Odile Renaud-Basso, President of EBRD on the Main Stage Inspire.

So, I'm extremely honored to be here. I'm Odile Renaud-Basso. I'm the president of EBRD, which is an international organization. I'm French. It's also a very specific time for EBRD because we start investing in sub-Saharan African countries. So, it's a new journey for us. We are the new kids on the block and looking forward to working with all of you. Before joining the bank as a president, I was at the head of the French Treasury. So, working a lot on public policies, how you ensure growth is dynamic growth, how you ensure sustainable growth, but also international cooperation, debt restructuring, European issues, and so forth. And I learned a lot about what policy environment, what regulatory framework, how much this is important to facilitate private sector investment and to have a vibrant economy. Before starting in sub-Saharan Africa and when I joined the bank in 2020, EBRD was already investing a lot in North Africa, in Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia. There, I measured how much ambition, willingness to grow, and policies together with capital and investment were fundamental for economies to strive for creating jobs, for supporting people. We've invested 26 billion, 24 billion in North Africa, and that's why we decided to start also new investing in new countries. Five now: Senegal, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, of course, and Nigeria, and hopefully soon Ghana. Really focusing on investing in the private sector. And we've had a start, very dynamic start already, from projects in cashew sectors to electrification, to trade finance in banks, and we look forward to doing more. We see a lot of transformation going on in the continent. This willingness to have the private sector at the core of growth model, very significant reform from trade liberalization, cross-border activity to reduction of state subsidies, foreign exchange liberalization. All these elements create a big shift towards private sector dynamism and economies. And we really see this momentum, this appetite, this ambition, this willingness to develop markets, to export, to become the beacon for global growth, and a lot of opportunities. Our priorities in Africa will be on energy and key infrastructure, transformation of agribusiness, and moving up in the value chain to develop transformation, manufacturing, and to force. SME support, because we know how much SMEs are the core of economic dynamics, jobs, so important for stability in the countries, but also digitalization, tech, new tech, fintech, and so forth. And in this area, we see of course Kenya is a big driver and we all know about Silicon Savannah and the big step forward made in fintech, AI, new technologies, but we see this trend everywhere in a number of countries, in a number of places with new entrepreneurs willing to leapfrog and bring all these new tools and these new technologies everywhere in Africa. So, we work—I mean our call for action is to work in partnership. We work with all the MDBs, DFIs. Our first project was with Proparco, but also with EIB and with—as I was mentioning the project in electrification in Benin, but also investing in banks in Nigeria, investing in telecom infrastructure with other MDBs in Nigeria also, and in agriculture project in Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria. So, a buoyant activity, very steep start, working in partnership with others and working with entrepreneurs, being open for business, that's where we are here for and so happy to be here today. Thank you very much.