2018 Warwick Africa Summit Titled “The African Century”, At The University Of Warwick, UK

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AFRICA HAS A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO TRAIN ITS LARGE YOUTH POPULATION, BE THE WORLD’S FOOD PROVIDER, SHAPE TRENDS IN GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT – VP OSINBAJO  

“This is the African Century because, in this century, Africa will, for good or ill, play the defining role in global development.  It implies that Africa will shape and will matter in all of the trends that will shape the world.

“Africa has a unique opportunity to train its large youth population to become the best digitally trained people in the world. Beginning from primary schools where code writing and other digital skills can be taught.

“So, Africa’s role as food provider to the world and especially in the next few decades is clear. The opportunity will provide millions of additional jobs, and revenues will grow exponentially if we process and take advantage of the agribusiness value chain.”

Below is the full text of his speech:

KEYNOTE ADDRESS DELIVERED BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, THE VICE PRESIDENT, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA AT THE 2018 WARWICK AFRICA SUMMIT TITLED “THE AFRICAN CENTURY”, AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK, UNITED KINGDOM ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 2018.

PROTOCOL

I am deeply honoured to have been given this opportunity to be here with you in this visionary conference and in this great place of learning and inquiry. I must say that I have always been rather partial to Warwick. And let me confess up front that it is not just because it is a university of world acclaim.

I will tell you the story, sometime in 1975, our then young and dashing Military Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon was overthrown in a Military coup while he was away for a conference in Kampala Uganda. In those days in Africa if you were ousted in a coup you were either killed or detained. General Gowon was fortunate he escaped here to the U.K.

He was offered a place here in Warwick, while he was here another coup attempt was made which led to the death of the then head of State. General Gowon, was, many believed, falsely accused of being involved in the plot and some of his adversaries called for his extradition. As the folklore goes the British authorities and Warwick stood solidly behind him.

As a young brash hotheaded Nigerian, I decided that if I ever tried a revolution and it failed, I would head for Warwick, this place of freedom and refuge and I will remain here until the dust settles.

There is another good reason why I am passionate to Warwick, My Son Fiyin in here; he is also one of the organisers of this summit. But that is not exactly why I happy that he is here; it is because when he is here, life is cheaper for me; my car, for one thing, is safe, so am pleased that he is here and am also excited to see you all.

The theme of the summit, I’m told, is ‘Ubuntu – Relighting the Fire of Africa’. Ubuntu is an Nguni term but with variants in other dialects, as the Zulus would say, “Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu”, which means that a person is a person through others.  “I am what I am because of who we all are”.

It is a belief in the universal bond of humanity. We validate our humanity through our responsibility to other human beings regardless of race, colour, gender or belief.

Indeed Africa is because of the rest of the world. My thesis this morning is essentially Africa’s historic responsibility to the rest of the world.  I have titled my thoughts “The Africa Century”.

Two weeks ago I was privileged to give a talk at the Harvard Business School titled Africa Rising. And as I reflected further on the subject it became clearer to me that aside from the encouraging narrative of some of the giant strides that Africa has made in the last 15 years, there is a fairly more profound insight, and that insight is, this century is indeed the African Century.

Before I elaborate, let me say that neither that expression i.e. the African Century nor the general notion that it implies is original. Indeed many African leaders before me, such as Thabo Mbeki, Nkosazana-Zuma have used the same words to describe the great advances that Africa is making especially in contrast to the last century.

The variant that I add to it is this, that this is the African Century because, in this century, Africa will, for good or ill, play the defining role in global development.  It implies that Africa will shape and will matter in all of the trends that will shape the world.

I say for good or for ill because either scenario is possible. Given the chequered history of Africa’s development, it is not always the case that the glaringly obvious path to progress and development is taken. If Africa fails the global impact will be catastrophic if it succeeds the global impact will be unimaginable.

There are at least four important respects in which Africa will hold the balance of world development.

First is in World Population (demography). Second is the environment and climate change. The third is production especially agriculture, manufacturing and technology. Fourth is social exclusion and its implications for global security.

I will examine first what I would describe as the doomsday scenarios in these four different areas before looking at our present efforts and projections for the future.

Let’s take Population, by 2035, Africa’s will have 1.2 billion people. Nigeria its most populous country will become the 4th most populous nation in the world. Over 50% of that number will be young persons under the age of 25.

Today, 60 per cent of the unemployed in Africa are young people. If we do not change the trajectory of socio-economic development, we would have millions of jobless young people in the prime of their lives and is we will see, largely illiterate and /or poorly trained. The workforce will be ill-equipped to man any industrial revolution or take advantage of the scale of technology.

The anger, disillusionment, and hopelessness of these young people will drive social unrest, compel more desperate migration northwards and present a fertile recruiting ground for extremist groups and ideologies.  If social conditions remain tenuous even the well-educated will be tempted into migration and contribute further to the brain drain.

How about the environment and climate change? So, it is generally agreed that although Africa has contributed least to global warming, it is and will suffer most of its consequences.

Indeed, we are already seeing extreme weather events such as flash floods, desertification, drought, and unseasonal occurrences in several parts of Africa.

Lake Chad, Africa’s fourth largest lake surrounded by Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon in 1960 covered over 25,000 square kilometres, it has now shrunk to less than 1,350 square kilometres. So, the water is provided for irrigation, fishing, and livestock for millions is now practically non-existent.

Lake Tanganyika in East Africa is one of the oldest lakes in the world, located in the western branch of the great African Rift Valley flowing through four countries; Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and Zambia, was recently declared the “Threatened Lake of 2017”. Why, Lake Tanganyika is adversely affected by human activity in the form of climate change, deforestation, over-fishing and hydrocarbon exploitation.

Again clearly, if we maintain the same trajectory and we don’t implement an aggressive plan for the environment, Africa might be the place where the perfect storm will first occur.

The perfect storm is the apocalyptic event predicted by John Beddington, former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government. He said that it will occur when competing needs for food, water, and energy, race ahead of supply despite the need to respond to climate change.

To quote him, he said ‘It is predicted that by 2030 the world will need to produce around 50 per cent more food and energy, together with 30 per cent more fresh water, whilst mitigating and adapting to climate change. This threatens to create a ‘perfect storm’ of global events…There’s not going to be a complete collapse, but things will start getting really worrying if we don’t tackle these problems’.

As for production i.e. Agriculture, manufacturing and technology, Africa’s share of global GDP is only 3% and unless production is ramped up across agriculture, manufacturing and technology the outlook for the continent and the rest of the world would be troubling indeed.

Take agriculture, agricultural production and productivity are well below its full potential.  Although the continent has 65% of globally available arable land up to 50% of it is uncultivated.

Assuming we continue at the pace we are going now, Africa will be unable to feed its own population and will lack the resources to import.  And as the food needs of the world rise with population growth, a significant portion of the world’s arable land which as we’ve seen is in Africa would be only suboptimally productive. The outcome would be an unsustainable dependence on food aid and continued food insecurity.

In manufacturing, Africa is at the risk of pre-mature de-industrialization.  In other words, the service sector is growing rapidly in African countries while it is yet to experience industrialization in the first place. This situation has serious implications for job creation, competitiveness and participation in global value chains.  It is further complicated by digitalization and the fourth industrial revolution through which traditional jobs are being lost.

The fourth area that bears close watching is inequality and social exclusion.

The UNDP has reported that every single African country is less equal today than they were in 2010 on account of lack of jobs and opportunity and lingering extreme poverty. Illiteracy is a critical factor.

In sub-Saharan Africa 1 in 3  adults is illiterate and over 50% of women are illiterate, youth literacy rates in Sub-Saharan Africa (70% in 2011) are the lowest of any region.

Now, literacy, as defined by UNESCO, is merely someone who can read and write a short simple statement about their life. Very low threshold, and of course does not begin to address the issues about functional literacy in the 21st Century.  Besides high levels of malnutrition in children in sub- Saharan Africa also means stunting in growth and poor development of the brain. The ability of both individual and the society to develop and compete is impeded by the low mental capacity of its growing population.

So, this is the doomsday scenario, Africa’s population growing exponentially, food production not being able to match population growth, nutritional inadequacy, a rise in trans-human conflicts due to shrinking vegetation and water, lack of jobs and opportunity for a massive poorly educated youth population leading to vulnerability to extremism and aggressive illegal migration.

But perhaps most immediately troubling is that Africa runs the risk of becoming a convenient breeding ground for extremist groups from where they can launch out to the rest of the world, a horrifying situation indeed. If in the next three decades Africa drops the ball on any of the four indicators

I have mentioned, there will be a tragedy for the entire world.   Neither Africa nor the rest of the world can afford to have these scenarios playing out. As we say in Nigeria – God forbid!

But let us flip the doomsday scenarios and see what it is that is being done on the 4 indicators and what needs to be done to ensure that the 21st Century will be the Africa Century in its most positive sense.

With regard to the environment, Africa presents huge potential and opportunity for itself and for the world. The perfect storm can be averted by focusing on the green economy as a source of growth.

The green economy is one that promotes environmental sustainability and equitable economic growth at the same time. This can happen for instance through investments in renewable energy, energy efficient processes and clean technology.

Solar installations can, for instance, be used to tackle Africa’s huge energy deficit while creating jobs.  Up to two-thirds of Africans do not have access to electricity so it is quite feasible to expect that the continent will take a huge chunk of the estimated 24 million jobs that will arise from operations, maintenance and manufacturing of solar systems. Of Nigeria’s 180 million people, over 20 million households have no power.

As part of efforts to diversify power sources in order to improve access, we started a programme of providing solar power in several thousand homes in rural villages. We started in Wuna a village just outside Abuja. Wuna is an agrarian community. It is not on the national grid and had no other source of power.

To charge their phones an entrepreneur with a small generator runs a service. You take your phone to his shop once a day or so, you pay a small fee for charging. Life in Wuna shuts down at about 7 pm until daylight.

But working with a PPP model, the government-owned NDPHC partnered with Azuri technology – a private solar company to provide a domestic solar solution. Azuri had provided the same end to end service in East Africa – a solar home system, including a payment system. The Solar equipment cost N1,900 a month ( about 5-6 pounds a month). Every home had one mounted on their roof. For the first time in its existence, the village now has running water, solar powered. The school has power; the school hall is now used as a community hall in the evenings. Each home has 4 points of light.

Children can now stay up and do some studying at night. Many of Wuna’s women can process their millet and yams at night now. New jobs have been created for solar installers, maintenance, and management of the payment system. Only one guy has lost his business in Wuna, the phone charger. Every household can now charge their phones. And this is the trend, everywhere you look.

Algeria, for example, created 3,500 jobs in the construction of 14 grid-connected solar PV projects in 2015, with 700 permanent jobs expected in operation and management.

Kenya has built Africa’s largest wind farm at Lake Turkana, providing 310MW of reliable, low-cost energy to Kenya’s national grid. 15% of the country’s installed capacity is now solar,   its construction created more than 2,000 local jobs.

The point being made especially for solar power is that there are millions of homes waiting to be serviced, especially in the rural areas. Besides our solar power demand and relatively cheap labour costs make Africa a logical candidate for solar panel and components manufacturing.

Agriculture is another sector where actions in Africa can have positive outcomes for the entire world.  With the right mix of policies, Africa can feed its growing population in a sustainable manner, meet nutritional standards, while also becoming a large scale supplier of grain and food to other parts of the world that are shifting out of agricultural production.

To take the example of Nigeria, we are undertaking a concerted effort in agriculture to boost food security and create jobs for our rapidly growing population by reducing reliance on food imports that run into billions of dollars annually.

Our rice, wheat and fish imports have cost us nearly $4bn per annum over the past two decades. Through investments in agricultural inputs, machinery, finance, agricultural extension, we are seeing growing results, with agriculture sectors demonstrating positive GDP growth rates even while Nigeria was in recession in the last year.  As of the end of 2017, we were producing 10 million tons of paddy rice, and rice imports dropped by 80% and 6 million new jobs have been created in agriculture.

Local and foreign Investors from Dangote Group to New Hope Group, to Heineken, are taking note, expanding their positions in Nigeria’s various value chains from rice production to maize to cashew nuts. With over 50% of the world’s arable land and over half of that uncultivated it is becoming clearer that the world will be looking to Africa as its food basket.

Just to take China’s demand alone. China has 27% of the world’s population but only 7% of the world’s arable land for agriculture. So, China needs and has asked Nigeria for 2 million tons of hybrid Soya beans per annum for livestock feed and vegetable oil, we have not been able to meet that demand yet.

Sesame seed from Africa is also in high demand about 2 million tons per annum is the demand from China, Vietnam Japan and Arab countries, sesame seed oil and the cake is used for confectionaries. That demand is largely unmet.

China also requires over 2.3 million tons of cassava chips and cassava products for industrial Starch, and ethanol and we have been able to meet that demand, neither have we been able to meet China’s demand for Cocoa. How about goat meat? 120,000 carcasses of goat meat are required weekly in different Arab countries. There is still a major gap in supply here as well. Most of Vietnam’s demand for over 2.5 million tons of cashew is unmet.

So, Africa’s role as food provider to the world and especially in the next few decades is clear. The opportunity will provide millions of additional jobs, and revenues will grow exponentially if we process and take advantage of the agribusiness value chain.

Besides, Africa is the logical frontier of the green economy; our credentials in sustainable agricultural practices are excellent. We have arable, largely organic lands that have not been contaminated by chemical fertilizers which means Africa can produce foods with near 100% environmentally sustainable labels for most of the world’s demand, including premium paying customers.

We may also emphasize our environmental credentials by virtue of sustainable land practices. Our oil palm plantations will be able to go into markets where competitors cannot go without breaking environmental rules such as Southeast Asian oil palm production.

The projection on the African food and beverage markets is exciting. This is a market that is worth up to US$1 trillion by 2030. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in African agriculture is projected to grow from less than US$10 billion in 2010 to more than US$45 billion in 2020.

In addition, growth in this sector would reduce poverty twice as fast as growth in other sectors especially if we are able to develop entrepreneurial capacity of our youth in agribusiness, to take advantage of the extremely lucrative agribusiness value chains.

Rwanda and Ethiopia are, excellent examples of non-resource rich African countries that are attaining impressive inclusive growth and they are able to do so because of their focus on agricultural practices that are contemporary and cutting edge.

Agriculture accounts for 50 per cent of employment in Ethiopia and in Rwanda close to 60 per cent. In the agriculture value chain in Africa what perhaps is most exciting is the emergence of several young, innovative entrepreneurs in Africa, providing thousands of new jobs along the agricultural value chain. A few examples, Fahad Awadh, a 29-year old entrepreneur from Tanzania, who set up a cashew processing facility in Tanzania. The factory brings international standards and traceability to the cashew nuts. The company’s flagship processing facility in Zanzibar has an installed capacity of 2,500 Tons per annum and recently raised a $500,000 investment from the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund to establish another processing facility in Mtwara, south-eastern Tanzania.

Ndidi Nwuneli is an African entrepreneur, she co-founded AACE food processing & distribution. AACE is an agro-processing company. AACE sources its produce from small cluster farmers in rural communities across the West African region. It also facilitates access to microfinance and farming technologies for these farm groups. AACE was founded about 8 years and today its annual turnover is about $20 million.

Seun and Seyi Abolaji started Wilsons’ Juice – a fresh juice company they started in the south west of Nigeria. Their main brand – Wilsons’ Lemonade is sold at major grocery stores in 140 locations in Nigeria. The bottles and every ingredient- lemons, local hibiscus flower, and sugar cane are all produced in Nigeria.

Fatima Wushishi is the Chief Operating Officer of 5th Harvest Ltd a post-harvest solutions provider. The company strengthens the value chains of crops such as groundnuts, rice and maize. Their solutions targeted at local farmers range from agro-commodities procurement services to storage services as well as Warehouse Receipt finance.

Blondie Okpuzor is the CEO and founder of BathKandy Co. a skincare, bath and body social enterprise. The company is unique for its insistence on environmentally friendly products.

Lanre Carew is an Agricultural Economist and the CEO of Farm City Limited, a farmland focused on growing vegetables using hydroponic farming technology.

Kola Masha is the CEO of the Babban Gona agriculture franchise. The company found a need and opportunity in the fact that smallholder farmers were unable to break- even due to low economies of scale. So the company deploys a model that franchises farmer groups and provides them with cost-effective end-to-end services and training and finds markets for their produce. All of these entrepreneurs that I have mentioned are under 40 years old and the number keeps increasing.

Manufacturing can also be part of this positive story despite fears of premature industrialization.  The point has been made elsewhere that there are a potential 85 million jobs that can be relocated to Africa from China through the movement of sunset industries as a result of the increasing wage gap between unskilled workers there and those in African countries.

The ramping up of production under this scenario will be assisted by the establishment of a Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) which will create an Africa wide market that enables the economies of scale on which successful manufacturing depends.   The CFTA should be ready this year and is one of the issues on the table for discussions at the African Union Summit.

Also because of the relative underdevelopment of the African industrial sector, it is possible for the continent to take a more environmentally friendly approach to industrial development.

Just to go back to the point which I just made, just because China which used to be the world’s factory is experiencing higher wages, Africa is going to be the next logical place for those manufacturing jobs to come to and we are already seeing signs of it. We are opening in Nigeria, special economic zones and we are seeing a great deal of interest from Chinese companies that want to come and invest in those SEZs. The reasons are simple, labour cost is cheaper and of course, it is easier to transport many of the products to parts of Europe and the rest of the World. It is an excellent opportunity and prognosis is excellent.

An excellent example is the rigorous planning that has gone into building the ultra-modern Hawassa Industrial Park in Ethiopia, which has one of the most advanced effluent discharge systems in the world in the form of a zero-emission water treatment plant. And that zero-emission is one that would be replicated in other parts of Africa.

Technology, especially, is an important plank in Africa’s job creation plans.    In and of itself technology provides opportunities in coding, creating the applications etc.

So, today African technology talent can find employment around the world and ultimately contribute to the growth and development of their own countries. Fortunately, on account of the age in which we now live – of outsourcing, teleconferencing, remote-working and so on – that is now very possible.

Andela is a very good example. Andela is a company that operates primarily in Nigeria and Kenya – one of the co-founders is a young Nigerian man called Iyin Aboyeji – the company trains young Africans living in Africa to code and then finds jobs for them in Western countries, where the demand for skilled coders is high.

By the very nature of coding, it can be done remotely, which means that the talent can stay back in Lagos and Nairobi and elsewhere, earn decent salaries, build a thriving ecosystem, and contribute the value of their salaries and taxes to their home countries.

Andela is operating a model that I envisage will be widely adopted in the years to come: Africans leveraging new and emerging technologies that allow them to primarily stay on the continent while filling job gaps around the world.

But perhaps the most important developments for Africa in digital technology is how young digital entrepreneurs have created solutions to value chain and logistics challenges and created thousands of jobs in the process.

And I will just give you a few examples, there is THRIVE AGRIC an innovative Agric – Tech startup supported by a Nigerian company called Venture Capital Fund – Ventures Platform. THRIVE AGRIC  was founded by Uka Eje and Ayo Arikawe one a farmer the other a software engineer – the company leverages technology to aggregate finances for smallholder farmers. They also provide inputs and farming extension services that are increasing farm yields four folds for thousands of ordinary farmers around the country.

There are also big data collection companies, MOBILE FORMS AND FORM PLUS are good examples, The Mobile Form’s platform is creating new employment opportunities for thousands of Nigerians as data collection agents to collect data on farmers and map farmlands so this also gives farmers better access to Finance.

I hear also that they are about to roll out one of Africa’s first Initial Coin Offering’s.  So, Cryptocurrencies here we come!

In payment solutions, Flutterwave and Paystack two young African companies have disrupted payment systems with their innovative technology-driven payment solutions. Flutter waves have processed 1.2 billion dollars in payments in 10million transactions in less than 3 years of operations. Paystack founded in 2015 is doing a turnover of over N1billion Naira, about 5 million dollars, in payments monthly.

Another African digital technology success story is the Rack Centre, a wholly Nigerian owned ‘carrier-neutral data centre’, the first of its type in Africa. It is, in essence, a colocation data centre that hosts IT assets for businesses and delivers Cloud solutions to them.

Rack Centre now hosts multi-national companies and connects all the undersea cables servicing the Atlantic coast of Africa.

There is no question that technology will provide for Africa the answer to many of the big issues that confront us. Educating and also finding jobs for the millions of new entrants into the job market. Technology can enable us to give African youth an education that is fit for the times in terms of science, technology, engineering and Mathematics,  as well as training across a range of skills relevant to the 21st Century job market. I will come back to this crucial point presently.

A low hanging fruit is using technology in the training of large numbers of young people, leapfrogging traditional obstacles such as access to books and educational materials especially in the rural areas. Our government, as part of our social investment programme, engaged 200,000 unemployed graduates from practically every local government in Nigeria and will employ 300,000 more.

The programme is called the N-Power volunteer programme. The idea is that these volunteers will work as teachers, farm extension workers, and public health offers. But during the course of their employment, they will have access to a broad range of technology and entrepreneurial training material loaded on to electronic tablets given to them and also available on an open portal. Two points to note.

First, training that number, over 200,000 simultaneously in far-flung parts of the country would have been practically impossible or prohibitively expensive without technology.

Second, training in relevant technology and entrepreneurship skills is crucial to prepare young people for the new market for digital jobs and their numerous extensions. This brings us back to the big question, educating young people in Africa for the jobs of the 21st Century. There is no question in my mind that we must radically change not just what we teach but how we teach. We are in a new educational era.

The emphasis on academic knowledge and general certifications will not be useful for many of the new jobs. New curricula and training techniques must be applied. We must begin from the premise that most low skill service jobs are disappearing forever as digital technology and robotics take over. All so suddenly bank tellers, shop assistants production line workers are disappearing with the development of online services, and industrial robotics respectively.

But as someone said if history is anything to go by, the technologies that take away jobs always create new ones; the only problem is that the new ones need a different set of skills, in this case, digital skills. To quote a source “The explosion in industrial robotics, for example, is eliminating thousands of assembly line jobs but it is creating a demand for people who can design, manufacture, program and maintain those machines”.

Digital skills in the new era are like what vocational education was in the old era. Most of the education will be more democratized; it will be online and available to millions at the same time. The courses will be relevant to work based skills required by industry. They will, therefore, be dynamic as the industry needs change. Udacity and Udeme, and other online educators, many of them pointing in the direction we are headed. They develop the curriculum for their online training for Job-ready skills in collaboration with industry, AT& T, Google, Facebook etc.

Africa has a unique opportunity to train its large youth population to become the best digitally trained people in the world. Beginning from primary schools where code writing and other digital skills can be taught.

And so, Ladies and gentlemen, there is no question that this century is the Africa Century where Africa will either be the world’s nemesis or its saviour.  Three things will decide.1: Leadership 2; leadership 3; leadership – visionary and innovative leadership.

But we are not now talking of political leadership. After all, which political leader has influenced the direction of world development as profoundly as the likes of the founders of Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Google, and several others.

So, the leaders we are talking about are this generation of African youth and their friends around the world, some of who are in this room, who see the incredible opportunity to revolutionize a continent.

Fortunately, technology has created a level playing field and so you don’t need an invitation to the development table, your ideas and drive will earn you a place.

But if I were a betting man and I was asked will Africa fly or will it fail?  I will surely put my money on Africa flying especially with all of you here.

So, welcome to the Africa Century!

Thank you very much.