number of lives being changed. All right, so I'm just kidding. So there's just some examples where you can think about, you know, this is a real count of life change, therefore effectiveness of our digital engagement. This is real. You know, we are engaging with people digitally, various forms of the website or seminars or whatever. And these are real numbers of people being changed. That shows, yeah, whatever you've done is effective. Okay, so just to close out here, you know, think about, you know, if you example, if you're thinking about teens, young adults, what would be a digital engagement strategy for them? So how would you start thinking about it? You would say, okay, let's see what are the main digital platforms where these people are engaging? You can look at it, look it up online if you want. And then think through those questions we put up in the table earlier. And how are you going to engage with this particular demographic? Right? So you can then begin to think about what content are you going to develop for this group of people? How are you going to deliver it to them? And then how are you going to measure the effectiveness?  Look at actual life change. That's where you can determine the effectiveness of what's happening. I'm going to pause here. There's a lot more we're going to cover in this thing, but we'll get into it. And I'll share some of our learnings and experiences as we go forward in this. Any questions before we leave? Okay. Thank you. Okay. If there are no questions, we'll close. We'll continue this digital engagement. Sorry, tomorrow. Yeah, we have it tomorrow. I said next week. Yeah. Let's close in prayer, please. Somebody could close in prayer. Then we'll dismiss. Please go ahead. Thank you for teaching us those beautiful things, Father, to reach out the utmost to the maximum people in the ways that can impact their lives. And we are so very thankful to you that you're teaching us bit by bit. And as we are learning, Father, may it be retained in us, may it be used by us to reach out the multitudes, Father, and bring a difference to the society, to the nations and to the church as well, Father. In all ways, Father, lead us and guide us and bless Pastor and all the students to use it for your glory and for your kingdom expansion. In Jesus' name we pray and thank you. Amen. Amen. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. I'll see you tomorrow. God bless. Bye now. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.


So this is the first patch that we've come up with. It's for our song, Temple. So that's what the patch is called and it's one of the cleanest songs that we have. It's very atmospheric and I hope you like it. It's very warm and it's very clean and that's just the clean warm is pretty good setting for it really for starting off. Rolling off the gain a little bit just so when you hit it, it does break up a little bit but then you can still play it a low volume and have it nice and clean. We've added a little bit more presence to it just because it again brightens it up a tad. You can't even see there just with the like it still sounds bassy but even though we've rolled it all the way back here so there's so much more room to play with. I guess the reason why we've gone for these settings is mainly because this song is a very picked out and intricate song more than anything so it's about accentuating those notes. So we've got the reverb up quite high but the delay on a little bit lower just as more of a sort of kickback thing I guess so it's not taken away too much from the reverb just so it because it's quite an atmospheric song it's just it's just nicer having those notes ringing out as long as possible and adding that little bit of delay just just helps that doesn't it really?