We are back off the All-Star break and I definitely did enjoy some downtime getting to, you know, not grind through a couple of days and then they'll be DFS, but I gotta admit that once I got to start digging into Friday Slate, I was pretty ready for that All-Star break to be done because we're coming back with a lot of big names on the bump for today. Sherser, birds, Otani, guys like that all going at the same time. And I think they're all very viable for DFS. We're gonna break things down, let you know my ranking of those guys, how I view them for today and hopefully try to identify some big upside there and try to find some bats we like too for this Friday Slate of MLB DFS. Welcome on into the solo shop, that's right here on the FanDual Podcast Network and NumberFire.com. My name is Jim Sonness. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire.com. Here to break down Friday's 13 game main slate with lock set for 7.05 p.m. Eastern for today. There is no rain note for today but a big weather note is the heat because on the East Coast it is crazy, crazy hot. The coolest game in the Eastern time zone it's 86 degrees for today, so the West Coast games including spots like Arizona where the roof be closed you're gonna wanna downgrade bats relative to the bats on the East Coast. The problem is there aren't a lot of East Coast teams we may wanna stack for today. There is one I like quite a bit but it is a bit dicey for sure. So bump up the hitters on the East Coast, bump down pitchers inherently as a result of that as well and bump down bats in the West Coast. Like there are some stacks I like in cooler games. The opportunity cost of stacking them is higher today than typically is. So be aware of the weather specifically with how warm it is for the East Coast games for tonight. We'll break down what that means for stacks later on but also talk about those stud pitchers in just one second. But first a quick reminder to make sure you are subscribed to the number fire daily fantasy podcast because we have not just the solo shot back every weekday but also USC NASCAR PGA podcast every week over on the heat check side of things. So search for the number fire daily fantasy podcast wherever you get your podcasts hit subscribe and if you like what you hear leave us a rating and review as well. Fandals kicking off the second half with a big contest to welcome MLB DFS back. Tonight's squeeze contest includes $222,000 in total prizes, 40,000 of that will go to first place and 22.7% of the field will get paid. Best of all, just a $4 entry for tonight. So you could turn $4 into $40,000. To get yourself entered go to fandall.com or download the Fandall fantasy app eligibility restrictions apply. Pitching preview for this Friday main slate. Max Scherzer is the highest salary to pitch on Fandall checking in at $11,500. We have Corbin Burns checking in at $11,300. Next up is Shohei Otani at $11,000. You Darvus is 10-2 followed by Kevin Gauzman at 10-1. Charlie Morton facing Otani is 9-8. Logan Webb also 98. Nathan DeValde against the Blue Jays checking in at 92. Jameson Tyone is 91. Lucas G. Alito also there. Then we have Tyler Anderson, Cal Quantrell, Jose Arquiti, Marco Gonzalez, Brad Keller, Drew Rasmussen, Tyler Wells and Zach Gallin as the other guys at $8,000 or higher. Now there are a lot of good starters on the bump for today but my favorite, at least from a median 70th percentile perspective is Max Scherzer. Scherzer is going to be my top arm of the night. He's at home here facing the Padres and that's not a great matchup. The Padres have just a 21% strikeout rate versus righties in their current active roster with a 105 WRC plus. So I'm not actively seeking out guys facing the Padres but I am actively seeking out Max Scherzer. He has looked fantastic since he came off the IL and he's using a slider a lot which we saw a bit before he got hurt. So that does a couple of things. It ups his strikeout rate. He's had 11, nine and 11 strikeouts in those three games and that does stretch further back before the injury too but I think the bigger thing is leaning on that slider tells me Max Scherzer is fully healthy, he's confident and that is a big thing from a DFS perspective. The strikeout rate across the past starts for Scherzer with more sliders is 34%. That ranks third on this slate. He doesn't walk anybody, does a decent job of suppressing hard contact. I've got Scherzer projected for 8.7 strikeouts for tonight which is a really good number for a guy who also brings a quality floor to the table. Scherzer has not faced the Padres yet so far this year. So there's no familiarity issues here. I find no reasons to be too worried about Scherzer on this slate. I love him, I love the situation that he's in. I think the salary is fine given the stacks I want to use. So Max Scherzer to me definitively, the number one pitcher despite this being a very, very good slate. I'm gonna put Corbin Burns seconds. I do like Shohai Otani and Charlie Morton. We'll talk about then things to watch but Burns to me holds a slight edge over those two guys. Similar to Scherzer, it's not the most elite matchup here for Corbin Burns. He's facing the Rockies who have a 21% strikeout rate. It's pretty mediocre but their WRC plus is 85. They have a 33% fly ball rate. So similar to Scherzer, I think that Burns has a very high floor as a result of the matchup but he himself has a high ceiling. The most relevant sample for Burns is his past 11 starts. He's thrown a couple of fewer curveballs in that time. He has a 2.96 skill interactive ERA with a 32% strikeout rate and really good bat at ball data as well. So honestly, I think he's pretty similar to Scherzer and he's similar in terms of upside too. We've seen Burns at double digit strikeouts in two straight games. He's done in three of his past five and part of that is the strikeout rate that obviously does matter a lot but he's also going super, super deep into games. We've seen Burns go seven plus innings in four of his past five starts. He said 110 pitches twice in this 11 start stretch and he said 105 in three others. It's gone 95 or more in 11 consecutive starts. It's only 11 to have in my sheet is for him is those past 11. He's gone 95 plus in all those. So no, it's not a high strikeout matchup and that doesn't matter but Burns because of the length because of how good he is is projected for 8.0 strikeouts. That's a really good number. So I like him for sure. I will put him a hair above Otani and Morton but they're solid too. We'll talk about them in Thanks to Watch because they are worthy of, I think, being in your player pool for tonight as well. For the value play, I think you could consider either Jose Quintana or Braxton Garrett but Garrett just faced the pirates. He was awesome in that game but just saw them. Quintana not the biggest upside guy. So I'm gonna talk about Zach Gallin here and Gallin hasn't been a high upside guy so far this year. His strikeout rate is fine at 23%. He has hit double digit strikeouts but he was just in one game. He had nine in another but those are his only games with more than seven strikeouts. So I'm not as into Gallin as I have been in the past because he hasn't shown the same upside this year but value is pretty thin. He's a good pitcher. His matchup is okay based on the Nationals here with a 97 WRC plus and a 34% fly ball rate. That should help him quite a bit. Gallin also does get boosted from being at home. He has a 25% strikeout rate at home this year versus 21% on the road. Pitchers like the league average dip in the strikeout rate on the road is about one percentage point from where they are at home. So he seems to have a slightly bigger gap between those two. And that's even with the 11th strikeout game for Gallin coming on the road. So he's been more consistently high-ish strikeout at home than on the road. I think he's fine. He's not someone I desperately want to use. Gallin that is. I wouldn't be shocked if I just focus on the studs. I think that with the teams I want to stack I can probably just focus on Scherzer, Berthes, Otani and Morton feel good about that. So I'll probably just wind up omitting Gallin but if you want to go for some value plays for tonight try to load up on Giancarlo Stanton era judge spoiler alert. I would say that Gallin would be my favorite. Of the value plays available to us. Let's go now to the stacking discussion for today. We'll talk about the Yankees in the second and first. Let's talk about the Brewers here. They're facing Antonia Sinsatella. I mentioned that the East Coast is very warm. I am betting though the roof open in Milwaukee it's about 84 degrees there. So not bad from a weather perspective despite the fact they are in the Midwest for tonight. This game is not a course. So no bump in stacking against Sinsatella from that perspective, but we can still do it here. Sinsatella is making his first start off the IL which means there is always some extra uncertainty there but Sinsatella was not great in his lone rehab start. He led up four runs across four innings. So that's one thing working in Milwaukee's favor. Sinsatella also lets up a lot of balls and play. Now to his credit, his strikeout rate has been on the rise because before his trip to the IL we saw Sinsatella throwing fewer sliders across his previous seven starts. The strikeout rate was up quite a bit but it's quite a bit for him. Usually around 11%, he was at 18% this time but they 5% walk rate. So even with the gains in the strikeout rate Sinsatella was still letting up a ball and play about 77% of the time. It's a pretty big number. 41% of those were hard hit as well. We saw Sinsatella face the twins on the road in this time. So that's not a course field and he led up four runs in that game. Now facing the Brewers and they're not as potent of an offense as the twins but they're not bad either. They have a 183 ISO, they have a 106 WRC plus. They can definitely do some damage. So I'll be in on the Brewers here because Sinsatella even with the gain being in Milwaukee not a course field and not on the very, very warm east coast still warm enough in Milwaukee assuming the roof is open for today. Sinsatella does not have big platoon splits so we can kind of go at anybody here. Rowdy Tlaez probably the top option. Willie Adamus is solid too but I want to talk about Colton Wong. I think that he is underrated at $2,500. He has a 197 ISO against righties this year. He's also stolen 10 bags and that's really good. For $2,500 you're getting two paths to upside and he's utilized both so far this year. So I'll be heavy on Colton Wong. He also feels second base which has been a nightmare for the most part this year. So I think Wong is one of the focal points of this slate which is why I feel confident in putting Max Scherzer at the top despite the fact his salary is $11,500. So Colton Wong and the Brewers a fun, fun stack for tonight. The Yankees talked about them before. I think they are going to be a primary focuser tonight and they're facing Tyler Wells who's had a very good year. He has a 3.38 ERA. He has a 3.41 expected ERA but there are some issues in his profile especially against a powerful team playing in hot weather. So I'm down a sec against Wells for tonight. The biggest issue for Wells or biggest issues I should say are his fly ball rates and his lack of strikeouts. The fly ball rate is 46%. The strikeout rate is 17%. So he's letting up a lot of balls in play and a lot of those are in the air. That can get you in trouble in the wrong spots. I think that against a team like the Yankees in warm weather, it is the wrong spot. So no, I don't think what Wells has done so far is fluky. I think that he is a pretty good pitcher. He's a precious hard contact. That's all very good. And it's probably sustainable in the right situations. I just don't think this is the right situation. The Yankees have faced Wells three separate times this year. He didn't really dominate any of those starts. So I feel okay about this despite the fact that I respect Wells as a pitcher. It might not be the safest stack because of that but I like the upside. So I feel good about stacking the Yankees here tonight. We do want to bump up the righties here because Wells has some pretty extreme reverse platoon splits compared to most righties. He lets up, gets fewer strikeouts against righties. Let's have more fly balls. So that obviously boosts judge and Stanton but also Laborator is Josh Donaldson. They get bumps up. D.G. Lemay, he was fine at 31. I typically don't use him but the salary is better than usual at 31. So I guess I can go there but I prefer Torres and Donaldson over him at the respect of salary. So the righties for sure are the key stacking points on the Yankees for tonight. For the third stack I do think the Ray is great out well. I just don't know who they're facing. It seems like it's Brad Keller but it seems like Zach Rankies also listens to the spots. Probably going to be Keller so we'll focus on him but if it does for some reason wind up being cranky I'd be okay with the Royals in that situation as well or the rays I should say. Keller's bat of ball numbers pretty good. He's been using more foreseamers and fewer sinkers in his past eight starts. In that time, even with the emphasis on the foreseamer he's still letting up just a 34% hard hit rate and getting a decent number of ground balls. So typically I don't want to sack against that but he's faced a lot of bad teams in this stretch. He got Detroit twice and he got Oakland twice. If you look at the other teams he's faced in that time we saw some struggles. Keller led up four runs to the Astros, five to the Orioles, three to the Blue Jays and four to the Guardians. So when we've seen Keller face decent teams things have definitely been tougher for him. The rays not phenomenal. They have a 102 WRC plus against righties and their current active roster. So I think that they're like not ideal but they could do well in this situation. I'm willing to stack them here on a slate where stacking is overall pretty tough. So the rays to me, a high quality stack for today. The splits against Keller are pretty even. I don't worry too much about righty versus lefty here. We can kind of just go with the guys we like the most. And the fun thing is that with Wander Franco being out we could downgrade the rays but Brandon Lau being back does help them quite a bit. Lau looked pretty good in his first two games back off the IL before the all-star break. He had a barrel in there, he had three hard hit balls. So I'm willing to use Lau right away despite the fact he is fresh off an injury. I saw enough in that two games that two games didn't where I can feel pretty good about him. So it helps make up for the loss of Wander Franco definitely do downgrade this offense without Franco but having Lau there at least smooths things out a bit the extent where I am okay. Stacking them for tonight. Let's talk about things to watch here and talk about why I love Ohtani and Morton. I mean, Ohtani should be obvious but my strikeout numbers love Morton too. So from a projection perspective these guys have really, really high upside and they've been racking up strikeouts. The Angels and the Braids are both teams that will strike out as well and both Ohtani and Morton go deep in games. So if you are worried about roster rates for Scherzer and for Burns I think you're very okay to pivot to Ohtani and Morton for tournaments. Again, only for tournaments. Prefer Scherzer and Burns by a wide margin for cash gains but Ohtani and Morton could very easily wind up being the top two starters for tonight. So I'll put them below Scherzer and Burns even for tournaments but I'm okay pivoting there if you're worried about roster rate on those other two guys. There are a couple of spots where I'm okay with one offs but don't really wanna do a full stack. One of those is the Royals based in Jurasmussen who struggled a bit recently with some batted balls. So that's a fine matchup just not a super potent lineup. Bobby Whitz there, Hunter Dozier, MJ Melendez they all have decent power numbers versus righties. So I like them for one offs, I think they're fine there or potentially a mini stack just, I don't know I don't feel great stacking the Royals in any situation. So mini stacks are one offs of the Royals. The other spot for one offs is Arizona. They're based in Patrick Corbin most likely not officially announced yet which would be a revenge game for Patrick Corbin of course facing off against Arizona but letting up a lot of hard contact still he's not great against lefties which is why you could potentially go for a full stack here but I'd be highest on the righties here. Carson Kelly since he came back a 221 ISO he's only $2,200. If you want a one-off to save you a lot of salary Carson Kelly is probably that guy. I do like Wong too but I think that Kelly right up there with him as well from a value play perspective. So Carson Kelly, a key one-off facing Corbin for tonight. Let's finish up here with some Dinger calls for this Friday slate, the boring one. Again, I kind of have to go as boring as possible go there a judge. I know that like again, it's can't get worse than that but facing a low strikeout pitcher who lets up a lot of fly balls. It's very warm. I'm going there a judge. I'm sorry, it's very boring but I need to do it. For the fun one, I will go Colton Wong. I think that like, I don't know. Maybe it's just me but I kind of overlooked how good he's been this year. And I think people have broadly too with the salary being $2,500. So he's only at six home runs so far this year but he's hitting for power overall. He's making decent contact, putting the ball in the air. I like that a lot. Maybe we can inside the park home run with Colton Wong for tonight. He's got four triples so far this year. So maybe we'll get that instead. But either way, Colton Wong if the judge one was too boring, hopefully this helps make up for it. So Colton Wong, the fun home run call for today. That is all that we have here for today. Coming off the MLB All-Star break. If you want more DFS action for this weekend though, do not forget to check out our NASCAR podcast or Pocono. That is up on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast already. We got UFC this weekend via Austin Swain. That'll be up later today on Friday. So get all that by subscribing to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. Pretty fun slave for tonight with all the good pitchers. I think it's a good night to spend up a pitcher and just bask in having these fun, fun guys back in our lives once again. If you've got any questions for me, I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the FanDual Podcast Network at FanDual Podcast. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in for today. Good luck to you with your MLB DFS. Linus will talk to you once again on Monday for another week, a full week of MLB DFS. This has been the solo shot right here on the FanDual Podcast Network.


Good morning from Helsinki. Welcome to the UNU-Wider online conference, Development Challenges in Africa in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. And welcome to our session four on the new normal and future development of Africa. My name is Rachel Gisselquist. I'm a senior research fellow here at UNU-Wider. And it's a great pleasure to be here today to chair this session and to see many of you joining us in the audience. As we've been discussing throughout this conference, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented challenges in Africa and around the world on all fronts of development. And over this past year, we've seen significant and worrying impact on African economies, livelihoods and welfare. In this session, we consider what is the new normal and we turn to the future. So what will this new normal mean for development in Africa? What kind of future do we envision post pandemic? What are key areas of concern and what kind of future do we hope to see and how can we achieve that? I'm very pleased to have three excellent speakers to welcome them in this session to help us reflect on these important questions. Each of them will focus in their opening remarks around a different aspect of the new normal and the future of development for Africa. And then we'll turn to discussion and provide an opportunity for you the audience to raise questions. So our first speaker, Ms. Satu Santila is the Director General for the Department of Development Policy Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the government of Finland. She will focus her remarks on the role of development partners. In addition to her role as Director General for the Department of Development Policy, Ms. Santila is also Finland's IDA Deputy for the World Bank. Prior to her current role in the ministry, she was Executive Director from Finland at the World Bank where she represented Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden. That's a list. She has also held several earlier positions in Finland's Ministry of Government Affairs including Deputy Director General Department for Development Policy, Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Finland in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Finland in New Delhi, India. And she's held numerous roles with the Finnish Red Cross including International Training Coordinator. Our second speaker will be Dr. Desiree Venkateshalam whose remarks will focus on domestic resource mobilization in the wake of COVID-19. He is Director of the Resource Mobilization and External Finance Department of the African Development Bank which oversees the African Development Fund, partnerships, trust funds and co-financing. He has also served as Director of the Operational Policies Department and Director of the Research Department of the African Development Bank. Prior to joining the bank, he was Professor of Economics at HEC Montreal, the University of Montreal, Canada and he holds a PhD in Economics from Queens University, Canada. Our third speaker will be Professor Juguna Undungu who will speak on emerging opportunities. Professor Undungu is the Executive Director of the African Economic Research Consortium based in Kenya. Before joining the AERC, he held the position of Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya from 2007 until 2015. And prior to this, he held positions with the African Economic Research Consortium, the University of Nairobi, the International Development Research Center and the Kenyan Institute of Public Policy, Research and Analysis. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. So a very warm welcome to our three speakers. So without further ado then, let us turn to our excellent panel. I would like to begin first by inviting Director General Satu Santila to make her remarks. Thank you, Rachel and it's a great honor to be with you here today in this virtual event. So a few remarks from the perspective of the role of development partners going forward. And I will go through my remarks looking at it from the perspective of what happened in the past few months. What have we learned and what's the emerging thinking? But I have to underline that it's early days, it's very difficult to make very sort of firm predictions of how the world is going to look like because a lot of things are still uncertain. And we can go straight to the second slide. There we go, thank you. So no need to go into details of how dramatic the impact has been and continues to be, including in Africa, but just to underline that it really is a very comprehensive development crisis. It's a health crisis, but the impact on economic or the social and economic consequences are dramatic. And also the underlying challenges including the environmental crises have not gone away. And it's been said so far that in general in Africa the impact of the COVID-19 crisis have been mostly socioeconomic and less health related, but this might also change as the pandemic evolves and the virus mutates. So I don't think we should have two firm conclusions on this yet. But we do know that there are long lasting effects on the population and development. And this crisis will remain with us for some time to come. I guess my message on it is that this is not the time to shift focus radically for the development partners. So the important long-term goals remain. And of course we know that the setbacks are dramatic in many ways and we need to be very sensitive to partner countries priorities and the needs of communities and populations. And particularly any crisis and also this crisis is hard on people in vulnerable situations such as women and girls, persons with disabilities and we do need to continue focusing on these populations. Next slide please. So some of the lessons that we are learning in this situation and I have to say when I was preparing for this event I realized that most of the lessons that I think we're learning are not new lessons. These many of the things that I'm talking about are things we already knew and are learning again and are sort of continuing to think that these are very important for a development partner state to bear in mind. So one of them is that we need to be agile and prepared to adjust our activities so that we can ensure our continuity in very rapidly evolving situations. The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken up working practices, partnerships, business models put unprecedented strain on public finances. And against this backdrop development cooperation agencies have shown impressive agility responding to the health and humanitarian aspects of the pandemic while also ensuring a program continuity. For example, in our case, a lot of practical issues have been there to resolve starting from allowing flexibility for reporting timelines or spending timelines, various requirements so that we have helped our partners to continue activities that were continued to be relevant and that we didn't, for example, you know, projects have a lot of people employed, we did not want to be in a situation where there's a sudden halt of activities that did not need to be stopped. According to the international development response to COVID-19 has been most effective where it built on existing good practice, local knowledge and leadership and where flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances was already built into systems and partnerships. And many developing development agencies have leveraged existing networks and domestic and partner countries structures to coordinate their efforts in COVID-19 response. Of course, it has to be admitted that a coordinated joint-up coherent transparent international response is difficult. It's always difficult and it's difficult in these kinds of circumstances even more so. The role of local actors, particularly civil society contribution to sustainable development has been reinforced during the COVID pandemic and it seems that development agencies are placing more trust on them, have engaged politically in support of their work. However, many local organizations struggle to access sufficient development finance and room for maneuver to maneuver. So I do think that this is a promising trend, something that will hopefully live on. But there are lots of questions emerging from, for example, challenges of monitoring as the situation drags on and new methodologies and partnerships need to emerge. Next. But while, of course, continuation has been important, so has been the ability to adapt, adjust and respond to the new situation. The pandemic has demonstrated even more clearly than before the importance of being able to adapt to changing contexts, not only the pandemic but also the ever more frequent natural disasters, conflicts and other external risks call for greater coordination, flexibility and capacity to adapt our support to the changing needs of our partner countries and communities. The OECD doc says that COVID-19 pandemic and its secondary effects have revealed the importance but and the challenge of applying lessons, evidence and evaluations during crisis. This is really hard to do but ever more important. Development agencies should be better prepared to conduct rapid learning to assess and share evidence to guide decision-making to support internal and cross-country learning and to stay focused on development results for accountability and communication. What has happened to a rather large degree is redirectional activities and funding within programs but also then from activities to other activities. It seems that donors have displayed quite a lot of creativity in reallocating budgeted funds and raising new resources as well. And humanitarian needs have rapidly increased with multiple crises simultaneously and the needs have been really through the roof and some additional resources have been mobilized for that. An interesting case of cooperation and coordination is what we call the Team Europe effort where European Commission or the European institutions I should say together with Member States have really made an effort to allocate resources to the pandemic and its impact and also to work better together. The EU has really responded swiftly in the past few months and has wanted to show its solidarity. The EU as the biggest global donor also of course needed to do this. Then it's clear that this kind of a an intensified coordination it was an opportunity that the pandemic provided and it's been very interesting to be part of that. Initially it started out as a sort of a COVID-19 response but now we're looking at it much more long term for the EU and Member States to improve our collective development impact and offering. And right now the Team Europe is translated into concrete actions to support our joint vision for recovery that is sustainable human rights based green and strengthens gender equality and boost human development especially for those furthest behind. And Finland has been participating in these efforts and we feel that a unified approach means more results and impact and we can join resources from Member States, the EU budget and European financial institutions and to continue to look for more innovative ways to coordinate. Of course at the same time underlining that all of this should be inclusive and ownership has to remain with our partner countries but just that we're working better together to make sure that we are as good a partner as we can be. There's been a lot of coordination happening around the debt issues and this will continue I think for some time to come knowing how central the debt question is. The debt moratorium initiative that is there right now has been one way of easing the economic burden of the pandemic on developing countries. Of course it has to be said that compared to previous debt crisis, the situation is rather different now because of the nature of the debt at the moment. So innovative solutions are going to be needed going forward and it has to be a responsibility that is shared by all debtors. Vaccinations, a lot of discussion of course internationally on vaccinations as well and we do think that the global community will need to ensure that vaccines are made available to everyone, no one is safe until we all are safe. The major effort that has gone into this is around what we call the ACT Accelerator Access to COVID-19 tools, which has been there is there to accelerate development production and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines and that has brought together government, scientists, businesses, civil society and philanthropists and global health organizations. And within that the so-called COVAX initiative where the vaccination work has been going on and there is a financing instrument within that where 92 low and middle-income countries will be able to access donor funded doses of safe and effective vaccines. And the EU has been a major funder of this. It's not yet able to provide vaccinations. We all know that the availability of vaccinations has been somewhat disappointing so far but this will later in the year be an important contribution and the EU is also working on methods to share vaccines from our own vaccination pools as soon as they become available. Then I wanted to just next slide, show very quickly as a picture what Finland has been doing. It's just a case of how it looks like in practice. Last year, this is what we were able to reallocate and show some additional or provide some additional resources to the COVID response. We've reallocated approximately 10% of our existing development budget and then added some more, mainly humanitarian and then various other multilateral funding. I really want to underline here the significance of working multilaterally. Finland is one of the countries that provides a significant share of unearmarked funding to both humanitarian and other multilateral organizations and therefore they've been able to react quickly and this is really important for flexibility. Then let's go forward. Sorry, you're muted. I muted myself on accident. Yes. So looking forward then, of course, maintaining global cooperation is really important and focusing on sustainable development priorities. The BBBG, the Building Back Veteran Greener slogan is popular now and of course, it does describe a vision forward. On the other hand, it is very much the same vision that we've had before. It's really sustainable development combining the various areas of sustainability together. For example, Finland has been going through a country programming process at the same time as the pandemic has been going on and we do think that the deepening work on areas that we've been working with our partners before is really the way forward, focusing on service delivery and the most important change really for us seems to be a greater emphasis on flexibility, adaptive management and building resilience in our partner countries and communities. The big question is then, how will development finance develop going forward? At the same time, as the needs in developing countries are increasing, so is also the crunch on the economic and fiscal challenges in donor countries. So far, we haven't seen any major impacts on ODA apart from the reduction declared or announced by United Kingdom, but we will only see going forward whether there'll be an impact and how big that might be. The DUC members have declared their ambition last year to strive to protect ODA budgets during the crisis, but of course the reality will only be seen in a couple of years time. But of course, again, this underlines that public funding will never be able to solve development on its own, but we do need to continue working hard on leveraging other resources, private investments and innovating on how best to leverage and catalyze resources. So I'll end here. I don't think that I'm able to paint a very new normal picture. I think I'm more relying on that actually what we know about good development seems to be valid also in the new situation. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let us turn now to our next speaker, Dr. Desiree Venkateshalon. Yes, good morning everyone. Can you hear me? I can, yes, good morning. Good and let me start by apologizing for being a bit late. We have regular power cats in my neighborhood in Abidjan and those of you who know the continent unfortunately, this is one of the issues we need to tackle. So I'm working out of my phone as a router, but that was positive in Africa, 4G revolution. And my good friend Andrew Gunnar, who I've not seen in a long time, his country, his home country is really a trendsetter in bad space. So it's good to be with you and happy to see Satu also. And thanks for having me for this fantastic exchange. I will not use any slide because I want to share my view and I also want to say I'm speaking in my private capacity and the views I express should not be attributed in one way or another to the African development group. Just need to say that at the beginning. So I've been asked to speak on the resource mobilization side for the continent and I'll speak a little bit more on the operational side given this is my area of work and my experience and I think I can bring more value to the exchange on that. I listened in yesterday. Also there were my good friend Steve Karanjikizi from ECA, Mario Petzini from OECD. So what Satu has said, I think the roots of a problem we know them very well. So, you know, when you look at resource mobilization you can see it in the post COVID world or in the during COVID world. You can see it in two ways, as completely negative or remain optimist. I remain very optimist and I'll tell you why. The latest news on resources for the continent is actually quite intriguing and very surprisingly positive in some countries. And then Djubu now will share his own experience and maybe disagree with me on that. For Cote d'Ivoire for instance, at the beginning of a year, you may be, I've seen it in the news, Cote d'Ivoire issued a 850 million Euro bond, 850 million Euro bond, that's close to one billion dollar, vastly oversubscribed. We're country like Cote d'Ivoire, vastly oversubscribed at a yield of 4.3%. 4.3% and 250 million Euro was for a maturity of 27 years. So, and Djubu now when you were governor, I mean, you did fantastic job on domestic capital market. We welcome your views on how we can leverage domestic capital market. Same thing happened for Benin. More recently, couple of weeks ago, Benin went on the capital market, raised half a billion Euro at a little bit higher yield of 6%. So, one message is, as we know, there's vast liquidity in the market. There's ample liquidity in the market. The issue is the risk and how do you tap into it? So, how do you structure the transaction? How do you work together to ensure that African countries have long-term patient capital to fund their national development plan? So, I'll come back to this a little bit later.  I'm not saying things are not bad, you know? I'll give the numbers later. But there are glimpses of very positive financing coming to parts of the continent. And Benin and Côte d'Ivoire are just two examples I've given. I'll come back to things which may be a little bit more worrisome later for financing and development. Now, I think also just to speak on what Satu said about development partners working together. I've been in this business for 15, 16 years now. And I can tell you, this is the first time ever on the operational side. I've seen development partners come so quickly, quickly and at scale, not enough. Nothing, I mean, I think Satu, I agree with you. Nothing will be, I mean, it's especially for the continent, we don't have deep pockets as European countries, as the US, as Japan, we are in a different ball game. But still, you know, at the African Development Bank Group, in a couple of months, we came up with a COVID response facility, $10 billion. That's not small amount. Now, that $10 billion, you can think it's big, but it's still not enough and it's much smaller than my colleagues at the World Bank Group I've been able to put on the table. It's a multiple of that, multiple of that. We were closely together and the World Bank Group has been able also to put a lot of resources. Satu spoke about the EC. So, second message in the short run, so the first message is on financing our long-term national development plan. We need to stay the course. We need to leverage all possibilities, including capital markets, including domestic capital markets, all this stuff. That's one. Second message, on short term, liquidity problem. I think we've done quite okay and national governments have actually been leading from their own balance sheet, but the international community has taken a role, an important role. So the issue now, it's not only liquidity, it's solvency. And this is where Satu, on the DSSI, I've been part into the G20 conversation. That is one of the big topic which we need to address because so many of our countries have a debt sustainability issue now. I mean, out of the 37 poorest countries on the continent, the low-income African countries, slightly more than half of them are either at high risk of death distress or in death distress. So we need to address for solvency issue and it has to be addressed urgently. The DSSI is a fantastic G20 initiative that we need to upload. We need to keep that and push it. But I think now we need to set our sites on addressing the solvency issue and there are fundamental debt issues which have to be resolved on both sides, on both sides, both the debtors and the lenders. But that conversation must happen. Otherwise, the national development plans and the resources for countries will not be there. I mean, if you look at what happened during HIPAA and the Iran, fiscal space was created and countries use that fiscal space to improve on the public finance management, on their social spending, a lot of good things were done. So we need to have a conversation on the solvency issue to assure that the resources flow towards countries. Now, so that's an immediate aspect for resources as COVID pays. And on the long-term one, we need to keep our eye on the ball and address and find ways to mobilize, as I say, patient long-term capital to address the fundamental bottlenecks which are infrastructure. These problems will not go away. You know, if you look at energy, if you look at water and sanitation, these are problems which needs to be addressed. You know, that has to be addressed. So on the one hand, we need to address the short-term issue, immediate issue, which is being addressed. And then in the long-term, we need to build on the capacity that many African countries have now. You know, they've cleaned their books, some of them have quite good public finance management put in place. If you look at the country like Rwanda, for instance, you know, if you roll the clock 20 years ago, no one would have expected such a good economic performance for a country like Rwanda. There are countries which still need to improve, but we need to recognize, but not, I mean, the fundamentals on public finance management and domestic resource mobilization has improved in many countries. So just the high-level messages I want to convey, because we are not in a physical space where we can, you know. So just to put that forward, one, there are opportunities right now. And we need to recognize that, but we need to recognize that there are many countries, in particular, the most fragile countries. And within that group, one area where we need to keep in mind is the Sahel countries. I mean, Finland works very, very closely with us and I want to thank Finland. Finland has been innovative and provided us concessional donor loan at the bank. One of the very few countries providing such assistance. So I want through you, Sato, to thank Finland. But there are countries, there's a group of countries in Africa, but whatever we say, require sustained and high-level of grant money. We cannot run away from that. And Sato, I heard you say rightly that the commitments on podium are there, but there are also indications that in the short run, that is being, you know, sort of not so, so, so sure. If you look at our number one contributor to the concessional fund in the African Development Fund is the UK. The UK is one of a few countries with no countries, which has a 0.7 GNI for ODA commitment captured in law, but they had to revise it down to 0.5. So my message is on grant money, on concessional resources, we need to be there. The second one is address for solvency issue. And this one, it has to come from the G7 G20 with a strong voice from African countries and also actions taken by African countries. And then for the long-term, my view is there's a need for front-loading of assistance urgently. You know, the needs are so big, but we can't stay at such a low level. We floated an idea two years ago with actually it was Minister Ngozi who is now going to be in a new capacity of front-loading future flows of ODA, issuing what we call a big bond and getting those resources urgently on board. So my last message is really think differently and innovate to get in those funds. So I've not used my presentation. I just thought I'll share my views on an operational side and I hope that was useful and I'll happy to engage with you. Thank you. That was terrific. Thank you very much. I think we now turn to our third speaker, Professor Tuguna Ndungu. The Zoom podium is yours. Can I move on? Okay. Let me go to the first screen then. It's five areas of coverage. I wanted actually to look at the impact of COVID pandemic and what has happened from fiscal space to poverty to household poverty to inequality. And I think some of this has been mentioned. But then I also say that the digital evolution was given some space. And this is helping because of the electronic payments platform and I'm going to show that in some countries in Africa they even design targeted social protection programs. But of course there are more benefits when it comes to electronic payment system, rich electronic payment system then make sure that everybody in the economy is included. That is very inclusive. And the third point I want to talk about is the post-COVID economic recovery strategy. It is now required, but where do we start? And the fourth point is perhaps we may want to ask ourselves what is going to be the best or what is going to define Africa's development path? We know we have failed in some of the approaches that we've taken in the past and the reasons why they have failed but we need to come and revisit that and then ask the question will the for the industrial revolution be the answer? And finally, I have some thoughts about why economists in Africa have not structurally adjusted the economic transmission has been slow but what we need to focus on. And for me that is very, very important and that is likely to be the one that will help me in terms of talking about the future activities. Let me go to the next slide. Thank you. This one was just to talk about what is happening to the debt. The death tuition is worsening, has worsened. And you can look at the countries in distress and look at countries which had grow risk, they are diminishing. And in the second top, you look at the countries in distress and hide that you can see they have been increasing. So we can actually show that the COVID-19 has exacerbated the condition. The next slide, the question is why is that in Africa? The next slide, why is that? It's because Africa started from a very weak point and now the recession is biting. The fiscal space was already diminished and then debt crisis was booming. But my biggest point is at that point that debt accumulation in Africa was not actually accompanied with capital accumulation that would support the economy in Africa in terms of future capacity for growth. And this is where we are getting beaten by the rain. So we are asking why are we here? But look at it, there are several factors that explain that point. Why did the debt accumulation not reflect in capital accumulation to support the capacity for future growth in African economy? This is where we have to reverse things and this is where emerging opportunities tells us that is where we go to reverse the issues. The next slide, please. And then the impact of the pandemic on household poverty. We have had studies on recent data using even phone service. I think we have been happy with Kipra in Kenya and Uganda, Senegal and Ethiopia and they provided some of this data and we have done some analysis. But one of the startling conclusion is that the efforts of reversing poverty and inequality and household poverty and inequality in African countries for the last 20 years seems to be reversing. It is actually a very startling conclusion. Ethiopia, for example, where poverty within the COVID time has increased by 4%, look at Ghana in 14%, look at Kenya with a 10%, Senegal with 32%, that 3% and Uganda with about 8%. So you can see that the poverty, if you compare poverty in the COVID days and look at household poverty, especially female-headed households and urban poor, we have sort of reversed the gains that we have really had managed for the last 20 years in terms of poverty education. And so it means that the first point in terms of the opportunities coming up is to say the impact of the pandemic on household poverty, we now have to say, how do we reverse this? Let me go to the next slide. Now, the second point I had mentioned is that digital evolution, electronic payments platform, this is what the CREP mentioned. I thought very hard when I was governor of central bank of Kenya to introduce mobile phone-based financial services. But actually what nobody saw and even the big banks didn't see is that we were actually fighting for a retail electronic payments platform, retail because it can bring everyone from whichever corner of the market using the mobile phone. And so it means that the digital systems came in handy when the pandemic rose and governments encouraged retail electronic payments platforms and discouraged cash. And for me, I'm happy that even Kenya designed very quickly social protection programs and in the urban areas to protect some of the urban families. And this is a major benefit because essentially we are getting an opportunity to accept that retail electronic payments platform can evolve, which is effective, it is efficient, it is transparent and safe. And so it is also initial entry to financial services. And so it means in Africa because we are plagued by informal markets. It could be an indirect way of formalizing informal markets. But more importantly for me is that the evolution of e-government services, tax policy designs, tax payments platforms and even revenue administration to minimize refugees has become very, very critical. And I think this ties up with what Desiree was talking about domestic resource mobilization. We can design optimal tax instruments with very optimal tax payments platforms because the whole idea of taking a trip to pay taxes or going to your bank to pay taxes is really not working. So, but the whole picture in terms of the emerging opportunities is that once you have a successful electronic payments platform, then it means that you can actually or you can perhaps it can become a game changer. And we know that FinTechs can actually roll out products to affect the whole sectors of the economy. This is frictionless development. It is already invested in. And so it's a question of rolling out new product. Let me go to the next slide, please. Yeah, the post COVID economic recovery is required. We need an economic recovery strategy. But let me state that if you look at the history of Africa in most of the developing countries, it takes a crisis to push for implementation of reforms. And that's why I remember Kofi Annan said that to please make sure that you do not take a, you have to take advantage of any crisis that comes because you can push for them. But I'm not telling you to go looking for a crisis so that we can push reforms. It is the other way around taking advantage of the crisis so that we push reforms. Where are the critical areas of reforms? One is the fiscal side. The other one is the debt side for capital accumulation that gives economists capacity for future growth. I wouldn't want to go into the details why this has happened, but it is very, very important that we can see what lessons we have learned. We were dealing with a lot of work in healthcare financing and healthcare infrastructure. And we can see where the rain beat us. Then content of free trade area is an area that everybody is talking about, but I have argued in the G20 meeting and G20 meetings that if we don't reform the global value chain, then content of free trade area is not going to give us a lot of benefits. The more critical issues are institutional reforms. Institutions will be important in shaping economic behavior. And this is more fundamental than even factor in governance because markets and coordination failures are coming in just because of the institutions, the capacity and capability in institutions. And this will go hand in hand in terms of improving government for the government, the role of government to facilitate and overcome coordination failures. And that for me is very, very important because coordination failures are, is the one that has led to market failure. In fact, what Desiree was saying that you have bonds that have been of a subscribed is because one, if you look at the new sector, there are no opportunities for investment. And if you did, the risk profile is not yet known first because of the pandemic. And the other one is actually government and institutional structure. We refuse always to talk about the government and institutional structure, which is the one providing us with massive risk profile that we cannot overcome. You can deal with market risks, but you cannot deal with the institutional and the government failure of government policies risks because they're quite demanding for a needy being. We go to the next slide. The next slide is talking about the fourth industrial revolution. And this is where of course I'd mentioned about the digital evolution taking shape. And I do know that we can talk about this until cows come home because it is exciting. It's a new idea. It's a question of whether we are going to get people to actually follow up in terms of what is happening. And we have seen everybody is now adapting digital services, digital financial services. We have seen even modernizing sectors like agriculture. And for us, this is a very important development. So essentially, I'm not going to details. Maybe let's go to the next slide because I'm just giving examples of what the fourth industrial revolution can move. We have seen improvement in healthcare and even human capital. And we have seen artificial intelligence coming in, terror health. And these are very, very important because they are defining how the fourth industrial revolution if well-defined can harness and even create a development path for Africa. The next slide. The next one, this is a good marketing tool for... If you look at the Brookings and what we presented last year in terms of the fourth industrial revolution, we have so many examples. Digital education. And this I can talk about because AARC has training programs across public universities in Africa. And all of a sudden, we could not bring students together to travel. And so we mounted virtual programs at the graduate level, master's and PhD across African universities. It is so something means that we can actually digitize but now the new English is digitalization of education. And we have seen virtual earnings and they are working even when students were, pupils were at home. And we have seen even e-conferencing is working a lot. So it is the fourth industrial revolution may help us in terms of skip some of the implementation strategies that actually need it or move. Then we can always debate about the aspects of fourth industrial revolution and what can be adapted. But it has become quite easy to adapt. The whole thing is now, can we make it a national policy? Then we go to the final slide. I think maybe that is going to be the final slide there. Okay. Number five. Now, having seen the industrial revolution that what the fourth industrial revolution and how it can support African economies to leap from their development strategy. The next question is to say, how can we achieve structural economic transformation in African economies, which is more urgent now? I have few points to make. I have started talking about emphasizing the role of institutions in shaping economic behavior, which is more fundamental than factor endowment. And here I can talk about even my role as governor of the central bank of Kenya. We pushed for reforms in the payment system. And that's how we did. We have digital financial system. We pushed for new monetary policy framework that is consistent and allows us to look at the avenues that we look at. I pushed for domestic resource mobilization using infrastructure board to create capital, to create, to provide government with funds for public investments and to close the infrastructure gap. It means that once you have a dedicated institutional maker, they can push for these reforms. The failure of input substitution, for example, if you want to see in the 1960s, 50s and 60s, for example, was due to lack of capital accumulation to upgrade industries. And was based or was tried to be applied by countries in now in Southern Africa that were also capital scarce. It could not work. The poverty trap we see in most African countries is sustained by the inability to implement dynamic structural transformation because capital accumulation is inadequate to cross the thresholds required for this structure transformation. We can address this with a lot of ease. We don't need any new ideas. It's only a question of focusing on how the institutions should bring this. When opportunities arise to raise the level of capital accumulation via, for example, debt financed public infrastructure that I've talked about. Governors use to step up and they destroy the process through so many aspects mismatch in terms of the investment as well as the cost of the delivery of those projects. And this is in addition to poor government facilitation to overcome coordination failures. And we have seen that coordination failures actually leads to policy failures and even market failures. And this is very, very important. We need to look at how does physical infrastructure and core infrastructure are coordinated so that they support the private sector. And finally, the decade, the 2000 decade witnessed a lot of formation of long-term visions. I was part of Kenya in terms of vision 2030. Rwanda has vision 2025, just to mention a few. For us, what did it provide? It provided us with a promise or a commitment or a technology commitment for long-term periods of policy clarity and coordination. Perhaps while we want to show case or to put a strong case in terms of structural economic transformation, we need to take a critical assessment in terms of what is happening. The last slide is the one that we use mostly to say, where is it? Do I have the last slide? The last slide? The last slide is what we say, we used to actually thank everyone for doing that. I wanted to use it to say sorry because one was this part of this. Thank you very much and for listening to me. And these are my thoughts in terms of what are the opportunities? Thank you very much. I hope I've not taken too much time and I know I also have a constraint in terms of my next meeting at 12. Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you very much. We have a lot of food for thought here and I think some really interesting connections across the three remarks. I wanted to kick off discussion, to pick up on one of the points that Desiree highlighted in his remarks about the solvency issue, which I think connects with what others have been talking, some of the issues that all of you have been talking about as well. So he makes the point that the issue now is not only liquidity, it's solvency. And many countries of course are in debt to stress and we need to address the solvency issue urgently. I wonder what Satu and Juguna think about this point and what are the prospects for addressing it? Please, either of you, what are your thoughts? Juguna, would you like to start since you were in Russia? Okay, actually, yeah. There are two sides to the story in terms of solvency and I do agree. And one of them is that we have created a market structure for even setting the debt instruments and even the private sector is also setting those debt instruments. But what is going to sustain us, to sustain the process, is what we see first in terms of the real sector of the economy. What are these funds supposed to do? And who is absorbing these funds? So it becomes sustainable. And as I go back to my point that if they are going to be used to create or to accumulate capital that allows for the new economy to have the capacity for future growth, then that is a sustainable process. But then if it is just a package, a package for excess liquidity, just like the settlement mentioned about excess liquidity, it is just to pack the excess liquidity for a short-term return. Then what we are really doing is that we are pushing the market to continue working within this waiting option. So we need a mechanism to destroy the market from this waiting option. And that's why I went back and said, we have to have a new growth path or a new growth model for African economies. So that at least we move from there, provide certainty and also destroy the market from this waiting option. Because if you don't do that, by the way, this is saying it's a short term, it's a commercial paper, but we'll continue because there is excess liquidity, we're going to continue issuing commercial paper because the market wants to trade in it. But that's all, that's all what will happen. And I don't know whether this may have different ideas, but my strong belief is that a vibrant economy will give us opportunities for investment. And that is very, very important that you can channel this excess liquidity to investable platforms and even to new investments. And they're going to be very, very important. They can be harnessed by governments to provide or to cross the gap of the infrastructure gap. The Syria complaint that it was a power outage and so it means that is a constraint which actually, it is good for him, we can use the phone, but if you are in a factory, you are trying to produce to confirm export items, you cannot do that. So you can see the constraints are drawing us, is the one that is really hitting the private sector and it acquires this waiting option, making an assumption that things will come back. That's why I come back to saying, we need to have a model, we take advantage of the crisis to develop a model for future economic transformation for African economy. Thank you. Thank you. Maybe just a very brief comment on my side. I do agree that it is a matter to be resolved. On the other hand, I think where we are coming from in a lot of economies, the background or the structure of, or the patterns of debt are different from what they were when we were doing HIPPIC and MDRI and the partners who need to be around the table to solve this are also different. And how do we engage commercial financiers, non-Paris club debtors, I think is critical. And I think we cannot be in a situation where we sort of let partners that are part of the issues that have emerged sort of off the hook and resolve this with, for example, multilateral financing at this moment. So I think it's a more difficult discussion to be had. And I fully agree that we cannot just do a short-term solution that does not address the underlying long-term issues. Thanks. Thanks. Before I give Desiree a chance to come back in, let's, I think you're going to, we have you for two more minutes. So if you would like to offer some closing reflections, please do so. I realize in Helsinki, we have you for another hour, but in Nairobi, I think your time is up. So please close it. Yeah, thank you very much. But I had programmed with the timing, sorry, there is a round because of what was in the city. So I was like, it's on. But I think I do agree with that, Sato. You know, the current debt structure is difficult because it is composed of non-Paris members and some of it is also private sector coordinating a mechanism to actually resolve the debt crisis will be a major problem. But I think in the short-term, what has been proposed is that what is the most urgent now because we need to manage the COVID? It's actually to look at the fiscal space and how we can improve on the fiscal space. And one of them was to suspend debt servicing and even have an agreement because then we can actually move to a restructuring in the medium term. But in the short-term, that was how do we improve the fiscal space? And that for me is very, very critical right now. But the other one is that once you get into that, those small steps, they may help us in terms of seeing how do we manage the future debt in terms of the payment period and the return on those investments. And then the mismatch they create with foreign exchange market. And we have not even seen reverberations, for example, in the other markets, for example, the foreign exchange market who have not seen inflation is because everybody's constrained by what you really need to do to work on this. So I do agree with you with the current debt problem. But I've argued in a study that we are looking for how we are going to move into it that in the long-term, Africa needs to move back and look at domestic resource mobilization. First of all, on one side is the debt instrument, sorry, the tax instruments. We need to have tax instruments that provide you with optimal resources, but does not also create a problem of, or does not affect the relative price structure in a way that it is disastrous. I have always given an example in Kenya for beer transition. And beer transition is accessible tax. We do know it is for reasons, but the technology has overtaken us. So you really have to come up and see what is the optimal level of taxing alcohol, not beer. Can you tax alcohol? I was living in Sweden, so I can always give those examples. Can you tax alcohol on the basis of its content? Then it means that it's going to serve two purposes. One is a same tax, because as you continue doing that, it's good but for health and we can subsidize the health sector using that. But secondly, you're not going to find people upgrading or downgrading consumption because you taxed beer, wine, whiskey, whatever in different levels. That's what Kenya government is. So if you look at Kenya government last 50 years, there has been getting less and less revenue from those. Yet we have provided examples of that that was a paper in 2001. So that's one example. We can actually come to optimal instruments of taxation that the Ministry of Finance and the revenue authorities agree and then they together move in that. So it is not just the domestic resource and instruments, but it's also the quality of that. And the second aspect of that is even digital platforms to manage revenue administration because the rickages in our countries is actually what it means. It's not the amount of tax revenue we have, it's the amount of rickage the revenue has. But that is a good avenue of trying to improve the whole issue of domestic resource mobilization. Thank you very much. So to our audience, I see there's a couple of questions here and I'm going to give you an opportunity in the moment to ask your questions live. So be ready. I think Funmi has, Sotan has the first question but let's allow Desiree to respond if he'd like and I think we say goodbye to Juguna who has to leave. Thank you. We... Desiree, you can say, I wait for Desiree to respond. Okay. Well, I'll be very short. I agree fully with what has been said both on non-OECD DAC countries and on DRM by Juguna. So just two points. The responsibility to securitize the flows for long-term investment and proper use to generate adequate returns rest with the borrower and the sovereigns for assigning the contract. So upstream, a lot of work has to be done to ensure African countries, governments are getting a good deal. So there's one institution which is not part of the bank group, African Development Bank, but which is a system institution we have called the African Legal Support Facility. Maybe on Juguna knows the ALSF. For me, that's a fantastic type of institution which comes in and advises countries upstream and also downstream when we're running trouble on how to make sure we are getting a good deal and when they negotiate now on solvency issue because these are the commercial creditors, the issue would be reputation, ratings, these are the rating agencies and haircuts. There needs to be a conversation involving the commercial creditors, the MDBs, the bilaterals and the borrower's property advice. Otherwise, it can have very adverse issue. On the non-OECD DACS, I cannot agree more. The balance sheet of borrowers is not the balance sheet we had at the time of HIPPIC and DRR. I think we would be fooling ourselves by saying this is a Paris Club only conversation. This is a broader conversation. There are communicating channels and the conversation is actually very good from what I've seen with both Paris Club and non-Paris Club members that willingness is there. So we need to really at the highest level at the G20, all MDBs, bilateral, stable course. Partnership, I think you said it Satu. Partner, be aware of the differences, but we need to get OECD DACS, non-OECD DACS borrowers to agree. Otherwise, it won't be enough. So thank you. Thank you. I think we have a question in the audience from Funmi Sotan. Are you there? Can you ask your question briefly? Otherwise, I will ask it for you. I'm here. Thank you for the excellent presentations. When we are talking about resource mobilization and also support by donors, we have to think about corruption, especially in African countries where there's very little citizen demand for accountability from leaders. So how do we handle this? Because it's a key constraint. In the debt problem, for instance, there are cases of COVID-19 support funds being mismanaged. Leaders claim or government officials claim that they have paid citizens and citizens say we have not been paid. So what strategies are available to address this issue of corruption is the Hydra headed problem that we have. And affects the effective use of funds, especially borrowed funds. Thank you. Thank you. Satu or Desiree, would you like to respond? Satu, you want to go first? I'll comment. Not particularly, but I will. I think I can say a few words and happy to have you continue, Desiree. This is, of course, a difficult question or difficult to address effectively and it's not unique to the COVID situation. It's a longer-term issue. In terms of donor-funded activities, what we can do as far as, or can try and do as best as we can, is to build oversight into those activities so that mismanagement is revealed. But then it's a much broader question in particular when it relates to the debt issue that it's building the national capacity to address and prevent and reduce corruption, where I think a lot of improvements can be built on systems and Guna spoke a lot about the possibilities that the digital world is providing us where there'll be fewer possibilities or fewer people actually handling resources where they will be directed directly going through digital channels or we can build other systems that optimize or reduce the risk. So there's that side. There's building institutions that has been mentioned today by several speakers, I think it's really, it is of course key, both government institutions but then oversight institutions, parliaments and so on, and then helping build the demand side with media, civil society and so on. This is long-term work and of course the responsibility really lies with the national governments in terms of domestic resources which are the main funder of development after all but then donors can support some of these trends and whenever we are involved with direct financing we have a bit of a bigger role to play. But yeah, these are my thoughts. Thank you. Thanks for the question. So let's start by being very clear. Corruption is unacceptable and must not be tolerated. It is unacceptable. Having said that, it happens, it happens not only in Africa, unfortunately, we have evidence of corruption around the world. Some of them are even more sophisticated than the most sophisticated we see on the continent but it is unacceptable. To, for me, I agree with you in that it has to be owned and led by the citizens and the institutions of the countries first and foremost. I think Satu, I also agree with you but outside world and all institutions can only help but that call to those actually misusing funds must be led by their own institutions and citizens of the country. So that's maybe generic but concretely what can we do? It's a long term, we are going to fix it. I think we should not hide behind our small finger and say we are going to fix it overnight. It's long term, we need to be persistent and multiple actions. One, for international organizations like ourselves where I work and others at work, immediate sanctions applied as per our rules and procedure in any misappropriation of funds, immediate. And these are heavy sanctions. I used to sit on the sanctions board of the African Development Bank Group. These are confidential files, I cannot divulge but trust me, these are heavy, heavy penalties. Okay, so that's one. We can set the example, we can set the tone at the international level, at MDBs level by clearly taking action. To, for me, there are many things the public does not see but we play an important role. It's our convening power, our policy dialogue when we bring people behind closed doors and we talk and we get them to do the right things. So again, I've been involved in those exchanges. They happen quite at a high level and good results are seen. Institutions is the key. On the continent, there's quite a number of anti-corruption units which have been set in place. We need to appropriately fund them and ensure they are independent. So maybe there's a push at the international community for a program to actually fund those institutions but we are then being perceived as being external parties trying to interfere in internal affairs. We need to be very, how do you say that, cognizant of those perceptions. Perceptions matter a lot. And last but not least, leadership, leadership, leadership. Set the example at the top. Again, I come back to the example of Rwanda, the example at the top and you see the results. Thank you. Thanks much. So we're almost out of time. We never have enough time with these things. And there are still some questions here in the chat. There's a great question from Edward, Gerald and Ilanha about adoption of blended financing. What's the best approach to ensure higher adoption of blended financing which makes both private and public funding for Desiree? There's another question. I've been given on the table about the SDGs and Satu had a great second slide showing the SDGs and the COVID virus spotting all over them. And I wonder where this leaves us for the SDGs. Where do we think the SDG agenda is going? Will there be need for adjustment and so on? We have just a few more minutes, perhaps keeping those questions in mind or other points you'd like to highlight. Maybe I'll give our speakers just a minute each to have some closing reflections. And then I'm under very strict instructions that I need to end on time. So please maybe Satu, a minute and then Desiree, a minute. Thank you. Okay, I already responded on the chat to the very concerning question of misuse of COVID really funds and it's important that those be addressed to or through the institutions that are involved and I'm quite worried about these reports. But just on the longer term question, I think this was a really, really interesting conversation. And I think so I remain of the view that the sustainable development framework is relevant going forward. And I also agree with the assessment that this crisis presents an opportunity to have a better or long-term vision for economic development, but then also it has to go with the human and ecological side of things and having that balance going forward. And I think also very much agree with the role of technology and the digital side of things and really taking those steps more rapidly than what we would have been able to do. Otherwise, I think is one of the big opportunities that we have at the moment. So a lot of concerns, but also I do think that there are some silver linings that we should be building on. Thanks. Thank you. So thank you everyone and thank you to the organizers, first of all, for inviting me to share my views and thank you to Satu and to Njubuna and the participants. Unfortunately, we can't answer all the questions. People can get in touch bilaterally as need be. Just on the blending question, which is a great question, you know, there's no silver bullet. We need all the instruments and blending is one of them. We however need to be careful when we talk of blending and using concessional resources going as a financing item in a commercial plan, not to create distortions. Maybe what we advocate also as we do blending and we do do blending is think of instrument like guarantees, partial risk guarantees, partial credit guarantees, invite you to visit the bank's website and you'll get quite a lot of information or get in touch with me through the organizers. I'll be happy to answer the question. So last comment, let's keep our eye on the long-term development goal for the continent. Financing gap is still in the vicinity of $120 billion for infrastructure. So that's big numbers. We'll be coming out with African Economic Outlook very soon. So watch out for the African Development Bank Group, African Economic Outlook in the coming weeks and you'll get more on the same topic. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you Satu and Desiree. So thank you to all three of our panelists and thank you to you, the audience for joining us in this session and posing such great questions which are here in the chat. So I think this is the place we need to end just with the hope that we can build back better from this new normal. And we'll go now straight into our next session, I think, which is the closing session. Thank you everyone. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you so much Desiree and Satu and in his absence, Professor Anjoguna. So now with the next session is going to be quite brief so that we can bring this conference to a close. And I'll be giving the summary and what of thanks. And once again, my name is Maureen Were, a UN-wide research fellow and focus point for the UN-wide projects on sustainable solutions on development in Tanzania. So that is a project that we are implementing with our partners in Tanzania and that's the project that I coordinate at UN-wide. And we are now at, it's now 1222 according to the East African time and I think we still have a few minutes so that we can bring the meeting to a close. So my task this morning is fairly difficult and easy but also difficult in the sense that we've had, we have had for the last two days, very lively, fruitful, insightful discussions from very eminent presenters starting with the keynote address from Vera Tsongwe. And so we have had quite a lot to discuss and as you can see, I only have like a few minutes to summarize. So if you allow me, I'll just like put a few points that I'll try as much as possible to see how I can capture the key points. We start Dr. Vera Tsongwe, I apologize for the flames. I'm just next to the airport so apologies for that. Can you hear me now? So Dr. Vera Tsongwe started us off by providing a detailed discussion of the macroeconomic impact and challenges which laid the ground for the rest of the sessions in a very good way. And this was followed by presentations by eminent speakers and seasoned researchers that we've been listening to in the last two days just up to the last session that has just ended. Now to start us off, I'll highlight some of the key points that emerged both from the keynote address and also from the presentations. Africa has three crises to deal with, health, economic, and climate change. And this was very well highlighted by Dr. Vera Tsongwe who gave us our keynote address. She also noted that 2020 was much better owing to the effective response undertaken across the African countries and that we may have a bit of more challenges to deal with in 2021 going forward. As we all know, it's now one year since the pandemic came a month and since then there are quite a number of challenges that have been noted on various fronts. African countries have been directly affected and indirectly following a decline in global demand as we know all most of the advanced countries and all the other countries are going through recession and this has an impact on export demand for the African commodities and all other exports. We've also had an adverse impact on the tourism sector. Throughout this conversation we have had in the last two days, the issue that has been also quite in a number of discussions is the issue of the rising debt burden with the more countries leaping into debt distress. And we have also seen like across many countries we've seen the rising debt to GDP ratio and the debt servicing burden has been going up. During the discussions, it was noted that it is important that we need to rethink the international structure that underlies the public debts, especially the external debt. As African countries face much higher interest rates compared to other regions. Due to this increased private external debts at high premiums, this has contributed to elevated debt and debt service burden for most of the African economies. It was also noted that there has been contraction of government revenue remittances and FDI across a number of African countries. In some countries, inflation is going up. In terms of trade, we had very lively discussions, particularly as presented by Dr. Stephen Karingi of UNECA who actually gave us some of the issues impacts that have occurred in the trade sector. And generally of importance to notice the fact that Africa trade has been mostly affected by the decline or collapse of commodity prices and cross-border restrictions, especially immediately after the emergence of the pandemic. Nonetheless, Africa's intra-trade has shown some resilience and it was not as adversely affected in comparison to the inter-trade with the rest of the world, which is good. However, it was noted that due to the border restrictions, the small towns are across the borders and also the cross-border inflows, especially the informal trade was adversely affected. African governments were already facing limited fiscal space and hence, they have lower financial resource capacity in terms of resource mobilization, particularly given the weak domestic tax revenue mobilization and the contraction that has been witnessed in FDI and unitances. Basically, all these indicators are pointing to the fact that attainment of the SDGs is now more challenging than before. We've also heard from our emerging preliminary evidence from the ongoing research studies at UNWIDER and also rapid surveys that have been taken at the household level from select African countries, that indicate that there is a rising inequality and also poverty, both at the household level and at the national level. These surveys and emerging evidence is pointing to the fact that they have been reduced household income, particularly following the lockdown measures and the temporary closure of businesses that was undertaken in many countries. There have been increased incidences of gender-based violence and in most of these economies due to the pandemic. Now, going forward, as we all know, there have been a lot of efforts towards vaccine. So there is a ray of hope. However, it was also noted that there are gaps and Africa is generally lagging behind. But all is not lost. There are opportunities. These opportunities include import substitution, avenues that African countries can tap into to promote the growth of manufacturing sector and the industrial sector in general. For example, investment in local pharmaceutical industries, textile and apparels through the increased opportunities to produce PPEs and other related products owing to the pandemic. There are also opportunities to diversify towards the technology sector and there are opportunities to enhance local assembling of raw materials as we witnessed during the pandemic. There was quite a challenge due to the restrictions and border closures to assess the import and imported capital goods and intermediate goods, especially that affected the manufacturing sector. So it's high time that now African countries took advantage of this to try and at least produce some of these materials locally. In general, the pandemic provides us with an opportunity to enhance capacity and ability to innovate. And hence, part of the solution lies in utilizing the digital technology and the ICT sector, which are expected to play a fundamental role in fast-tracking Africa's recovery. Already we have examples like countries in Kenya, where there has been a major shift towards cashless transactions and digital finance and electronic payment systems. Other opportunities include the African free continent of trade area, which holds great potential as pathway to trade diversification, industrialization and the boosting of Africa's trade. How about the role of development partners? Just before the preceding session, we heard that the development partners need to safeguard the continuity of programs and they need to factor in more flexibility and enhance the role of local actors. The key words are adapt, adjust and response. Thanks to the pandemic, we have witnessed an intensified coordination across the development partners. There has been rapid response from development partners. For example, the debt suspension, debt service suspension initiative by the G20, the COVAX and also efforts towards COVID related financing by African Development Bank. However, modernities to mobilize additional resources are still needed, especially towards humanitarian aid, debt and vaccines. Going forward, a more unified multilateral approach is needed among all the development partners. Global community need to ensure that vaccines are made available to everyone, as no one is safe until everyone is safe. We need to leverage on other resources. As it has been pointed out, we still have a lot of avenues, for example through the domestic resource mobilization, such as domestic capital markets, which we can use to take advantage of the vast liquidity that exists in some of these economies. More importantly, is also the need to address the solvency challenges, given the fundamental debt challenges that African economies are experiencing. We need to have a conversation, both by the, from the creditors side and the debitors side, as the solutions lie in a unified approach from both sides. The G20 debt suspension, debt service suspension initiative is good, but it's not adequate, it's not enough. The conversation should involve both Paris Club and non-Paris Club creditors. As we address short-term issues, it's important that we also take critical measures to address the long-term development challenges that are affecting African economies. We need post COVID-19 recovery economy strategy and the paint around the fourth industrial, fourth industrial revolution. The key factors to consider going forward as in fourth towards the post COVID economic recovery include the following. The key role of institutions in form of institutional reforms are needed, for example, to overcome the coordination failures and to reduce the high risk profiles. Other measures include modernizing agriculture and, as I already mentioned, their critical role of digitalization. For example, digitalization of education through e-learning e-commerce is going to be very fundamental going forward. We also need structural economic transformation and particularly that to do this we'll need capital accumulation by debt financed public infrastructure for instance. As we need to accumulate, we need capital infrastructure to be able to transform the African economies. Ladies and gentlemen, all these things require great leadership and so this has been pointed out that it's important to have great leadership, especially at the top, to be able to achieve all this. With this brief remarks, thank you very much for your attention. Now my task was in two parts, so that is part one. And now I move to part two, which is to give the word of thanks. So just to start us off, some of you may not have been able to attend all the sessions since yesterday, but for some of you who are not there yesterday, I'd like to let you know that we have very, very lively discussions from very eminent speakers and above all, we didn't have had a better keynote speaker than Dr. Vera Songwe from the Executive Secretary of UNEKA. So I'd like and first and foremost to start in even in her absence to thank our keynote address despite her busy schedule as you well know at that level to spare some time to be with us and all the preparation that had to to prepare such a fantastic presentation. And we really appreciate and we hope that going forward we are going to continue this collaboration. I also want to thank the speakers. Will agree with me that we had very fantastic speakers well prepared and it's not easy to prepare for such kind of presentations. It takes effort and time and I just want to say that from our perspective we don't take that for granted. We really, really want to thank you all. We have just had very lively discussions. We have had very insightful policy issues and I hope that even going forward some of the issues that we discussed here maybe we could have a forum where they could be picked up further even by our own very governments because they are fundamental. We really want to thank all the speakers and the presenters. I'll note many times because they are that will take us quite time but we really appreciate. I also want to like like to thank our very own UNU director Professor Kunansen who has been with us from their planning from the initial planning of this conference and also throughout he has given us a lot of support institutional support and individual support. Kunal, thank you so much and to all our participants. I mean it doesn't make sense would have just come here and maybe spoke to ourselves so it doesn't make sense without participants. So we don't take your attendance for granted. We really want to thank all of you for being with us and we also want to let you know that in case you are interested in specific sessions or you are interested in some of the presentations just let us know and we are going to be sharing some of the presentations that have been presented. Some of the speakers didn't have maybe physical presentations but we have also made we have also recorded this conference so it will also be available. We just want to thank you all for your active participation I think in some sessions you even had more questions and unfortunately due to time constraints we could not pick all of them but please feel free you can approach any of the speakers you can also approach us and we will be able to to get in touch with you in case you need any further follow-ups and to my own very colleagues the conference team Anna, Teresa, Bruce you are just fantastic I just want to thank you so all in order to have been working behind the around the clock to ensure that everything is going on smoothly and as well know that some of this technology sometimes can fail us but I'm very happy to note that I think we've had such a smooth conference without hiccups and so I just want to thank the conference team, the IT team at UNWIDER we've done a fantastic job and with those few remarks thank you very much Quairini and in Xwaili Quairini means bye asante means thank you thank you very much asante bye bye