All right, welcome everyone. My name is Nzinga Broussard, Senior Director of Impact Measurement at the Sorenson Impact Institute. Happy to be moderating this session. I'm going to let the panelists introduce themselves. But let me just get started in terms of what I hope we can accomplish. Sounds OK? Is this better? OK, so just how I hold it. All right. I want to start with just some of the things that I hope we accomplish with this discussion. So as the title of this session is worded, this actually is the title, Is it the Future? Impact Investing in Africa. I really wanted to get at the more than remittances. And so one of the objectives of this discussion is to be able to talk about how impact investing can complement the impact and the flows of remittances that has taken place on the continent, which played a very, very important role in improving the lives of the poor on the continent. We also want to talk about how impact investing in Africa can also introduce some opportunities to address the current climate crises. So I think our panelists have a lot to say about that. And then I also want to talk about we want to be able to gain some insights into the role that the diaspora has been playing and identifying and financing impactful endeavors on the continent and how the broader impact investing community can really scale that. And we've heard the usage of scale used quite a bit this morning. And so hopefully our panelists will be able to offer some insights on those three objectives. So now our panelists to introduce themselves, Pedro, you want to start? Yes, good afternoon. I'm Pedro Vasconcelos. I'm the manager of the financing facility for remittances at the International Fund for Agriculture Development, UN Agency, and the only IFI. That's it. Hi, everyone. My name is Aloysios Ata. I'm the CEO of a company called Farmer Line Group. We are a digital marketplace for 1.7 million small scale farmers. We've known around for a decade. We leverage digital tools to train farmers, finance them to grow food, and we help them to sell food. Thanks. Hello, everyone. I'm Maria. I'm the founding partner at OpenSea Ventures. We are a global fund both as Q with African, look across future of commerce, work, and health. We back operators, turn founders, at the very early stage of the first capital before they go out to fundraise. And I've been an operator before I became an investor and very much have Africa as a core part of my thesis. My name is Inyo Lua Boeji. Everyone calls me E. I'm the founding partner at the Fund for Africa's Future. Also known as Future Africa. We are first-check investors into businesses that are turning Africa's biggest. I think it has that. We're first-check investors into businesses that are turning Africa's biggest challenges into global businesses. We backed Andela, which helped turn Africa's youth unemployment problem into a remote work opportunity. We backed and also co-founded Flutterwave, which helped turn our financial inclusion challenge into a global payments opportunity. And we also backed Move, which is a business that turned our mobility challenges into a global mobility asset management business. Thank you and welcome. So before we jump right into impact investing, Pedro, I wanted to start with you. And so can you share with the audience the important role that remittances has already played on the continent? Yes, thank you. And I think that's a key question, because not only the title, but also the misconceptions that sometimes are. I think there's an echo. No? OK. But before maybe saying remittances is just maybe better understand migrant contributions to their home countries. And they can do that in many ways, with non-financial and non-financial ways. Non-financial, it's remittances. And there's also diaspora investment. So one that I will explain in a second is that has very different characteristics than the other one. But also they're contributing in non-financial aspects with the ideas, their knowledge, that they be it as an entrepreneur, for instance. And I think we're going to be discussing this. But the long story short, they contributed in many ways. When you think about remittances, it's of course about the money, but it's about the people behind. We're talking about 1 billion people involved in this process globally. 200 million sending. You come across them. I'm sure there's actually some in this room. They don't even know that they were remitters. But 200 million people are sending back to their home communities. And back there, it's 800 million people benefiting. That's how you get to 1 billion people in the world benefiting and being involved in this process. It's $640 billion a year on the rise. Crisis free. With all the crisis that happened, being security, health, et cetera, these flows continue to grow at least 10% every year. And it's not going to stop. Most important thing is that half of that, I think, goes to rural areas where these flows basically count the most. And that's where I think it's important that to understand. But these are $200 at a time. All the billions and trillions don't matter. So 5.4 billion, a trillion dollars will be sent by the end of this decade, 2030. You've heard that agenda, the deadline of 2030. 5.4 trillion dollars will be sent. But again, what matters is this $200 that you send back to your family. 75% of that 200 bucks is made to pay bills, put food on the table, education. And there's no discussion about grabbing that money elsewhere. But 25% is either save or invested. And this is where the big opportunity on remittances come in by banking most of the people that receive these funds that are unbanked. This was remittances. The other side of the question is, well, then, what is diaspora investment? Well, is the other funds that the diaspora is also sending to their communities? They would like to invest back home. So after having supported your family with those $200, you also invest home, entrepreneurial activities. And that's half a trillion dollars also in accumulated savings. Now, that connection is, I don't know about the echo. Is it manageable? Yes, okay. The problem with that is that supply of demand from an investor back here. We were talking about a recent friend that you met at the border control in Nigeria that went to invest back home. And basically, he's also in the premises. And he was asking questions about, how do I do it? I have the potential. I would like to invest. No one is helping. I would have more information. I would like vehicle. I would like supply and demand. In our case, supply and demand to be met. And this is, I think, what we will be discussing today and two concepts that need to really be differentiated when you hear remittances, fantastic opportunities. It's been happening for the last 30 years. Southern Europe benefits from that. A lot of banking has been happening through this. But diaspora investment is also another vehicle that, again, needs to be promoted and tapped. Maria, I want to go to you now. And Pedro touched a little bit on this. And what ways can impact investing play a different role than remittances? And in what ways can it complement it? Yeah, this is a great question. I guess maybe, for context, I think this is the open seed view. I do think that the bifurcation of... I think that probably will never work out for me. It seems to be gonna work out. I think that this... Is that right? We're sorry about that. I'm trying to think, yeah. Got it. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I was saying that I do think that this division of what is impact and what is not, I think, in the world of the future, should not be. Because I think thinking about the sustainable impact of your fund, thinking about the environment, thinking about equity, is no longer nice to have. I think it's an inevitable context. Where, you know, at the time, primarily the European power has expanded out and created the system by way of... Okay. Can you all hear me? Okay, maybe we do this, okay. So I was saying, I do think that that separation is not going to be going to be relevant for the future. I think that, you know, gone are the days when you built businesses without any consideration of what that did to the environment, without any consideration to the equity to the type of world you're building. I do think our value systems more globally is anchoring not just on the financial value, but then also how exactly does it impact the world? And I think that that presents an opportunity. In the context of Africa, there are a few different things. I'm sure you've heard of the popular stats, you know? One out of five will be African in 2050, median age is 18. But I think that there is a bit that no one's really talking about in the fact that the world will look different. In the context of even broader macro trends, I would talk about technology innovations, like AI, for example, I will talk about how we are innovating for a world that puts sustainability at the core of it. I did lead a fund in Europe, an early stage fund, and I've also operated startups like Uber and Branch, and I've scaled startups locally in Africa, and I've seen global applications. I think that even from a funding perspective, there is an opportunity. There's the context of Africa as a silo, but I do think that there is relevance of Africa and the global world. If you think about value creation, it's comparative advantage. And I think for every civilization that has built prosperity for its people, you do have to think about what you can offer the world in context of how the world is going forward and trending and building that defensibility that creates value that just creates leverage as a result. So a few opportunities I do see is if you look at the greatest, I guess, emitters of CO2, it's the U.S., it's Europe, it's Asia. Africa is, I think, the least source, one of the least of those emitters, but we are rapidly organizing. If you think about what that means for the future, there is opportunity for leadership and green leadership and thinking green first in how we build cities. Now that's more infrastructural. If you think about technologies across the world, you are seeing chatter in terms of software that helps you track how you manage your CO2, manage your waste implications. If you don't measure it, you don't mean it. Without technologies, we cannot evolve into a world that allows us to be a bit more sustainable. And I think that that presents an opportunity even for investments, for venture, for impact, whatever you want to call it, you will need to fund these innovations that help us track the data, that help us build new infrastructure that allows us to think of the world a little differently. One specific example I'm beginning to see is just, let's say, just, and I know this is a little controversial, but like just carbon credits. I'm seeing carbon insurance. There's a whole new infrastructure for value that's being created and the lowest emitters are not necessarily a part of the conversation. Yes, there's no answer to this, but I do think that there's a lot of innovation that we can create that creates this opportunity for strategic advantage for the continent. That's on one hand. OpenSeed really focuses on operators turn founders. I've scaled startups. I was the GM at Uber. I also led branch. I think that human capital within the context of Africa is one of the most under tapped opportunities. And I think if you think about just venture and high growth and building products that is relevant to the world, we now have a concentration of operators, Africans, Africans in diaspora who understand how high growth startups are built, how value is created, and can translate this in the local context and build value locally for Africa that can be even more relevant in the global stage. I do think that funding these people, I do think that providing the support that they need at that early stage can be very catalytic. So in my mind, I think rather than thinking and I do believe that remittance plays its role, but I do think that beyond the volume of capital, we should also think about the type of capital. If you think about the impact of remittance companies in creating value to Africans if they were built locally and you compare that side to side to just the remittance, I would say the 75% that kind of goes into subsistence. That's important. But if you think about the other, it's not just the capital. It's the human capital development. People are at the startups learning how to build high growth startups. It's the generating of value locally. It's jobs. It's improving livelihoods. It's also the knowledge. I'll give two examples of startups that I think are doing this in a very interesting way. There's a startup that's recently built speech to text solutions for electrical medical records for doctors, aside from the fact that that just makes things sustainable because if you think about the local context, technology is still being adopted and you still have a lot of paper and manual based use for data records. Aside from that, there is a broader AI conversation and the digital world is literally being built without Africans in it. And they are generating data on African, the local context of African language and also accent. Who has an Alexa hair? I have to Americanize so many words. It's like play sim. It's like, no, play simi. And then it's like, oh, I get that. But I think that there, and this is just one example. I think there are so many opportunities, not necessarily in the silo of Africa, but Africa's relevance in the emerging global world that is inevitable. So yeah, that would be my two cents to that. You touched on a number of things. And I just want to come back to Alotius. Maybe you can answer this. What role can impact investing play in tackling the current climate crisis? So you touched a little bit on it. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more? Yeah. Thanks. About 19% of the greenhouse gases that are emitted comes from how we grow food. And about 80% of that is from agriculture. 10% from deforestation. Although Africa and agriculture, although Africa is a very small contributor to the impasse of climate change, they are heavily impacted by it. When you look at how climate funding is allocated for every $12 that is spent on mitigation, only $1 goes to adaptation. So there's a massive opportunity for government, private sector, the diaspora to invest in, in my view, three areas to not only help people in rural areas and people across the continent, people who are mostly impacted by climate change to only be resilient, but then also to mitigate. The first thing is making sure that the decades of research that has been done on the tools, the technology, about how to farm well and grow food well. The education should be democratized and made freely available to people who need it the most, more importantly in the languages that they can understand. Today, when you look at what the content is, it's mostly online. It's mostly in books. It's mostly PDF documents. And it's mostly in Western languages. Ghana alone has about 59 local languages. In Nigeria, it has 200. And there are many more languages. And research shows that if you give content to people in a language that they understand, adoption actually increases. So the first step is let's make sure everything that people need to do, farmers need to do, people in rural areas need to do to be resilient, but also mitigate their impact. Doesn't only end in these halls, these conference rooms, but it goes to them in the format that they understand. The second thing is the technology, the tools, the services has to be accessible to them. If you think about drought resistant seeds, they were invented 100 years ago, but adoption across the continent is still not very high. It's still very low. Organic fertilizer, the same way. Solar irrigation, that actually gives the opportunity for farmers to farm all year round and not only depend on rainfall. All those technologies are already there. We know they work, but in the distribution, it's not very high. There's massive room for government, for private sector, the diaspora to invest for impact, but then also for money returns. And then finally, accelerating finance, making sure that those who, people who are most affected actually get the resources to afford the services. There are examples like the Green Climate Fund, they just got replenished by about nine billion or so. You guys part of that? Yeah, okay. Yeah, and they are leveraging that to work with the government, but then also the private sector to accelerate more financing. And there are many creative ways that that can happen, like invest in companies and solutions that are deploying digital technologies to make financing more accessible. Governments could come up with incentives for local financial institutions to invest. If you look at India, I think there's another location where financial institutions in India must invest about 15% of their total portfolio into agriculture. There's DEPA, where they are encouraging financial institutions to leverage alternative data sources to underwrite, like small scale farmers to underwrite rural people. Just like how we have FICO here, in most developing countries, people still depend on collateral to invest. There's room to invest in those tools and technologies to make sure financing is unleashed and accelerated to make sure that all the products that we know that work make it more affordable and accessible for people to use. So those are the three areas that I think impact investment can contribute or help the climate crisis. One, education to distribution of services and products that we know that work and three, financing to make sure they're actually affordable. That those things need to be the most able to get it and use it when they need it. Thanks. Thank you. E, the African diaspora has played an outsized role in investing in Africa, but also in developing innovations and solutions that aim to address many of the development challenges on the continent. How important is it for the private sector to finance innovations developed by African entrepreneurs? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for that question. You know, our point of view has always been that in Africa, every investment has an impact, right? Sometimes impact can be positive and sometimes the impact can be negative. And on the wall, you know, the truth is a lot of the time, a lot of what is labeled impact investing doesn't always have a positive impact. And the challenge is, you know, how do we, in the midst of all of this and the labeling and everything, try to figure out what actually has a positive impact and how do we skill those investments that have a positive impact? Well, the one thing we've seen from the data is the fact that investments with a positive impact usually prioritize productivity and ultimately they're backed by the evidence of increase in income because that is sort of how the economics work, right? And people are more productive, incomes rise. And I mean, just speaking more personally from our own experience, building on Della, we were four diaspora, although it's a weird one to call us that because I only left four, my country for five years to go to school in Canada, so I don't know if that counts. But we came back home and but in the process of being outside the country, you know, we had partnered up with people from around the world who had a lot of expertise about education and scaling learning science and helping people learn things really, really fast. And that was how Della was born. And that group worked very collaboratively to build and train over 100,000 technology leaders who saw a practical increase in income, you know, from $0 in many cases to over $100,000 over three years. And it's probably one of the most successful development programs I can think about from an investment perspective, right? The amount of incomes and returns, both financially and otherwise, have eclipsed pretty much any other investment that I know of on the continent. And the question we have to be asking ourselves is, how do we get more outcomes like that? And I think it's gonna start by prioritizing investment, not just of money, which is what tends to be the case. Everybody wants to throw money at Africa's problems. But, you know, like I always say, money doesn't buy anything, right? It's knowledge that makes things. And if there was a way for us to better organize our human capital around the world to actually be able to raise new talent in Africa, to be able to build solutions to the world's problems, not just Africa's problems, then we would actually be in a position to increase productivity and alongside that, increase incomes. And that's ultimately when we start to get development because somebody who has increased income can solve their own problems in the priority in which they choose to. They can choose to eat what they like. They can choose to get the healthcare they believe they need. They can choose to meet the needs of the people around them. And so I think in many ways, we gotta start thinking about, how do we leverage our diaspora to invest in human capital, not just with their money, but with their time, and help them to be able to increase incomes. And I'll just end with a practical point, you know. The U.S. today has perhaps most of the doctors that were trained in Nigeria and Ethiopia over the last 20 years with public taxpayers' money from Nigeria because I can guarantee you a lot of those schools are not priced to what you pay here. And we're talking about a health crisis in many of these countries. If just a portion of the taxes that these doctors paying the U.S. was put into a fund to improve healthcare training institutions on the continent, right? Everybody wins. America gets all the doctors and nurses they need, but then it doesn't have to be at the expense of our people back home. And I think that if you apply that same model in every sector where our diaspora has had to leave the continent for better outcomes for themselves, but unfortunately at the cost of better outcomes for society, you would actually be able to build a more sustainable model over time. And that would be a positive impact. I like that. I'm gonna come back to the question that I asked and anyone can answer this. But the question that I have is, do African entrepreneurs have a comparative advantage in coming up with innovations or solutions that affect the continent? I'm happy to go. I do think that the one thing that African entrepreneurs have is context. The context of Africa is very nuanced. And I think incredible things can happen when you have global knowledge on best practices, quote unquote, the talent networks because no one solves anything alone. The heuristic on what makes high growth businesses or businesses that can unlock value at scale like a systemic thinking business. I do think that there's some comparative advantage and not just locally because with these conversations I think there's the temptation to think of Africa as a silo. It's not. The world is continuously evolving and every country, every region has to figure out its relevance in the context of the new and developing world. We are having these conversations. Sometimes I believe as though the world is static but it is evolving. And I think that the only people that can balance the global context with the local context, the global skills, knowledge, trends, networks but the local context are the Africans themselves in my mind. And I think that that creates some strategic advantage. The other thing I will say is that there's certain, I believe for every civilization there is a point where you have a window for strategic opportunity. You can build comparative advantage. I think within Africa we're coming up to a few windows. We have the human capital. We have the democratization of knowledge of technologies. Even the emigration and the diaspora that is often painted as a somewhat negative thing. Yes, there are negative effects. But I think that there are certain skills, knowledge, insights that Africans are gathering of the global world that can now be put into context locally. Historically, and I do think you need a critical mass to do that because you can't do the things alone. I'll give you an example. I am speaking with the start of who's building an infrastructure layer for the deployment of AI models, AI models locally in Africa. He is struggling with talent in terms of data scientists to build a model or an AI ML model. They are very specific skill sets in terms of the architecture, in terms of the mining, in terms of the insights on understanding data science and the insights that that brings into how you deploy the data. But if you have people who have been in these different context building solutions for global companies who can bring those talent networks and have the local context, imagine what could happen. And I think that we have several pockets of things where, yes, it's locally relevant, but then it's globally relevant as well. My earlier example, AI, there's literally, to me, no other source or representative data beyond Africa for AI. We should be mining a lot of data to feed into the models that are shaping how people view the world through the AI models. I don't know how many of you have used AI models if you use your regular AI models and you ask for physical prompts.  You will contort, it's like black, it will not bring it up, because that's the nature of AI models. They present what they are trained with. So I think that's just one example. And I think that we have several pockets of things like this, where we are now at a point within Africa where there are opportunities to build globally relevant, but also locally contextual solutions that actually ensures that we are in the conversation on a global landscape as well, as opposed to just try and solve the problems because they don't exist in isolation. Yeah, so that would be my comment on that. Thank you. Can I share some thought? I actually disagree, sadly. And I disagree because the reality of the situations, entrepreneurs do not have any comparative advantage in solving our own problems. And that's primarily because in many cases they don't have the intellectual capital to do so, even if they have context. And very much like Alouish has mentioned, a lot of the problems we have are not rocket science. They are solved problems in other parts of the world. Now, if the question is, where do we have comparative advantage? And by the way, when I say we don't have comparative advantage, what I mean is not that African entrepreneurs cannot solve African problems. I'm just saying we don't do it better than anybody else in the world, so that we're on the same page. But the thing that I think that we do, what is Africa's comparative advantage, it's still talent. It's still the fact that you have the largest number of young people in the world. If you consider the fact that we add 25 million people to our numbers every year. And our median age is 18 for most of the continent. We still have the talent that can build that comparative advantage over time. So if you think about it in terms of hours, man hours, especially with the accelerant that is intelligence and AI, I think that we can accelerate a lot of the productivity. That's where our comparative advantage is, which is why I think ultimately Africa's comparative advantage is that it is the human in the loop. When you talk about artificial intelligence, you need a human in the loop at the back end and at the front end of the system. It is the human in the loop. It has been the human in the loop in the back end companies like Samosaurus and Hugo and Talent Factory and so many other companies built and organized all the models we use for AI today. And it created jobs and incomes while doing it. They were the human in the loop at the back. Now, perhaps there's a world where they can be the human in the loop and the front when AI starts to be integrated into everything in the world, but there's still a need for some man-machine symbiosis that can guarantee that it's not being misused or it's being ethically made. And this is the global context for Africa's comparative advantage. But I think part of the problem is a lot of impact capital kind of comes at it with a more realistic justice-driven point of view. So we want to make things that are not necessarily true, true, or we end up in a hypocrisy where we dismiss them entirely. Meanwhile, the reality is a bit more nuanced and that's why I said I didn't agree. We're not necessarily the best at solving our own problems. Do you want to challenge that? I'm not challenging you, but just add a bit. Before you go, if you have questions on your cards, please send them up so we can definitely answer them. So I'll answer the question in two ways. We don't have a lot of comparative advantage if we have to continue. Today, if you start a company, if you're trying to raise money, there are not a lot of people in your country that will invest money into a tech company. So you have to either come to America or go to Europe, or mostly work with funds. Most of the funds around the continent are backed by the government or private people on the continent. They are mostly backed by the GDFIs, family offices, and those are all good. But what that means is that the value system or what people put premium on is also very different. I would say it's not always African. It's not like African in code. You have to learn to understand and feel into all those value systems in order to attract the resources. And that just takes time. For us, it took us a decade to raise $20 million. And the path to that $20 million, meaning I have to join really good fellowships like Echoing Green and learn how to talk the talk, learn the blueprint, speak the language, say what I do in eight words very quickly, 30 seconds. All those things are just ways that things work. That's fine. I'm not used to speaking all that. But we are privileged. There are many other young people who don't have access to this network, who don't understand the blueprint, and they don't understand the various value systems. So they are already systematically at a disadvantage.  If they have to go elsewhere to raise the money, they'll face the same challenges. Let me just give you one example. 2017, I was in Boston, 4th, 10th, and 30th, who were pitching for half a million dollars from Rice Fund. Ghanians are known to be very humble. So I went to my pitch deck, and I'm going to focus on the work, just give numbers. And my friend, very good friend of mine from India, very close friend, Echoing Green fellow from Boston, he knew the judges that are there from the East Coast. He knew that East Coast investors, you have to drop names, companies, mentors, coaches, people that you are affiliated. I didn't know. My company was the most advanced. I lost.  He didn't play the game. So if you look at it from that lens, we are at a disadvantage, but we don't have to cry about it. We can do something about it. Where we have the advantage is we do have the advantage if we embrace what makes Africa great by looking into the past. And I also understand in the present, let me start from the past. The past, learning about all the contributions that we've made, like Africans made a lot of contribution to architecture, to medicine, science, taxation. For me, I drew a lot of strength from that. That gives me an advantage to design for the continent, to know that before the lines and the bodies were drawn, we're already trading Nigeria. Togo, we're already trading the beach, we're already working. It's already like, and if you take it like, I drew from Togo, Ghana to Benin, and we were speaking the same local language across the coast. When I came back, my company, we expanded very quickly because I knew that I didn't have to learn French to expand to Togo because they spoke my local language. I'm from the eastern part of Ghana. Just understanding that allowed my company to grow very quickly, just like if you look into the past. But then also, when you're African, you also have some level of trust too, in some cycles. And that trust can allow you to acquire talent quite quickly. That trust can allow you to do things cheaply than most people. What people put, some people may put risk on, you would see it as an opportunity. And that, if you embrace that, that could allow you to build a high-value business. So my insight is yes and no. Yes, when you embrace the greatness in our DNA and our history and the trust that exists around us, what makes Africa truly great, not just in this millennia, but like stuff that happened way before us. Our contributions to humanity. If you go to Ethiopia, so much inspiration there. If you go to Egypt, the pyramid, like, and all that. So for me, all those things give me a lot of inspiration. But today, the fact still remains that if you want to raise capital to build, like to scale across the continent, you have to pitch to institutions that mean well and are doing well, but they have value systems. I would say that, you know, the blueprint, it's not very common. And you have to lend the language. I remember one day, I have like a thousand examples. I was in Switzerland trying to pitch for an investment. And I'm like, hey, I'm a lot of shares from, like from Fama and Ghana. And then the first question is like, where is Ghana? And then do they build software there, right? Yeah, so like, I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna raise, like there's no chance I'm gonna get investment just because of where I have to start from, right? Again, you can cry about it or you can do something about it. And I'm not crying about it. I'm just trying to point out, like the facts as we have it today, a lot has changed and a lot continues to change. But if things remain the way they are, we will continue to be at the disadvantage. Thanks. Did you want to take that or? I think it's gonna connect to many things. Okay. I have two questions from the audience, but let's start with this one, which goes back to the climate solutions. What needs to change for commercial banks and governments to invest in climate solutions? What you don't know is we're gonna do business together because what you don't know yet, because we're in the same place. Can I just say something about complement what was said also before and then maybe give my contribution to this question? When we look at the title, Impact Investment in Africa, we're talking from Africans or anybody else that wants to invest in Africa, that would be maybe the first question. When we see more than remittances, well, foreigners don't send remittances. Only nationals from that country normally send remittances because this is where their family is. So I took the question from how Africans can also impact investment. And one thing that we've noticed, that I've noticed 20 years working in this field.  If it's very annoying, I'll rather shout. That's okay. I almost never see the issue about diaspora groups being offered the mechanism, the services so they can do it. And they're the biggest investors yet. If the diasporas brought together were considered a country, they would bump somebody out of the G-8, the G-7, they would bump it. And if it was the African diaspora, they would bump somebody from the G-20. This is how big it is. This is how their contribution be it from remittances, which by the way, the part of remittances that is invested in climate adaptation dwarfs every country in Africa. Climate adaptation dwarfs everything else that is done in climate adaptation in Africa today. Agriculture, four times.   A, and the list is long and you can challenge me and I'll give you the figures. So this is how powerful this is and it is the powers in the aggregation. I agree with what is needed. Are we looking, when we're talking about diaspora investor, are we looking at the C-suite, the investors, angel investors that can just drop $150,000? Because if I'm telling you that the diaspora investors that we see Mali and Juan in France right now would like to invest $20. And they would like to contribute to that. I'm sure you're starting, well, this is what they're doing right now. And we're putting mechanisms with crowdfunding where that 20 bucks makes a big difference and we saw that during COVID. So are we looking into addressing that reality from mechanisms that allow you to invest 20 bucks or a million bucks? But all these mechanisms is what is missing. I really appreciate, I don't disagree with anyone. I think everybody is right in a way because it is relevant. It is about the Africans, that relevance that you mentioned, absolutely. Many want to invest in, we were discussing in Ghana because it's my own country. I might be interested in Africa next and maybe South East Asia, maybe later on if I'm just thinking about money, but my connection is with my country, in this case, Ghana. So I think what you were mentioning is, yes, the context, they understand the context, they understand the risk, but there's also a very big lack of knowledge and this is where there's need help. They do everything part-time. They have a full-time job, like your new friend has a full-time job, he wants to invest, he needs to learn how to do it, he's gonna take risks, he's gonna lose thousands of dollars maybe in the process, that should not happen. And there should be a lot of support from governments, of course, their own government, but also hosts that are interested in supporting this. This is basically the contribution that I wanted to give, but on climate, I would like to illustrate many examples where it is unknown again for a lot of the diaspora that is investing or supporting small and medium-sized enterprises in their community of origin, and they're really bringing this notion now of climate resilience to it. They really understand and we have fantastic projects that showcase this in Somalia, in all places, where access to water is a problem, invasive pests, and these not only remittances have been addressing this, but also impact investment, so the knowledge that it is also coming across from the case of Africa, from African entrepreneurs here that, or those that send remittances is, are you thinking about the access to water? Are you thinking about solar energy? Yes, tell me. So this is happening right now, but the flow is not as efficient as we would like, and this a lot could be done in that regard. And so what I'm hearing from you is that the remittances or the flows from private citizens are addressing some of these climate challenges, but I think what, I don't know who wrote the question, it's about how can we incentivize the banks and the governments to, you want to elaborate on the question? Can I share? Yeah, you can go ahead. I think if you think about getting anyone to do anything, it's incentives, and I think this is also the conversation around the fact that Africa is not a silo. If you look at Europe and how these incentives are forming and morphing, it's the emergence of some quasi-regulation, not yet, but soon, it's the systems to tracking certain data, it's the systems to reporting. If you think about how the world is organized around the climate emergency, and permit me to be in front, we talk a lot, we say many things, but if you think about a commercial entity that was built on the foundations of capitalism, you either incentivize either the carrot or a stick, and you could use policies and incentives like tax rebates, whatever, but if those incentives don't exist, people won't do it. And I have a personal philosophy, if you don't measure it, you don't mean it. We talk about all these things, but if you cannot see, if you cannot track, you cannot measure, you cannot even set a goal. I do believe that this is where policy can come in and play a very active role into creating the incentives on both sides to getting us to a place where at least we're visible, and then people can then benefit from those incentives. I would say that it's either, that's the way, but then the one thought I would say we should potentially think about is the fact that, and this is how I see climate, sustainability, equity, it is an inevitable context for the world of tomorrow. Sooner or later, if you look at the evolution of our value systems in the global landscape, it's shifting not just from financial, solely financial, to other forms of value, it's we care about the environment, it's getting worse, okay, we need to keep doing something about it.  It's we are, you know, as a civilization hinting that beyond the financial, there are other things that matter, and I think we need to evolve to that. One of the things that I've seen across Europe more is the big core, the idea of a big core. I do think that if you think of capitalism, the thing was historically the shareholders, right? But now we're getting nuanced. It's not just the shareholders, it's the environment. This has been a system that we've used for hundreds, thousands or whatever of years. For us to move, we will have to rethink how we think of an organization, what is value, what we report. And I think policy is a huge part of that debate as well. Yeah. Two examples, like from Ghana, so the two things. So the government set up a first loss guarantee scheme called Gesau, so all ag investments that banks make into farmers and agribusinesses, they take up to 50% first loss. And that has accelerated a lot of financing into agriculture, right? Like in the past, banks were not investing. I've had meetings with everyone, they were not investing. Now, Apsa, EcoBank, they've all deployed a million dollars each, all of our balance sheet directly to former associations and former groups because of that first loss guarantee. Second, also in development organizations also played a big role. So in MasterCAD Foundation, also set up a scheme that actually reduced the cost of lending below the reference rate to give opportunity to smaller former groups to also study a financial journey. So the interest rate dropped from 36% to 10%. And it can get up to like a million cities, which is like $100,000 per group. Obviously it is not going to be forever. This is heavily subsidized, but the plan is to get those small former groups to actually study a financial journey, make some money, and be ready to take market rate, right? So those are like two examples that we've seen in the country. And then there's one more coming up in 2024 where the government is going to be passing, like the central bank is gonna be doing something where it's gonna be, banks will be using more alternative data, it's gonna be more official where they will use alternative agricultural data to underwrite. This already happens in the West where you can get a credit card without any collateral. And there's a lot of information in agriculture, like for instance, like cocoa we sell about in the $2 billion sort of cocoa every year as a country. And that comes from farmers and former groups. All that transaction is there. If it is digitized, banks can lend on that, but that gives you an idea of the cash flow and then the risk profile of a farmer and then an agribusiness. So there's all these examples that are coming up that is accelerating more financing into agriculture. And hopefully the work that you guys are doing as well, I thought that you're doing in Ghana as well. I just want to compliment on one thing. And when you hear remittances, you think money, grab that. Exactly what you just mentioned is the private companies, banks today are basically seeing the potential for that. I mentioned credit history before to connect so you can connect to it. But this is what for banks is the real opportunity is getting through that, the fact that they receive remittances at connection with these remittance families. And through that, they can get access to credit. Now, a lot of financial institutions here are also trying to see the credit if it is for a farm. This is basically what projects that we're doing to make sure that it is climate resilient, for instance, or products. And there's incentives for that, be it for the carrot and without the stick, but it works. So these are the small little changes. And again, remittances is the vehicle that allows you to get into that. It's not about the money, it's about the opportunity and answering the question. One needs to be done. It's, I think is the mindset that just needs to be changed. Mindset starting from the entrepreneur, for the migrant, from the remitter, the recipient, and from the governments. There's a mindset that needs to change, but it's a slight change. And but it's done across the board. It would work. I think one thing that I often see people on the ground miss when they're talking about engaging governments and banks is that at the end of the day, bottom line is key. And I'll tell you, we invest in some things. We don't call it climbing, because we think about it as sustainability at scale. And we've just had an explosion in solar. And all it took was government to stop subsidizing petrol. And that was that probably is responsible for, almost double triple-digit adoption in Nigeria. More than any other fund impacts all that stuff. Billions of dollars spent. None of it mattered until the government stopped subsidizing petrol. And so I think sometimes we ignore low-hanging fruit that actually moves people because we want to speak a lot of English. And the truth of matter is, look, most of these governments don't have capacity to enforce policy. So leaning on that is going to be very difficult. So I just want us to maybe go back to the drawing board. Climate resiliency might be the goal but thinking about it slightly differently and trying to tie it to people's personal bottom lines. Either increase in income or lowering their costs might be a better strategy. Another question from the audience. For the past two years, is this better? Okay. For the past two years, I've been trying to raise capital for a portfolio of diagnostic manufacturers in Africa. Investors ask, what is the demand for African manufactured products? Unfortunately, demand is not there yet. Or is not yet high, which minimizes ROI, what can be done to bridge this gap? Did I get the question right? That's actually an area where we invest. And the mindset actually is, sell outcomes, don't sell devices. The challenge with manufacturing is that the cost of capital for each of these things go bankrupt any local healthcare facility. And we can afford to buy the devices. And so we have a business, for example, called M-DAS, Medical Devices as a Service, which is literally what it means. And they own the third largest network of diagnostic clinics across the country in Nigeria. Very interesting towards number one. And the reality of that business is they just sell outcomes. People come in every day to get their test. And from the money for the test, they get a little bit goes to the manufacturer, right? And now we just have to look for capital to finance devices as opposed to look for money to buy the devices, which greatly changes the income, the cost and income and distribution profile. So that'll be my advice is for that person to look much more closely into selling outcomes and not selling the devices themselves. Just to provide an example, going back to the diaspora is nostalgic trade. And basically this is what you found, while you're abroad, that they don't sell, but you had home. And of those 200 million that are far away from home, this is big business. You name one country and they will have this type of things, but some of the nostalgic trade for some are not. I have the example of Mexico, Nopal, this big cactus. Well, you do everything out of that. If you're Mexican, you will know that. You might not know from Nigeria, but in the case of the Mexicans, they really found that. And as I remember in my previous life, working in Inter-American Development Bank, we did a project to support this, the farming of Nopal, and to make sure that it could be exported to the US, get all the ISO certification, et cetera, et cetera. Why? Because the husband had left to Chicago for the meat packing. Their wife stayed, they were receiving the money, but they decided to take over the Nopal plantation and that's it. So with this help, they started basically producing and exporting because they realized that all the Mexicans in this particular case in Chicago really wanted to that. You create anything out of that. That's it. And they would sell it five times more than they could sell it in Mexico. That's it. That's one example. Somalia, we did the same project. So again, this is just to say that maybe not the devices, but there's the local producers. Actually, that also my work in terms of something that you can create. I have some thoughts about that and even broader than that. I think that's one of the biggest weaknesses with the remittances landscape today, right? It's not appropriately aggregated and actually there's a lot of hidden costs part of which is this idea. But I think one of the things that a lot of very successful remittance companies have done is try to penetrate the communities through the groups, right? Through the community groups and associations. However, I also think that we also as a continent maybe need a bit of sophistication around how we move the money and how to think about moving the money. So for example, many times we see, you know, 30 to 35% of the cost of the remittance kind of ends up in fees, right? Because of the quantum, the movement, the pricing and all sorts of other things, right? And at the end of the day, it doesn't always necessarily help. And this is an area where central banks in particular can be more productively engaged in actually making sure that, you know, by the way, all the money you send home ends up in the bank account of the central bank. So it turns into actual currency back home.  And they all, all that bank accounts and infrastructure sort of sits at JPMorgan Chase or one of these other big banks. And there's actually a big case for working more closely with those banks to say, since this money is going to the central bank, can you make sure that it's a bit cheaper? And that's one area of advocacy that a lot of diaspora could really pick up and global partners could actually take on in a practical way without trying to exploit anybody. The other thing is given, you know, we don't exploit America's charity laws enough.  And everything you send to your family, properly structured, can be considered charitable given, especially when you're investing in social infrastructure for your community. And we find that a lot of these groups are not empowered or enabled to organize themselves properly to be able to make those types of large scale social investments with local organizations. And that's a big, you know, potential area of innovation and impact. Like for example, the Christian groups have something called National Impact Foundation and most of the money they send to Africa goes through that foundation, which has the ability to give you tax receipts but is for benefit of charities all over. And there's no reason why you couldn't have something similar with respect to diaspora organizations. I think the problem is a very tough one because with diaspora, they're not necessarily aggregated in one place, the communities are fragmented, go to market is very hard. But I do think that I have seen some interesting actually tech models that are launching products and digital nations, for example. And that might seem really flippant at the top of it, but ultimately their goal is actually to aggregate the diaspora and provide almost like an ubiquitous like virtual access to these groups at enough depth that makes it the cost of acquisition lower as you go. So people are trying to solve the problem, but I think it's a problem nonetheless. And I think that without that problem being solved, we really won't be able to tap into the diaspora as a lumped unit of value creation, whatever way, because they're so spread out. And to be honest, I do think that there is something to be said about, I guess, the demographic shift about the immigration, about diasporas in nation in and of itself and it's being this extension of the continent to even penetrating the markets externally, not just the other way. I keep talking about the relevance of Africa both ways. I do think that there is some, I guess, world where the diaspora in and of itself is the go-to market for the larger global opportunities. So yeah, but just to say that the problem is right, I think it's tough. No one solved it, but people are trying. Thank you. All right, so we have about five minutes and I'm gonna ask a question and I want each of you to answer it. I'm gonna situate the question in a sense of when we talk about impact investing, we're talking about social returns alongside financial returns, right? And so that we're also kind of thinking about the private sector, right? So the government or grants may not be looking for that financial return, they're looking for the social or environmental impact. And so really thinking about the private sector that needs to be incentivized to do something good, with the financial returns. What are the sectors that we should be watching and there might be some investors here thinking about what are the sectors that we should be investing in where we can have a social and our environmental impact alongside healthy financial returns. And we've talked a little bit about agriculture, AI and climate, what are some of the other sectors that you think we should be focused on? Let's start with you, Pedro, is that all right? Yeah, instead of the sectors, I would say the target groups. Again, we're talking about big sector dropping $100,000 or that $50, $50 or $30. So I think that's how I would answer my question is the target groups. It's very difficult to get the diaspora. I think it was much more difficult 20 years ago with the internet and everything, it makes it much, much easier. We can give you some of the tips, but I think particularly with digitalization today and particularly since COVID, it's much more easier to identify and track and to bring that diaspora community back together. And then I don't understand it, it is not about the money, it is about who they are, their financial capability, I think is what needs to be done and then the needs. So then I would answer more is on the sectors in rural areas, there's different opportunities than in urban. When we're looking at the diaspora connected with rural areas, it really goes from any type of SME sort of investment. The surveys is gold in this field and this is what we find in some surveys is to understand what not only diaspora ones but the recipients also want. And that gives you the answer to that. What is the sector? And they're pretty basic at the end of the day for many of the rural populations that we are targeting. But before that again, I want to ask you what type of product or what type of target group rather than just the sector. And to answer that, I think investors are more thinking about they want to get the highest financial returns alongside those social returns. So think about it in conjunction with, we want to have a large impact. Yes, we're in reverse. Yes, we're in reverse. So from impact, this is why they're going to invest in that. So food, investing in food, but you have to be a bit more patient. 2022, investors invested about 630 million dollars into food companies in Africa. 2023, that dropped to, you know, 99 million for obvious reasons, right? Like, a Greek is hard, it takes time, is heavily affected by many of the macros. Russia decides to invade Ukraine. Food prices goes up, fertilizer prices goes up. Three times, fewer prices goes up. So it's really hard, but, you know, there will be a lot of humans on the planet. No matter what is happening in the world, humans eat, they'll keep investing in food. So invest in food on the continent, but be very patient. Also invest in value addition. If you're thinking about areas to look at, think about cocoa, you know, Ghana and Africa is where you spot a lot of the raw cocoa. We don't process it. A lot of money to be made, a lot of impact to be made. Cashew, aricos is the largest spot of raw cashew nut, one million metric tons. We spot more of the raw than the processed. The processed adds more margin, more jobs are created, more money stays in the country. So invest in not just the growing, but in the processing as well. There's a lot of money to be made, but you have to have like a long-term view, 10-year horizon, if you want to create wealth that lasts in a Greek. Thanks. I would say invest in the future. OpenSea looks across future of commerce, work and health. All three are very deliberately picked in the way the world is evolving. I think look for funds, projects, startups who align with your value to both create sustainable and financial impact. I think invest in value adding initiatives that scale invest in people with incredibly bright ideas of how they can create value and opportunity for people on the continent, or globally via people from the continent. I think that with this nuance, the one thing I would say is, and I know that this is probably not the panel to say, but some flexibility on the nuance on what impact means and really anchoring on the actual impact as opposed to the labeling on what it looks like. I think given the world that we live in, also investing in things that create more representation in the world. It's getting worse with technology. People are shaping the world and it's not looking like a representative of the world as well, so that would be my two cents. I'm going to be very straightforward. Services, export services specifically. The reality of the landscape in Africa is that there is a need for, a lot of the currencies have devalued, and there is a need for foreign exchange income. And whether it's tradable services or non-tradable services, if you invest in services, many of the people are able to make a lot of money in US dollars, the costs remain low, but even then income increases because productivity increases, so you actually give people more income. And so I like to say, think about whatever it is that Africans can do for you, preferably over the internet, because that requires a little bit less infrastructure, but just generally any kind of export services actually work out pretty well, financially and impact-wise. Thank you.


And so what we're going to do for you now is kind of show you a little bit of a role play as to how things go right in marriage and how things go wrong in marriage. Right? And it's a light and funny sort of thing that we're going to show you, but it's a reality that if it's not managed and if it's not dealt with and we don't learn how to deal with the conflict in an appropriate way, unfortunately, there are negative consequences to that, which is the reason why Nissa exists, right, in essence. So there is a definite tie-in to this, the way we run our own homes and to the way which we ideally want to run our homes. So first... Oh, yeah. So I have to... I'm the director, so I have to, you know, give my advice and tell them what to do. I'm her, you know, like, plaything. Just she gets to use me and abuse me. No, no, we don't want to use that word lightly. So we're going to role play for you how not to engage in conflict, marital conflict.  You've been staring at that thing for 30 minutes now. It's the big deal. I'm just trying to... You just barging in, yelling at me. I'm just looking at my phone. What's the big deal? Yeah, but you haven't even noticed me all evening.  Calm down. Stop nagging me. I wouldn't nag you if you just pay attention to me. Can't you see I had a long day. I've been working all day, like 8, 10, 12 hours every day. Oh, yeah. You're always on my case. Oh, really? You've had a long day. What about me? Don't you think I like to relax after a long day driving the kids everywhere, cooking, cleaning up after your mess? My mess? What are you talking about? Look at your hijabs all over the place, man. Well, maybe if you helped me out more, I'd have time to put myself away. Maybe you can do more. Now you're blaming me? Now you're blaming me? I'm always on my phone. I'm not helping you up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. You know what? That really hurts. I just wanted to spend some time with you, and now you're making fun of me.  Well, how am I supposed to know you want to spend time with me? All you do is criticize me. I wasn't criticizing you. I just want you to get off that dumb phone of yours. Okay, so I'm off my phone. Happy now? No, I forget it. I don't want to spend time with you. I'm going to go to sleep. Forget it. So that's... I don't know why you guys are clapping. That's not how you're supposed to engage. I don't understand this audience. I think it hits home too hard for all of us. We know. All right.  You've been staring at that thing for 30 minutes now. What's the big deal? Why are you barging in and yelling at me all of a sudden? Man, you haven't noticed me. I've come in and out the whole evening. You haven't even looked up once. Calm down. Stop nagging me, man. I wouldn't nag you if you would just pay attention to me. Besides, I feel hurt when you use that word nagging. It really hurts. Scoot over, bro. Scoot over. You know, we got to try to make this up now. Look, I'm sorry for saying that you were nagging me. I just don't know why you came in yelling at me all of a sudden. Okay.  Let me start over. Let me start over. Okay. I'd like you to stop looking at your phone at night so we can spend some time together. Okay. That's reasonable. I would like that too. But sometimes I'm just overwhelmed from work and I need some time to relax, decompress, and, you know, catching up on my messages and reading stuff is my way of relaxing. Okay. I mean, that's fair. But I just want to let you know I feel lonely when I walk in and out of the room a few times and you don't even look up once. When the kids are asleep, this is a good chance for us to spend some time together. I want to catch up. I could see how staring at my phone when you come into the room would make you feel bad. I'm sorry. Okay. And I'm sure my yelling at you to get off your phone is not the best way to get your attention. Sorry about that. That's true. That's true. You know what? I just need about 20 minutes until after the kids go sleep and then I'm here for you. Okay. That's fair. But what if you're so blue to your phone you don't even realize how much time has passed. Just tell me the time is up and, you know, we'll manage it. Okay. That sounds like a deal. Hey, well... All right. Is that Klochen? I think that was an Academy Award for... let's give him another hand. Well, first of all, thank you, everyone, for coming. As Amun said, this is the largest event we've had and we're honored to have all of you join us. And as Amun Thair said, this is not our organization. This is our organization. So thank you again. So that was fabulous. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for coming and joining us. So what we thought we'd do is do a bit of a Q&A. I'm short. Okay, I get it. So I will ask you a couple questions if you don't mind. And also I'm going to leave it open for you guys to come up with your own questions too. So have some good, you know, conversation around the table and come up with a couple good questions. So I have one for you.  We feel very rejuvenated after. We feel that it can be a very, you know, cathartic experience. But as two people come together, disagreement is normal. It's natural. There are two different people coming together in one marriage or relationship. And conflict is not necessarily bad. So how my first question is how do you break down maybe years of resentment and anger to start afresh? You know, the kids are in college. You're looking at each other on the breakfast table. Yeah, yeah. I know when, you know, people bring these scenarios and not bringing theoretical scenarios. These are these are real life things that a lot of us live with on different levels.  Now two people who have went through life and they went through pain and they went through difficulty and one party has really pushed hard on the other party and maybe there's a lot of that historical pain. And now you're looking at each other across the way and there's no one else in the house to occupy that time. It can be a very difficult time for a lot of people. Allah SWT tells us in the context of marital conflict يريد إصلاحا يوفق الله بينهما And if two people they want إصلاح they want reconciliation, they want to rejuvenate they want to revive their marriage Allah will divinely synchronize and make their marriage work. So the door of hope is always open. That's number one. The door of hope is always open for anybody in any relationship as long as both parties are committed in yuridah, both of them, both people have to be invested have to have a sincere intention then sometimes you have to take the means to fix what was broken. And Allah SWT is very interesting.  If there's a tear, if there's a rip in that garment you have to patch it up.  You've got to patch it up. And so dealing with that previous emotional injury is very important. Maybe Lubna Yafsin is right. So that's really important. And most likely that might be helpful to have that be guided, right? I mean, it's kind of like our first argument even though it was something light, the underlying, what was the underlying desire about the whole thing, about the whole argument, even though it went into hijabs and mess and driving and all this stuff. Well, spending time together, right? And so what happens sometimes, you know, the intention is good, but these past hurts, you start talking about it. Let's say, okay, you know, I want to resolve some of these things.  And then, you know, husband and wife, it can just, the argument can just go haywire. Well, I did that because you did this and all these years and stuff.  So just as we're here tonight to kind of break the stigma and talk about domestic violence and hopefully inducing, what was it, marital harmony? That was the nice word. Same thing. We also want to break the stigma on marital counseling, you know, getting therapy because that can really help break down. And one of the steps aside from that is to really start from the bottom. You know, a lot of us, when we, our parents are teaching us about marriage, I don't know, at least from my background. You know, yeah, you don't need to be friends. It's just, you know, marriage is a business. You get it done, right? Marriage, husband, wife, you do your thing. But really, when Suhaa was mentioning what Alice Montala says about marriage, that a lot of places love and mercy between you, love is that baseline. Well, where does love start? It starts as friends. You have to rebuild that friendship, get to know each other again, go out together, spend intentional time together. That can start to soothe some of that pain. And then now when you want to bring up difficult things, you have something, you have a baseline to go off of. So it's, you know, there's a lot of steps, but those are some starting points, inshallah. Wonderful. Question number two. What do you do when conflict comes from an external source, like a family member, mother-in-law? Yes, another taboo that we should talk about. So you deal with that all the time. You want to start with your advice? And actually, many of us are mother-in-laws. Not me yet, but I know that many of my friends, our kids are getting married. Absolutely. He goes both ways. You know, SubhanAllah, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, when he frames marriage, and we heard the ayat that started off the night, actually, وَمِنْ آيَاتِهِ انْخَلَ خَلَكُمْ اَنْفُسِكُمْ اَزْوَاجَةَ And from among his signs, he has created for you spouses for one another. Marriage is a unification of two people. And these two people need to be unified in their approach to life. And a lot of times, you know, when we have these external sources, we have in-laws, we have family, we have mother-in-laws that try to inject their wants and desires into your marriage, it's important that the couple is unified in their approach towards dealing with life. And that when somebody from outside kind of puts themselves too much inside, or one of these two allows too much space and they don't set up boundaries for themselves with the external family members, that's going to naturally disrupt this. So this comes number one. And even if that's mom, even if that's mom to say, mom, this is about us, this is about our life building, this is about our life together.  You need to let us raise our kids the way we see fit to our, raise our kids. Otherwise that's going to disrupt us and our flow and how we go about doing this.  Although men can be as well. Oftentimes in these in-law conflicts, it tends to be mother-in-law and son that, you know, that issue is there. And I think as, you know, just in general, when we educate our community, especially our men, to understand that you can implement the hadith of your mother, then your mother, then your mother, of whom you should love and respect, and then also implement the understanding that Allah SWT has put love and mercy between you. If a man understands that more, of course the women can do the same thing, right? She can always be telling her mom and then mom is interjecting and she's not kind of creating that boundary as well. But that can really alleviate a lot of this, you know, these problem dynamics. And of course, as women understanding, you know, the love that we have for our sons, for our daughters, it should not transgress the boundaries of that sanctity of marriage. You can love and respect your parents while loving and respecting your spouse. Any questions so far? Let me repeat it. So if I heard you correctly, how do you set boundaries, healthy boundaries in a marriage or relationship? And what can you do if they are disturbed or violated? And by boundaries, do you mean within laws or within each other, like between husband and wife? Maybe you want to start. Ladies first. Wow. You know, I, that's a fantastic question. And I would say that Subhan Allah, I think in a lot of these cases, the more we understand ourselves, the more we start to understand that something is affecting us and we're not really happy with it. But Subhan Allah, you know, human nature, it takes time to like, to see patterns time and time again and finally realize, wait a minute, I don't like this. This is not healthy. Right. So that's number one. It's kind of that self-realization that something is amiss. Like something needs to change. And then secondly, really being able to go about expressing your feelings in a non-confrontational manner, in a non-confrontational environment. So the argument that we had, it was a light one, right? But when we started to resolve it, what if we got so heated, we needed to take a break, you know? So that's something that's important. We never want to bring up these important conversations during a heated moment, you know, after dinner, hungry, all those kind of things. When we're hungry. So choosing the right, you know, having the realization, choosing the right time and then really being able to bring up how you feel about the situation. If you bring it up in a manner that is a non-confrontational, meaning talk about what you're feeling and what you would like is much more powerful than saying what you don't like and what they're doing. So if I say, for example, you know, you're always asking for things when I'm extremely exhausted. You're asking for dinner when it's like super late at night or I don't know, a third snack, whatever. It's always about food, so I'm just going to throw that out there. For me, at least. No, with me. Not with you. Not with you. I love food, so food comes to my mind. You're great. Then you would want to say, for example, you know, I feel really tired when it's late at night and I would really like it that any request you have, you know, that you help yourself to fruit or whatever. And you say what it is you want. That's a light example. Or I would really appreciate it that if you have a concern that you don't share negative things that are really personal with your mom. I would appreciate that.  That's so annoying. Right? So it's difficult. There may be some reactions. It may take time. It may take again and, you know, having that facilitated, if it's something that's really painful and really, that's, you know, prevalent in your marriage. It's something that's very persistent. It may take a third party to help, again, like counseling, but giving space for, you know, these hurt feelings to express them in positive ways as much as possible and giving it time. Learning when to take a break from an argument when it gets heated and coming back to try to find that resolution, inshallah. One thing that's really important in marriage is, you know, theoretically, marriage is supposed to be unifying. But practically speaking, in the beginning of marriage and many people for many years beyond, marriage is, can be very conflictual, meaning it's two people coming together. Lubna doesn't like when I give this whole little spiel, but marriage in itself can be conflictual, meaning two people are coming together, trying to unify as one unit and to navigate life accordingly. Well, that unification process, like that intentional, conscious, deliberate process needs to take place in that way. And for a lot of people they don't realize that. They just go on about life and they never negotiated, navigated, figured out their boundaries. They never came to be on the same page. You have to have usul. You have to have foundational principles by which your marriage works on. And a lot of people don't take the time to even figure out what that is.  What are our rules of engagement? What do we want for our children? What are our shared goals? What are our shared dreams? What do we want out of life together as a couple? What do we want for our family? That all needs to be like, it needs to be brought out. It needs to be talked about. It needs to be, you know, shared together in conversation and constantly developed as we grow with each other. You mentioned sharing. We're going to have to share mics. We can share it together. I know there is a mic going around now for questions. So as that mic goes around, are you taking it? Yes, folks? Okay, great. I'll get a question in edgewise. This lovely young man has the mic. If you can grab him, you will get your question answered. So follow the mic. So a question for you. Excellent point, right? It's two individuals coming to form a totally different dynamic. And I'm pretty selfish. I like to take time. I write children's books. So I am dedicated in that. I go to conferences and do different things in addition to my day job and having a family. And my husband has his interests. So how do you encourage that to be an individual? Because if you're not an individual, you're not really bringing your whole self to create something that's whole. So how would you encourage that? Yeah, we can share. We can share. Okay, okay. Bismillah. So, you know, it's important that individuals are allowed to be their individual selves within the context of marriage so as to be fulfilled. For me to have fulfillment in my life, I need to be able to participate and do and be active in what I like doing. And of course, my wife is the same. But it's also important that we don't get lost in those two different worlds and that there is a common ground. You know, ultimately, there was a survey that was done a few years ago. They called the American Muslim Marital Quality Survey. And they found the five biggest problems between marital couples. One of them was that two people have differing interests. And differing interests can split people apart because your interests is what you spend quality time participating in. And quality time is time that's very valuable to me. And if our quality time is spent in two different worlds and we never connect and there's no, you know, mutual, you know, time that we enjoy doing activities, we enjoy participating in something together, then that's a cause for division. Where you just will slowly, emotionally divide from one another and that's dangerous for a relationship. I actually have a question right here. Can I go ahead? Okay. So one question that I have which usually comes up often with the clients that I work at NISA as well as in therapy is that most of the clients that I work with before actually seeking whether therapy or support services from NISA, they try, they attempt to work things out with their husband, right, with their spouse, whether it's a husband or wife. And usually when that doesn't work out then they seek support through other means but oftentimes what they ask is since we're in the Quran it says that we're garments for each other, does that mean that means that we protect our spouse and that protection involves not seeking support from a third party and if you can touch on that a bit what would be, you know, a good response to that. Right. And this is more of a cultural reality that we have in many cultures where we feel that well we can't go, we can't reach out. We're shaming ourselves when we put our when we acknowledge to some other party, some other individual about the fact that we're not getting along and we need help. And the one when we seek help it's important that we seek it from the right sources right, if you need medical help you go to a doctor, if you need religious advice, you go to Imam Tahr Allah bless him and preserve him or if you go to, you know, XYZ you go to the expert as Allah says, ask the people of expertise and the same thing goes here right, you go to people that are going to be able to help you bridge that gap who know how to bridge that gap and that is not putting yourself, that is not erring your dirty laundry that is seeking to help to repair the rip in the garment that's seeking to fix what has been broken that you don't have the ability to repair yourselves because there's a lot of hurt and there's a lot of pain and there's a lot of argumentation and there's a lot of emotions that don't allow you to get to where you need to get to and put your attention to where you need to put your attention to there's a famous incident that's related about Sayyidina Umar ibn al-Khattab a man, he comes to the door of Sayyidina Umar and he was having trouble with his wife and he comes to Sayyidina Umar to complain to him my wife doesn't listen to me he comes to the door of Umar and he hears Sayyidina Umar's wife giving it to him right and so the man he hears from outside what's going on inside and he's like let me get out of here man he has his own problems so the man starts to walk away and finally Umar comes to the door and the man is walking he says come come what did you want what did you need and the man he says well I needed to come to you to get advice how to deal with my wife because I can't deal with her but I found you O Umar Ya Amir al-Mu'mineen that you have the same issue so Sayyidina Umar he says this is my wife she cooks my food she takes care of my needs and even though she doesn't have to and even though she's doing this on her own accord and so can't I be patient with her because she's patient with me and so SubhanAllah you know the point here being related to the question that they saw they would seek advice they would seek to speak with each other to kind of figure out how to deal with their marital needs this is the time of this habah even so we have that precedent there as well now there's time for one more question so anybody has the mic has a question brave souls and asking questions in this audience I'm making my husband nervous I think no mashallah we are adoring how beautifully both of you are sitting there being true couple mashallah mashallah make dua for us make dua so what advice would you like to give us so called kind of young couples to do or not to do maybe just like two or three advice that's a wonderful question beautiful question make time for each other every single day every single week and then on repeat you guys are extremely busy for both professionals or someone's you know whatever it is that makes your schedule so busy and I know they're so busy I know that they are make time for each other make sure that when you're leaving the home you give each other a quick kiss a quick hug make that normal or talk about obviously family appropriate in front of your kids make that normal right a lot of times in our homes we grew up it's like and like never touch like you know come on I know that there's social norms and that's okay but so you know not only should that be displayed amongst before your kids that they can see that that's something healthy to look forward to but that's a very important touch point for you and your spouse and when you come back home same thing give a hug give a little appropriate kiss you know peck on the cheek on the forehead some type of love tap something but make that consistent you guys have really busy schedules text each other you know text text what you're having for lunch you know text you know I miss you whatever right do that once a day as much as it is possible try to have that 5 10 15 20 minutes of having tea together actually talking something beyond the bills and who should have done what and how come you didn't do the dishes and look at the trash that's outside and you still didn't fix the leaky pipe what's wrong with you right beyond all of that connect connect connect then when you're when when when when troubles happen as they will do as so how mentioned and as you mentioned it's natural those fights are going to be less caustic c-a-u-s-t-i-c right that kind of you know it's going to be less corrosive because you've connected so there's like a nice saying what is it fighting is less about how you actually you know what is it what you actually fight about but it's how you fight we don't want to be mud slinging we don't want to be nasty towards each other name calling so the more we can connect with each other in a loving way build that friendship spend time together ask each other questions like get to know each other always there's things that are changing as human beings we change all the time the nature of our relationship will change all the time so keep up to date with you know what they like what they don't like try to facilitate that both husband and wife right speak the loving which that you're that your spouse speaks and that can really really strengthen foundation so that when tough times fall as they will it doesn't really crumble the house inshallah what does that look like Allah SWT He says that we have taken from you O men a weighty heavy covenant as it regards to your women and so marriage is a serious matter right and it's not something to be taken lightly we don't at the slightest you know at the slightest difficulties just you know over drama ties and catastrophe catastrophize what's taking place in marriage and to make marriage work there's a nice saying they say that marriage is not about getting what you want but marriage is about wanting what you get and what that means is everybody's mind is spinning what does that mean marriage is not about getting what you want you can't mold your spouse into the person that you want them to be but it's about getting what you want meaning wanting what you get even I did right it's about making the best of what you have in your relationship learning your spouse understanding them loving them for who they are not who you dream them to be and putting your energy into that accepting their shortcomings the Prophet SAW he told us you know that a believing man a husband should not despise their wife in there's something that you don't like about her then there's other things that you like about her focus on the positive right and marriage is so much of that just focusing on the positive accepting them for who they are loving them for who they are and may Allah SWT bless you all well honestly I could have spent another half an hour listening and you're hearing the great questions but I know they have a flight to catch but I want to thank you so much sister Lubna, brother Subahil you really really first of all you're funny as heck so wonderful as my son was it was just a wonderful interaction and opportunity to be with you and please keep doing the amazing work that you do so thank you very much


And with that, I want to introduce Mayor Julian Castro. Thank you very much, Charlotte. Good evening.  Congratulations. Happy birthday for four years of Nowcast SA. Just a few years ago in San Antonio, those of us on this side of the aisle, public servants as well as our citizens, often felt like they were in the middle of the riddle of, if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound? When democracy happens and nobody really watches, what happens? Nowcast SA is so special and so important to our local democracy, because it has shown a light on what actually happens in the decision-making process, the policy-making process. And that's what we see, but also has played a great role in showing high school graduations, Luminadia, a whole host of other events that have tremendous community appeal and that are now accessible to the community in a way that they just were not before. And I just wanted to come this evening and to say a big thank you for that. I wanted to thank Ramiro and the library staff and the board. I know Gene Brady is here as well for their support of Nowcast. My colleagues and former colleagues like Councilwoman Ozuna and Radle and as well as Rod Radle for their great support, this has been an exciting endeavor. I remember the first time that I heard about Nowcast was when we launched SA 2020. And I remember because that day, that Saturday, September 25, 2010, after I was done speaking, I think it was Charlotte Ann or somebody else said, will you go do an interview over here on the side? And I said, what is Nowcast to say? And why am I having to go do a five minute interview over here? But then I realized that it was being broadcast to folks all over the community and really the whole world and folks like Juanee and others who might be away from the city but have a passion for ensuring that their hometown becomes a better and better place to live could now watch. I would have died for that when I was away in college or law school. And y'all are making it possible, not just for people outside the city, but for our community residents here. So a huge thank you for democratizing what happens throughout San Antonio. And I look forward on Friday, September 25, 2020, to see Nowcast SA broadcast our result show after SA 2020 is done. Thank you all very much.