When I came into office, we had a serious fuel crisis in the country. There were queues at our petrol stations. The first lot of people to come to see me, even before I left my former office, were oil marketers. And they told me, 'Mr. President-elect, we are facing a stockout. We do not have dollars. We have a crisis.' And it became my first assignment, maybe baptism by fire, you know, on my first day in office. And we figured out with my team, how do we deal with this? And I remember reaching out to friends who, for this meeting I will not mention, good friends of mine who are running multinational banks, and telling them, 'Oh, we need to do this.' Little did I know that many of them were already figuring out how they were going to make money when the dollar went to 200 shillings, Kenya shillings, to a dollar. They were already thinking how to make money from foreign exchange. I mean, I'm looking at how do we solve a Kenyan problem. It is only one bank, one Kenyan bank, Kenya Commercial Bank, that was willing to issue letters of credit and stand with us at that very critical moment. Do you know what happened? We not only solved that problem in a very permanent way. Today we have a G2G framework that many other countries have come to learn from us. Malawi have been here to learn from us. Burundi have been here to learn from us how we did it. So we solved the problem. But you know what? Kenya Commercial Bank made tons of money in the process. Their share price went from 17 shillings to now 74 shillings. You know, if there was a case for believing in ourselves, Kenya Commercial Bank, being a Kenyan bank, believed in us. We believed in them. The outcome is a win-win. We not only solved our problem, but we built our bank even more. That's one example.
Example number two, when I made a proposition to the people of Kenya on a matter that has been with us for a long time, on how do we deal with the challenge of housing, and it's a conversation we've had for long as Kenyans, possibly 25, 30 years of conversation, and I did make a proposition to the people of Kenya that it was necessary for us to do this using our own resources, mobilizing domestic capital for us to be able to undertake our housing programs. There was a big debate, but today we have done what we couldn't do with money borrowed from this place and that place, talking to this guy and the other guy and the one bank and another one, using our own domestic resources. Today we are building, concluding some of them, 240,000 housing units with a pipeline of 700,000 housing units. We are building hostels for 180,000 students in our universities and TVETs, and we are building 600 modern markets around Kenya with our own resources, using a housing fund derived from a housing levy. We have signed contracts for $4 billion. $4 billion. Not a single shilling borrowed from anybody. Domestic resources built by Kenyans, raised from Kenya. Believing in ourselves, I make this case firmly that the challenges we face, the aspirations we have for the future, we have the solutions within us. And that's why I'm very happy that we have in our midst not just Africa Finance Corporation, we have the leadership of African Bank, we have the leadership of Shelter Afrique, ADB, we have the leadership of Trade and Development Bank. These are institutions that we must mark for the future and we must invest in them and work with them.
Look, Nigeria has been a producer of oil for all the years that we know. Yet when you went to Nigeria, there were queues of people looking for fuel in petrol stations for a long time, until one African stepped forward and built a refinery. The solution wasn't in Europe. It wasn't in Asia. The solution was in Nigeria for a problem that disturbed Nigeria for years. I dare say, ladies and gentlemen, we have the, in this room, we have the political leadership. We have the industrialists. We have the financials to transform our continent. And we must waste no time looking any further.
In Kenya, we have established a national infrastructure fund and are in the process of creating a sovereign wealth fund, following in the footsteps of some of our peers on the continent, including I know what has been done in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and in many other places. Through these instruments, we aim to mobilize public and private as well as domestic and foreign capital to fund major priority projects in the tune of $40 billion over the next decade. When you heard my minister here speak, he said we already have mobilized $3 billion just in a short span. And we are looking at the people in this room how we are going to work together to leverage that money so that we can drive the issues we are discussing here: infrastructure, transport, logistics, infrastructure. Because Kenya's infrastructure ambitions are bold, we seek to expand our road network by over 28,000 kilometers, more than double what we have today over the next 7 years. We also aim to generate an additional 10,000 megawatts, nearly three times our current installed capacity, and that is to support modern technology, power industrialization, and sustain economic expansion. At the same time, we are strengthening our export-led agricultural transformation and food security through large-scale irrigation anchored on the construction of at least 50 mega dams to bring an additional 2.5 million acres of land under productive use.
Listening to my friend, the CEO of AFC, he did mention very clearly that we have some of the largest agricultural lands in our continent. How do we leverage on those? Why is Africa still a hungry continent? Why is Africa still defined by hunger and imports from all manner of places when we can do it right here? These are not merely national priorities. They are integral to the broader continental agenda of industrial transformation through manufacturing and value addition. For far too long, the economic destiny of our continent has been shaped by others. While historical injustices from colonialism to inequities in the global economic order are real, we must also acknowledge that other regions have faced similar challenges, but they have risen above them. We're not the only ones that have faced these challenges. We are constrained, however, only by the extent that we accept the status quo through acquiescence, complacency, and limited ambition. Too often, as a continent, we have settled for what is rather than what could be. For far too long we have accepted the average, the ordinary. That must change, good people. We must raise the scale of our ambition and refuse to be defined by what is merely functional. The time has come for Africa to take full control of its destiny. Many of the nations we admire today, from Singapore to South Korea and even Japan, once stood where we stand today, constrained and uncertain of their place in the world. But they made choices that made the difference through disciplined leadership, bold policy, and unrelenting commitment to progress. They rewrote their future, and they did not do so over centuries. They did so within a single generation. In just three to four decades, they moved from fragility to strength, from limitation to global competitiveness. That is the lesson before us, good people. Transformation is neither accidental nor a miracle. It is deliberate. It is intentional. And it is entirely within reach if we have the resolve to pursue it, to reach higher, and to reject the average. This is our assignment as the current generation of Africans, leaders, business people, entrepreneurs. This is our assignment, and this is the job that we must do without equivocation, without wavering, and without hesitation. It is now, ladies and gentlemen, or never. You know, we must get it right. And I'm very happy that we are meeting at a time like this when it is so obvious to us that we are paying very high prices because of a war in the middle of nowhere which we have no control over, when we could as well have our own resources here.
I want to thank President Museveni for refusing to accept easy choices. He had a choice. He had a choice to allow the oil in Uganda to go the way others would have wanted. But I remember having a conversation with President Museveni, and allow me to say this, when I visited him once, and I asked him, 'What's going to happen about the oil reserves that you have?' because it's taken time. And I remember there telling me, 'Look, young man,' then I wasn't even president. He told me, 'You see, some of these people you see here, if we give them a chance, they will sell this oil at a throwaway price and go and buy perfume.' You know, those are his words, and they have never left my mind. You know, a case of people making shortcuts, easy decisions, and in the process sabotaging the destiny of a nation and a region. I am happy that we will be discussing how we are going to use our resources, whether it is the oil we have in our region or the minerals we have in our region, not to export to others, but to industrialize our own region, our countries. When the other day we divested from Kenya Pipeline because we wanted to unlock the value of Kenya Pipeline and use it for the transformation of the country, President Museveni called me and said, 'I want to buy 50% of Kenya Pipeline.' And he told me, 'I don't care the price.' You know, that's how serious he was, when some other pessimists in Kenya were saying, 'Oh, you know, the price is very high, I don't know.' President Museveni could see beyond the price. He could see the opportunity of transforming our nation, our region together. Muse, I want to assure you that the same way you invested in Kenya Pipeline, Kenya is going to invest in your refinery and in the future of our resources together. And hopefully, we can bring all the other countries in our region to see the value not in the short-term benefit you get from something cheap from somewhere else, but in the benefit of building something for the future that will not only earn you money today but earn you opportunities tomorrow. I run the risk of monopolizing this meeting, and it is not my intention to do so, and I don't want to spoil things for AFC. But allow me, ladies and gentlemen, now to take this opportunity to invite our elder, President Museveni, to come and share with us his wisdom. Karibu.
Hello. Hello. You can hear me? Very good. His Excellency President Ruto, the leaders of the AFC, all the other distinguished persons who are here, ladies and gentlemen, I'm glad you have allowed me to speak when I'm seated here because in my doing my push-ups, I strained my back, and I really want to talk to you comfortably, not in a hurry. I want to thank His Excellency President Ruto for organizing this conference and the AFC for organizing it under the patronage of President Ruto. We have got a minister in Uganda who is called... the Banyankole ways of naming people, you give a name which is actually a sentence. So it means that if you don't die, you will see good things in the end. Therefore, by not dying and having been involved in public affairs for the last 65 years since 1960, I'm now beginning to see some waking up. When the manager from AFC was speaking, I said, 'This man is speaking my language now.' And he's a bureaucrat, but he's speaking a language of revolution. This has been our problem. The discrepancy between revolution and betrayal, really, because Africa has been betrayed in the last 70 years. Sudan was the first to get independence in 1955. It is now 70 years since we started getting independence. But you look at the GDP of Africa, the GDP of Africa is now 3.6 trillion. All of us. Imagine the whole of Africa, Egypt, South Africa, Algeria, all of us. 3.6 trillion. And we are 1.5 billion people now. And our land area is... I'm speaking in... you will not understand. So the land area of Africa is four times the size of the United States. And our population is now five times the population of the United States of America. But our GDP is 3.6 trillion and the GDP of the USA is 32 trillion. So all of us together, in terms of wealth, are only 10% of the wealth of the United States. This is a big shame. Why should this be the case? There's been some talk that there was no other way in the past. I don't believe that. If you look at China, you people, you can go and get the figures. China was very, very poor, very underdeveloped when the communists took over. But they were able, because of discipline and clarity, to save and start investing in their economy even when they were still very poor. So it is ideological. It's not just money. It's not money. This is more than money.
We had a conference here about 10 years ago here in Nairobi with the Prime Minister of Japan who died, the one who died. We had the conference here, and in that conference, I made this written speech which they will distribute to the delegations. And in this speech, I pointed out that, and I'm glad the speakers here, His Excellency President Ruto, the person from the IFC, our commissioner, the man from the islands, the minister who originally came from Uganda long, long ago, they all talked about it. We should not look at these issues in isolated ways. This was the problem in the 1960s and even 70s. They would pick one item, rural development. Then they talk about that, talk about that, talk about that. Then after some time, said, 'No, no, no, women, women advance, women empowerment.' Then women empowerment, women empowerment. Then education, education, education, education. Then just like that. But in that speech, I pointed out that in my view, there are 10 strategic bottlenecks, and I can repeat them for you here. Number one is ideological orientation, because we are talking of inter-regional infrastructure. But how will you have inter-regional infrastructure if there are wars going up, and these wars are based on ideological bankruptcy? People believe in sectarianism. They believe in the politics of identity, of tribe, of religion. The wars which are going on in the Middle East, what is their ideological base? What are they fighting for? We know all of those people, the Iranians, the Israelites, the Americans. We know all of them. We have good relations with them. But you can see that the mistakes which they have in their thinking is the one which causes all this suffering, mistakes ideological. What is crucial is it because I am a... you see, that's why I was speaking in Kikuyu. I wanted somebody to bring me my coffee. So in my view, I welcome these very good technical professional ideas about infrastructure. But I think if we always focus on infrastructure alone, we may not go far because there are wars. There are wars in Congo. There are wars in South Sudan. There are in all these different places, Somalia. So how would you have infrastructure if people are fighting for wrong reasons? Therefore, strategic obstacle number one in this booklet which I will give you was ideological disorientation. Why do you believe in tribalism and religious sectarianism? I am a cattle keeper. I'm like this man who are dancing here. I produce milk. I produce beef. I produce bananas. But people in my tribe don't buy from me. Why? Because they also have the same products. I have milk, they have milk. They don't buy from me, I don't buy from them. I have beef, they have beef. So who buys from me? The people of Kampala, many of whom are not my tribe. The people of East Africa. So my prosperity is supported more by Uganda as a country and East Africa and Africa than by my own small group. If therefore you have somebody killing people just because of religion or tribes, how will you have the corridors we are talking about? That is strategic obstacle number one which we pointed out here when we met here with Mr. Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan, because of number one, because of ideological fragmentation, then you end up with weak states, no army. Why is there insecurity in Africa? Some of these countries have no armies. Why don't they have an army? Because they cannot build one. Why? Because part of all ideology. You want to have a highly paid army when you don't have money. How will you have an army? In Uganda, we fought for no money for 17 years. From 1971 to 1987, I was fighting for no pay, for patriotism. So, how would you have a paid army when you don't have money? You don't have the state to pay. So therefore because of that, and then when we recruit soldiers, instead of joining the national army, they join the clan armies like in Somalia. Now if you don't have army, you don't have police, how would you have peace? So number one, ideological disorientation leads to number two, weak states. Then you come to the underdevelopment of the human resource, education. There, many Africans have gone to school now, many of them are, we have got more educated people than before, but they need these other factors. But in some cases, it is also a problem. Then number four is what we are talking about here. We talked about this here 10 years ago. What we are talking about now, infrastructure, is number four here in this booklet. It is very true that if you don't have infrastructure, how will you have industrialization? How will you have modernization? Now on infrastructure, we are moving very well now from the comments of His Excellency Ruto, from the comments of the AFC. We are all moving in the right direction. The only clarification I want to make is that there are core cost pushers. If you want the economy to succeed, you must identify the core cost pushers which push costs in production. One of them is transport, transport especially the railway and the water transport. So if you build the railway, you must build it with either government money who are not looking for high profits and quickly, or with patient capital, patient private capital, because if you have got very high cost of transport of the rail, how would you compete? How will you compete? How will the companies make money? The other cost pusher is electricity. In Uganda, my people behind my back, they made a mistake and they went with a group called what? I don't know what they call them. And they built a dam, one of the dams on the Nile, using private money. When it came to the price of the electricity production was 16 cents per kilowatt hour, how can you make money? How can that electricity help the economy? It almost caused a civil war because they didn't tell me, they went behind my back. But the dams were built with government money. We are able to produce electricity at 4.8 cents, American cents per kilowatt hour. Then the old dams, the ones we have already paid for, the cost is 1.2 cents, American cents. So there you must be very careful. It must either be government money or patient capital, not people looking for quick money. Then the next is the railway and electricity and water transport, and then the cost of money in the banks. That's why in Uganda I had to keep the Uganda Development Bank. I privatized Uganda Commercial Bank because they persuaded me, they confused me. They said if you privatize, private capital is efficient, they will do what. I said okay, but you know I am a bush man, so I go cautiously. I said okay, you take the Uganda Commercial Bank. They privatized it, the interest rate is now 25%. How can somebody... that's how you get what His Excellency was talking about, the perfume importers. They are the ones who make money from 25% interest loans. A manufacturer cannot make profit with 25%, or a farmer. So, rail transport, electricity, money, cost of money for manufacturing and agriculture. I would want you to look at it. The cost of labor is still not high. Cost of labor, the salaries are not still high. Those are not a problem. Now, it comes down to the pipeline. I would not have bothered His Excellency so much for fuel. Especially people are driving on the road. If the fuel is expensive, don't travel. Stay at home. Where are you going? I'm not really worried about you. What I was worried about was jet fuel, because jet fuel is not only just for travel, it is for tourism. If the cost of the jet fuel is very expensive, the tourists will not come. It is for export because the aircrafts also export. So that's why I had to disturb that the governments need to keep a voice in the pipeline. The governments of Kenya, government of Uganda must keep a voice in the pipeline mainly because for the jet fuel. People are going for nightclubs. What I don't care so much about them. If you don't have the money, stay at home. Where are you going? So therefore with infrastructure, but for instance for the roads, once we have got enough infrastructure of the railway and the water, there's also water transport, water transport like Victoria, the River Nile, like Albert. Once we have those, the railway, electricity, for the roads we can actually have toll roads. That's what I'm telling our American friends. Come and make money on the toll roads. I will not welcome you in the railway if you are greedy for profits. But for the toll roads, you build a road and charge those who can pay, pay, those who can't use the small national roads. So that's what I would say on the infrastructure. Now the other bottleneck, because of these bottlenecks, then you end up what people, our leaders, we are talking about here, export of raw materials, unprocessed. When you export unprocessed, when you export cotton and process it as lint, you get $1.2 per kilo, per kilogram. That 1 kilogram, if you make cloth out of it and garments, you will get $15. The same kilogram for which you got 1.2. If you weave, you spin, weave, and get textiles out of it, you'll get $15. Coffee. A kilo of coffee unprocessed is $2.5. The same kilo processed will go for $25 or even $40. So the Africans have been the mega donors. I don't know why they never call them in conferences for donors in Paris because they are the mega donors, and every kilogram of coffee they are donating $40. And they don't know, you find Africans there putting on ties, moving around, they are not bothered. So therefore, without electricity, without the railway, you cannot industrialize, and you go with the raw materials. That's why you have got this stunted economy. The other day I was with a delegation of military people from Tanzania. They gave me a word of stunted... does somebody have that word? Stunted growth? They told me, but I forgot. Last night I was with a delegation from Tanzania. I know it in my language but get it in. So the African economy is stunted, stunted because of these mistakes, because of these hemorrhages. Then number six, fragmented market. If you produce, who buys? I've told you that my tribe cannot help me. I am a capitalist also. I sell my milk. But in Uganda, it is bought by the Ugandans in Kampala. Not in my tribal area so much. Then East Africa. That's why I've been begging His Excellency, my young sister, please. Now if you don't have a market, how will you attract capital? And the ones who invest in your country, how would they succeed? China opened in 1978. I'm comfortable, I'm all right. China, I have the figures here. By that time, China opened in 1978, opened the economy. Our African economies were open all the time, all that time. But by the time I made this speech here 10 years ago when we were with the Prime Minister of Japan here, by that time China had attracted $2.6 trillion, while Africa had attracted only $65 billion. Why? One of the magnets is the big Chinese market inside China. One of the big magnets of attracting. So to go with these fragmented economies is a very big mistake. And that's why I'm very happy with His Excellency Mr. Ruto denouncing the tariff barriers that stop trade among our countries. Then the other bottleneck here, underdeveloped services, tourism, banking, professional services and so on, and underdeveloped agriculture, bottleneck number eight. Uganda has got a little bit of agriculture. We never import food. So when I saw people crying that there was a war in Ukraine, is the war in Uganda here? It's in Ukraine. Why are you crying? Or that we shall have no food to eat. Not in Uganda. We always eat. We have enough food. We have got so much food that we don't know where to put it. Market. Market is our problem. But in other parts of Africa, you get this problem of no food. Amazing. And the food they buy from outside is very dangerous. Bad food with hormones and so on. Now in the 1960s, we had made some mistakes also. We, the African people. You must have heard that in Uganda, Idi Amin grabbed private capital, the property of the Indians. And in other countries, they had a practice of what they were calling nationalization. That one also was a mistake, strategic mistake. But I'm glad that when we came into government, because I was from the revolutionary side, I had enough credentials to say no, give back all the property of the Indians. Let them get their properties back. Because my people, some of them are here, they were saying, 'No, no, no. We must keep the properties of Indians.' I said, 'But if you don't give back the Indians their properties, who trusts you that in future if you invest in your country you will not also grab his property like you grabbed the one of the Indians?' So I persuaded them, we get back all the property of the Indians, miserable properties, just 4,000 of them, not much too. Now around Kampala and in the whole of Uganda we had only 4,000 Asian properties, 4,000 in the whole of Uganda. But now around Kampala we have got 2 million properties of the Ugandans plus also our Indians who came back. So that was also another mistake. You people should remember that that issue of confiscating properties of private sector was one of the mistakes that delayed us. Now finally, of course, the final bottleneck was lack of democracy, because that was also another problem. Because if you don't have... I see some people trying to say democracy is not action. No, democracy forces you to be accountable, to go to the people and win their support. Recently we had elections and where my people listened to my advice, we performed very well when they implement what we like, getting rid of poverty in the whole country. How can you preserve poverty in the whole country? It's not a national park that you are preserving. So now therefore I want to conclude by saying that we have the money here. Yes, we are getting more money. Now the speaker from AFC gave a very good example. The pension funds, what are they being used for? NSSF in Uganda has got a lot of money but they just invest in treasury bills. The government borrows from the national fund and eats the money. They borrow for eating. So our expert has really challenged you people. You heard him that the necessary money should be for, not for eating, because if you treasury the bills, they are borrowing to pay debts, to pay salaries, to pay what, they are not borrowing for the... I call infrastructure, in our language, means the bone marrow. You know the English don't have enough words. They couldn't describe that part of the body, the bone marrow, they call it bone marrow, but in our language we call it... or in one of the other languages, so the marrow of the economy is the railway transport, electricity, plus of course peace and so on. So if the NSSF money is used for eating, eating, eating, not to build part of the bone marrow, because the English don't have enough words, it's a very big mistake. But also the government, our countries can deliberately save. We have been funding, we set up a science innovation fund where I have been funding government innovations. We have built an electric vehicle called Kiira motor vehicle and its sister vehicles, the bus and the other smaller vehicles, is the government money, government capital. So now we are getting demands, getting orders for that electric vehicle. We had to build our own vehicles because I had begged the Japanese to come and assemble in Uganda. They refused. So I said, 'Okay, bye-bye.' Now when I started making my vehicles, some of the Japanese came, want to assemble, said no, too late. I will not allow any assembly in Uganda. You must manufacture, not assemble. The vaccines, we have been funding them ourselves. I'm going to launch a new vaccine the day after, a few days to come. So we have the capital. It's not enough but we have it. If we constrain consumption, we can get the capital. So therefore, I'm very happy with the initiative of His Excellency Ruto, like on the issue of the refinery, what he told you. In Uganda, I have banned the export of unprocessed minerals, all of them, I have banned. They have been praying for me to die or something like that. But no export of tin, no export of copper. They are all there in the ground. But slowly we are getting investors. Iron ore, can you imagine, some Indian guy from India, India, New Delhi, had come to make a deal with my people to sell our iron ore at $47 per ton. The iron ore of Uganda is the best in the whole world. It is about 70% pure. So when you sell iron ore, somebody goes and makes it into steel, he earns, at one time he would earn $900, and you export all the jobs. But I stopped them. And I'm glad that some of the investors from Kenya, encouraged by His Excellency, are now investing in the steel industry in Uganda. Now on the issue of petroleum, we found it long ago, 2005, but up to now it's now about to come out of the ground. What was the reason? Disagreeing with the oil companies, Total. They were telling my people, who would tell me, 'Refineries don't make money. Hey, they don't make money.' How about the ones who build them? Why do they build them? Then when I checked, the refinery in Uganda is very, very profitable. Do we have somebody from that sector, from energy? Do we have somebody here? Uh-huh. Minister, do you remember the internal rate of return? Uh, 14. For... you will confirm. You go and confirm, the rate of return is very high of the refinery in Uganda. So, but because I'm also tactical, because Total insisting that they should take all the oil. Why do you take the oil? The users are here. Why do you take it? Say, 'Oh, no, no. There's no money in the refinery.' I said, 'No, you are lying.' Now eventually we agreed that we build a small refinery of 60,000 barrels per day. Uh, what do you call this? You build then you add on, if you, when you, there's a way they say it in English. You build one unit then you add on, add on another 60,000. And that my refinery would have first go on the oil and then the balance you can export through Tanzania, fine. Now recently, and then that EOP, it's now called EOP, East African Pipeline. Later on we could see that people of Congo could use it if they want because there's some oil there on the other side. People in South Sudan can use it because they have got oil there. Now this oil of the Albert is one of the four, five provinces. We have got four other provinces of oil. This is just one of them. So therefore the... 13%. Uh-huh. That internal rate of return, 13. Okay. And what is internal rate of return of others in the world? Find out. So therefore, when His Excellency recently sent me a message, I supported that the surplus oil which we had given to Total to take through Tanga to I don't know where, be our contribution to the refinery in Tanga. Number one. Then later on we can add the petroleum from the other Congo, from South Sudan, and also these other provinces, because the one of Uganda where we have the oil now is only 40% of the Albert area. There's another 60% which we have not fully, which is not yet fully explored. So there's more oil, there's more oil in Uganda both within Albert and in the other provinces. So therefore I support this idea of the Tanga refinery. We shall maintain our small refinery because we have already gone ahead. We are very far, we can't stop. The question is how do you... those refineries, if you don't want to create jealousy, we... if you don't want, it's better that if the countries have ownership together, like in... because that's what we were doing in the past. We were calling it East African Common Services. We were owning the ports together, East African Harbors, East African Railway, East African Airways, East African Development Bank. It was all East African. If it is all ours, then it is ours. Then it is not either me or you, all together. So with these few words, you should be careful. Don't invite old men for... don't give audience to old men because you do so at your own risk. With these few words, it is now my pleasure to participate in the meeting.
A round of applause again for Museveni. Thank you very much. Please let's take our seats. You agree with me that we have benefited from a wealth of wisdom from President Museveni, and we have been listening to you very carefully, Muse, very carefully, and you have made the work of this summit that much more easy for us to take it forward. I take note of what you have said about the need for us to save. It is one of the decisions that I've had to make in Kenya to change the contribution model for our savings. You have also made a very profound statement, and I hope those of us in Kenya were listening to. He has said money from our social security savings must not only be used for matters consumption and paying debt by investing in treasury bills. It should also be invested much more meaningfully in infrastructure development. That is what progressive countries do. I know there's been a debate in Kenya as to whether resources from our pension funds should be used in the development of the railway, the roads, and other infrastructure. The wisdom of Museveni tells us that is the right thing to do, and that is conventional wisdom worldwide. And it is the statement that was said by my good...
Friend the CEO of Africa Finance Corporation, linking our pension funds to infrastructure development. So with those many remarks, I think it's a good point for us to say now that the Africa Infrastructure Summit is formally open and we can progress. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you, Your Excellency Dr. William Samoei Ruto. I request that we kindly take our seats. We'll shortly be transitioning to a panel, a presidential panel discussion. And for us to transition to that, we'll now have the signing of the host country agreement. And I request that we bring in the table and those instruments that are going to be used for signing. This is the signing of the host country agreement between Kenya and the Africa Finance Corporation. It is basically to establish the regional offices of the Africa Finance Corporation in Nairobi, Kenya as has already been mentioned. So at this point, allow me to invite the signatories starting with His Excellency Dr. Musalia Mudavadi who is the Prime Cabinet Secretary to kindly take your seat at the signing table. Also followed in by Samaila Zubairu, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Africa Finance Corporation. The host country agreement is between the government of the Republic of Kenya and the Africa Finance Corporation. So I'll also request that the legal team that is assisting with the signing to kindly present the documents as we now witness the signing of the host country agreement between Kenya and Africa Finance Corporation.
Again, the objective of this particular signing is to establish the regional offices of the Africa Finance Corporation in Nairobi, Kenya. As mentioned earlier, Kenya is definitely the hub of many activities in the region. Africa Finance Corporation Kenya now also being established and after the signing we'll request for a photo op before we transition to the next part of this particular opening ceremony which will be the presidential panel discussion in which I will invite Jennifer who's going to be the moderator of that particular session. Jennifer from Bloomberg, but I will do that as soon as we're done with the signing of the agreement.
Perhaps just to capture that for the sake of those who might be doing the communication for this particular session. This agreement, the objective is to establish a regional office of the Africa Finance Corporation in Nairobi and it is the host country being Kenya and this particular agreement is between the government of the Republic of Kenya and the Africa Finance Corporation. Now that the signing is done, we'll request that the signatories will stand for a photo op as they hold their document. Kindly let them hold their document for that photo op with the crowns facing the photographers. Wonderful. Why don't you give a round of applause? Thank you. Thank you very much.
Wonderful. Thank you very much. You may exit. And I'll request that we now prepare the stage for the panel discussion. And this particular panel discussion, Africa's industrial revolution needs three levels of success to succeed: the right policy, the right environment to attract and retain capital, industrial courage to build and scale, and the development capital and architecture to turn projects into bankable investment assets. I'll request that we now bring in the chairs for the panel discussion as I go through this. Africa's industrial revolution needs three levers to succeed: the right policy environment to attract and retain capital, the industrial courage to build at scale, and the development capital architecture to turn projects into bankable investment assets. This conversation unpacks what each looks like in practice and what happens when all these three pull in tandem. This definitely being revolutionary and as mentioned earlier it is a paradigm shift. It is a moment where we change how we look at things as Africa. So, as we get ready, allow me to now invite Jennifer Zabasaja who's an anchor at Bloomberg who's going to be moderating this session. So, I'll invite her to kindly take her seat then after that scene set for what we are about to have. And as we wait for the principals, I'll request that we have some background music playing as we get ourselves ready. Jennifer, if you're around, kindly you may come and take your seat as we prepare to invite the other panelists which includes the two heads of state that we have present. Why don't we put our hands together as we welcome Jennifer.
So allow me to invite the panelists. And at this point, Samaila Zubairu, kindly if you may come on stage. Let's give him a clap as he's approaching. Also, allow me to invite on stage Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Chairman and CEO of Dangote Group. And we shall now just take a short minute as we wait for His Excellency Yoweri Museveni who will also join in the panel together with His Excellency Dr. William Samoei Ruto. So we'll just take, let's just have some background music as we wait on that. So allow me to invite Jennifer to just set the scene as we transition. Welcome Jennifer.
Okay, we found one that works. Good afternoon everyone. As Mike was pointing out, my name is Jennifer Zabasaja and I am an anchor and a correspondent for Bloomberg Television based in Johannesburg. And I'm very pleased and honored to be a part of this panel session today with Aliko Dangote, also Samaila Zubairu, and our two heads of state who will join us. As we've been hearing all morning, the discussion is really about a more regional integrated approach to investment and infrastructure. And so we're hoping to again, as Mike was pointing out, put the levers, the three different levers together that make up the ambition and hopefully accelerate some of the ambition that we have. And we have of course one of the best examples of that in Aliko Dangote of course with the refinery in Nigeria and then some, and also the policy portion of it how we see our leaders potentially helping us to accelerate that and the AFC of course convening this gathering and talking about the financial architecture that is needed to make this happen. So, perhaps we get things started while we wait a bit. I wanted to just start here and maybe I start with the both of you. Aliko, you're so far away. I don't know why. But luckily we have microphones. We've been speaking all morning and hearing from the presidents and the heads of state about some of the challenges that we've seen on the continent and the potential moving forward. What's been interesting is for the past two decades if we take a look at AFC has been 20 years old. Past two decades there's been more than a trillion dollars, US dollars committed to infrastructure investment on the continent. And yet we're seeing the vulnerabilities of Africa at this point of course from your vantage point as someone who has this refinery that is revolutionizing the way we talk about industrialization on the continent, where do you think the gaps still are right now?
Well, thank you very much. It's great to be here. You know, I must thank AFC and the government of Kenya for arranging this conference which is the Africa We Build. I think, sorry, I have a bit of, you know, I've lost my voice really so you know, I hope you can hear me. So when you look at it today we can do much, much bigger things, you know, and I think it was President Ruto who said that maybe we should forgive past leaders. But right now we don't have any excuse, you know, because we have, you know, very big financial institutions, we have big entrepreneurs. What actually caused the delay before was that normally when you go to those financial institutions the interest is not to develop Africa. The interest is to develop themselves. And you know today we have big financial institutions that at least they can listen to the big, you know, entrepreneurs and see how do we develop and build our nation. We have made a lot of mistakes in the past where we've been relying on foreign investors. A foreign investor will not come without the leadership of domestic investor. So a domestic investor must take the risk and start developing your own continent. Not for you to wait for foreign investors. Foreign investor will only come when things are looking rosy and good. So I mean as we speak today also when you listen to the speech of President Ruto he actually summarizes almost everything that we are to discuss today. You know you have 550 billion of funds in Africa and you are funding something totally that is irrelevant. And most of our own people too when they have money they take the money abroad. So when they know that we have money we have what it takes to develop our continent. Every day we are saying potential, potential, potential for what? The potentials are there of course but you have to harness the potentials. I mean we've been having fuel cues in Nigeria for 52 years. Even when the refineries were sold, three out of four were sold to us in 2007. Later on the same people who are benefiting $10 billion of corruption money went and instigated and it was reversed few months later which we lost a lot of money because we paid banks, we paid advisers, we paid lawyers, we paid everybody of which you know AFC was part of. So today as we speak can we be where we want to be? The answer is yes. But we must build this ourselves as Africans, not by foreigners.
Thank you for that. And of course, we will welcome President Museveni and also President Ruto to the stage. We were just speaking about the gaps that still exist despite some of the investment that we've seen on the continent. I've been listening to both of you speak this morning and it seems like there is more cohesion between both of your countries. I wonder if you speak to an investor and you talk about what the regional collaboration looks like now. What's different now than in the past? What would you say? President Museveni,
What I think is different is that the mistake makers have failed. So people have seen the mistakes. The mistakes have blossomed. They have seen. I think that's why the people are beginning to see themselves different. You can see these are, I have been watching this for the last 65 years. I think Mr. Zubairu, are you 65?
You can imagine 50. So these young people have come up and they have seen. It would have been better if we, because like some of the other people like the Chinese, the people like you, they saw it earlier. But Africa also had a lot of additional problems like for instance landlocked countries, right? If you are landlocked, even if you see something, if the coastal countries don't see it properly, you can't move. So the mistakes are our biggest teachers because and the crises, the youth have no jobs, so I think people can now see, can listen more. Because there was a lure, it was really ideological intoxication. That if you, like for instance here in East Africa, how this East African Community broke up in 1977. People thought there was another way other than this East African Community. But now later on they discovered that no, community is the only way and that's how we came back.
President Ruto, have recent crises potentially accelerated some of this newfound collaboration between your countries?
Yes and no. I think the real question you've asked is what is different now? And I think there is realization by all of us that the solution to the challenges and problems we have is not out there. It is right with us. If you listen from what Dangote has said, he has said investors from out there will not invest in our countries unless we take the lead ourselves. Why would somebody else take a risk? How is it their business to build our countries? It's none of their business. And I mean rightfully so. First and foremost, we must realize that it is our responsibility. Others can only come to support us. But we must take the lead ourselves. And it doesn't start with entrepreneurs and industrialists like Aliko here. It starts with leaders like President Museveni and myself because a challenge that we have in our continent is a challenge of leadership. That's it. I mean if the leaders are not willing to lead from the front, if the leaders are not willing to make the decisions, the policy choices that will take our country forward because some of the policy choices are not necessarily popular. It isn't easy for President Museveni to say if you are not making this choice we are not going with you, you know, banning export of minerals is not an easy thing because there are people who make money out of selling raw materials so you have to tell them no this is not the right thing to do. So some choices have to be made by leaders. So it starts with us as leaders making the right choices, not convenient choices, not necessarily popular choices, the right choices. That's number one. Number two it is to stop what President Museveni was saying, petty jealousy, you know, between us. I'll give you an example. President Museveni decided that he's going to invest in the pipeline in Kenya because he believes that the pipeline in Kenya is not only important for Kenya but is also important for Uganda. When President Museveni told me, I went to him and I told him, please give us some of your iron ore for our business people here in Kenya. He told me that is not the policy choice I want to make. I have already said nobody's going to take iron ore from Uganda unprocessed. Then I made a choice that the investors who are in Kenya, I persuaded them to go and invest in the plant in Uganda. You know, I was not selfish about it because what will happen is that the iron ore in Uganda, the steel that is going to come from that iron ore is going to benefit not just Uganda, it's going to benefit Kenya as well. Instead of us importing steel from all over the world, it is cheaper for us to import steel from Uganda. Right? And because this is one region. So this is the beginning, the leadership that determines how we move forward. Let me conclude by saying listening to Aliko here, it is not just leadership at our level, it's also leadership at the level of our business people. It would have been easier for Aliko Dangote to do trade of oil. You know, I remember speaking to President Museveni and he told me he had a meeting with Aliko here and Aliko told him if you don't change the policies here, it is easier for me to import oil cheaper. I make more money selling than to refine oil unless you make the right policy decisions. And that is what Aliko is telling us here that the private sector and us will invest in the refinery. And by the way, we are discussing a refinery in Tanzania. The two of you? Yes. We are not discussing a refinery in Kenya or Uganda. We are discussing that we're going to have a joint refinery in Tanga to benefit all of us because that refinery is going to take on board the oil from DRC, the oil from Kenya, the oil from South Sudan, the oil from Uganda and we will just need to build a short pipeline from Tanga to Mombasa and the finished product will use the pipeline that we already jointly own with Uganda. So all our assets become profitable. But you need a longer-term view, you know, to see it than just a short-term, you know, country by country and that is why President Museveni was saying fragmentation is also part of our enemy. That is why some people broke up the East African Community because they didn't see the benefit of the bigger market. They were just looking at individual countries. So that is where we are at the moment and it is different because we've all learned our lessons. The policy makers like myself and President Museveni, we can see with clarity where this should go. Industrialists like Dangote here, they too can see. And AFC right here with us and all these other good bank people, they also appreciate that it is their responsibility to invest in this infrastructure because it makes them money and it grows their bank balance sheets as well.
Thank you, President Ruto. Samaila, I wanted you to jump in because if we talk,
But you go, you speak Swahili.
Not right now. Samaila, I wanted you to jump in because,
Just hold on. What is also new is that if you look at Uganda, the pool of scientists whom we have now, we didn't have them at independence. We now have people who can do anything: automobiles, vaccines, electronics. So although we are meandering making mistakes but also some capacity was being built, education, knowledge, we've got a lot of scientists, there's nothing we cannot make. So that is also new. So it is capacity there. But what he's saying, the eyes to see the future workforce.
Samaila, I wanted you to jump in. When you talk to global investors, is this regional cooperation, is that becoming a prerequisite? Because it seems like you've been speaking about this for quite some time and it's seeming like now that we're getting government on board. This is actually starting to pick up steam being the case for capital to actually be deployed. What are you hearing in your discussions?
Very good question. I'd like to lean in on two points raised. I think the key point is leadership. Leadership is extremely, extremely important to whatever we want to achieve. And I want us to look at leadership not just, you know, from a transaction that we want to do now but maybe from a long-term perspective. We need to embrace the idea of thinking about the next 15, 20, 30 years when we're thinking about development. So if you saw the report today on the state of African infrastructure report it talked about the consumption over time it says it's going to grow significantly and since we know that consumption is going to grow significantly it only makes sense to look at regional infrastructure which is what is happening here. Another point I want to make is the need for this same leadership to be applied to capital mobilization. I cannot emphasize that point enough, you know, because Aliko mentioned it, I mentioned it as well and President Ruto mentioned it. He said who pays the piper dictates the tune. Capital has always been one of those enablers for development and we need to crack that code and it's not so difficult. It's not so difficult because what we need to do is to look at what we have. Our research shows we have 4.4 trillion, over 600 billion with pension funds, over 400 billion with insurance funds. That's $1 trillion. And these are traditional long-term investors. So what we should be looking at is the regulation that prevents insurance companies from playing in other jurisdictions, the regulations that focus more on short-term treasury bill investments as opposed to long-term productive investments. We need to educate our trustees and gatekeepers on the need to think of the future of the workers whose funds they are managing. It is not enough to say that you're managing funds for pensioners and their children will be unemployed. That doesn't make any sense. We must have that in mind that we must be managing holistically. So that means we must be deliberate around policy and on what will make policy work. So I come back to credit enhancements. You know we're just starting this journey. We're starting this journey. We need to understand that the trustees are more focused on safety and liquidity. That's their job. So we need to find a way to make them comfortable to take longer-term risks. And I believe that within us in this room, the alliance of African financial institutions, the new architecture for financial, the new African financial architecture development that is being chaired by AfDB within this room or within this group, we can create guarantee programs that will take the initial risk from pension funds. So they're not looking at the project, they're looking at our own risks. And because we are going to develop and prepare this project, they can be comfortable that we will not put our money in things that don't work. I say this because we need to go beyond this 100 million, 1 billion, 2 billion. We should be looking at 20, 30, 40, 50 billion for development. And for me that is more important than any conversations that we can have with anybody. Let's focus on our needs for development. We have identified several infrastructure projects that need to be built. We have identified several refineries, fertilizer plants, all of these. They need billions of dollars. And we should be thinking about how can we use this opportunity, create those credit enhancements, create those guarantee programs that allow us mobilize 20, 30, $40 billion. I'm not interested in conversations. I mean we have conversations but I mean like Aliko mentioned, they are focused on their own objectives. I'm focused on African objectives. I'm focused on the future of the African child. I'm focused on what future are we leaving. So I am more interested on what we can do together. I'm more interested on what leadership can get done and let's work together make these reforms in the insurance, in the pension sectors to ensure that capital moves around.
So, somewhat answered my question. A little bit of not so much a prerequisite, but just it's a nuanced discussion that you're having with investors. Now, Aliko, I wanted you to jump in because you have said that you have an ambitious goal for the Dangote Group and want to invest where there's a lack of investment on the African continent. When you look at East Africa, what are the policy commitments that you need? You say you're already in discussion. What is it that you need?
I think what we need first of all is consistency in government policies. That's number one. And also the support of the governments here because I mean if you look at it really what we lack in Africa is quite a lot because we are a continent of imports and we're not really exporting much. We export raw materials which means when you export raw materials you are exporting jobs and when you import you are importing for because you are creating jobs out there not here in the continent. So I think with the support of the government that's nothing that is impossible and some of us were really tired of seeing our continent going out there to be begging for anything. I mean if you remember at the beginning of the war between Ukraine and Russia the chairman of African Union that was President Macky Sall had to go and be begging for fertilizers. And since that day I said okay fine by 2028 Africa will be self-sufficient in fertilizer and we are doing that. We're opening 20 blending plants in areas where they don't have the capacity. Also we are going to be at 12 million tons of urea, we are going to have massive potash and phosphate from Congo Brazzaville and we believe we will satisfy most of the demands of Africa. I mean you look at it today with population of Africa of 1.4 billion and also rising right we don't have raw material for detergent just to wash our clothes which we need every day we don't have. We only have two factories, one Egypt 50 tons, 100 tons in Algeria. So that's why we also launch now 400,000 metric tons of linear alkyl benzene which is the 100% raw material of detergent. So we have quite a lot of which before we don't have the capacity but right now with the likes of African banks, African bank with the likes of Africa Finance Corporation with a lot of support from other financial institutions following these two there's nothing we cannot do in Africa. That's why we as a group we have now launched between now and 2030 we're investing $40 billion in various fields.
