Your Excellency, Mohammed Bazoum, President of the Republic of Niger.

Your Excellency Macky Sall, President of the Republic of Senegal and Chairperson of the African Union.

Your Excellencies, Heads of States and Government

Your Excellency Moussa Faki, Chairperson of the African Union Commission.

Honorable Ministers, Commissioners, Heads of International Organizations.

Heads of regional economic communities.

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen.

I wish to thank you for the honor of addressing you today on behalf of Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group, who wishes it were possible to be here with your Excellencies at this extra-ordinary summit on industrialization, economic diversification, and the African Continental Free Trade Area. 

I will now proceed to read Dr. Adesina’s speech.

Your Excellencies, 

The African Continental Free Trade Area is the continent’s best pathway to prosperity. To unlock its potential, however, we must not just trade. We must turn the zone into an industrial manufacturing zone. Free Trade Zones that launch prosperity around the world have done so not by trading low value commodities, but by industrial manufacturing.

Without any doubt, Africa’s wealth must no longer depend on exports of raw materials but of finished value-added products. The door to poverty is from export of raw materials, the highway to wealth is industrialization.

The sector with the greatest potential for industrialization in Africa is agriculture. Africa has 65% of the uncultivated arable land left to feed the world, therefore how Africa develops its agriculture will determine the future of food in the world. Across Africa, we must turn cocoa beans into chocolates, cotton into textile and garments, coffee beans into brewed coffee. That is why the African Development Bank is investing $25 billion in agriculture across the continent, to transform the agricultural sector. 

The African Development Bank is investing over $1 billion in the development of Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones in 18 countries, to help unlock Africa’s potential in food and agriculture. This is part of our efforts to unlock the food and agriculture market estimated to reach $1 trillion by 2030. 

Under the chairmanship of President Macky Sall, the African Development Bank and the African Union Commission are organizing a Presidential Feed Africa Summit from 25-27January 2023 in Dakar to develop action plans to fully transform Africa’s agriculture to feed itself and to contribute to feeding the world.

Your Excellencies,

Africa has an abundance of natural resources, oil, gas, minerals, and metals, as well as extensive blue economy that must be rapidly industrialized. The future of electric cars in the world depends on Africa, given its extensive resource deposits in rare minerals, especially lithium-ion, cobalt, nickel, and copper. The size of the electric vehicles market has been estimated to reach $7 trillion by 2030 and $46 trillion by 2050. Building precursor facilities for lithium-ion batteries in Africa will be three times cheaper than in other parts of the world. 

The African Development Bank and its partners -- which includes the Africa Finance Corporation, African Export Import Bank, Africa50, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Trade and Development Bank, European Investment Bank, and the Islamic Development Bank -- are working to develop lithium-ion manufacturing value chains in Africa. 

Your Excellencies,

The COVID-19 pandemic showed that Africa cannot outsource the health of its 1.4 billion people to the benevolence of others or depend on unreliable and highly concentrated value chains outside of the continent. Africa imports over 70% of its pharmaceutical products, with only 1% of vaccines produced locally. The African Development Bank strongly supports the Africa 2030 pharmaceutical vision of the African Union, with the goal of increasing Africa’s share of pharmaceutical production to up to 55% by 2030. The African Development Bank will be investing $3 billion to support pharmaceutical manufacturing in Africa.

Your Excellencies,

To industrialize, Africa must solve its major challenge with very low access to electricity. Yet Africa is endowed with 45% of the world’s resources for renewable energy, including solar, hydro, wind, and geothermal energy sources. The African Development Bank has invested over $7.5 billion in the past five years to expand access to electricity which has provided electricity for 20 million people. 

To further boost electricity availability, the African Development Bank is implementing a $20 billion Desert-to-Power initiative to develop 10,000 megawatts of solar power across 11 countries in the Sahel zone of Africa, which will provide electricity for 250 million people. The program, which has already garnered massive global support and has commenced in the G5 Sahel countries, will become the world’s largest solar zone. 

To further boost Africa’s manufacturing capacity for green energy, the African Development Bank will work with its partners to support the manufacturing of solar panels in Africa. 

Your Excellencies,

The success of the African Continental Free Trade Area depends on closing Africa’s infrastructure deficits. The African Development Bank Group has invested over $44 billion in infrastructure over the past seven years, including roads, seaports, airports, digital communications infrastructure backbones, transport corridors, one stop border posts, and regional power transmission lines which are supporting regional power pools.

We are connecting Africa better. 

Your Excellencies,

! Let us industrialize Africa.

! Let’s diversify our economies.

! Let’s prosper with the African Continental Free Trade Area

! Let’s close the door of poverty from the exports of raw materials.

! Let’s open the highways for wealth, with industrialization.

Thank you very much.