Good evening aspirants, we are very happy to inform you that Shankar A.S. Academy is launching a free online initiative for the benefit of civil service aspirants. We are launching a weekly program on international relations. So we will be posting one class every week and these classes will be explained by Sree T. P. Srinivasan who is a former IFS officer. He also served as former ambassador of India and former permanent representative of India to the United Nations. So he is a man with extremely wide experience in international affairs and highly proficient in current global realities. So this foreign policy initiative will be helpful for aspirants for their preparation and understanding of international relations. The first capsule of this series will be published at 5 p.m. on 14 January 2021 in our YouTube channel. We suggest to the viewers and the aspirants to utilize this unique opportunity and also share this wonderful resource with all your friends. Now let us proceed to our daily news analysis. The list of news articles along with the page numbers is given here for your reference. Let us now take this op-ed column from today's newspaper which focuses on electric mobility and various aspects associated with it. See the article begins with electrical vehicles being a viable option both economically as well as environmentally. See being sustainable to the environment they are capable of yielding profits in the longer run. By doing so they save government expenditure and pushes for energy security through domestic means. We will try to explain what this means. See firstly we all know that India is highly dependent on West Asia for meeting its energy needs mainly because of fossil fuels. And it is also causing a very huge import bill thereby threatening our forex reserves. So shifting to e-vehicles impacts in India's foreign policy by altering the energy security dependence from West Asia to Latin America. Why Latin America? We will see it now. See as per 2018-2019 India is the third largest oil importer in the world. So mainly to reduce this dependence on crude oil the Indian government has brought in policies which aid in increasing the mobility of e-vehicles. See we are all aware of this scheme called FAME that is faster adoption and manufacturing of hybrid and electric vehicles. So this scheme was initially launched in 2015 for a period of two years and later it was subsequently extended from time to time until March 2019. So the first phase of FAME India scheme mainly focused on four areas. First one demand creation that is demand creation for electric vehicles. Second technology platform we need technologies to develop e-vehicles. Third one pilot project and fourth one charging infrastructure. So for creation of demand incentives were given for different vehicle segments. For example if you buy a two wheeler or even three wheelers, autos, four wheelers, even light commercial vehicles, buses. Government has given some kind of incentive for purchasing a e-vehicle. And after expiry of phase one of FAME scheme that is in 2019 government came up with phase two of FAME scheme for a period of three years starting from April 2019. So this phase aimed at generating demand by supporting 7,000 electric buses, 5,00,000 three wheelers, 55,004 wheeler passenger cars etc. The numbers are not important. Just we are saying that government is promoting the demand by diversifying the electric vehicles ranging from two wheelers to four wheelers, LCVs etc. And similar to that of phase one phase two is also aimed at creation of charging infrastructure. Because electric vehicles need charging and charging infrastructure needs to be developed across the highways. As of now we are having oil bunks everywhere. So similar to that charging infrastructure must also be developed. And as we said before electric vehicles promote the energy security of the country and also reduces the import dependency. Further increased use of electric vehicles leads to battery development. See how electric vehicle works. First we charge the battery and this battery is used to rotate the motor. That is engine of a car. So this development of domestic battery alters India's relationship with resource rich Latin America. Why? Because Latin America that is South America is known for Lithium reserves. Particularly there is a triangle called Lithium Triangle in Latin America. The countries are Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. You can remember like this ABC Triangle. So these three countries are known for Lithium and around 80% of Lithium in the world is present in these three countries. So coming back to the discussion. In 2019 a new joint venture company named Kanes-Bidesh India Limited shortly Kabul has been set up with the participation of three central public sector enterprises. They are National Aluminium Company Limited NALCO, Hindustan Copper Limited HCL and Mineral Exploration Company Limited MECL. So these three CPSCs came together and formed a new joint venture called Kabul. So the object of this new joint venture is to ensure a consistent supply of critical and strategic minerals to Indian domestic market. So this joint venture Kabul will also gather strategic mineral assets like lithium, cobalt for an abroad for commercial use and supply to meet the domestic requirement of battery manufacturers. See generally Lithium batteries are known for their high efficiency. See almost all our mobile phones batteries are lithium based batteries. So this company Kabul which is also working on lithium and cobalt will help in building partnerships with other mineral rich countries like Australia, Africa, South America where Indian expertise in exploration and mineral processing will be mutually beneficial. So we will be giving our expertise to explore the minerals in their countries and in return we will be getting strategic minerals for development of local batteries. So for this reason at the start we said that shifting to e-vehicles will alter the India's foreign policy from West Asia to Latin America. So currently India is importing lithium ion batteries from Hong Kong, China, Vietnam and in the past two years the imports of lithium ion batteries have tripled. So recognizing this growing demand the government has brought in policy interventions to supply lithium and cobalt to the battery manufacturers. Interestingly lithium is also used in treatment of bipolar disorder. So it is expected that in the long run lithium may emerge as a metal which helps in treating the excessive carbon emissions. And coming back to India's dependence on Latin America, currently India's biggest trading partners in Latin America are Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela. But if you see majority of trade with these countries is concentrated on crude oil. So as we said before with the shift in trade to lithium and cobalt from crude oil the situation is expected to change. So across the world cobalt is emerging as an important element in rechargeable batteries. More amount of lithium and cobalt will be required for self-sufficiency of lithium batteries in our country. Some of the major producers of cobalt are Congo, Russia, Australia, Cuba, Madagascar, Canada, South Africa etc. So these countries are known for cobalt reserves. So India's initiative to boost the electric mobility and its attempt in understanding the availability of lithium and possibilities of joint ventures with those countries where lithium and cobalt are available will be a long term solution for clean cities, new markets, employment and mainly towards Atman-Irbar Bharat. And before we go on to the next news article, a small question for you. Clean cities, employment, these terms are already covered under sustainable development goals. So find out the number of SDG where employment and clean cities are discussed and mention those SDG numbers in the comment section. Let us move on to next news article discussion. Let us now take up this editorial from today's newspaper which talks about a very heart-wrenching, depressing incident where a deadly fire has led to loss of 10 infants in a hospital in Maharashtra. So the fire accidents are happening on a regular phenomenon across India, mainly in government hospitals. For example, a fire accident occurred in covid wards in Vijaywada, Ahmedabad, etc. So this shows the poor adherence to safety protocols and lack of disaster preparedness among many of our government hospitals. So in this context, let us have a brief discussion on why the fire accidents are happening across the country and what can be done to mitigate them or at least having a disaster response mechanism. Before going further, the relevant syllabus is given here for your reference. Firstly, why fire accidents are happening on a very regular basis? One reason is the poorly trained staff in hospitals who do not know how to respond properly in an emergency situation. Next, if you see, safety protocols are yet to be institutionalized even in places like hospitals. Generally we expect a very high degree of professionalism, a very high degree of safety protocols when it comes to hospitals. But even then, they are yet to be finalized or institutionalized. Then if you see, there is a poor oversight by fire authorities and faulty electrical equipments which are not repaired or which are not maintained properly. So these are the major administrative causes which are leading to hospital fires and most of these fires could be avoided if the authorities are more alert. And after this incident, the Maharashtra government has ordered an inquiry into this incident and also a fire audit of the hospital has been ordered. If you see further, we must notice that hospital fires are not like any other urban fires or like a forest fires. So to avoid them, we must better understand them. So only if we understand why are they happening, we can plan or prepare for mitigating them. So research shows that there are specific factors which trigger fire incidents and aggravate their impact. So let us now look into these technical aspects on what is causing a fire incident in a hospital. See firstly, it is often observed that fire starts in intensive care units and mostly operation rooms. Why because in ICU's operation rooms, high concentration of oxygen is confined in a small space. See most of us know that oxygen is a very important reason for fire. If oxygen is not there, generally fire puts off. Second, see a review of Indian hospital fires identified that higher oxygen availability in intensive care units along with motors, electrical units are main causes of ignition and the presence of plastic materials are further fueling these or aggravating the fire incidents. So by now we have understood what are the administrative reasons and what are the technical reasons for fire incidents. Let us now see what can be done to avoid these types of incidents in the future. Firstly, hospitals should be audited regularly and if any incident or shortcoming is noted, immediately they should be addressed. Second, we need a comprehensive national building safety codes in line with international safety standards. Further, oxygen monitors should be installed in all hospital rooms so that they will ensure the ambient level within the safe norms. And there is a numerical value here. The oxygen level should be a maximum of 23.5% which is set by US National Fire Protection Association, not required for exam. So we should note that the oxygen level should be properly maintained to avoid the mishaps. In addition to these, the electrical appliances like air conditioners which are having spark potential should be kept far away from oxygen areas. See generally during Diwali we often have the fire accidents in go downs of crackers. This happens mainly because of electrical spark or short circuit which is happening in the electrical equipment. So similarly these type of incidents also happen in hospitals and these will be further fueled or aggravated by presence of high concentrated oxygen. So these are the things which need to be done to avoid future mishaps in the hospitals. So as the health sector is expanding, it is essential that all new infrastructure conforms to rigorous safety standards. And it is high time that government sets the bar high enough and it should also ensure hospital authorities adhere to full safety standards in their buildings. In addition to these, the hospital staff should be trained accordingly so that the patients will not be left there whenever fire accidents happen. And central government should also create a public platform where knowledge gained from these inquiries can be shared and certions from the public can be taken to improve the safety standards. Similar to big corporate companies, hospitals should also mandatorily hold regular safety and evacuation drills which are very important to save lives when a disaster happens. So this is all about the discussion of this news article wherein we had a brief discussion on fire incidents in hospitals, what are the reasons for them and what can be done to mitigate or prevent them. Let us move on to next news article discussion. Let us now proceed with this news article from today's editorial page. This article is written by former RBI governor who discusses the challenges that will be faced by Reserve Bank of India in coming out of its current monetary policy. So in this context, let us have a brief discussion on what are the challenges and what is the current monetary policy. The relevant syllabus is given here for your reference. Firstly, what is current monetary policy of Reserve Bank of India? See, as you all know, monetary policy refers to use of monetary instruments under the control of RBI to regulate interest rates, money supplying, even availability of credit, etc. So to manage the financial pressures caused by COVID-19, RBI has gone for Expansionary Monetary Policy or Easy Money Policy. So what is this expansionary policy or easy money policy? See, under this policy, the central bank i.e. RBI reduces statutory bank reserves i.e. CRR, SLR and lowers the key interest rates like report rate and also improves market liquidity to encourage economic activity. So simply put, RBI pushes more money into the market. For this reason, we call it as Expansionary Policy and we also said that RBI will also reduce interest rates. So the consumers will get cheap loans. For this reason, it is called Easy Money or Cheap Money. So thus, Expansionary Policy seeks to stimulate an economy by boosting demand through monetary and fiscal stimulus. So it is intended to prevent or moderate the economic downturns and recessions. See, during COVID-19, almost all the economic activity has come to standstill. Many people lost their jobs. So because of all these issues, people had no money to spend. Even if they are having money, they are not willing to spend because of fear of COVID-19. Because there may be expenses regarding health, etc. So automatically what happens? Demand comes down. When there is no demand, the companies or the industries will face losses. When companies or industries face losses, they cannot give money to their employees. Again, employees of these companies may not be in a position to purchase the things. Again, demand comes down. So this is a cycle wherein one consequence pushes the cost and again this cycle continues to rotate. So to break this cycle, RBI is giving cheap money or easy money to the consumers. So that when they are having money, they will start purchasing.  When there is demand, companies will start producing. They will get profits. They will pay salaries to their employees. So again, demand increases. One is virtuous cycle. The other is vicious cycle. So accordingly, to ease these pandemic pressures, RBI reduced interest rates like repo rate. Repo rate was reduced to 4%. In addition, RBI flooded the market with an unprecedented amount of liquidity and set up number of measures for targeted assistance to distress sectors. For example, we had something called LT-ORVO, that is long-term repo operations and then targeted long-term repo operations, wherein money is being given for longer 10 years but at the lower interest rates. In addition to this, a 30,000 crore rupees special liquidity scheme was launched for NBFCs, HFCs, etc. So the bottom line is RBI has been pushing a lot of money into the market at cheaper interest rates. So other called it as crisis-driven expansionary policy. The crisis is COVID-19 pandemic. So the issue with such expansionary monetary policy is finding out when to engage, how much to do and when to stop. Which means when to start expansionary policy, how much amount should be given into the market, at what interest rate it should be given and when this expansionary policy should be stopped. This is what is discussed by the author today. So author indicates that reversing this crisis-driven expansionary policy must be a deliberative process and the timing for the same should be planned very, very carefully. But during search reversing, RBI will be facing certain challenges. So what do we mean by reversing? One thing, increasing the reports. Second thing, reducing the excessive liquidity in the market. Let us now see what are the challenges for RBI. First one, to manage the tension between restraining inflation under the same time supporting the recovery of economy. See, one of the major side effects of such expansionary monetary policy is inflation. So when interest rates go down, it becomes cheaper to borrow. So consumers are more willing to buy more goods and services and companies are also in better position to purchase items to expand their businesses, etc. So cheap money leads to increased demand. When there is more demand, automatically the prices will increase, which is what we call as demand-pull inflation. From the MPC review meetings, it became very clear that inflation remained above the target band for the past several months and will be the same in near future also. So what is the target of inflation? It is 4 plus R minus 2 percent, that is maximum 6, minimum 2. Here inflation means CPA inflation. But the December MPC review meeting reported that CPA inflation is around 7.3 percent in September, 7.6 in October and even the inflation projection for the third quarter of the current year is around 6.8 percent. So it can be inferred that all these are above the tolerance range, that is above 6 percent. But even in this scenario, where inflation is too much over the target, Monetary Policy Committee decided not to increase the interest rates. Why? Because there has been a lot of concerns for growth and financial stability. See if interest rates are increased, it will definitely reduce inflation. But at the same time, it will become costly to borrow money, which in turn will affect the liquidity that is fueling the growth. So now because there is cheap money, people are buying goods and companies are also producing lots of goods and services. But not changing interest rates or reducing it is also an issue. It will affect the savers, that is individuals who regularly save money through a bank. That is what we call as fixed deposits, recurring deposits, etc. Because a continued low interest rate or further reduced interest rate to their savings will affect them at this time of high inflation. See many people put their excess money in the bank in terms of fixed deposits, recurring deposits. They will be dependent on the income coming in the form of interest on these deposits. If interest is very less, they will be even more affected during high inflation times. So before normalizing policy rates, RBI has to take into all these points. Next author talks about economic recovery. He feels that recovery will be weak, uneven and unequal. Why uneven and why unequal? Because large industries are already showing the signs of recovery. But small and medium enterprises and the informal sector are still in distress. So to encourage these sectors or enterprises, stimulus is needed. So thus controlling inflation at the same time providing enough liquidity for the recovery is going to be a very challenging task for Reserve Bank of India. Why? If you give more liquidity, inflation will increase. If you want to control inflation, liquidity should be reduced. So both are mutually exclusive. So it is a very big challenge for RBI to manage both these opposing things. Now the second challenge is withdrawing though excess liquidity injected into the market. Here author notes that liquidity injected is not fueling consumption as there is low expenditure. Why there is low expenditure? See RBI has given cheap money despite that there is low expenditure. Why? Because the money or cash is kept as safe deposits. So the consumers instead of spending the money, they are saving the money in the banks. So banks are routinely depositing trillions of rupees with Reserve Bank of India every day. Also people are choosing cash and bank deposits rather than risky options like stock markets. So instead of increased money supply improving the consumption, money is being saved. So the intention of RBI and the government is not getting realized because people are saving instead of spending. Additionally such excess liquidity existing too long is also risky as it might urge investors to invest the excess money into dishonest ventures. So this will threaten the financial stability. So excess money or liquidity must be definitely brought down. The third big challenge for Reserve Bank of India is to restrain the rupee from appreciating out of the line. So what is this appreciation? Appreciation of rupee means Indian rupee becoming costlier in comparison to US dollar. See for example today if 1 dollar equal to 70 rupees and if tomorrow if it reduces to 60 rupees. It means the Indian rupee is appreciating. So the amount of rupees you are getting for 1 dollar has decreased from 70 to 60. So this appreciation will lead to erosion on the value of India's exports. So appreciation of rupee is not good for India's exports. So this sudden strengthening of rupee could be due to many reasons. For example there has been a lot of capital inflows from outside the world. See around 15 billion dollars worth investment came into geo-platforms. Second reason may be the falling crude oil prices. Third one India's current account turned a surplus in 2020. That is current account deficit has turned into current account surplus. So economists are predicting that current account surplus is likely to remain even in first quarter of next financial year. So this is leading to an appreciation of rupee because the surplus is being driven by lower inputs. This indicates a weakness in demand representing slow growth. So in order to maintain export competitiveness of Indian industry steps have to be taken to restrict the appreciation of rupee. So to restrict the appreciation of rupee RBI started buying huge inflows of foreign money. Around 90 billion dollars of foreign money was purchased by RBI in last 10 months. So these are the three different challenges that is the impossible trinity faced by Reserve Bank of India. Why we are saying impossible is the three challenges are mutually conflicting. On one side we need to ensure that inflation is reducing. On the other side we have to ensure that economy is recovering. And on the third side the export competitiveness of India should be preserved. So because of these three mutually conflicting challenges RBI need to make a deliberative policy and the policy should be predictable for supporting the market sentiments. So the conclusion is maintaining a policy balance across all three conflicting objectives can be tricky which is the biggest challenge for Reserve Bank of India. This is all about the discussion of this news article. Have a brief idea on what are the three challenges and how each challenge is affecting the other challenge. That is understand how economy is working. Let us move on to next news article discussion. Let us take up this news article from main page which says that Supreme Court bench to study other verdict today. See in 2018 a constitution bench of Supreme Court led by then CJI Deepak Mishra upheld the validity of other act. But in that verdict court also struck down few provisions. For example it struck down section 57 of other act which allows private entities to use ADAR for verification purposes. Additionally one more section which allows UIDAI that is parent agency of other to share data with specially authorized officers in the interest of national security. So this provision was also struck down. So three out of five judges were of the view that ADAR is valid. Additionally ADAR requirement by CBSE NEET UGC has also been struck down. But ADAR PAN linkage has been upheld. So regarding this verdict of 2018 many review petitions were filed. And today these review petitions are being heard upon by Supreme Court bench. As said before the majority view held by the constitution bench in 2018 declared ADAR an unparalleled identity proof which cannot be duplicated like PAN, ration card and passport. However Justice DOH Chandrachud had a dissenting opinion in 2018 verdict. He said that ADAR is unconstitutional and passage of ADAR bill as money bill is fraud on the constitution. He further held that section 7 of the act which makes ADAR mandatory for state subsidies as unconstitutional. Addition to this data collected for authentication purposes can be held only for six months. But the original ADAR act had said that the data can be held for five years. In this context Justice Chandrachud ordered service providers to delete any information collected by them after linking ADAR with SIM cards. So these are the important provisions regarding to ADAR verdict of 2018. So in a broad sense ADAR act was held constitutional by the Supreme Court bench. But few provisions like allowing private entities to use ADAR as well as allowing UIDAI to share data with specially authorized officers were completely struck down by Supreme Court. Additionally as said before ADAR should not be mandated for CBC, NEET, UGC, school, college, admissions etc. So petitioners have filed review petitions in Supreme Court and Supreme Court is hearing those matters today. The main contentious provision here is ADAR does not come under Ambit of Money Bill according to article 110 and it was fraudfully or deceitfully passed as a money bill. Apart from this petitioners are also arguing on other issues with respect to ADAR act. For example section 2K of ADAR act prohibits any person from parting with any information which is pertaining to one's income. Simply put the income details should not be shared. But the problem here is despite clearly mentioning in the ADAR act the income tax act of 1961 made it compulsory to ensure that PAN card is linked with other details. So this section further states that in case a person fails to intimate ADAR number the PAN card of the person will be invalid. So the petitioners are arguing that the majority verdict of Supreme Court did not look into all these matters. Secondly the petitioner said that ADAR linkage was supposed to be confined to either a benefit, subsidy or service. But filing of income tax returns do not fall under each of these three descriptions. So ADAR should not be mandated for filing of income tax returns. So these are the contentious provisions. First one passing ADAR bill as money bill. Second one mandating ADAR card PAN card linkage as well as compulsory ADAR card for filing of income tax returns. So just have a very brief idea on these aspects because we are expecting more news articles like editorials, VOPEDs in the coming days. So we thought of giving you a very brief idea today so that you will be more informed about ADAR act in coming days. So this is all about the discussion of this news article let us move on to next news article discussion. See this news article mentions that the Delhi High Court upheld the provisions for arrest for tax evasion in GST Act of 2017. So actually GST Act is having a provision for arresting a person if a person has committed offenses like issuing invoices or bill without supply of goods or availing input tax credit fraudulently or collecting any tax amount but failing to pay same amount to government. So for these issues the offenders can be arrested. So the petitioners argued that procedure prescribed under CGST Act was not fair and reasonable because this section which is having provisions for arrest is of criminal nature. So it could not be enacted under article 246A of constitution. See this article deals with special provisions with respect to GST. But the High Court ruled that the sections pertaining to arrest of individuals are constitutional and importantly they fall within the legislative competence of parliament. The High Court also said that scope of article 246A is significantly wide so it grants power to parliament and state legislatures to make all laws with respect to GST. Here while delivering the verdict High Court also used Pith and Substance Doctrine. So what is this P and S doctrine? Let us have a brief discussion over that. See the literal meaning of Pith is true nature or essence of something and the meaning of substance is essential part of something. So P and S means an essential part of something in which its true essence lies. So this doctrine says that where the question is about determining the power of legislature to make a particular law under the three lists union, state, concurrent then what court must look into is the substance of the same. So this doctrine is used whenever the competence of legislature is questioned. So according to this doctrine whenever competence of legislature is questioned what has to be looked into is the substance of the enactment. So we have to focus on the essential part where essence of the act is lying. So if we talk about High Court's verdict the petitioners argued that under article 246a that is special powers with respect to GST Parliament has no power to legislate an act with powers of arrest because provisions of arrest generally relates to criminal nature. But High Court opined that the Pith and substance of the act is about taxation. So the sections of this act are valid and they fall within the competence of Parliament. So instead of going by literary sense we have to take the spirit of the act that is what we mean by Pith and substance. So as for the doctrine if it is found that the legislation is in substance on the matter assigned to legislature then the enactment must be valid completely. In our case the substance of the legislation is with regard to taxation so the act is valid. Additionally if an enactment incidentally or accidentally touches upon the matter which is beyond the competence of particular legislature then also such encroachments do not lead to invalidity of entire act that is if the substance falls within the union list then the incidental encroachment by the law on the state list does not make the law invalid. So instead of going on a strict boundaries with regard to union list, state list and concurrent list what has to be seen is the substance or the spirit of the act that is what we mean by Pith and substance. So this is all about the discussion of this news article. Let us move on to practice questions discussion session. Consider the following statements regarding Fame India scheme. Statement 1, it aims to promote manufacturing of electric and hybrid vehicle technology and to ensure its sustainable growth. Yes, statement 1 is correct. Statement 2, it is being implemented by Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. No, statement 2 is incorrect because Fame India scheme is being implemented by Department of Heavy Industry which comes under Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises. So statement 2 is incorrect. Therefore correct answer is option A, one only. See this previous year question appeared in 2018 prelims. The identity platform other provides open application programming interfaces that is APAs. What does it imply? Statement 1, it can be integrated into any electronic device. Statement 2, online authentication using iris is possible. Which of the statements given above are correct? If you see, both statements are correct. So correct answer is option C, both one and two. With help of APAs, other authentication can be used across all government agencies. So both statements are correct. Option C is the correct answer. Consider the following statements with reference to doctrine of Pith and Substance. Statement 1, it was adopted in pre-independence period. Yes, statement 1 is correct. This principle had come to be established by the Privy Council when it determined appeals from Canada or Australia involving the question of legislative competence of federation or the states in those countries. Even in India, the doctrine of Pith and Substance came to be adopted in the pre-independence period under Government of India Act of 1935. Statement 2, according to the doctrine if the substance falls within union list, then the incidental encroachment by the law on state list makes it invalid. Statement 2 is incorrect. As we said before, if the substance is within the ambit of legislature, then act will not be invalid. So statement 2 is incorrect. Therefore, correct answer is option A, one only. Let us take up main questions. What are the challenges facing Reserve Bank of India while exiting the easy money regime that it embarked on to manage the financial pressures unleashed by COVID-19? One more main question. The tragic incidents have become frequent across India in government institutions. We elaborately discuss what causes such incidents and what should be done to avert such incidents in the future. Please write the answers and post them in the comment section. With this, we conclude today's news analysis. If you find this session resourceful, click on the like button, show your appreciation in the comment section, and don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel.


So actually, this is just for the video recording. There's no audio, but I think you hear me. It's sort of funny to talk in a microphone. Okay, we're starting right now, but this is not information that people at the webcast need to know, really. So this microphone is just really only for the webcast. We don't have an audio, but I think we're able to understand what people say up front here, right? Okay, so we'll be introducing the workshop really briefly is generally longer than intended. So I'll start out and then just Caroline will take over later. So I want to welcome all of you on behalf of Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Siani and also Suda, who is hosting this workshop on the use of entrepreneurship and the sustainable development goals. Agriculture is in need of sustainable transformation. We all know that innovation, we need innovation and intensification to get food on the table for generations to come. And the world population is growing, so there's an urgent need for that. Now, how do we do this? Now, key in forging change and transformation is youth. Why is that? Because they're savvy, technologically more savvy. They're engaged, they're open for new ideas and they have their whole life in front of them as opposed to me. I still consider myself youth, but I'm not, right? I mean, you will always see yourself in the mirror and they think, yeah, that's passe. But anyway, so we need youth. But youth are sustainable transformation of agriculture. They are not really interested in agriculture in general. Agriculture is considered generally uncool by most youth. They're savvy, they're on the cell phones rather. And it has also to do with the lack of business development and opportunities for youth in agriculture. And so youth generally flee the rural areas and go to cities and search for opportunities. And so we have a double side of the coin really here. Youth is in need of opportunities, job opportunities on one side. At the same time, we need youth to be represented in agriculture to make the transformation we need in agriculture. So what can we do to enhance engagement of youth in agriculture? How can we engage people to close the yield gap and create opportunities in rural areas for business, for agriculture business? How can we prevent the rural to urban brain drain? How can we prevent migration? And how can we give opportunities to youth in general and prevent them being sucked into things like extremism, right? Those are key questions. We just had the elections yesterday in France, presidential election. Luckily it turned out well, but those are issues that clearly are at stake. We discuss this globally, right? So here we are together about 50 people from all over the world really, but here in Sweden located and from different backgrounds. It's really good to see. We had a list from where people came from and thanks for signing up. There's a lot of people from CEDA coming as well, but besides CEDA, there's people from different universities, from institutes, from NGOs, governmental organization and intergovernmental organizations. And there's even people that I hear that do the job that we're talking about. That's agriculture. And I would like to point out to people here in front from our very own SOU Agripreneur program, but also people from White Park and Michael driving business in Africa, Agri Business. People that actually do the job. So it's a really nice SOU Agripreneur here as well, driving business with Africa. It's really good to see this diversity. I just wanted to mention that if you have looked online on the program, that program changed very dynamically online as well. We had people coming from IGOT, from Roo Forum, from Uganda, from the Sustainability Network, and they're all not here. So last minute changes have been added. And those last minute changes, we're very, very happy about that. They could join in. That's a White Park representative, Jana, here in front. And then we have Engage, Mary Asia is there. Last minute additions, but not least, we have a, it just shows we're late to the scene, but there's a lot of people that think about youth and opportunity for youth in agriculture. Very welcome that you could make it. And the last minute is really very much appreciated. Now, I just wanted to mention here, this is a workshop. So we're speaking here. You're the audience, and not quite so. Actually, I want you to be engaged with your little gray cells and actually contribute to the discussion that follows. So we have a bunch of hopefully inspiring, I'm sure about that, inspiring speakers that will set the stage, and then after which we have discussions and also roundtable discussions following lunch. With that, I would like you to listen carefully to these talks, and Caroline will speak about the program a little bit more in detail. Thank you very much. I'm very welcome. Yes, and I'm happy to see so many of you here. My name is Caroline Anderson. I am a food agronomist working for Siani, the Swedish Agricultural Network Initiative. And together with Tönn, Dekka, I think you forgot to introduce yourself. We will take you through this exciting day and make sure we have a nice time together. And as Tönn said, the event is live-streamed and you will be able to watch the event workshop afterwards. And you can also share the link from Siani's webpage to your colleagues and networks and in social media. I will be the timekeeper today to make sure we get our coffee in time and that we stick to the program as much as possible. And so I will be the one holding up signs for the presenters to make sure you keep the time. So the program is here. We have an exciting day ahead of us. In the morning, we will have two sessions with two sessions with short presentations with a panel after each session. Coffee will be served in the middle, maybe a bit later than 10.25, but we'll try to keep it. After lunch, which is served 12.15, we are splitting up in groups for roundtable discussions. And I think that Kostas, co-organiser, will explain more about that as we're getting closer. And 14.45, we have coffee again. And after that, it's time to wrap up and have some final discussion and defining the outcomes. So I was also going to say that after each presentation we're going to try to have a small window for one or two clarifying questions from you. But we suggest that if you have more questions of a discussion character, I suggest you keep them for the panel discussions. If you have come up with questions or thoughts during the presentations or in the coffee breakers, or so you can submit them to us prior to the panels, either by sending them via email to Tön at töndekka.se or tweeting them and using the hashtag use in Agri, yes. Or you can tell them to us face to face or ask them during the panels themselves. And this will help us shape the panel according to your needs and interests. So let's get started with our first speaker, Ola Möller. Ola is a senior policy specialist at the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency here, CIDA. And we're glad to have you here to present the perspectives of CIDA on global development cooperation and use in agriculture. Welcome. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I have one already, but a small one. I hope it's working. Welcome, everyone. I'm very happy to see so many people here today. I work as the senior policy specialist here at the policy unit at CIDA. And I'm the senior policy specialist for agriculture, rural development and food security. Each year here at the policy unit, we develop an internal policy review on what is hot, so to say, in each of our respective subject matter areas. And this year, youth and development is one of the areas identified. From our policies perspective, we look upon the challenges from the following starting points. Youth are the future for food production and food security. Yet around the world, the trend is that few people see a future for themselves in agriculture or rural areas. Rural youth face many hurdles in trying to earn a livelihood. The high pressure on arable land in many parts of the world makes it difficult for young people to start and run a farm. Youth also usually lacks access to capital and credit and many other productive resources necessary for agriculture. But even if such hurdles can be overcome, urban life often seems much more attractive and prosperous than a career within agriculture living rural areas with all its insecurity and vulnerability that comes with it. Most of the world's food is produced by an aging group of smallholder farmers. The older generation is the bearer of local and traditional knowledge. And this knowledge will be lost unless there remain a generation of young farmers that this knowledge can be transferred to and overtaken by. In addition, older farmers are generally less likely to invest in new technologies needed to sustainably increase productivity. Another aspect which is very important in this context is that the agriculture sector is underperforming in many developing countries in many parts because women do not have equal access to resources and opportunities that need to be productive. The gender gap imposes real costs on society in terms of lost agriculture output, food security and economic growth. Empowering women is key to overall economic productivity given women's large presence in agriculture and in the agricultural workforce worldwide. Involving women not only improves production but also improves secondary results such as improved family health and children's education. The economic empowerment of young women and their role in agriculture value chains and markets must be prioritized if we want to have a development in rural areas. The focus on gender in agriculture requires special attention related to workload balance, women's rights and that includes many different aspects including capital and access to land, voice, education, access to technology, innovation, processing, marketing for staple food as well as cash crops and small-scale livestock. CEDA has for many years been supporting work focusing on supporting... sorry, CEDA has for many years been supporting work focusing on supporting youth. Much of this support has been in the form of supporting basic and higher education. Today we know generally that more young people receive higher education than ever before also in developing countries. But it is now the big challenge and it's very important from many perspectives that we also support these young people's entries into adulthood, employment and the workforce. It is vital that these young people see possibilities and opportunities for the future and I hope that CEDA can be an active and reliable partner in this work. With this said, I think I'm keeping within the time limit and I would like again just as tuned to welcome you all here to CEDA today and this workshop and I'm very much looking forward to the discussions and presentations during the day. Thank you. Thank you Ula. Now we're on time again. Do we need any clarifying questions for Ula despite your short talk? No. Monday morning. Yes, yes. They might come later. Then let's move on to the next speaker who is Kostas Karantaninis and he is a professor in business administration at the Swedish University of Agriculture of Science as in Uppsala and you will share the perspective of global development on agripreneurship programs. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much. As they're setting this, I have to find with a reputation and I think they said that there is a reputation that this person is very bad with time but I think it's because they made a mistake. This is only my middle name. My first name is Per and my last name is Kanadini Son. So I'm always on time. So don't worry. Okay. Thank you very much. I'm not going to thank everybody for the last time. There are many people to thank for this event today. First of all, I want to thank you all for being here. So I'm going to talk about entrepreneurship. We're going to talk about youth entrepreneurship. So let's start with some definitions. I have some students here. They always know that we always start with the definition. So what is entrepreneurship? Okay. Entrepreneurship has many connotations and people use it liberally. For example, as of yesterday people are talking about political entrepreneurship. So they call Macron an entrepreneur. Okay. But is this the kind of entrepreneurship we're interested in? No. We're interested more in economic entrepreneurship. So let's look at when you Google entrepreneur, what is an entrepreneur? An entrepreneur is a person who sets up a business or businesses taking on financial risks in the hope of profit. So business risks hoping for profit. If we look a little bit historically, and I mean, there is reasons I'm doing this, the origins of this word come from an early economist, Cantillon, from Ireland and French from Ireland. He's talking about the entrepreneur is an adventurer. The entrepreneur is an adventurer who invests in the purchase of goods and materials. So mostly he was thinking of trade. This is the mercantilist era of economics. Now this is the origin of the word and the term where Adam Smith in the world of nations he's talking about the entrepreneur. This is the foundation, Cantillon. We have also the Schumpeterian entrepreneur, Schumpeter, creative destruction and so on. So Schumpeter introduces us also to some other elements of entrepreneurship. He's talking about entrepreneurs are not only motivated by profit, they're motivated also by other incentives that are measuring their success. I was listening, it's very fashionable these days to look at the global world of entrepreneurship. They are stars. So I was listening to a talk of Warren Buffett because recently there was this gathering of the investors of Warren Buffett's investment and Buffett was saying you know Buffett all the corporations that are under Buffett, Warren Buffett they employ about 350,000 employees and so there are corporations run by big CEOs and Buffett says you know these guys are already rich how do I motivate them? How do you motivate somebody who's already rich? Well I mean it's a Schumpeterian entrepreneur. You motivate them by giving them something to do that is interesting. He says I have to give them something that wakes them up at 6 o'clock in the morning and they go up and do their business in the best way they can because they have other kinds of satisfaction. So it's not only the financial satisfaction. Now when you look at economic theories of entrepreneurship you can see that sometimes they're talking about the outcome of the entrepreneur entrepreneurship so it is a phenomenon so you see business, you see startups so that's entrepreneurial activities but it's also a way of thinking this person is entrepreneurial for example when they're talking about Macron he's entrepreneurial he created something out of nothing he created a movement since last night he's the new president of France the second largest country in the European Union so there are these two elements but when you look at those that research entrepreneurship and I think I would like to emphasize this very much because this is basically which drives my discussion today or at least you know they initiated my thinking around this there are two parts in entrepreneurship there is managerial skills and the entrepreneurial spirit managerial skills they can be taught the spirit cannot so you cannot make somebody an entrepreneur if they are not an entrepreneur there are some entrepreneurs already sitting in this room I had one invited in my class he's gonna speak to us today Michael, Mikael, Edler Mikael has the entrepreneurial spirit like many like him you cannot teach that and I think when we're advising policy we're trying to see what is the outcome of this we have to keep that in mind there are certain things in entrepreneurship that we can we can be involved and others we cannot it's simply there so we have to know our limits so I repeat managerial skills but entrepreneurial spirit cannot talking about entrepreneurs are we thinking in this workshop are we thinking about people like him for example like Bill Gates worth $87.6 billion as of January 2017 or are we talking about this guy the owner of Amazon worth over $80 billion these are all entrepreneurs Warren Buffett Mark Zuckerberg born in 1984 worth $62 billion Elon Musk who wants to take us to the stars and wants to create the electric city are we talking about Steve Jobs who we all use or directly or indirectly his ideas, his products or are we we should go to some entrepreneurs like this now Madeleine where is Madeleine Madeleine you were very worried about gender balance on this one so here is some gender balance for you so here is a female entrepreneur this lady Tabitha Karanja she is the owner of Keroche Breweries in Kenya she took over multinational and now she is she has 5% of market share she is an entrepreneur here is somebody else who would be sitting here talking to you today but she couldn't come and that is Mrs. Yvette Ortachi of OJ Green she was a saleswoman again in Kenya and she founded this company and what she does is she produces and sells green products by contracting farmers so she is giving employment to farmers she evolves high technology she has created or her company has created a mobile platform farmers receive everyday instructions of what to do so today you have to water tomorrow you have to spray and so on and so forth so she is taking a lot of the risk she is taking a lot of the decisions that the farmers have to make she has centralized and outsourced if you want the decisions from the farmers to her with the benefit to the farmers at the end of the day she is also an entrepreneur a female I mean talking about the gender issue and using high technology talking about innovation and she is also fighting something that we are all very concerned and it is one of the development agendas of the goals of the development agenda that we are going to talk about that is climate change because a big problem in that agriculture in sub-Saharan African agriculture is affected by climate change what they do is they are introducing a new culture control the irrigation they are already doing it they are doing it from using entrepreneurial skills and so on why are we interested in youth entrepreneurship why I am not going to talk very much about the problems of population and poverty because I am sure we are going to talk about this I am just going to show you some figures some figures which they tell us something first of all youth age 15 to 24 years old in Africa look at the red line there it is increasing with an increasing rate actually so we will have more young people than ever in Africa is this a problem you know although I have a Swedish name I come from Greece and our neighbour Turkey prouds themselves for being the most youthful country in the region so it is an advantage here we are talking about the disadvantage well youth is an advantage okay I got the 5 minute sign so I have some some figures here that I am going to jump I will just show you these figures and tell you they are wrong these statistics are wrong Rwanda does not only have this unemployment rate governments in many countries especially in that region that we are talking about either they misrepresent the numbers or they don't collect the right numbers or they misrepresent them unemployment these are different projections of Sub-Saharan Africa they estimate it is 11.8% it is much higher I would like you to take a look at these numbers these are the facts that I would like us to focus on first of all people under age 25 in Sub-Saharan Africa are 3 times more often to be unemployed than adults 3 times more likely to be unemployed and this sub-group makes 62% of the total population in the region okay 78% of the youth business but is the youth as I call it here the YAPS the new YAPS is this the solution our evidence so far we don't have very much evidence but our evidence so far shows that the youth business in Angola for example have created up to 5 jobs however in Malawi 88% of the youth business do not even create additional jobs so we have conflicting evidence there what does youth entrepreneurship do and how do they contribute they also don't use technology they don't use new technology as we would expect okay now why do they fail 10% of startups fail succeed 90% they fail of those that they fail they say that 47 to 50 I mean depending on the region they fail because they simply do not make enough money okay so what are we talking about what is all this about as we said we cannot create entrepreneurs but we can train them we can train them by saying teach somebody to fish and then they will never be hungry again okay entrepreneurship in agriculture is very low it averages about 10% okay now studies this is a study by the global entrepreneurship monitor and a recent study 2016 and they show the impediments to youth entrepreneurship in agriculture insufficient access to knowledge limited access to land inadequate access to financial services difficulties in accessing jobs so what can we do and I'm finishing in the I have two minutes okay so what can we what we cannot do is to create entrepreneurs but what we can do remember one of the impediments is education and training we can train we can trace that those that they have the entrepreneurial spirit they will select themselves we can train them okay because we know how to train people with universities I'm talking now wearing my my SLU badge and we can train students that they have the entrepreneurial skills and I have some programs there that we can discuss later and we can train the trainers that's what we can do we can another impediment was limited access to markets what can we do about this well we are researchers and policy advisors we can advise governments on policies and on how to develop institutions enable access to markets and also we should envisage a university that is involved university should be involved we should not just stay on our ivory tower and here is the GAIA model that the roof forum and in Africa is using what universities are engaged the students students are involved with farmers and students are involved in creating a given business and so the university that is involved and we have to look at this model because also another thing that we can do by doing this is because we also can learn we can learn and I think I have learned more by going to Africa and looking at these universities and looking at how the students are involved and I have learned a lot and I'm sure I can learn a lot because in some of the things that they are doing they are ahead of us and finally I just want to emphasize this you know my kids always tell me if you know so much about economics how come you are poor and I tell them economists don't know they cannot tell you how to make money but they can tell you how to spend I can tell you all how to spend SIDA money and I think if there is something that I would like to emphasize also is this, I mean there are some low-hanging fruits there, post-conflict areas, the results in these areas are very, very high they are very high and they are very quick because they need it and I have here and this is just the last thing Carolina and this is a result of a case study of a vocational school in Somali land they are running this program of training experts in livestock the last three years from all the graduates all of them have a job no one has left the country some of them are even entrepreneurs there is no migration from there and there is no terrorism and I think that's the message that we should we should get, thank you very much I think I was on time thank you very much Kostas thanks a lot Kostas does anyone have some very quick clarification question for Kostas no then I would like to remind you about if you have questions for the panels to submit them to submit, sorry, oh I thought I was speaking in the loudspeaker to submit them either by emailing or using twitter and could you write because there was a mistake in the hashtag that you're supposed to use and also write the email address please if that's okay so let's move on to listen to our next speaker Ilva Hilbo Ilva is the provise chancellor for international relations at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and you have previously been Vice Deputy Director Director General at IITA welcome thank you very much and thanks to the organizers for inviting me to this very exciting workshop I'm very pleased to be here and my presentation today will be partly mine but mostly it will be on behalf of Evelyn Noam Wussi who is the director of the IITA youth agripreneurs so the IITA youth agripreneurs is basically youth led by youth governed and managed by youth so I'm basically her voice in this workshop today now just to give you a bit of background because IITA is key in this initiative and IITA or the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture is one of the CGIR centers it is based it has its headquarters in Nigeria in Ibadan it's organized around four regional hubs you can see them here or maybe you can in four different colors you have the West African hub Central African hub in yellow and Eastern Africa in purple and down in the south blue the Southern African hub it's a broad agricultural research institute so around four major research themes genetic improvement and biotech so plant breeding basically natural resource management social science and agribusiness and plant production and plant health about 1500 employees an annual budget of 140 million US dollars and approximately 150 ongoing projects and they are marked on the top map in red on green and you cannot see them at all but trust me they are located in the eumatropic regions of Sub-Saharan Africa now in terms of plant breeding IITA covers six mandate crops so those belonging to those agroecological zones so cassava and yam of course banana the roots and troopers crops also grain legumes, cowpea and soybean and maize that was just the background so now moving to the IITA youth agrippiners or IYA it was I don't know could we turn off the lights here so it's possible to see the slides perhaps oh you can turn off the lights I see well anyway the group of people here thank you very much this is perfect the first batch of youth agrippiners and it dates back to 2012 when we had a visit to IITA by the then EFAD president Kanayo who spoke very passionately about the problem in Africa in terms of agriculture with its aging population of farmers paralleled with a very high unemployment of youth like Kostas and Ola were both and in the room we're also about 30 or so national youth service corpus as soon as you finish your degree bachelor's degree in Nigeria you're part of the corpus scheme so you make social service somewhere in the country and IITA always get a batch of those so they were listening in and one of them asked the question so but how do we get into agriculture I have a bachelor's degree in history I don't know how can I move into agriculture and that sort of prompted this program this question so a group of bachelor holders men and women equal proportion different disciplines history, statistics, some in agriculture biology computing anything but most of them actually facing unemployment when they were leaving their service so the DG brought them together and said do you want to come along do you want to join me for another year and start this venture through where we're going to move towards the mindset change you talked about the mindset Kostas how can we see agriculture as a livelihood and a business opportunity how can you get the agripreneurial training across the value chain so you can make a living out of agriculture not necessarily with the whole in the ground but different aspects of agriculture along the value chain that was two of the objectives to bring these young graduates along and then of course another reason was to start a movement that would allow advocacy to continue the advocacy and resource mobilization for youth in agriculture and it was a lot learning by doing it was really the spur of the moment let's get started if I'd put in some money so they could get going now in 2017 this group is about 385 members big and we have eight different groups in Nigeria three in DR Congo one in Uganda, one in Kenya, one in Tanzania and they're starting up in Malawi as well and you have some of the teams here so their major activities is of course the capacity building again and business incubation activities across all these locations they're engaged in production and value addition it's a pure agriculture production but also further processing and then advocacy and resource mobilization for expansion of youth in agriculture business activities so those are the big headings and here you can't see but this is just a table detailing at what the different groups are doing and I will give you a few examples later on so this sums up to the 385 members you have a range of different groups and different activities now to give you a few examples the most popular activity is aquaculture fish there's a lot of money in catfish so a lot of fish production is going on soy milk various other soy products cassava of course being a staple in many of these countries so just the production of cassava but also further processing of cassava into high quality cassava flour big business in DRC for instance various types of snacks mixed with cassava flour and cowpea or soybean to make them more nutritious poultry is coming up very strongly both eggs and meat production of seedlings plants there you have plantain suckers, mushrooms big deal in DRC for instance and then training of other youth vegetable production and the more innovative team here in Uganda are actually doing online marketing of vegetables so you can order online your vegetables and get them delivered to your workplace resource mobilization is another thing where they have been training so we have a core team that are well growing but it's part of the team that started in 2012 and they've become pretty skilled at resource mobilization so they have a project funded by USAID called Hello Tractor about 100 participants so these are Uber tractors smart tractors so one youth have three tractors and then you can check out where the nearest one is and you can rent them for service on your farm field. Chevron it's operating in the Niger delta where they're advocating cassava fish and plantain production 120 participants the Gates is funding and this is because of a personal friendship between Bill Gates and the governor of Borne State a program with 130 participants where 50% of those have started businesses or established businesses in May soybean groundnut fabrication spray services not only capacity development but more linking to both development and somehow research is the Ag Youth Lab a new project by the Mastercard Foundation collaboration with Michigan State University and several partners including I.T.A and also Soquini University in Tanzania engaging 10,000 youth in Nigeria and 6,000 in Tanzania involving the private sector very strongly and here focusing on horticulture, aquaculture poultry, cassava and the oil seed sector so number of projects so we're looking both at the hands-on level but also at a higher level in terms of advocacy lobbying bringing in more funds final example here is the Enable Youth Program this was started out with a conference in 2014 in Ibaran basically organized by the African Development Bank and I.T.A bringing in youth NGOs, government representatives policy makers private sector to a big meeting discussing youth unemployment and agriculture so this was the starting point for developing a program called Enable which is an acronym for empowering novel agribusiness led employment for youth it's funded by the African Development Bank as of now it's operational in Nigeria, Cameroon DRC, Kenya Tanzania, Sudan, Zambia Malau in Uganda but about 30 sub-Saharan African countries have requested support from the AFDB and technical assistance from I.T.A so it builds partly on the I.T.A. Gripner model but also on the Agra model focusing more on youth without the bachelor's degrees and in agricultural areas so we don't need to go into the details here but it is a fairly elaborate programs with many components in terms of an enabling environment entrepreneurship and agrobusiness incubation business development and financing, project management so training and facilitation in these areas and some bold targets in terms of job creation investment in number of countries and number of enterprises created and graduates employed so I was also asked to talk about the global interfaces for this initiative and of course it is, per se the I.T.A youth agriperiners is a broad continental network with representation in many African countries as is and it's extended beyond Africa through research collaboration as I referred to before and we do have North-South and youth-to-youth link established at least between the I.T.A youth agriperiners and the Lantmester of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and that's one starting point and of course it will be very interesting other potential networking and collaboration opportunities and with that I'd like to thank you Ilva do you have any clarifying questions for Ilva about the I.Y.A no, thank you very much Ilva then let's then welcome Mikael Edlor the next speaker who is the Executive Director of Bratt International to present some firsthand experience on challenges and opportunities from agriperinership in Africa welcome could we turn on the light please yes I will fall asleep if it's so dark here and I can't read my script so thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to you right now in Africa there are two mega trends it's the fastest growth in population in the world where in 2050 we are going to be double the amount of people in Africa compared to what we are today it's also the other mega trend is urbanization and in my hometown Dar es Salaam we get about 10, well 1000 new people every day moving in so the question is who is going to feed the growing cities and who are going to feed the 1.3 new hungry African consumers the answer is rather obvious it has to be satisfied by the local agriculture sector a sector that today has the lowest output per hectare in the world as an entrepreneur I don't see this as a problem I see it as an opportunity to do business an opportunity that we all have a possibility to tap into and create something that is both important to people while we are having fun and perhaps getting rich at the same time and Africa needs to desperately needs to modernize its agriculture sector especially and I'm not turning to you young people here are essential part of making that happen Africa needs your knowledge your talent, your energy myself I live and work in Africa and I have done so for the last 10 years I am an entrepreneur and until 10 days ago I wasn't even aware that I'm actually also an agri-printer I'm very happy so I have started a number of different companies in different sectors and different countries and today we own and operate 7 different enterprises in Sweden and Tanzania that employ more than 500 people 400 of them in Tanzania directly and we have an annual turnover of about 60 million dollars 500 million Swedish crowns our largest companies that some of you might have heard of is Student Literature in Sweden a publishing company so I see a huge pile of untapped opportunities within farm to fork and in developing sustainable quality agribusinesses in Tanzania and in sub-Saharan Africa it is sad though that I see so few European colleagues that doesn't explore the fun and excitement in doing something that is good for Africa and that you get a very very good lifestyle and adventure and you might get rich as well so I'm going to tell you a story and that story is about entrepreneurship and my other favorite topic is about myself so this story starts about 15 years ago in Västerås Sweden and my wife told me that she was cold and she wanted to move to a warmer climate and I then like to start companies so I said ok let's start companies in warmer climate so we wanted to achieve four goals we wanted to fill our life with new content in a warm place and we wanted to give back and do something good for others and we wanted to found and build sustainable profitable companies and we wanted to expose our children to the real world so we started then to look East Asia Mexico Africa was not on our map what everyone knew at that time that Africa is dangerous malaria, famine war, everything so luckily I met a librarian in Västerås and she was from Tanzania and she more or less forced me to go to Tanzania go there but that was the first time when I came to a country and I did we had a quite extensive country evaluation form that we evaluated from all these four different perspectives and I could tick all boxes except one and that was our son's ice hockey they don't have ice hockey teams in Dar es Salaam so what I learned from those first trips was that Africa is friendly, Tanzania is friendly it's green, it's prosperous lots of opportunities it's warm I've enjoyed that my main business idea at that time was to start an investment company and put it on the Dar es Salaam stock exchange so I had a meeting this is 13 years ago with the managing director for the Dar es Salaam stock exchange and he was very proud he showed me his trading room that was a little bit smaller than my toilet and he then they had trading going on two days a week for one hour on the seven companies that were listed so that business idea was a little bit premature but at the same time it happened that we were closing down our printing operation in Sweden so we then said let's do build book printing facility in Tanzania so we did, so we built the largest book printing facility in Tanzania and we also then at the same time acquired and upgraded a beach resort on Pemba Island so that was the two first project and then one of the reasons why we went to Africa was also because we wanted to build an underwater room so we put that one outside the hotel in the water and it's still there and the years went by the hotel, the underwater room and the printing facility but I felt I needed to start something more so then I found a young woman and she wanted to go into cosmetics and we wanted to supply safe cosmetic to the young urban African woman so we created Atsoko and we today have seven stores all over Dar es Salaam the way I start businesses is I start with the right manager finding that person and then we find the business idea we don't start with the business idea we start with the person that is going to lead this and that has to be an entrepreneur and they are difficult to find my experience is that if you have the right person a kind of average business idea becomes successful but if you have the wrong person the best business idea always fails unfortunately but I found this lady and I saw some many opportunities within the agri sector so I was determined I wanted to start a new company now in agriculture somewhere along the farm to food farm to fork value chain and I found Petra Larsen and I spent more than two years interviewing and influencing her to quit her well paid job and start to work together with me instead so after two years we finally went off the two of us to get our pilot licenses in South Africa and I had three months where I could just bombard her and influence her to get her to quit and start working together with myself and she did so there she was me and we hadn't decided what crop or where in the value chain we wanted to enter so we started quite intensely to travel to to India Vietnam around Tanzania to see where are the opportunities we didn't want to go heads on with any of the big guys but it needed to be a little bit of money so it was worthwhile and we found cashew nuts cashew all the cashew at that time 95% of the cashew was exported raw to Vietnam and India without any processing so we said let's start a processing plant with such high quality levels so that we can export it directly into the highest paying market in the world, Sweden so that was the idea so that we did so now we have a company with 280 employees we ship about one container two weeks to Sweden with cashew kernels so if you have had cashews here that are big white and lovely then the probability is that they come from us we now have 3000 farmers to contract farmers that get better payment, they get paid on delivery before when they were delivering to the cooperative they got paid half on delivery and they were supposed to get the other half when the cooperative had sold it but they never got paid now they get paid on time and this company now injects about 3 million dollars into the local economy so young fellows we did get plenty of adventure when doing this and we did create something good for Africa and we have managed to build economically sustainable companies there and one of the reasons why we can do that is because normally when you build a company the hard thing is to find customers but in Africa there's need for everything or you have strong competition but there's no competition in Africa although it's lousy so both the demand is high and no competition and yes we exposed our children to the real world so with that I would like to say that my wife and I consider moving to Africa and starting companies there our third best decision in our life together the second was having children together and the third was moving to Africa and just as a teaser for you young people so this is how I live out in the savannah in my hut it cost less than a two bedroom flat in Vasastan but I'm sure it's a better lifestyle thank you okay I would like to have all the presenters to come up front here and now we have a I hope you saved all questions for this session where we actually have a bit more discussion rather than having the questions directly after the talk we thought it was nicer to have a panel discussion so we're going to do that right now so I'm sure there's questions with Michael's presentation but try also to remember the questions that came up during the presentations of the other people now this again this is a funny thing you walk around with a microphone and you have to talk in this thing even though it doesn't matter for you for the audience it matters for the people that may be listening at the distance or later on so I open the floor to questions and ideas and yes please I can run this maybe you start out with saying your name and where you're from yes I'm Alba from SLU in Alnar and I have a question for Michael Adler you said that the local agricultural sector gives the lowest output but I've been told that 50% of the global food production comes from the small scale farms and they use only 20% of the land could you explain a little bit further what you said productivity per hectare you would have to say sorry no the productivity per hectare statistics from the UN and they showed that the average output per year in Africa is less than two metric tons if you grow grains while it's in European Union it's close to six tons so that was the figure I was basing that statement on you're welcome thank you very much my name is Joe Sang from Kenya Embassy my name is to agree with you that where the greatest opportunity exists is actually in getting a lot of production done locally I think that's where the biggest opportunity for us is and it's very important that whether it's coffee, whether it's cashew nuts whether it's tea the actual product itself needs to be produced locally so that at least in terms of production locally that tends to go up thank you my name is Pelle Siamann I have my own consultancy and I also represent Sweden we'll have some presentation later on I have a question to Michael also on your distribution you sell your products to Sweden in bulk I suppose and then you have various distributors wholesale retailers or what what it works like this you are not allowed to do well you are allowed but if you roast it locally in Tanzania before you ship it then you are exposed to added taxes to bring it into the European Union so it's actually a way the European Union are protecting their roasteries so what we do is we go as far as we can in the value chain then we deliver it in 22 kilos kernels, sorted, vacuum packed and then the next the roasteries take over they roast it and they put it in the clients different bags so it could be the IKAS bag, it could be Albina's own bags or it could be the Vicenta bags for instance and the roasting is here in Sweden it is in Helsingborg hi hello I come from Inclusive Business Sweden we are based in Gothenburg I have a question for Mikael I am also interested in all of them so we are starting a project in Nigeria we are planning to start a project in Nigeria and looking for funding at this point and it is more or less based on the project that Ilva described earlier but as Inclusive Business Sweden we want to help businesses to help the young agripreneurs so if and right now we are trying to set up a process or a model of how to approach those businesses that will provide services so how in your head what would be the model of of supporting agripreneurs or businesses if you would start from scratch that is a big question I think the first thing that you have to do is try to find the people that have the entrepreneurial drive and understanding and that is a very difficult thing to do I have practiced that for a long time and I did many errors during the way and then when you find them then normally the biggest challenge is funding in Africa but a true entrepreneur doesn't need cash gifts we need to be able to borrow money on adequate terms and conditions so that is what we see thank you my name is Opera Otto I am an educationalist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences but for this particular purpose I will introduce myself as a clan leader I come from Uganda or originally from Uganda place called Kittgum a truly sub region in northern Uganda we have had more than 25 years of conflicts between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Uganda government and it gave us hell of a problem now I need advice costas and my colleague on the right on many occasions we have plenty of land we encourage the young actually or the young northern Ugandans to take on to the land but each time they get the opportunity they sell the land and buy border border so the border border syndrome and the border border economy is a form of entrepreneurship in northern Uganda today in post conflict northern Uganda which is giving us the elders and the clan leaders hell of a hard time what do I do what should I tell the young people of northern Uganda when it comes to accessibility to land protecting it and securing it in the right way and to you could it be a good idea to say that corporate driven investment is the right way to promote agricultural productivity after all the young men and women of northern Uganda they don't want to be in the countryside they wonder about the borders and go to Kampala and given the opportunities across the Sahara the Mediterranean come to Europe and Sweden and be like a pyra so what do we do thank you well should I start what I think you should do is the way I do I always start with a small pilot I did that with the cashew we start with a small pilot and if it goes well then we expand it so what I mean what that means for you is that invite a sincere company to invest and to build something on the land but just on a small piece of land and see and then wait five years and if it develops well then they can get the right to buy more or it will sort as centre of competence and centre of excellence that will hopefully then get others around them to try to copy what they are doing because when they see success you know young people they would like to copy that success especially in the region we are talking about that's my advice and I guess okay opera you know this is a question I get very often when I go to my village in Greece all my old friends they come and say okay now you tell us what to produce and how should we use our land so they have land my reply always is assume that you have the product find out if you can sell that product if you can make money then the production is a very very different issue what I mean by that is that what we should look at is the chain we should start from the chain they are very smart they respond to market signals and the market signal is that given the uncertainty given the returns on investment the best thing is the Bora Bora and the return on investment on agriculture is low because they cannot capture the entire value of their production so first look at the value of the production the value added in the chain probably and I've been I've been to Gulu is that the area you are talking about and the the problem is always access to market and broken value chains that's where you start thank you just a comment from CEDA side I think we at CEDA see this as one of the major challenges for development the gap between entrepreneurs and possibilities to try their ideas to test them to see if they success if it's a success or if it's a failure and just as I think Costa said before 90% of the failures are failures but those 10% can be as important to cover the cost for these 90% that fail and this is very important and it's a challenge for us to see that to work that because that's not normally the way we work we want 100% success which is not possible in these cases but for a number of years now we have been working with this and we have different tools of working with this how to link entrepreneurs with good ideas to the market and we cannot support the development of new ideas that can be done in other ways but what we can do is to support if you are an entrepreneur and you have a good idea you can apply for funding from something that we call challenge funds where we can fund activities where you try your product, a developed product where you try it in a market to see if it works but it has to have a clear poverty reduction focus it has to be both profitable as well as a gain for the society and if you want to learn more about this you can just talk with me during the coffee break or something or look at Sida's webpage these challenge funds we have in agriculture something called securing water for food we have powering agriculture we have innovations against poverty and so on there is a number of these and I would very much encourage you as Swedes to take part in this because we at Sida put a lot of money into it and there is a lot of applications but not many from Sweden not at all much too few from Sweden thank you oh sorry I should say now what I said last might have sounded a bit strange from Sweden what we know about agriculture in Tanzania for instance usually what is approved is some kind of cooperation between Sweden and a local organization or a company or a entrepreneur so it's sort of a combined effort we have one here first hi good morning my name is Natalie Jelenik I work as an educational development officer at SLU and I just maybe I will open Pandora's box here but I'm a sociologist and believe very strongly in the power of education and I just wanted to ask this idea that entrepreneurship is this innate kind of either you have it or you don't how much can we talk about training if we're coming from the perspective that either you find the right entrepreneur or then you just can't do anything that's the sense that I'm getting from some of the speakers I just wanted to kind of ask how much of entrepreneurship can be taught how much are we saying that we can teach can we teach entrepreneurs or are they just born that way thank you yes please I find that what separates myself and my wife from most other Swedes is when we moved to Tanzania we didn't have a home there we didn't have school for our children we just went there left everything here and went very few people do that very few people are take risks not stupid risk but take a risk and that's the difference and that's part of the mindset of an entrepreneur to be able to take calculated risks and if you can teach that to people perhaps I'm not sure a lot of people especially in Sweden is so oriented to being safe secure and not taking risks while entrepreneurship is to always step into the unknown and to make take every initiative yourself and if you can teach that hopefully what I think is that there are many entrepreneurs that we never find and we need to find them and then teach them how to become an entrepreneur and the way to become an entrepreneur is by trying and failing and after a few failures you become much better at what you do can I just add to that a little bit I think the IT youth some might be they like to call natural born entrepreneurs if you like or risk takers some aren't but everybody or every one of them is looking for some kind of opportunity some kind of job opportunity and in many cases with rather modest ambitions in terms of just making a living not necessarily becoming rich although that would be a benefit of course so there and I'm certainly well I don't know actually what an entrepreneur is but I wouldn't say that I am so I wouldn't be able to say whether you can learn it or not but I think there are certain components if you're to start up a business that are more things you can teach people how to make a business plan what is the you know you make these investments you have to actually look out for how much time you put into it to make sure that you make a revenue et cetera et cetera so very basic things money in money out invested time et cetera that you certainly can learn and that will help you in terms of starting any kind of business although maybe not at the grandest of scales but you know if you're looking at making $100, $200 compared to no money at all it is still making a difference for many of these young people Can I just say one short thing my normal advice is don't plan too much and just do it just go ahead and try and probably fail but you learn a lot from that process don't think too much just do it in a small scale I was connected to that about risks and financing of course you need to have some economic security to be able to take risks you built up your company in Sweden so you could afford to do it I have been in a situation employed by a big company so I could take the risk because I had some economic backing now when I'm a consultant on my own I cannot afford to go on acquisition trips every second month I can do it once or twice a year and to add to what Ula was saying about the challenge funds what has happened a big change in the government potential financing now is that they can they can allow small money well a couple of hundred thousands might be big or small depending on your situation but for feasibility studies so you can do your study free of charge without taking any economic risk just your idea risk or whatever your business type of risk and that's a great advantage to what the situation was like five years ago like that at all thank you I think one of the questions that is sort of not necessarily the elephant in the room but something that we will touch on is we can start businesses but in the end also we need to be better in how we manage our lands and how to drive sustainability at the same time and how does it go hand in hand I hope we will touch on that later during the questions talks and discussions that we will have later on it's an important issue I mean how can we merge it how does education come in and how can we make more equitable businesses and all that anyways further questions my name is Klaus Selström I come from the Swedish NGO Svaluna Latin America I have a question to Ilvan and you mentioned briefly an activity about mechanization people who train first and then rent tractors, small tractors so I would just like you to say a bit more about that activity if it is within further value chain work how it was planned if it is working or problems or if you have just any more information about that activity I cannot give you the exact details it is a new program that started after I left so I got some information from Evelyn about this new Hello Tractor program and I think the idea is to make youth owners of such smart tractors and then be able to serve a community or region and then have them so with a GPS so you will be able to locate on a smart phone where the nearest tractor is and you can then request that they come and help you on your farm so I actually had to send her a message over the weekend asking because the slide said three tractors per youth and I was initially thinking it must be the other way around but no it is true so it means that you will have a small business where you own three of these small tractors and then that will be your business idea so you will be like running a machine station exactly yeah does that help ok just to add a few things I think perhaps we should be more clear and more realistic when we are talking about training we should be talking about training in business skills I think the world is full of business and they are very well attended and they have very high fees which means there is a very high demand for them and what do these business schools teach people that besides management and all this they did some very technical things like accounting decision making scientific decision making that is and so on and I think when we train these people these future entrepreneurs we are basically perhaps giving them skills to save them time to avoid you know maybe reduce the fail rate that's all we are doing so that's what this training might achieve if it is successful and the other thing is I just want to underline also what Michel already said a true entrepreneur does not need free money and finance is not a constraint for a true entrepreneur so giving free money to people I think it does very often it does more harm than good because it attracts the wrong people it just gives the wrong incentives and it's an adverse election as we say in economics you attract the wrong people so be careful there and with that we are almost back on schedule really so I'd say if you have questions please do send them via Twitter I don't know how that works but this is my email address we try to collect them and also we will have plenty of opportunities either outside or during the next discussion session or during the round table discussions to discuss the ideas that come up so for now we'll take a break and we'll reconvene in 15 minutes 10 part, 22 11 thank you I should thank all the speakers right


The media and resources bag includes this training video as a DVD. This is for training your club members on the use of this toolkit. Some posters on multi-wavelength astronomy which can be used for a number of activities. The toolkit manual on the manual and resources CD. Insert this into your computer and click on scopemanual.pdf. This has all the suggested scripts, masters for cards, materials lists, and background information for each activity. On the manual and resources CD, you'll also find several other resources. PDFs of two magazine articles. From Sky and Telescope, Making the Photon Connection, talking about the benefits of viewing the real night sky. From Night Sky Magazine, How far can you see? Helping to answer another common question we get at the telescope. A PDF describing the micro-observatory program. A network of automated telescopes that can be controlled over the internet. On the CD, you'll find a folder named PowerPoints. Two of these PowerPoints are used to supplement the activities. We'll describe them when we discuss the activity. The main PowerPoint used as a presentation with your visitors or club members is how telescopes changed our understanding of the universe. The PowerPoint discusses a number of the historical discoveries made with telescopes and the telescope technology that changed our view of the universe. It begins with the understanding ancient astronomers had by studying the universe before the invention of the telescope. It goes on to tell the story of how telescopes and telescope technologies contributed to our understanding of the universe. Today, we know Earth is not in the center of the universe, but is a small planet orbiting an average star in the suburbs of a large galaxy filled with billions of other stars and planets. And that large galaxy is surrounded by billions of other galaxies being pulled apart from each other by the expansion of space. Please read through the suggested script in detail. It's found in the PowerPoints folder on the manual and resources CD. Parts of this PowerPoint might be better suited to an audience with some astronomy experience. Pick what you'd like to use depending on your audience. On the CD, you'll also find a folder named telescopes from the ground up. The telescopes from the ground up website produced by the folks at the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute has been reproduced here on the CD so you don't need an internet connection to run it. Just click on index.html to start it up. This presentation is all about telescopes, different kinds of telescopes and the story of their development. The site includes the history of the development of telescopes from the refractor Galileo used to the giant terrestrial reflecting telescopes to NASA's great observatories out in space. It also has an extensive section with FAQs about telescopes, optics and light. This provides more background when preparing to use this toolkit. So the PowerPoint is a history of telescope discoveries and the website is a history of telescope development.