Discussing Infrastructure Finance at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank annual meetings in Mumbai with Ms Anita George, Executive Vice President Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec, Mr Donald Kanak, Chairman Eastsprings Investments, Mr Alan Macdonald Vice Chairman of Citibank, Mr Thierry de Longuemar , Vice President and CFO AIIB, and HE Mr Shaukat Aziz Former Prime Minister of Pakistan.

According to estimates by the New Climate Economy group, about 90 trillion dollars is needed globally for infrastructure investment in the next 15 years. About two third of this, or $60 trillion, will be needed in emerging markets and developing countries.

The public sector cannot handle this alone so the key question is how can institutional investors, pension funds and insurance companies etc who hold over $100 trillion in assets be attracted to invest in emerging and frontier markets?

Multilateral development Banks MDBs like AIIB can play a key role by working with governments upstream to tackle uncertain policy and regulatory environments, lack of transparency, bureaucratic hurdles, lack of bankable projects and other hurdles that contribute to risk perception.

They can also work downstream to develop financial instruments that mitigate risk, such as blended finance instruments, guarantees, first loss provisions, construction finance, originate and distribute actions that will attract institutional finance. The AIIB's investment in India's National Infrastructure Investment Fund of funds NIIF is a good example of a blended finance approach.

Dr Vera Songwe Executive Secretary, African Union Commission, and HE Mr Moussa Faki, Chair African Union Commission, holding a copy of the book Fighting Corruption is Dangerous: The Story Behind the Headlines. The theme of the AU in 2018 is Winning the Fight against Corruption.

Discussing Fighting Corruption is Dangerous and the problem of private sector corruption at the Said Business School, Oxford University and the Oxford Union.

With former President of Ghana President Kufour, Dean Tufano of Said, and Oxford Union President Gui Cavalcanti, and the wonderful, enthusiastic African students of Said.

Gavi continues to save lives! At its latest meeting in Geneva the Gavi Board approved about $200 million of support for 2019-2020 towards global polio eradication efforts. The Gavi Board also approved about $1 billion over the next 10 years to assist Nigeria to strengthen its immunization program. Click on the link https://www.gavi.org/library/news/press-releases/2018/gavi-board-approves-funding-for-inactivated-poliovirus-vaccine-until-2020/.

At 4.3 million children, Nigeria has the largest number of under-immunized children in the world. This must change! No child should be allowed to die from preventable diseases. Nigeria has pledged $1.9 billion of its own resources over 10 years to co-finance the program. Let’s save our children’s lives! The Gavi Board welcomes HE Dr Tedros, WHO DG and himself a former Gavi Board member.

It has come to my attention that mischief makers are again trying to distort what is written in my book, ‘Fighting Corruption is Dangerous: the Story Behind the Headlines’, for their own political purposes.

One more time, It is important that people read the book for themselves. In the case of the N17billion, the book does not talk of bribe. It indicates that lawmakers increased the budget by N17billion and we had to accept that to move on; hence, the term “price to pay”.

The reason for discussing what happened is that this approach needs to change. The country must clear up and clarify its budget process for the future to improve. Those like Hon Gbajabiamiala trying to introduce lies that myself and my aides put in our own projects and lawmakers were fighting with me on that basis are playing their usual cynical games and Nigerians are tired of that!

Lies obscure the country’s problems and do not allow us to improve. There were and there still are politicians in the National Assembly trying to do the right thing. The book also points that out. Such well-meaning legislators should not allow their strident colleagues to twist matters and divert attention from the need to improve the country’s budget process so our young people can see a better side of their country.

Signed.

NOI

Brainstorming the African Financial Alliance for Climate Change.

Africa needs $2.7 trillion for climate change mitigation and $488 billion for adaptation by 2030 according to the African Development Bank.

While the global community must fulfil its pledge to provide financing to manage the impacts of climate change, Africans need to also raise their own resources and invest. According to the New Climate Economy group, you can have better growth and better climate and create jobs.

The Afdb is focused on creating an alliance of African financial institutions to leverage the $380 billion in pension fund resources, leverage private equity, sovereign wealth funds, insurance, and banking to provide green finance on the continent.

In Busan, Korea with Howard Bamsey CEO Green Climate Fund, President Adesina Afdb, Naoko Ishii, CEO Global Environmental Facility, Alain Ebobisse CEO of Africa50, Oscar Onyema CEO Nigerian Stock Exchange, Amadou Hott, Dolika Banda, Minister Adriano Maleiane of Mozambique, among others.

Discussing Korea’s partnership with and support to Gavi, including Gavi’s latest results in immunizing 640million children and saving 9million lives; Gavi’s support to WHO to administer experimental vaccines in DRC to contain the Ebola outbreak.

With Mr Sung-Soo Eun Chairman and President of the Export-Import Bank of Korea, Mr Young-hoon Chang, Executive Director, EDCF Operations Group, Korea Exim Bank and Hon. Juyoung Lee, Member of the Parliament and the President of the National Assembly Africa New Era Forum. Korea is at the forefront in developing a new less expensive and easier to administer cholera vaccine.

Discussing the 4th industrial revolution, Africa’s role, including the impact on innovation and entrepreneurship in Africa at the 2018 KOAFEC Korean Africa Economic Cooperation Meeting in Busan; with President Mahama, former President of Ghana, dynamic young Nigerian entrepreneur, Nkemdilim Begho, African Development Bank Director of Macroeconomics, Hanan Moray, and others including Korean and African business men and women.

London launch of the book, “Fighting Corruption is Dangerous” at the London School of Economics with students, faculty and guests and with LSE Director, Dame Nemat Minouche Shafik.

Followed by a launch at the House of Commons with Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP, Dr Rupa Huq MP, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Anti Corruption APPG, and Lord Michael Watson of Invergowrie.

A limited number of signed books are available at Waterstones Trafalgar Square and in Nigeria try Roving Heights and Laterna bookstores.

With the Global Leaders of Peace group in Paris discussing conflict prevention and how to wage peace, not war, in an uncertain world.

With Prime Minister of France HE Édouard Philippe, former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin founder of Leaders, Excellencies Amr Moussa, Tertius Zongo, Enrico Letta, Antony Blinken, Surakiart Sathirathai, Wided Bouchamaoui, Rivka Carmi, Martha Ruiz Corzo among others.

Joined by the amazing students of Sciences Po challenging received wisdom and asking tough questions of their elders all the way.

At no point in my book, 'Fighting Corruption is Dangerous', did I say 'yesterday's scavengers are today's saints'. While I appreciate all the reviews and discourse the book is generating at home and abroad; mischief-makers who wish to add their comments should get their own copy of the book so that they can make intelligent contributions, rather than putting words in my mouth.

Signed.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

Discussing the need to create civic space, rebuild trust, strengthen African public service and strengthen the social contract between governments and citizens to enable better delivery of basic services on the African continent with Jay Naidoo, Akere Muna and two terrific young African women, Aya Chebbi activist from Tunisia, and Barkha Mossae, a diplomat from Mauritius.

A wonderful day and night in Kigali at the Mo Ibrahim Foundation weekend as HE President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf becomes the fifth African and first female leader to receive the Mo Ibrahim Governance Prize. She will utilize the $5m award to set up a foundation to train and empower female leaders on the continent.

Please click the link to listen to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s elegant, powerful and impactful speech — a legacy speech in which she talks about building and developing a fragile state from scratch, the imperative of empowering girls and women and the necessity of confronting corruption.

Ellen was surrounded by Presidents Kagame and Ouattara, former President Horst Kohler, former Prime Ministers Desalegn of Ethiopia and Salim Ahmed Salim of Tanzania, Mo Ibrahim among others.

http://mo.ibrahim.foundation/annual-event/ceremony/2018/

Discussing the transition from Gavi and other concessional Financing such as IDA, Global Fund, Pepfar, with Finance ministers from middle-income countries.

As countries develop and experience increases in their per capita income, they must transition from concessional support and assume more of the financing burden for development from their domestic resources and non-concessional resources.

How do finance ministers manage the multiple transitions and make the requisite tradeoffs? How do they interact with their health colleagues in making such decisions? How do we protect and ensure sustainability of financing for immunization, health, and other crucial human capital expenditures so central to development?

Co-chairing a dinner with Bill Gates to discuss the above issues with Ministers of Finance from Georgia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Ghana, Angola, Kenya, Bangladesh, and Sudan on the sidelines of the World Bank-IMF spring meetings in Washington.

“Resign on national TV and leave the country” – the message from the kidnapper’s of Okonjo-Iweala’s mother to the former minister

Some respected global leaders are commending the forthcoming book by former Finance Minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on her experiences while serving in the Jonathan administration as a timely, honest and very useful account on the challenges of progressing national development and fighting corruption in a very challenging environment.

The book, Fighting Corruption Is Dangerous: The Story Behind The Headlines, published by MIT Press is scheduled for global release on April 12.

Former British Prime Minister and United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown has described the book, an often riveting account of the challenges and serious dangers which the former Minister faced as “Fearless, principled, compassionate for Africa's poor and passionate for Africa's future”.

According to Brown...

CREDIT: https://newsbreakers.ng/gordon-brown-mo-ibrahim-others-praise-okonjo-iwealas-new-book/

At the Duke University Center for International Development’s Rethinking Development Series discussing ways to rethink Africa’s development and accelerate it.

Thanks to Prof Indermit Gill and his wonderful colleagues at the Center, as well as students and faculty for a stimulating discussion. Sub Saharan Africa is making progress but not fast enough. In fact, in the last three years, Sub Saharan Africa took some steps backwards. South Asia’s per capita GDP is overtaking SSA’s while the gap with East Asia is widening. There Will be 600 million young people in Africa (as much as the rest of the world combined) by the end of the century.

We need to accelerate inclusive growth, job creation, and human development to make it. This will not happen unless the pace of development accelerates in the three largest economies that make up 67 percent of SSA’s GDP that is Nigeria, South Africa and Angola. The three countries are presently holding Africa back!

The global community needs to prioritize their development if they want Africa to make progress.

Pix 2: With Duke University President Vincent Price, Prof Indermit Gill, Director Duke Center for International Development and Prof Giovanni Zanalda, Director Duke University Center for International and Global Studies

Pix 3: With Prof Michael Merson Vice Provost, Duke University,

Pix 4: With African students at Duke

Discussing public-private partnership solutions to non-communicable diseases in Africa. What role can the private sector play? Gavi, a public, private, civil society partnership supports HPV vaccines for girls in order to prevent the occurrence of cervical cancer as adults.

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the world, with 530,000 diagnosed cases every year, resulting in 266,000 deaths worldwide. The vast majority of these deaths – around 85 percent – happen in poor countries. Let’s support @Gavi to immunize our girls!

Africa Risk Capacity and UNECA sign MOU on risk modeling and capacity building on weather based insurance for African countries at the Transform: Africa Business and Investment Forum at the AU summit in Addis 30th January 2018.

With amazing ARC staff, Executive Secretary of the ECA Dr. Vera Songwe, ACP Secretary-General Dr. Patrick Gomes, and dynamic African women CEO’s Dr. Frannie Léautier and Dr. Eleni Gabre-Madhin

At the Transforming Africa Business and Investment Forum organized by the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the Corporate Council on Africa on the margins of the AU summit.

Discussing public-private partnerships for agriculture, energy, trade, and health with their Excellencies President Paul Kagame of Rwanda current AU chair, Prime Minister Desalegn of Ethiopia, President Museveni of Uganda, and President Issoufou of Niger along with Dr Vera Songwe Executive Secretary ECA, Ms Florie Liser President and CEO of CCA, and other dignitaries.

Images from yesterday's AU meeting in Addis, tapping the wisdom of elders and encouraging 'youngers' - with Former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Thabo Mbeki, AUC Chair H.E Moussa Faki, AUC Deputy Chair H.E.Thomas Quartey, Ambassador Gambari and Dr. Emmanuel Nnadozie of ACBF with Former Deputy AUC Chair H.E Mr. Mwencha and Dr. Michel Sidibe Executive Director UNAIDS.

At the African Union event on Partnerships to End Hunger in Africa headlining Prime Minister Desalegn of Ethiopia, President Conde of Guinea, UN Secretary-General Gutteres, former President of Nigeria Dr Olusegun Obasanjo, DG FAO Dr Graziano, President IFAD Dr Houngbo, AU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Madame Sacko, among other eminent panelists.

Despite progress made in improving agriculture on the continent as exemplified by such countries as Ethiopia, according to Sec-Gen Gutteres, Africa remains the continent with the highest incidence of hunger due to conflicts and climate change. According to FAO statistics, the number of undernourished people on the continent rose from 200 to 224 million people in 2016, accounting for 25 percent of the 815 undernourished people in the world.

Africa needs to work hard to solve this eminently solvable problem because it has the basis to do this. But to get there we must deal with our remaining conflicts and raise our conversation on climate change and its impacts. We must manage better our climate risks.

The good news I shared is that the AU has created an institution, the African Risk Capacity, that helps countries manage extreme weather events through insurance transferring some of the risks to capital markets.

The ARC has already paid out $36 million to 4 countries to manage drought events, supporting over 2 million people and 1 million livestock.

Let's work hard, let's work sustainably, and let's build innovative mechanisms to solve Africa's hunger problem.

Africa has what it takes to solve its problems, but the continent must deploy its assets appropriately. More action, less talk!!

On the snow with Jack Ma in Davos. Please see his powerful statement in Davos on women.

He said, “37% of senior management in Alibaba are women. Part of the secret sauce of our success is because we have so many women colleagues.

"If you want your company to be successful, if you want your company to operate with wisdom, with care, then women are best!”

Debating inequality at Sciences Po, Paris with talented African, European and other international students and faculty.

Global and within-country inequality will be one of the most hotly debated topics internationally this year. We need to look at three types of inequality, inequality of incomes and consumption, inequality of opportunity, and inequality of wealth. While global income inequality has declined in the past three decades due to progress in China and India, income inequality has increased within 53 percent of all countries and inequality of wealth has certainly increased.

In many countries, most of the gains in income have gone to the top one percent. Latin America and Africa are the two most unequal regions. Strong job-creating economic growth along with a stronger action on taxation and redistribution, social safety nets, investment in human capital, and active labour market policies can help ensure no one is left behind.

With Dean of Sciences Po former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, Lakhdar Brahimi former UN envoy for Syria, Maria Nowak founder ADIE at Sciences Po session on Inequality

Happy to join the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Brookings Institution Africa Growth Initiative.

Congratulations to AGI and to Brookings. Honored to have contributed to the founding of this initiative. Also pleased to participate in the launch of the flagship Foresight Africa Report #Foresight outlining top priorities for the continent in 2018.

See the contributions of top thinkers and actors from within and outside the continent on leadership and governance, trade, industrialization, the digital frontier and other modern infrastructure, ending hunger, mobilizing our own resources, avoiding debt, and taking charge of our own development.

A good way to generate positive energy and start the year.

Enjoy!

It has been brought to my attention that a number of fake news items with my photo and fake voice recordings of me making political utterances are circulating on social media.

I want the public to beware of such fake news items. They are being put out by politically motivated people with malicious intent.

It is the 2019 political season and such people are desperate to destroy and distract for power.

I want to state categorically, as I have always done, that I will not be distracted from the focused international assignments I am engaged with.

Singed.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

The year 2017 did not end on a normal note for some of the illustrious families in the land. The curtain of 2017 fell on a very convivial note for members of the families of the literary icon, Professor Chinua Achebe, and Nigeria’s two-time finance minister, the first woman to hold that office to boot, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, as their children, Uchechi Iweala and Chioma Achebe joined hearts in matrimony.

Here are some pictures from the two-day event https://newsbreakers.ng/photo-splash-okonjo-iwealas-chinua-achebes-families-become-one/

Vaccination Boosts the Economy

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on Securing Children's Future

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on Investing in Children

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on Infant Vaccination

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on Immunisation & Economic Development

It has been two years since the historic Paris agreement to limit global temperature rise was struck. Now, on its second anniversary, the One Planet Summit hosted by French president Emmanuel Macron, is rightly putting finance at the centre of its agenda. Financing the transition to a low-carbon economy is fundamental to securing a more sustainable, secure and prosperous future.

We know that the low-carbon transition does not need to cost more than our current, high-polluting pathway, and will avoid the potentially enormous human and economic costs of congested cities, degraded agricultural and forest lands, and a changing climate. Research has shown that either path – the business-as-usual or the low-carbon, sustainable one – would require investing approximately $90tn (£67.5tn) over the next 15 years (pdf) to meet global infrastructure needs, and that this capital already exists. The problem is that we are still making the wrong investment choices in too many places and across too many sectors. These are only going to yield bigger and costlier stranded assets. It is time to be smart about finance.

The good news is that the wind – quite literally – is at our backs. Public and private investment in clean energy is scaling up. Global investment in renewable energy capacity has exceeded that in fossil fuel generation for the fifth year in a row (pdf). And South Australia, courtesy of Tesla, has just switched on the world’s biggest lithium ion battery – capable of storing enough energy to power 30,000 homes for an hour – a major game-changer in improving the reliability of sustainable energy.

The question is therefore not whether the transformation to a low-carbon future will happen, but how quickly it will take place. And what can financial decision-makers – finance ministers, institutional investors, and heads of private or multilateral development banks – do to help speed this process? There are exciting signs of momentum in each group: more must now seize the opportunity.

Countries must develop economy-wide development strategies to guide long-term investment that is consistent with their climate commitments. As a former finance minister myself, I know how intensive a process this will be. Every country – whether a mature or emerging economy – will need to undertake it. There are clear rewards for doing so.

Consider Uganda, for instance. Its finance ministry has adopted a holistic approach, identifying 23 specific investment opportunities (pdf) in the country that will increase growth – providing as much as 10% higher GDP than business-as-usual in 2020 – while helping the country meet or exceed its climate targets. These opportunities have been reflected in the Uganda Green Growth Development Strategy, released earlier this year, and the ministry is now integrating them into budget planning.

Meanwhile, Indonesia’s planning minister announced in November 2017 that his country’s next five-year development plan would also be its first low-carbon development one. More countries should adopt this strong approach to policy alignment: it offers a clear win both for immediate investment and for future growth.

Then, take the work of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Risk Disclosure, with its potentially global impact on the finance industry. Commissioned in 2016 by G20 finance ministers, the Task Force’s recommendations effectively establish a way of identifying and reporting what makes a good investment in the face of climate risk. Already more than 100 businesses, investors, and banks – including Unilever, Barclays and HSBC – are working to implement them. Another recommendation – voluntary climate-related disclosures – should be part of mainstream financial filings. Indeed we should look to make these mandatory as soon as possible, as in France.

Next, there are important signals from investors. Over 400 of them, with $25tn in assets, have joined the Investor Platform for Climate Actions. Around 520 institutions with $3.4tn in assets, have committed to divest from fossil fuels. Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, the world’s largest with assets of $1tn, took steps to divest from coal in 2016 and in November proposed the selling off of $35bn in oil and natural gas. It would be among the largest investors to undertake such a shift – and European oil stocks promptly plummeted. The signal should be clear to investors and shareholders everywhere: future-smart investments are those that are sustainable.

Multilateral development banks and other development finance institutions hold a final and critical part of the puzzle. They must work harder to catalyse a virtuous circle of sustainable investment, especially in some of the world’s poorest countries, which both have the greatest investment needs and are facing the most significant impacts of a changing climate. Some have already committed to increasing climate-smart financing over the next five years. That is a welcome step, but it must quickly be bolstered by efforts comprehensively to assess the rest of their portfolios to ensure that other investments are not hindering sustainable development or efforts to protect the global commons.

There’s no shortcut or special secret to achieving a low-carbon economy. It will require concerted, consistent and coordinated effort from the public and private sectors, and from governments at all levels. Developed countries and large emerging markets should particularly step up to be good examples, taking the lead in aligning their growth and climate strategies and meeting their financial pledges to support poor countries.

The world displayed all these qualities in Paris two years ago. Now we need to keep that spirit alive as we work to make its goals a reality.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was formerly finance minister of Nigeria and managing director of the World Bank.

https://www.theguardian.com/the-gef-partner-zone/2017/dec/12/its-time-to-be-smart-about-financing-clean-development