Assalamualaikum guys, I hope you're all doing well. I wanted to share some interesting news with you regarding Andrutayd ever since he returned home on Haas Arrest. He's been given a lot of interviews and media charts. Recently he had a conversation with the famous BBD podcast team and even had an interview with the BBC but here's to really intriguing part. There are rumors floating around about the potential collaboration between him and the famous Fox news presenter Toka Kossin. Honestly this is exciting. Now what caught my attention is how cautious Andrutayd has been when it comes to discussing religion especially Islam. It seems he's trading carefully in that regard. This has led to many prominent figures in the Dawa community like Ali Dawa. Explaining why we shouldn't mistake Andrutayd for an error. They've gone to great lengths to have people understand that he may become more knowledgeable about the faith as time goes on. However, Andrutayd found himself facing criticism recently for a tweet he made now as someone who used to be a Catholic seminarian and deved into Christian theology. I must say that a tweet when viewed through the lens of pure ecumenical tradition seems balanced. He wrote and I quote Christians and Muslims we are brothers against evil. End of quote. Tell me what you make of this statement in the comments and don't forget to like the video so that other people can say because at first glance this tweet may seem quite innocent but it carries deep meaning when you consider the moral and theological challenges both Islam and Christianity face into this world. There is a significant push for this two major religion to deviate from the traditional beliefs in favor of a more liberal interpretation of morality and godliness. While Christianity has to some extent succumbed to this pressure on multiple occasions, Islam appears to remain steadfast in the face of these turbulent times. In fact, in some ways the crisis of identity within Christianity has led to an increase in the number of people turning to Islam in the Western world. However, when Andrutayd made this post he was well aware that there is a conservative faction within Christianity that refuses to yield to the pressure and stand firm in the fence of their faith. They are resolute in preserving the tradition passed down by their forefathers. Interestingly, Muslims find themselves in a similar situation, standing side by side with their Christian brothers against extrem ideologies such as the LGBT right, abortion, the preservation of traditional family values and nationalism. We can witness examples of this unity in the protests organized by conservative Christians and Muslims against LGBT indoctrination in Canadian schools. You know what is really interesting? During this protest religion of faith that in matter at all, people from various backgrounds came together united in the goal to protest against a erosion of parental authority in constant when it comes to deciding what their children should be exposed to in school. It was truly a display of solidarity. However, what caught my attention were the comments below Andrut's tweet.  As a new Muslim, I was taken aback by this perspective and couldn't help but find thought in such thinking. One response in particular stood out to me and I will be quoting it right away. We may have a common enemy and sometimes we may fight alongside each other against that enemy as mentioned in Hadith but unless we are related by blood, Christians are not our brothers. While this might reflect the current understanding among some Muslims regarding brotherhood outside our religion, there is a fault line in this argument. Before diving into further explanation, I urge you to watch the video that he posted as evidence to support his claim that Christians and Muslims are not brothers. It might shed some light on the reasoning behind his viewpoint. This shape may have made a statement of fact that some Muslims might interpret it in a more radical manner such as justifying a force for conversion or hate. As a child of theology and philosophy, I can better leave this unexplained. Without dropping any comment because I really have nothing to say about it but the truth is that Muslims and Christians are definitely brothers united by the single reality of the humanness.


Dear friends, dear colleagues, it was a profound shock and the deepest grief we received the sad news on 22 February that our esteemed colleague and dear friend, Professor Beno Endulo, Moa Lima Niereira, Professoral Chair in Development at the University of Dijsselam and Chair for the Board of Union Wider, had passed at the age of 71. Beno embodied all of the human professional qualities which intellectual and policy leaders should aspire to achieve. Inspiring, sacrificing, extremely effective and influential, and yet modest and forthcoming. Always with a warm and broad smile that immediately made everyone comfortable. Be the head of state, a colleague, or a student seeking his wise counsel. This is why the Development Conference special session would commemorate and celebrate the life of work on Beno, this unusual person who always had so much to offer wherever he found himself, and throughout deeply concerned about the young, the next generation who will shape the future of Africa and the world. This panel will recall his many contributions as an international leader in academic research for African and global development. His key role in bringing top quality policy research and practice together. And his outstanding performance as an institution builder and executive director of the ARC. And finally, the panel will pay homage to him as a treasured mentor, deliberating on his legacy in the Tanzania Economics Society. Our panel include, in the order in which they will speak, Stephen O'Connell. Stephen is professor of economics at Swarthmore College, and was chief economist of USAID in 2014-15. He's published widely on macroeconomic policy and growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, and was co-editor with Beno of the ARC's two volume study, The Political Economy of Economic Growth in Africa 1960-2000. And Yuguna Ndungu, and Yuguna is the executive director of the ARC following in the footsteps of Beno. And Yuguna is also the immediate governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, with numerous collaborative relations with his close colleague Indar Benondulo, who completed 10 years of service, the Central Bank Governor of the Bank of Tanzania. Ernest Narayiti, Ernest's secretary general of the African Research Universities Alliance of Rua, a network of 16 of Africa's flagship universities, and his former vice chancellor of the University of Ghana. His chair of the board of the ARC, and was previously chair of the board of union wider, a position Beno assumed in 2019. And to conclude, Landina Kilomer. Landina is outstanding among the numerous researchers Beno mentored, and she now works as an economic advisor to the president of the United Republic of Tanzania. She was the CEO of the Economic Society of Tanzania, of which Beno was the president until his passing. After these four presentations, I will make a few closing remarks, and I'll invite you to observe a minute of silence before moving to a separate room, where participants will have the opportunity to recall and share with the rest of us, memorable moments with Beno. Thank you, and Steve, you now have the floor. I'm Steve O'Connell. It's a privilege to share some thoughts about Beno as a scholar who served as a bridge between the worlds of research and policy, and devoted his life to building that bridge throughout the continent. Beno was in secondary school at the time of the Arusha Declaration on Socialism and Self-Reliance in Tanzania in 1967. He entered the University of Dar es Salaam in 1971. In rural Tanzania, President Nerari's program to resettle smallholders into Ujama villages for collective farming was entering an intense phase. Beno published his first research paper in 1973 as an undergraduate. Nearly 30 years later, Professor Issa Shivji, with the grudging admiration of a fiery Marxist, cites this paper as a highlight of the exhilarating campus debates of the time, and an exemplar of the Maoist concept of no evidence, no right to speak. Beno's paper was based on primary research among farmers in the Rufiji river base in south of Dar es Salaam. In 1968, severe flooding had displaced smallholders from the basin, and President Nerari had taken the opportunity to resettle them into Ujama villages on higher ground. But by the early 1970s, farmers were moving back. Why? Beno and his co-authors showed that the typical farmer's labor was more productive under the vulnerable conditions of the flood plain than on the lower quality land operated collectively by the Ujama villages. In what ultimately proved a pervasive policy failure, the pressure of subsistence was driving smallholders back. Beno's 1979 PhD dissertation at Northwestern is entitled The Role of Transportation in Agricultural Production, the Case of Tanzania. He begins the dissertation with quotations from the British chief railway engineer in Tanganyika in 1945, and from Tanzania's first post-Arusha five-year plan in 1969. Only then do we hear Beno's voice, and I quote, I found it proper to start with these two strong policy quotations under two very different regimes to show the continuous emphasis transportation policy has received in economic development in general and agricultural development in particular in Tanzania, unquote. There's a subtle gambit here that defined Beno as a researcher. He would depoliticize debate by asserting common ground economic development in Tanzania in order to focus participants from all quarters on the question of how to get there. The best evidence would carry the day. That was the bridge he was building. The dissertation is a model of clarity and creativity. He uses the German army's destruction of railways during World War I as what we now call a natural experiment to show that changes in transport costs affect the commercialization of agriculture and the allocation of farm labor between cash and food crops. The supply response to farm gate prices is crucial in his theory, and he finds large and significant responses using regional data on cotton and rice. He then addresses the government's policy of paying the same crop prices to farmers in all parts of the country. To President Neurary, panterritorial pricing was a fundamental expression of solidarity and egalitarianism. To Beno, it was one potential way, among others, of getting to the goals of the Arusha Declaration. Beno makes it clear that by paying uniform prices, the government was subsidizing long and difficult transport routes over short and easy ones. He estimates the large efficiency distortion and also the fiscal burden. Equity goals might justify these costs, but the country's most prosperous subsistence farmers were far from Dar es Salaam. As an instrument for equity, therefore, the policy was backwards. It was imposing an implicit tax on the poorest farmers who lived closest to Dar es Salaam. Here's the final sentence of that dissertation. Quote, I sincerely feel that interregional transport subsidy policy should be examined with closer scrutiny so that the nation knows what costs are incurred in implementing it and whether it is effective in achieving the social objective of egalitarianism. Beno never lost that commitment to scrutiny or that unique combination of courage and modesty. Of Beno's nine books and nearly 50 articles, I'll briefly focus on two characteristic pieces. In his 1986 article, Governance and Economic Management, Beno starts with the insight that in many countries, the proliferation of black markets in response to government controls had undermined the effectiveness of those controls and, quote, significantly altered the political calculus of economic adjustment, unquote. There was therefore a political window of opportunity for economic reforms. But as always, Beno was playing the long game. It was unclear, he said, whether African governments would sustain the needed reforms once crisis conditions had improved. Sustainable reform, he wrote, will hinge upon the strengthening of institutional structures capable of defending the resultant changes, unquote. So in this 1986 paper, Beno anticipates a literature on institutions and growth that would not even take off until the 1990s when big cross-country datasets became available. His emphasis was on the role of institutions in creating a favorable environment for private investment. He writes with deeply informed specificity about public sector management and urgent pragmatism on the need to reduce dependency on donor-driven agendas and advisors. His discussion of the importance of university research in Africa is a clear precursor of his role in establishing the AERC. There is a nuanced understanding of the political economy of reform and a signal to donors that front-loaded aid flows could help governments navigate the short-run politics of reform by maintaining vital imports, infrastructure services, and social services. Two decades later, Beno had built the AERC, contributed to the senior age and debt literatures, served as research manager at the World Bank, and written his most cited paper with me entitled, Governance and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. He was at the World Bank and we were wrapping up the AERC project on the political economy of economic growth in Africa. That project focused on the drivers and consequences of intervention, crisis, and market-based reform. In his 2007 book, Challenges of African Development, Beno asks a different question. What does the African developmental state look like? Beno had always insisted on an activist developmental role for governments, even when acknowledging the need to scale back and target more effectively. Now, with reforms largely consolidated, he draws on the global growth evidence to identify the four eyes of African development, investment, innovation, infrastructure, and institutions. In each domain, he strikes a balance between the roles of the state, the market, and non-state and external institutions, recognizing the unique capabilities and limitations of each and proposing a concrete vision consistent with inclusive development. In retrospect, these four pillars run like a thread through Beno's scholarly writings. A balanced strategy is now central to how African governments and regional institutions conceive of development strategy, a reality that was of immense significance to Beno and for which he gave credit always to others. Beno was still playing the long game when he died, and in fact our paper, Africa's Development Debt, is forthcoming in the Journal of African Economies. As a research collaborator, Beno was all in. He was astoundingly fast and responsive and always, subtly or not, a coach as well as a collaborator. One of my favorite emails is entitled, Steve, I don't think it's time to panic. Our central argument in that paper is that the preservation of development assets should be at the center of efforts to manage the debts accumulated during the 2000s. Beno's voice comes through clearly. I'm grateful to Finn and to you and you wider for this opportunity to remember Beno with you. We've lost a towering presence in our lives and for Africa. Beno built a bridge between research and policy in Africa. Keeping that bridge open and vital is an invitation to all of us. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Steve, for calling attention to Beno's many contributions, as an intellectual academic leader in our field. This is much appreciated. We will now move on to the presentation by Niyuguna, the Executive Director of the ARC. Niyuguna, you have the floor. Let me start by thanking you and you, Wider, for organizing this session and also for the chairman, Fimta, for coordinating these efforts in an effort to honor our foreign hero, Professor Beno. We at the ARC are very grateful for this. I have a few slides that I'm going to share. Let me start by sharing them so that, at least you can see the content under which we hold our hero, Beno Lulu. First, let me say that we are celebrating Professor Beno Lulu, who is an intellectual and a policy leader, and we are very happy at the ARC for doing this. I'm going to bring a few tributes or a few issues, a few areas where Beno has contributed, not only in terms of intellectual input, but also as a policy advisor and a policy leader. First, let me start by where we are at the ARC. ARC is a capacity-building network that comprises of capacity-building through research and even graduate training. We also have a policy outreach and communication. This helps us in terms of trying to help capacity that will go into institutions, mid-level career of government, and even policy leaders in the network in sub-Saharan Africa. And this is the structure that Beno helped to create way back in 1988. And this is the approach we use to date for capacity-building and knowledge generation in sub-Saharan Africa. Second, let me talk about Beno Lulu, the thought leader. Here's he was the leading right at the University of Jerusalem, and his publications span four decades. Some of the trails of revolutionary contributions involve, for example, agenda for Africa economic renewal in the 1990s that set the stage for richer and comprehensive reforms in African economies. Second, growth and adjustment in sub-Saharan Africa. And this is also the time when ARC was established just to deal with the issues of structural adjustment. And here Beno actually outlined economic reforms in sub-Saharan Africa that is required, and this is by 1991. The third area which is very important for us is economic directions, new directions in development economics, which was published in 1996. And that gave even us young economists the direction that we need to take when we're looking at development economics. Fourth, governance and growth in sub-Saharan Africa. And these are issues that we have that has preoccupied our researchers for many years. And finally, and not the least, there are so many of them, if we wanted to parade them, is the political economy of economic growth in Africa. And this was published in 2000. And this was really a leading light in terms of what African economic growth is all about. And the difference between different countries in Africa, the coastal rich countries, coastal resource rich countries, red rock resource poor countries, and all that. And this has helped shift the policy narrative in Africa because it's actually not one narrative, but diverse narrative depending on country characteristics. And for us, this is a lesson that we have learned for many years. The second thing is I wanted to show that Beno Lulu is a reader in terms of innovation and capacity building. And he was the first director of the AARC research, and he is the one who actually developed the building blocks of capacity building. Second, he was also the first African executive director of the AARC in 1992. For us, we are happy to report and even to showcase that he has provided pioneering development at the AARC. And the collaborative research in the 1990s and the graduate training in 1993 is a good example. So he has, this has supported the AARC network and the secretariat with innovative ideas for capacity building and funding AARC activities since then. From where he was sitting as governor of the Bank of Tanzania, he was coordinating the AARC African Central Bank Governors, the program committee. And even he has made some contribution, tangible contribution at the AARC board, even when he had left the AARC. But the reading policy advisor in Beno is quite remarkable. The first AARC senior policy seminar in 1995 was supposed to reach out to policy makers and share research findings and a ring to practical policy implementation. And since then, every month of the year, we have held senior policy seminar in diverse topics. He had a long stint at the World Bank in Tanzania as a lead economist and in the vice president and chief economist office in Washington DC of the World Bank. He was also an economic advisor to the prime minister of Ethiopia. He has had an advisory role from governments to government agencies as various multilateral institutions. He was an economic advisor to the president of Republic of South Africa. But the history of his advisory role in the Republic of South Africa starts way back in the 1990s. And the most successful and celebrated, it is one of the most successful and celebrated governor of the Central Bank in this region and build. He served as the governor of Bank of Tanzania from 2008 to 2018, a 10-years period which has seen a remarkable development in central banking and even monetary policy. Beno, the policy leader, is actually quite fascinating. Deciding monetary policy in the Bank of Tanzania, that was very, very critical. He was reading writing monetary policy reforms, regional integration in the East African community, and even the Sandakh region. He was reading writing payment system, that is the East African payment system, and the pioneering push for digital financial systems, starting with retroelectronic payment system in East Africa. Tanzania also published the book on the path to prosperity. And he was one of the editors and even a contributor. And that for us is really a reading writing terms of path to prosperity. And finally, he was a commissioner by the time of his demise with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Digital Pathways for Prosperity Commission on Technology and Inclusive Development in Brabantnik School of Government in Oxford. But then we also come to a personal level. He was a friend to me and a mentor. He was a friend to me and a role model and also a mentor. He was the only governor in the African region to accept and replicate Kenya's and PESA in the Bank of Tanzania. And PESA is an electronic payment platform, a retroelectronic payment platform that was started in Kenya in 2007 and has been replicated across the East African region and now is reaching out to outside Africa. He was at my defense when the IMF and World Bank doubted Kenya's and PESA, the retroelectronic payments platform and financial inclusion goal. The two countries are now the most successful, that is Kenya and Tanzania, the most successful in digital financial services, financial inclusion and electronic payments infrastructure. We then combined forces to lead the way in reformulating mandatory policy framework in the African countries with the support of IGC. He supported me as chair in the formation of Alliance for Financial Inclusion, AFI in 2009, a network of financial regulators that coordinated financial and still coordinates financial inclusion in our policies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He later became chair of AFI and pushed its expansion and that is how it has stood even to date. It's one of the most prolific network on policy formulation. We have seen tributes but from so many and this was in our previous biannual in June this year and we asked several reading rights and even those who are there in the formation of the IGC and later to provide tributes. We have so many and it is actually in our website but I just wanted to just show you a few and I don't want to read the tributes. These slides will be available but I want to recognize Professor Anne Bixen, Professor Jerry Heraina, Dr. Barbara Brungi, Dr. Joyce Mook, Professor Shantha Debrajian, Professor E. B. Ajay, Professor Steven Ophane, Dr. Rohington Merora and finally one of perhaps a prolific policy makers in Africa, Dr. Kefara Yansane. The way forward is that we have to keep the memories of our hero life and we at the IGC are asking ourselves how do we do this. The first thing is that we're going to start with the memorial lectures during the December biannual starting with the December 2021 biannual conference. We'll be having Beno's memorial lectures. The second thing is that we're going to organize and we're still continuing to organize and arrange and develop a publication of a volume in Beno's memory and we are working towards that especially Steven O'Connor and Shantha Debrajian and ourselves in the ARC. We are working very hard on that and finally we are going to establish corrections in the name of Professor Beno Newell and this will be awarded to the best male and female candidates every year at the ARC graduate training programs and we do believe that these three areas and maybe others that we may think about in future will be very very important in keeping the memories of our hero alive. And finally we might be saying pain free, less in peace our dear friend but from all of us at the ARC let me say in a East African way a Santisana but of course we also cover a front from region let me say Mesibuku and from all of us at the ARC thank you very much and let my friend our friend rest in in time of peace. Thank you very much and good afternoon. Thank you very much in Uganda for so aptly bringing out Beno's role in the interface between research and policy making and also so eloquently referring to his personal qualities which we will of course always keep in our hearts. Now we move on to Ernest. Ernest you have the floor. Ladies and gentlemen let me begin my remarks by thanking you and you wider for inviting to join this special session in honor of our dear friend and colleague Beno Ndulu. I first met Professor Beno Ndulu in November 1988 this was at the first ARC by annual research workshop which brought together more than 40 young researchers from several different African countries to narrow because at this meeting that we first learned of Beno's strong engagement with the network he was there a director of research but it was obvious that the entire operation had been changed on his ability to organize things and bring people together. It was clear that his presence as director of research was not simply in order to take a box for ARC but largely based on his shown competence. In March of 1994 Jeff Fein who was direct executive director left ARC and Beno replaced him. It was obvious that a very wise decision had been made by the board in appointing Beno to replace Jeff. It didn't take long before Beno began the process of expanding ARC he encouraged him from different countries to join the network he encouraged researchers from several different places and institutions to submit proposals to the network for consideration. His interest was simply in growing the number of researchers but also in broadening his scope of work done by the network. He was quite anxious to make the work of ARC relevant to the needs of the African nations. The network was after all meant to serve those nations and their need for evidence to support policy making. So Beno began a process of transformation very early and in doing this brought in researchers and resource persons from different backgrounds in different nations who had a lot of promise in terms of what they could do for African economic research. Beno was very interested in diversification diversification only of the themes but also the source of funding for the network. He showed a lot of interest in moving beyond the original funders of ARC finding new funders from other parts of Europe and also looking beyond Europe to other places in North America and also Asia. That's how the funding base of ARC was expanded considerably in the 1990s but beyond that Beno was very very interested in getting African governments and African institutions to be active in organizing ARC. He sought assistance from the African Development Bank found it. He sought encouragement in collaboration with the UN, the current Commission for Africa and also the African Union. Several African governments were approved and some provided support in different ways. I'm very happy that Beno's initiatives paid off in several ways not only in the resources coming to ARC but also in the very rich resources of these people. Beno did in the diversity. He wanted to see more women participating in the work of ARC. He toured the length and breadth of Africa looking for women in various economics departments, finance ministries and treasuries, central banks to support the work of ARC to engage with ARC to some extent. He saw success there. Beno wanted more Francophone participation. This also saw Francophone as a testimony from very unlikely places. In the end, ARC became a much more diversified unit. Very strong, very capable. Beno believed strongly that the work done by ARC researchers should reflect the needs and the requirements of their countries. The Senior Policy Seminar was introduced as a way of encouraging governments to be interested in the work being done by the other schools. The Senior Policy Seminar was a means to bring research to the doorstep of governments. It was also a means of helping governments to know who their active researchers were. Beyond the Senior Policy Seminar, there were also National Policy Seminaries supported by ARC or very much the ideas coming from Beno. It was obvious that Beno had transformed ARC where it was leaving. It was obvious that Beno's contribution to the growth and transformation of ARC could not be taken lightly. What impressed many of us was Beno's private or personal lifestyle and how he used that to encourage people. Beno was a very friendly person. He engaged with each of us as friends. Even though we had been brought together to work, we became friends. Nothing else with me, but almost everybody. Beno was a friend. Through this, he mentored young people. Through this, he counseled very young people. Everybody came to like and appreciate what he stood for. Everybody respected his integrity and everybody respected his intellect. Beno was a very strong killer for African Eternity Research. Today, because they're here to mourn him, I show my respect for him. Beno did everything possible to help improve the quality of economic research in Africa. It's my hope that in death, he will continue to influence us, that his legacy will be one that will guide young researchers in Africa, that his integrity, his reputation, will strengthen many young researchers. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ernest, for these warm words, recalling the importance of Beno as an institution builder and executive director of the ERC. I appreciate your contribution very, very much. And now we will pass the floor to Blandina. Blandina, you have the floor. Thank you very much. It was really nice to hear from Steve and John, as you would see, all of them have been introduced as professors. And most of the friends that I got to meet through Beno were professors, but when you were with him, you were never intimidated by a lot of the good things that you had today. And so today, when Fin, you reached out to me a couple of months ago, there are four things I want to talk about, Professor Beno Zulu. He was a father, that's something that I always say, but he would introduce me to his students, then suddenly he was like my grandfather when it comes to the research world. The second bit worked with Beno after he left the Bank of Tanzania after he was the governor. So I knew him more as the president of the Economic Society of Tanzania. That's the second bit I'd like to talk about. And then the third bit, and I think all the other presenters also touched on it, is his drive for learning. And in particular, towards the end, a lot around technology. That will be the third thing. And the fourth thing that I'd like to touch on is he's really a drive to make sure that he's building capacity of young researchers from all diversified groups. I think those are the things that I would like to talk about. So the first bit when I called him a grandfather, but let's say a father at the same time, the one thing that strikes you so much is the way he would introduce you to anybody at any time when you ask for something. And with that, then I found myself a lot of times when you're with Professor Beno Ndulu. In as much as he was a giant, you will feel like, you know what, I am okay. I belong here.  In such a way when you read his work, you would feel it too, that he had the lead figure. And I think I agree with all the others. He was just not famous and carrying it with him. But I think the biggest part with him was he was giving away his power to everybody who was around him. And with that, I think that's why he became so full. And I think that's the biggest lesson for all of us who have learned from him. And I would say like what Ernest and Juguna has said, when we're thinking about the legacy that he is living behind in particular for us, is how you can really be humble, but really touch it as many people as you can. That's the first part. Second, it's him as the president of the Iomic Society of Time there. I've learned so many things from him. So today, we hear a lot about his academic credentials. We hear a lot about his policymaking skills. But for me, he was, he connects not only the academics and the research bits, but how he was also really strong when it comes to administering and moving different issues that we had. So at the Iomic Society in as much as we were organizing the seminars and platforms for different audiences, he will always say, Blondina, let's finish this meeting before it starts. He will always, always have time, no matter what, he will just have time. Okay, if this meeting, let's say like today is on on the 6th, let's meet on the 4th and make sure we have ticked everything that is required. And if there are things that need to be revised, he will advise accordingly. And I think that is a very rare thing. He was selfless to his time, given like what you've heard others say, and we keep on hearing how established he was, but still he gave his time. And I think that is a lesson we can all pick. And when he comes again to the same bits around him being the president, he had this network that he was just on his fingertips. I remember Finn yourself, we asked you to help us organize one of our conferences. And already he knew if you're talking about industrialization, you had his people in Vietnam, we can link with Finn, we can link with all these other speakers, we can link with sound and everybody. He was just that quick to get people together to discuss an issue that he believes people need to understand better. And one joke that I always used to laugh when he would say, he would say, it's important that people run away from the brown knots. Perhaps this is more typical in Tanzania than elsewhere in the world. But he was like, people need to read access to information in different packages and not one kind alone. The third bit, which was also a bit of a surprise given who he was. I spoke about him loving to learn and loving to do new things, is he is really drive towards the use of technology and making sure teaching as many people as much as possible. And for him, and I think as Professor Njuguna touched on issues around financial inclusion, there's a very important to him and we're very dear and he would hear him, a lot of platforms talking about how he believes we need to reach to the people who are really far away and how they can have access and then able to produce productively. And he would move very quickly from a very macro discussion and take you very quickly to a mess and suddenly you're in a micro discussion just to make you understand what he is really referring to. And for him, technology was the way and was the way not only to reach more, but he believes the disruption that the technology would bring will actually help to enhance lives of so many people. And the last, and I think all the other speakers touched on is his belief in capacity building. And when he speaks of capacity building, he means everything from like the methodological kind of like trainings to like high level kind of like discussions. But then importantly, even having people set aside for several days just to make sure they understand an issue better, he was really good at that. And I found that was very interesting, as I said that given his name and what he has accomplished, you always see, you would always think it would be very difficult for him to give you your time. But if you would bring something that is really dear to him, he will be ready and he will be available to speak to all different kind of the audience, not just economists. I had a lot about economists here. But for instance, while I was a repower, we had this course where we were talking about harnessing natural resources for development. He came in and he was willing to talk to the group of young people who were really interested to understand how actually our natural resources imported in creating development in the country. And he again, opened up himself so much in such a way we were like, okay, yes, Professor Ben Ndolo, we knew about this. But then it was important to hear him really encourage other people from other fields to understand better economics. And the last bit, as I said with him, we were together as he was the president of the Economic Society of Tanzania. The last time, and it's sad that this was the last time that we were with him, it was during something we call sneakers and heels. And this was a mentoring program for mid career women. And he was around looking at women who are in the transport sector. And he was like, Blondina, you're bringing me full circle. And I think I will come and speak to the women and tell them some of the opportunities that are there. And he was fantastic. And he was saying, just because the sector is male dominated, technology is really disrupting all this. And there are lots of opportunities that we can actually undertake and get more women involved, more diversified groups involved more productively. Of course, you can't speak about Finn in 10 minutes, but I thought I would share those few. Finn, thank you so much and all the others. Thanks. Blondina, thanks so much for the interpret to Beno's many qualities when it comes to mentoring. And you were spot on. May I on behalf of both myself as well as everybody who have been listening to Steve and Uganda, Ernest and Blondina express sincere gratitude for capturing so aptly Beno's many contributions and his enduring professional and personal importance to all of us. With your permission that we will share your contributions with Beno's family as a statement of how much we appreciate their sharing his valuable time and profound inspiration with us. I'm sure you will understand that it was with both commitment and gratitude to Ben's memory that this session was put together. To be sure, Beno will continue to live with us in our minds and hearts as a great inspiration he always was and is. May Beno's soul rest in eternal peace. And may I invite you all to observe a minute of silence in honor of Professor Beno Endulu, leading colleague, chair of the UNU wider board and dear, dear friend. Thank you very, very much. And may I now invite you to join us in the thematic coffee room continuation of the Beno Endulu special session. I look forward to seeing you there where we can share memories of Beno.