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well ladies and gentlemen good afternoon the Brookings Institution I'm John Allen I'm the president of Brookings and it is my great pleasure and distinct honor to welcome to Brookings today is excellency Alpha Hyundai president of the Republic of Guinea president Conde we're gonna hold for just a moment so where translation is working I'm hard enough to understand in English good sir president Conde was first elected president nearly 10 years ago in 2010 but he was re-elected again in 2015 and has also had the honor of serving as the chairperson of the African Union prior to his political career president Conde was a professor of public law at the Sorbonne University in Paris shortly the president will deliver a set of remarks touching on many of the issues that are impacting Guinea and the African continent today not the least of them natural resource management and economic diversification which is the theme of today's event and I assure you mr. president that these are important issues for us at the Brookings Institution and the Africa growth initiative gold bauxite diamonds are guineas main exports and resource revenues revolve largely around an extractive economy and comprise a significant portion of the GDP the mining sector also produces more than 90% of guineas exports once he has completed his remarks the president will be joined by Brahimi coulibaly who is who is our senior fellow and the director of the Africa growth initiative or the AG I as you'll hear it called here at Brookings AG I has long examined how enhanced natural resource management can boost structural transformation in Africa and I have little doubt that that conversation will be tremendously insightful today as for format the president will make about 15 minutes of remarks and it'll be followed by a moderated discussion with dr. Coulibaly and a question-and-answer session a final reminder that today's event is very much on the record and with that please join me in welcoming to the stage president Conde [Applause] a ball generally messy the president remember the blue team mm VT the members here Guinea has always been represented as a geological and agricultural scandal but we have been working on the issue of natural resources we know that in Guinea we have over half of the world's reserves of bauxite we also have iron ore at the seminal site as well as gold and bauxite that's what people are most familiar with when we talk about Guinea we have carried out a geophysical survey recently and in addition to bauxite we have cobalt copper platinum and uranium when I became president in 2011 we knew that Guinea had half of the world bauxite reserves but we only exported 13 million tonnes a year which is only 7 percent of that market but we have worked a great deal on the mining sector and I would like to thank many of the partners who have helped us and have worked with us on developing iron ore and bauxite so that we don't repeat the mistakes that we have made in other countries today we are producing 60 million tonnes and we hope to soon be producing 80 million tonnes meaning that we will be the second largest producer in the world and the top supplier for China when we talk about bauxite people think we give everything to the Chinese but I need to clarify that point we started to mine bauxite several decades ago and we found that we had the largest bauxite reserves in the world then we were able to develop different sites throughout the country there is an English American company that has also been mining in Guinea we also have other private companies that are involved in the mining sector in Guinea the issue that we see today is the weakness of African countries we don't have the technological expertise that we need when you need to produce a certain number of barrels of oil there may be oil in our countries but we don't have the technology to produce so the main challenge that we are facing is to develop the technological tools to no.1 what resources we have and to what the quality of these resources is we may have bauxite but not all of it can be processed so those are some of the challenges that we are seeing in Africa today it is also important to have a code that addresses the concerns of African populations the companies that come in to mine earn profits but we need to have a winning cooperation a win-win cooperation in both in two respects with the government but also with the local population we developed a mining code in Guinea mining companies must give 15% of their stake to the Ghanaian government meaning that if there is a company mining bauxite and the government according to this code has to have at least a 15% stake in the company in addition within these companies decisions can only be made by the governing board on which the government has a representative another issue we face is environmental protection as you know development in countries has sometimes caused damage if you go to Beijing for instance there's a great deal of air pollution if you go to France that might not be the case in other words Africa needs to develop its natural resources without repeating the mistakes of other countries that means we need to focus on environmental protection today what we want to do well we've developed bauxite meaning mining as well as iron ore unfortunately before I became president the situation was a bit different Simona was the main mining site but a lot of that mining didn't actually happen the mine wasn't actually developed and that was a loss for us so how can recover how can we recover from that the first thing we did was to make public all of the mining contracts that we have in Guinea the second thing we did was to withdraw 800 mining permits from licences people had licenses but they didn't even know where the mines were located in some cases in addition there were other requirements that we had in our code that people were not upholding that is why we withdrew all of those licenses we also focused on local content what does that mean a certain percentage of the revenues that mining companies earn has to go back to local communities and to address environmental concerns in addition 15% of mining revenues will go to infrastructure oftentimes we see most development happening in cities but there is a lot going on in rural areas and much of the population lives in rural areas that is why we want to give 15% of mining revenues to develop these rural communities another challenge that we are facing today is processing raw materials but not just that because of colonization we have been condemned to being producers of raw materials and not so much of finished products therefore if we are to develop we need to have better control over the value chain from the beginning that is mining bauxite all the way through to the commercialization process seven out of ten Africans do not have access to energy and without energy we can't develop Africa has faced so many issues including issues that affected our young people and that prevented them from really developing their full potential today we are seeing the fourth Industrial Revolution which is major progress and is happening at an accelerated rate and what I've seen is that young Africans are just as good as Europeans and America Americans when it comes to having technological ability I see this in Ethiopia I see this in Eritrea I see it in other African countries young people have a lot of technological expertise which brings me back to the importance of energy we need to have access to energy this fourth Industrial Revolution will allow Africa to catch up I can give you a simple example of this when we had landlines back in the day you needed to have the right technology to be able to use a landline but now we have cell phones and that allows people to use that technology no matter where they are when we talk about technology one of the most important aspects is making sure that young people know how to use a technology that's the first part the second part is infrastructure we have just created the Continental free-trade area but will that really help us if there aren't any railroads connecting major cities for instance so we need energy but we also need infrastructure I'm talking about all of Africa first because as you know I was the president of the African Union before I was the president of Guinea that is why I'm focusing on the importance of being able to process raw materials into finished products as I mentioned we have bauxite in Guinea people often think wrongly that China is the largest bauxite market but that actually is not the case Africa is actually a major market for aluminum and actually the major market for that aluminum is in Africa not in China this also brings me to talk about agriculture that is why we also need a value chain for agriculture so that we can have a value chain for the entire process from production all the way to commercialization that way countries can get benefits and profits this also brings me to focus on natural resources we have many natural resources in Guinea but many of them are still undeveloped even though we have half of the world's bauxite reserves initially we were only exporting 13 million tons a year we have been able to bring that up to about 80 even 100 million we also need to make sure that we are investing in these bauxite mines so that the bauxite can be mined and turned into aluminum the aluminum is then used to make certain products that are then exported to other African countries gas is very important you need a lot of energy from gas for instance to be able to mine bauxite and process it we have done a lot of research and surveys into the concept of clean coal but I'm convinced that it does not exist because there is always going to be consequences when you burn coal we have dams that provide hydropower but those dams are not sufficient for processing bauxite you either need to have gas or coal that is what you need to burn we decided to use gas and as a matter of fact we have recently been developing that what do we still need we still need knowledge expertise we don't always know or have the best way of knowing exactly how many tons are being shipped into on various boats that's one challenge the second challenge is quality so we need to have laboratories that can tell us how much of the bauxite reserves can actually be developed those are the two most important elements the two main challenges that we are trying to address in Guinea the boats that I mentioned before we need to know how many tonnes can go on those boats and secondly we need to know how much of the bauxite can actually be developed we don't have enough information about all of our natural resources that are still underground companies may tell us that we have X number of tonnes of bauxite or other resources we don't have the technology ourselves to make sure that what they are telling us is actually true we need to have this technology so that we truly know what resources we actually have we also want to avoid mistakes made by developed countries in France asbestos was used in homes which is becoming a major issue as you know we know that this has serious consequences the same is true in China so how can we develop our natural resources while still protecting the environment the environment is several things first we must protect the rivers when mines are developed we need to make sure that fish populations don't die out secondly we need to look after agriculture we need to make sure that development is not preventing people from farming the land we also need to protect rare species this is one of the issues that we are working on with the World Bank we developed a dam and many people were displaced we also had issues with other projects chimpanzees actually there are many chimpanzees in Guinea and when we were developing one of our projects we discussed this with the world bank because near the site that we were trying to develop there was actually a large population of chimpanzees so we had to make certain modifications to the project to make sure that population of chimpanzees wasn't affected sometimes there are people outside of Guinea who say that we have X number of chimpanzees or X amount of this or that but they don't have the most exact information but for this project we're able to protect those chimpanzees and make sure that they were not affected by the dams sometimes it's difficult for people to understand why do we have to displace people but we're able to protect a chimpanzee population there are a lot of multinational multinational companies that are involved in various African countries and they impose certain rules in one part of the country we have a great deal of iron ore but in that same area we also have chimpanzees there and other resources so we're not able to develop the iron ore in that area not what I do and this is why we had an agreement with UNESCO to protect these populations now as soon as we can protect such populations because what we really need to know today is that we want to also protect endangered species but the questions that Africans ask themselves we have no food we are poor we cannot feed ourselves and at the same time we are being told that these chimpanzees are more important than we are like international organizations it is a problem so we need to take development into account of this way but a number of things were done when we wanted to promote development and economic growth and a number of factors were not taken into account in the past so we don't want to make the same mistakes as in the past when I remember talking to a vice president of the USA we said you need hydroelectric dams and I said well no there are other things that we may need we may need railways but that means population resettlement oftentimes and at the same time we have to resettle populations and you don't want us to make us to make dance because well the actual fight that we have in Africa is that we want to use clean energies because thermal plants thermal plants coal plants are expensive and of course they contribute to more greenhouse gas emissions and co2 emissions since the Paris cop meetings a number of countries have said that it is important first and foremost to have construction be respectful of climate change or at least be adapted to climate change so we are not polluters and can also be resilient and fight against pollution but we are not really the biggest polluters in the world the US China India are the bigger polluters but we are the most hardly hit by the effects of climate change our countries are and so the question of surface area is a question that is problematic both for cattle breeders and for small hold farmers or large-scale farmers and so it's a big problem and there are a number of cooperatives now between cattle breeders and artisanal workers as well as Agriculture's because little by little each person's parcel of land gets smaller now we have to also take into account energy visa vie climate change and so these are a number of challenges that we have to surmount in Kigali we were create able to create the new African initiative and I'm the only spokesperson for it for the time being but each country represents its own region well Egypt for Northwest northeast Africa Chad for Central Africa and we have our discussions together with the different heads of the African regions because we want to express ourselves in one single voice I said to Secretary of State Pompeo that we do not intervene in Libya because if you intervene in Libya there will be two outcomes Libya will be just like Somalia it will be stateless will be lawless that will be the first outcome and at the beginning there was a government being formed Qadhafi was in power with some tribal leaders but now each tribe is having its own independence and is taking its own independence with its own leaders so that means if there's no more government who is going to actually bring government back it's just like reforestation what you have in Burkina Faso is not the same thing as you have amnesia for instance but they know they don't listen you are here today and you are capable of telling our partners here that the major objective of Africa should be to get together and we are capable of making our own decisions but what we need is support we need to be accompanied and we need assistance we need support no turnkey solutions is not what we want at all but rather collaboration because we don't have the same history we don't have the same backgrounds and of course the populations are different now we have a universal population but it has to be adapted and everything has to be adapted to each country's context so we want not to abandon our cultures and our traditions but also use them to move forward so what do you do my brother Coulibaly and others dr. Coulibaly what do you do for this vision and to promote this vision in Abidjan when i was president of the AU i had said we need to sever the umbilical cord we have with France and by president of the President of Guinea at the time said are you sure we should do that and I said you know this is the right decision I'm vouching for that decision well we are no longer babies the umbilical cord has been severed but we need to tie relations with other countries such as yourself in the United States we don't yet have in Africa all the knowledge that is needed in facing multinational companies that have all their lawyers and experts and bankers and so on and so forth that surround them and support them we don't have all of these experts so there is where we find bottlenecks this is where we need assistance in order to better control the sort of maze in which the major lawyers are leading us - as well as the big financial institutions so that is the kind of support we need in order to be on an equal footing with immense ease even though we don't have as many resources at least not the same resources as they do but still work on an equal footing you know mine so that is all good and well mine mining extraction that is all good and well but it doesn't really hire that many people in our countries actually very few people are recruited 70% of the population in Africa is in rural areas live in rural areas so small hold farmers agriculture and agribusiness that is what we need agribusiness is crucial because if we make mining resources all of our wealth but from that we will actually have forgone or lost opportunity we also need to have a great business agribusiness processing is crucial the entire value chain so we need to be involved there and that's what we tell the big mining operators and we have agreements with the African Development Bank to have bigger agricultural areas with bulldozers actually coming in to prepare the land and in order for people to be able to grow crops of course exporting minerals is very good because we get revenue from that but our local populations also need to be involved and in to intervene in agribusiness because when you fund it a farmer he can actually pay back but you need a whole value chain in order to fund this grower for processing processing plants and then marketing of the product and then everyone has it's a win-win situation and everyone gets value from such a value chain the more you have finished products made in your own country the more wealth you have and so it is in our interest that for Guinea which has bauxite and iron ore which have just signed some agreements with a well for iron ore for so without and one American company with Philip and the C Mon sorry NEMA iron ore extraction signed and we launched a call for tenders for an investment program of 14 billion so a big mine and then a railway of 600 kilometers in order for there to be connection routes and we also many people say Guinea is the Chinese true granted we have signed some agreements with China some 2 billion in this area and in creating our mining the code we actually avoided the mistakes by made by the Congo and so now we have a wealth of 5 billion for these mining extraction sites and 5 billion with China so if there are some private Chinese companies that are actually carrying out extraction operations up for a certain number of years and of course there has been a reimbursement loop a number of the revenues come back to Guinea so Alcoa American company has a very big project of five billion dollars and most of the other projects are actually not as high but significant ones in one project with Abu Dhabi there's a French company also that has been implanted in our country and we wish there to be as many American investors as possible in our country as well the president president Truong had invited us to lunch when I was president of the AU and I was very surprised to hear you well I mean this private sector we know as you know the value of the private sector we want the private sector and do as China does we have relations with Exim Bank now we need American companies to do the same way because they might be risk-averse at certain points but at a certain point it is useful to know that there is a policy that we have in order to invite more investors now I'm not here to do politics or talk politics actually politics really is what we do in Guinea itself and what I do but when we said no to France that was very important we are a sovereign country and nobody gives us any orders no country does gives us any orders - France or the United States the Guinean population has elected me and it is the viewpoint of the Canadian population that is crucial and not that of France or of China or of the United States of course but the viewpoint of the Union population this is how we have been able to further develop our own resources and now this is where we need support the mayor of Dallas told me you need a better place I said well we are at the mercy of energy we need energy in order to transform in order to process for a material of course in Texas there is a lot of gas and hydrocarbons and so it was really impressive to see when I was in Houston and in Dallas but we are always very curious to learn more we have an appetite for learning we need to be aware of our own shortcomings and see what we can do also to help you work side by side with you in order for you to also overcome perhaps some other shortcomings but we have a lot of progress to make and we have made some progress but we are really taking reforms as very important and we have been quite courageous in adopting these reforms in adapting the mining code but of course you need to have appropriate mining extraction sites so I came here of course to speak but also to listen to you to find out how you can best support us in order to go from a stage of shortcomings and really seize the opportunities that we have in our country and once we decide to protect our environment which we do whether it we're talking about the habitat of human beings or the habitats of endangered species we want to protect to them all this is where I came to say thank [Applause] so the mic is getting set up yes a couple of housekeeping so for this part of the motivation is going to be followed by the question and answer and you must have had like I received a card when you signed in so write down your name institution as well as your questions on the card and some of the staff members will come by collect them and then hand them over over to me I ask that you keep with your questions and comments brief and also keep them on topic I know we all have a lot of questions we want to ask His Excellency but the time frame is a bit short so we want to get in as many questions as well as possible so thank you your excellency for joining us for this important conversation on the management of Natural Resources which is clearly an important topic for Africa the economic development so here at Brookings the Africa program with support from the institution's leadership Willie strives through our research to be a trusted partner to the African government and policymakers and a neutral broker for policy discussions on socio-economic development issues of the continent so in this regard we've been very attentive to the issue of natural resources and the work on some of our experts to uncover new approaches to natural resource management and for the better contribution of the sector to structural transformation on the continent is proceeding and we will likely be sharing some of those results so with Guinea through his Excellency the Ambassador whom we've been in close contact so given Ginny's endowment in natural resource particularly mining we couldn't have thought of a better person to have for today's conversation and they if I may start you've outlined quite a number of challenges but I think you've been a bit humble in terms of some of the achievements that Guinea has made over the past years notably you recall a report from the National Natural Resources government Institute that has highlighted in the interim report some of the progress you've made which has contributed then to boosting activity in the mining sector and then also boosting GDP and you had like eight and half percent growth rates over the past three years by some statistics and projections are that you may grow to about six percent over the next few years sub-saharan Africa is around four percent and then the world economy is around three percent so that's quite good I see and the mining sector was an important part of that and the reform so if I can step back and just ask a question about reforms more broadly because reforms it's easily said and done and because you try to balance different competing needs so from your experience what were the most challenging aspect of enacting the reform that you were able to do to begin unlocking some of the potential of the mining sector well you know what you have is an asset when you have an asset well then you have you asset but what is important to speak about is what you don't have the assets you do not have and so I think I focus a lot on what we don't have now a number of reforms first of all the reform of the military you need a state and when I arrived in power and and I took office there was a large civil service but there were many many military servicemen and that were actually this force was being increased and we had to allow a number of officers to retire at a certain point because this was much too much of a growth of the military as it were now a state is also an administration and it is also the security apparatus and justice now with respect to human resources we've also benefited from the help of many friend Saros and polka yi and i would like to thank them very warmly because that helped us in elaborating our own mining code we looked at what other countries were doing and then we made some improvements we also wanted to be as transparent as possible fully transparent in other words all the public contracts are published and this is open source and we've also launched in the extractive industries initiative EITI in order to set up some very specific and stringent rules in mining codes so all of the commercial contracts have to be countersigned by the minister of mining I was previously working in these fields and I can actually sell a branch when you have a bank of course you have a number of branches and of course they have to be profitable so we need to know when we have these contracts who were contracting with and the appropriate counterparts in order for there to be profits and of course for the situation to be positive for all now 15 percent that we talked about earlier it's either revenue or it's also material that we can sell back ourselves for instance if there's a company that buys a bauxite from us and we don't make a secret of that but we should be able to sell to this mining company the bauxite in order for it to be transformed at this stage we've also included in the code that any company that gets a production permit that you are free to sell of course but you will need the agreement of the Ghanaian government first and foremost so for everything to be done legally now of course with the interactions with China I had actually applied a fine on one company of 700 million dollars because they had sold but without the agreement of the Ghanaian government which is a problematic situation so we also have the stability code we wanted to apply these they weren't previously so this is a stabilizing wrist ability code that was introduced and the mining code especially needs to take into account environmental protection and this is always the case so that the environment therefore is always a factor it is always appropriate to have several resources and but of course we have perhaps a long battle now is that our resources are internal and they go I mean when we want to fight against corruption this is the main thing that we need to work on because you know that there may be people getting bribes here and others cheating there and we decided to do the one-stop shop the one-stop shop the tax the taxation system has been amended and this has mean this has meant some increased revenues and so all of these reforms hand-in-hand it's not a question of human resources or men we have experts such as dr. Karim Ali and others but corruption is not linked to one sole individual it's the structure you need to create in order to fight against corruption appropriately and to make sure that someone doesn't bribe someone else will receive a bribe for an event from another party and failing which if you don't really have the institution to be the watchdog of corruption then you won't really make that much progress now civil service bureaucracy when I arrived as as president in 2010 the vice president of the World Bank told me at the time at the time that in here when we need to do something it's three days and in Guinea it takes three months well now actually it is better in Guinea in order to get a permit you can do it in 72 hours you can get a permit much more quickly in Guinea so this means a number of reforms because indeed you need to have the conducive environment the appropriate context that will attract investments if you want to create companies and profitable ones at that you have to have the appropriate structures and the appropriate base now if I can if I can give you a land lease agreement and suddenly somebody is going to come and say no this parcel of land belongs to my forefather to my four mother you need to be able to to find out and of course allay the fears of investors so that they don't fear coming up against these types of problems and so the policy of management of mining resources comes into play in all of this as well but it has to be done in an appropriately balanced fashion so this is what we try to do and what we ask of you is that you support us because we not we are not as powerful as the five greatest powers in this field but we can't always blame the others or point two fingers at others true we were colonized but we're not going to continue to blame colonizers if a number of children also died drowning in the Mediterranean is because people are fleeing their countries now that means that heads of state and government in Africa need to affect the very much needed resources for their populations and their populations welfare the most vulnerable to which the youth and the women of course and if we do this there will be improvement so we're talking about the stability situation the security situation of the colonizers but that is also having an effect on us terrorism what are we talking about terrorism is the outcome of poverty of abject misery and it's not about her going to heaven and having thousands of beautiful virgins around you it's really not about that at all people are really driven to terrorism because of poverty Texas so if I find the same basically for successful reforms back to original question you would really highlight political will to achieve a particular outcome and then have the institutions necessary to follow through on those reforms indeed I think in that report I flagged it was indeed mentioned that much of the gain has come through implementation because they attend early to be a gap between what we all know we need to do and then what exactly we do and that's where Ginny's made some significant progress in narrowing that gap I think in your opening remark you touch on an issue that is very critical which is the extent to which the population by a large benefit from the rents coming from the natural resource oil sector and some of the common solution that are sometimes put forward is to be able to have some kind of transfer mechanism to the populations and I think you've mentioned your remarks that Guinea has been doing some of that what is the state of play in terms of the transfer of those resources to local communities not just those who live in the mining areas but also the population more broadly so they can benefit more from the profits in their sector one doesn't remit well local content first benefited individuals living in rural areas but we wanted to do more which is why we decided to give 15% of mining revenues to the sub-prefecture errs the smaller rural towns we have prefix we also have governor's and we wanted to know how to solve the problem let's say you are a great doctor but if you don't know what disease your patient has you can't cure that patient I see a parallel between that and the rural villages in Guinea those are often abandoned and ignored villages are left behind in comparison to cities we've seen that in France we've seen that with the G Leone those are people who aren't necessarily from cities and who feel like they're being left behind it's similar in Guinea in the sense that we have a large rural population that was not being looked after let's say you have fiber optic cable that'll make sure that people in these more remote areas have access to what they need because that is going to give people Internet access that way people don't feel like they have to leave the countryside and go to cities or even leave the country entirely what we must do is make sure that even the remotest villages have technological no foul know-how rather that is why we have focused so much on fiber optic cables so that even people living far away from Kenickie can have access to certain technologies and can have access to Internet without having to leave their homes in the countryside and go to cities we need to make sure that we have development throughout the country not just focus on the major cities and leave the rest behind otherwise we're going to see Seelye shown in in Africa that's why we cannot forget about people in rural areas 70% of the population lives in the countryside we need to make sure that we have the right information about those people and if we're not even aware that 70% of the population lives in the countryside then we're not going to adopt the right measures to help them you mentioned political will before yes you also need trust in yourself and trust in the people's capabilities we need to be able to explain what we want to do to everyone in the population no matter what level these individuals have in terms of education or experience we know that people in the country sign maybe they don't have certain access to education but they still have a lot of ingenuity and are able to do a great deal with the little than they have so we need to make sure that we educate ourselves Portman does not revolution and how Africa missed the first miss the second third but we shouldn't miss the fourth Industrial Revolution and I was pleased to know that part of the resources from the mining sector then it's being used to do investments that would actually facilitate digitization set up the right infrastructure so the young people who mentioned fearless and bold and can compete with any other young person everywhere and it's still a one of the most efficient way to achieve inclusion so the we wouldn't finish discussion without talking about China and think you raised it earlier but when it comes to China natural resources in Africa China tends to always come up so if you can use this opportunity to further elaborate on what is you think is the most misunderstood aspect of China's involvement in Africa when it comes to natural resources and what has been Ginny's experience dealing with the Chinese the world well I think it is a mistake to think that we are just giving our way our natural resources blindly if we need to build a dam and this is actually what we did when we worked on the dam we made sure that this was being done so that the Guinean government wasn't going to go into debt and we made sure that the debt would be able to be reimbursed even though we were involved with Chinese companies for that particular initiative or when we have deepwater ports that need to be built mining companies actually financed the construction of that deepwater port we need to make sure that we know what we are doing with the Chinese each country defends its own interests and China is no different I defend my own interests as well there's also the America first policy so you could have China first or Guinea first so what kind of contract should we be signing with them I laugh sometimes because people sometimes criticize us but now we have railroads and we have an accused of going into debt to finance certain infrastructure projects or other types of projects someone may come from the planet Mars and I don't care where that person come from where that person comes from as long as that person is willing to do something that's going to be beneficial to Guinea so that we can develop our natural resources actually develop our bauxite if a Martian comes to us and says sure we'll help you do that that's fine but it is up to me to defend the interests of my country at the same time it is good to have a win-win situation where both sides are able to benefit from our partnership and I'm not talking about defending the interests of just the ruling class I'm talking about defending the interests of the entire population we have many problems in Guinea there is teenage marriage there other societal prob problems there is female genital mutilation among others we need to make sure that we're helping all of the populations so that we can live every one up and especially focus on you those are some of the specific questions that need to be asked of African leaders we need to make sure that we are thinking about developing the entire population and fighting poverty everyone everywhere especially in the countryside leaders tend to be more familiar with cities where things are happening and they don't often know what is going on the countries all right even though as I said that's where much of the population lives the reforms that need to be undertaken need to benefit Guinea first and especially the most vulnerable people in the population women and youth mainly Guinea is open for business and this would be the second African president to mention this on this stage in case there were any doubt so before we turn to the question-and-answer portion you say president if I can give you the opportunity to convey some messages to any potential investors out there but the mining sector in Guinea or natural resources more broadly what would those messages be the premium the first message that I have is that people should not think that there is more risk when you invest in Africa that's not true in Africa you can maximize your profit when you invest sometimes we talk about Africa we talk about civil war and famine we don't talk about all of the progress that Africa has made we just talk about the bad things but really it's not more risky to invest in Africa as compared to Europe or Asia that's the first message the second message is that we are independent countries we do not depend only on England or on France we are open and we have a great deal of expertise but there's a lot of expertise in the u.s. a lot of Technology and I have visited several American cities and I have tried to explain this to investors sometimes well I know America is a very big country but sometimes people aren't familiar with french-speaking countries in Africa we know that in some US states or cities people don't even have a passport because America is such a large country and people might not even leave the US but people should know that they can go out of the US and invest in Africa but we need to come to them sometimes we've collected a few cards from some of you we're going to go through them and if there's more time we can collect some also if you haven't had a chance to submit there could be an opportunity and the the first question is coming from astrid answer it from population Services International the president highlighted the fact that Guinea likes the technological know-how to be able to properly develop the mining sector exploit bauxite however many people from the Diaspora even locally have trouble entering the market sharing the ideas but there are already people there are already people there who are capable of raising an impact [Music] so I'm socked and you clarify yes please yes that last part now perpendicular preventability um before that you could you please provide a microphone otherwise the interpreters can't interpret the question for the president if you could please give a microphone to the person asking the question thank you [Music] some you create the first I do you what I don't care and exactly I'll just translate into French for the president says the moderator who is currently translating the question reading the question about technology there are a lot of people who are interested in entering the market but there are obstacles that prevent these people from doing so well as I look out into this room I know that I have a chief of staff and I have other people who work for me and who had the opportunity to work or study in the US or in other countries and my other associate worked in London and now he is working to promote public investment in Guinea we have a lot of Ghanaians who are working in the private sector they have had the opportunity to work in the US or in France and so they're familiar with the culture maybe they don't have a lot of funds but they know how this system works and so we do turn to the diaspora I'm not saying that you all need to send X number of dollars every month from Washington but if you could have a sense of patriotism that way the diaspora can still contribute to Guinea we also know that we have ambassadors I am always very happy to meet these ambassadors and other people who are working abroad they can send the right message to attract investors from various places from the US from the UK we need to make sure that we continue doing that we know that you could have people coming from other countries from Germany and we might not be quite the melting pot that the US is but we welcome people from other countries who can share their knowledge with us because that's what the u.s. did and that is one of the strengths that America has we need dollars yes but we also need that entrepreneurial spirit that patriotic spirit because if your country makes progress then your salary will go up we can't leave people to suffer in poverty there's a choice that Africans must make are they going to continue to go to the US and Europe where salaries are higher or will they come to Africa and help Africa and come back at some point maybe a bit of a sacrifice is necessary to help out Africa a little bit that's a question that we have it's a question of conscience there are a lot of young Ghanaians who have come back home and to have really risen high because they have technological know-how and as you said we can't let the fourth Industrial Revolution leave us behind so I call upon young Africans who are living abroad think about what you can bring to Africa when we saw we've seen other countries do this we know that when certain Asian countries were prospering that created some fear that might also be the case with Africa but Africa can become a great power without necessarily creating this fear for other countries and actually progress for other countries depends on progress that is made in Africa so I send the ball back to your court the technicians who finish you touch on which is the environmental implications of exploiting the natural resource sector they said mr. president you are correct that most of the greenhouse gas emissions are the fault of countries like the United States not Guinea but the world is not close to making advances on climate change all countries will have to go to green energy how important is finding alternative coal and gas to you and how can the United States help well we've created the renewables energy initiative for Africa because gradually we wish to have hydraulic energy to replace a thermal energy solar energy of course and wind energy and we emphasize but as President Kagame has said himself it is better sometimes to have slightly dirty energy than none whatsoever than no energy at all we can't overnight have renewables everywhere in the entire country for a certain period of time we have no choice but to accumulate thermal plants and fossil fuel of course shields fossil fuel energy and then gradually phase that out and have cleaner energies but with respect to the mining sector I don't think there's a mining extraction sector that can be entirely clean actually we've been to China and there are always things that disappear but not everything is eroded which means that if we want to develop further if we want to grow with respect to raw materials we need to focus on gas now but tomorrow 100% of our energy in Africa needs to be entirely renewable but we're not going to wait a hundred years to do this we need energy now in order to transform an appropriate energy mix hence is crucial we continue to have thermal plants coal plants and we will continue to develop hydro electric names as well as solar energy and wind energy but gradually phase the dirtier energies out and those that move towards the most and have made the most progress towards clean energies are for instance the Germans but we must have to be told do not pollute stop using because they've been doing it to develop themselves in their own industrial revolutions now we're going to do the same thing but we're going to avoid the stumbling blocks that they were previously confronted with other countries now we need to know what was used we need to use the same things but avoid the worst inputs so we need to be able to sustain our business but we don't want our rivers to disappear for instance of our legs to be completely dried out as is the case in certain countries so we need to move towards clean energy but in the meantime we still need coal energy failing which we won't be able to have economic growth or development so seven Africans seven oncoproteins out of ten have no energy now if in the mining and agricultural sectors improve we would be number one in the world so of course we would have to employ and increase salaries and then start exporting but we need to have internal growth of first and foremost so that those companies those investors are interested in recruiting labor that we have cheap labor but we don't have them know-how in our labor force in our active workforce and so we need to have our raw materials transformed into finished products and become the first plants in the world in this area but we need our brains or african brains to come back to africa it is good that mr. Cody Bali is a great director here and a great doctor here but he will come back to could develop to help his country I'm certain opening remarks you outlined a number of issues that you would like me to help with yeah and I like to think while I'm here please to provide that kind of assistance but I do hear you and how plans to return at some point by the moma about the environment for innovation by saying what initiatives are being put in place to create an environment for innovation that could help create the ecosystem for your the resources that work come first of all we need to combat the disadvantages or rather the impacts of climate change so we have to have an appropriate environmental policy systemically for instance we are going to reforest all the forests around the rivers now it is often said that Guinea is the water tower of the West Africa because it really provides other countries was quite a lot of water so if we see a river dry up suddenly Mali will have no water anymore at all so we need to fight against climate change make sure that we continue to have water resources and clean one so we need to reforest reforestation as Cody WA has done and it has recovered a large portion of its forests but we need to do the same secondly we need to use instead of using small hold farmers or farmers that are using a fuel would we wanted them to use a cleaner type of energy so a former in Guinea doesn't necessarily have to go somewhere else these days he can order a tractor with his cellphone come to his field and he can order the inputs or fertilizers and all these can be imported thanks to phone call but he can't use just anything either because when we say that we need to do waste transformation as well that's all good and well to create fertilizer that's okay but be careful of the waste because what we need to do ok for energy or create bricks fine that kind of energy is fine but not in some cases so in the fight against climate change the Funi Den is going to make it possible for us for instance in so building in building it to take advantage of the water from the leisure river now in the past there were ships that could do this but thanks to the new dam we were going to be able to raise the water level of the Niger River which will then make it possible to irrigate six thousand six six thousands of hectares between Mali Niger Guinea so let us start firstly to fight against the impact of climate change and create the appropriate conditions for a return an appropriate return to nature and natural resources that is our obligation and let us avoid abusive exploration or exploitation as we've done in the West or as David and in the West such as asbestos which has a number of very bad consequences and therefore the development that they have known in the West we wish the same but we want to avoid of course the most harmful aspects of it such as asbestos it was sometime difficult to even know how much you have underground and the kind of technology that can allow to monitor it as well as what is extracted and what is exported but for technology more broadly what are some of the initiatives there to facilitate local technological innovation that would potentially benefit the sector as well as the economy more broadly well with the support from friendly countries we have some spearheads and we have actually ships high-speed ships high-speed boats that actually can go visit the bigger ships and actually measure the amount of tonnage the tonnage in raw material or whatever material is being transported or shipped so we have two laboratories that make it possible for us the content of the bauxite that is being exported in these ships we've made progress there but that is not enough for instance in Guinea we carried out some geophysical mapping for our own resources for our products but this is something that was done by foreign companies we do not have the wherewithal to carry out geophysical analyses to allow analyze tonnage as well as content and so we have to have partnerships with foreign countries and we need to learn therefore so that we may our selves to be able to control the entire technological field and especially for bauxite and in order to analyze or measure tonnage I have a lot of very smart African people working around me and working for me working with me but there are Ivorian x' they're not just from Guinea for instance it was advisor for the agriculture and they wanted to I don't know if I can Jesse is here but he's was an Ivorian man who made it possible for us to make some headway john below I have a number of assistants that work with me from Africa but they're not necessarily all from Guinea they're from Senegal they're from Cote d'Ivoire I don't want to recruit someone from France necessarily I want the Africans to be concerned in this kind of enterprise I mean if you think about someone from Bangladesh coming to Mali it doesn't make any sense in order to really make progress we have to do it amongst ourselves amongst Africans I have a number of projects in Mali because Mali and Guinea are very close together and are good partners but diaspora the Diaspora will help us creating the sixth continent or the sixth region I should say the sixth region of Africa should be the Diaspora with all the various countries in it and that they be more involved in the development of Africa but gradually we will be able to spearhead to leverage technology and there are currently some technologies where we don't have the wherewithal and we have we have to call upon partners this this last question how the business is here in the United States who have created partners investors have the opportunity to invest at home and to work hand in hand with the government I'm sorry how do Guineans here in the United States who have created partners and investors have the opportunity to invest at home to work in and help the government and this question is from ibrahim ah Gibby no no I'm paraphrasing I'm a pan-african person not just a Ghanaian person I think that if there's one African person here that has a certain where was all or no how in a certain sector he's welcome in Guinea what is important to work with an American company with an American company comes to Guinea it gives others courage also to imitate if it's successful of course if the first one is successful others will be attracted so the preconditions the enabling environment has to be offered first and foremost because if they if the first investors have problems others won't follow so the first ones have to be a master ders or spokespersons for others to come because the conditions were favorable for them to invest and then borders borders are artificial there are artificial borders borders we see the same language you grew up here but you you actually are from Cote d'Ivoire half Malian but there are no barriers there are no borders between us so if all Africans that have good possibilities and have good know-how could come to Guinea then they are welcome to come you know the symbol to end hunger was if all the children could participate in other words if we could all get together and put our strengths together we would solve the problem of hunger in Africa and as a president of the AU previously I have always said there is no discrimination between countries there should not be and there isn't in South Africa I was visiting South Africa you heard many ma declaration recently and in a fossa where they are setting many representatives in other words it means that each and every African has to appropriate this there should be no difference when you're in could give walk making differences between a newborn person and Malian person a Senegalese person is is useless it's a completely useless and all Africans should feel at home wherever they are in an African country in order to develop further we need to have the participation of each and every African person and we need support from our American partners to invest in our country that's why I call upon them to support us in this way and they can either for the Diaspora come back to Africa or actually go back and forth between the US and Guinea or other countries so they can become ambassadors but in a bi-directional fashion so you come back and you get more information going back to the United States then you go back to Guinea and you impart that information and you go further and further and that makes it possible for you to transmit knowledge to your young brothers and sisters in Africa but I do promise you that the questions that we were not able to read to share this with the ambassador for him to share with his Excellency and if I can just ask for your patient to remain a bit seated while the president makes his way I'll be appreciated and mr. president thank you very much for coming it's been a very fascinating conversation and we've made well II made a note of some of the challenges Guinea is facing in the natural resource sector thanks for watching be sure to LIKE and subscribe for more videos from Brookings [Music]