Faure Gnassingbé0:00
Excellency Mr. Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda, host of this summit. Excellency Madam Samia Suluhu Hassan, President of the United Republic of Tanzania. Ladies and gentlemen, heads of delegation, Mr. Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Ladies and gentlemen, directors general of major global nuclear institutions. Ladies and gentlemen, investors, technical and financial partners. Ladies and gentlemen, representatives of financial institutions, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Before anything else, I would like to express to President Paul Kagame and the brotherly people of Rwanda the gratitude of the Togolese people, gratitude for the hospitality, gratitude for the courage of the vision, gratitude for this leadership that once again opens for our continent a path that others thought impassable. Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, there are moments in the life of continents when one is no longer content to observe, moments when one must decide. And this morning is one of those moments. For the truth is before us: nearly one in two Africans still does not have access to reliable electricity. The African continent represents a growing share of the world's population. Our cities will continue to grow. Our industrial needs will increase, our economies will digitize, and all of this requires an energy that we can no longer reasonably hope to obtain from the only sources we mobilize today. Allow me, in the time allotted to me, to make three simple remarks, three questions that Africa and this summit must answer. The first question is that of lucidity. Are we today ready to recognize together that renewable energies, as essential as they are, will no longer suffice on their own to support our industrialization? In Togo, as in many countries, we believe in solar, we also believe in hydropower. We are already lighting hundreds of villages with mini-grids, but we are also aware that processing industries, data centers, artificial intelligence, the African digital future requires continuous, decarbonized, competitive baseload electricity. In this area, civil nuclear power, and particularly small modular reactors and microreactors, is no longer a distant option. It is an option, we say, that is mature. The World Bank has lifted its historic ban on financing nuclear power; COP and financial institutions have validated this technology because the context has also changed. Now it is up to us to change our perspective. The second question is that of responsibility. What are we concretely doing to make this ambition a reality? Togo, for its part, has chosen to act. A member of the IAEA since 2012, the national law on the safe, secure, and peaceful use of nuclear energy has been adopted. Creation in January 2025 of our Atomic Energy Commission. Election to the IAEA Board of Governors for 2025-2027, and most recently in Vienna, signing of a new cooperation framework with the Agency for the next five years. We have also launched the exploration of modular microreactors for areas not connected to the national grid. We are ratifying international safety conventions. We are building, step by step, the institutional credibility that makes a project bankable. Being responsible is not waiting. It is preparing, framing, convincing, and above all guaranteeing to our populations that African nuclear power will be born under the sign of absolute safety and transparency. The third question is that of common requirement. Are we together ready to do what no African country can achieve alone? Pool our regulations, align our standards, aggregate our demand, build for the first time an African framework for financing nuclear power with development banks, sovereign wealth funds, private investors. Without this framework, the ambition risks remaining a dead letter. And above all, train, train massively: scientists, engineers, technicians, regulators, lawyers. Our youth, and particularly our young girls, must be at the heart of this adventure. African nuclear power will not be an imported nuclear power; it will be a nuclear power thought out, operated, and governed by Africans for the benefit of Africans. Mr. President, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, Africa is not asking for a technology to be given to it. Africa is proposing a partnership. Africa is proposing a market. Africa is proposing a mature vision of its own energy. We have the resources, we have uranium. We have the demand, we also have the political will. What we still lack are financial instruments commensurate with our ambition and an international narrative that stops considering African nuclear power as an improbable or even impossible horizon, to recognize what it is becoming, that is, a possible, probable, and why not imminent horizon. So let us make NESA 2026 the summit where Africa stops debating the why and organizes around the how and the when, the summit of the shift from intentions to investments. My country will take its full part with rigor, with humility, in respect for the highest standards of safety, security, and non-proliferation, and as a convinced Pan-Africanist. I thank you for your kind attention.
