Conference Agenda

to be webcast live = Archive Video Available

Venue: Joaquim Chissano International Conference Center,
Avenida da Marginal 4441, Maputo

Friday, May 30

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8:30am-9:30am to be webcast live

Plenary Panel Session 3:Structural Transformation and Private Sector Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

The public sector remains the most important source of formal sector employment in most Sub-Saharan African countries, but global experience suggests that the key to long-term growth is boosting private sector activity. While constraints are diverse and country specific, reducing business costs, streamlining regulations, and promoting trade remain important goals for many African countries. Moreover, despite sustained high growth, structural transformation has been limited in many African countries. Manufacturing sectors are small in most of SSA; agriculture is characterized by low productivity and little use of technology; and mining sectors are typically foreign-owned enclaves with limited job opportunities and little integration into the overall economy. Yet, population projections suggest that Sub-Saharan Africa will enjoy a demographic dividend, reflected in much faster-growing working age populations than other regions of the world.

Moderator: Eleni Giokos (Senior anchor, Bloomberg TV Africa

Panelists:

  • Ambassador Claver Gatete (Minister of Finance and Economic Planning of Rwanda)
  • Sarah Alade (Acting Governor, Nigeria)
  • Olivier Blanchard (Chief Economist, International Monetary Fund)
  • Jingdong Hua (Vice-President and Treasurer, International Finance Corporation)
  • Andrew Rugasira (CEO, Good African Coffee, Uganda)

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8:30am-9:30am to be webcast live

Concluding Roundtable: Next Steps and Joint Action

The panel will draw key conclusions from the conference Africa Rising:

  • What are the long term challenges, both at the global and continental levels, for policy making in SSA?
  • What can governments, the private sector and civil society do jointly over the next decade, and what are their respective roles?
  • What is the IMF’s role as a partner for SSA, and are the IMF’s policy advice, financial support, and capacity building efforts adequate?

Moderator: Nikiwe Bikitsha (Television and Radio Journalist)

Panelists:

  • Alberto Vaquina (Prime Minister, Mozambique)
  • Christine Lagarde (Managing Director, International Monetary Fund)
  • Daniel Kablan Duncan (Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Côte d’Ivoire)
  • Winnie Byanyima (Executive Director, Oxfam International)
  • Bob Collymore (CEO, Safaricom, and Governance Director for Africa, Vodacom)
8:30am-9:30am to be webcast live

Closing Press Conference

Thursday, May 29

Opening (Joaquin Chissano Conference Center)

8:30am-9:30am to be webcast live

Introduction and welcome by:

  • Manuel Chang (Minister of Finance, Mozambique)

Video Remarks by:

  • Kofi Annan (Chair, Africa Progress Panel)

Opening speeches by:

  • Christine Lagarde (Managing Director, International Monetary Fund)
  • Armando Guebuza (President, Mozambique)
10:00am-12:00pm to be webcast live

Plenary session I: Opportunities and Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa

Much of SSA has proven to be extraordinarily resilient to the 2007-08 global financial crisis. Growth slowed to 3.6 percent in 2009, but quickly recovered to over 5.5 percent in the sub sequent years. For low-and middle income countries, the key challenge in reducing poverty is to maintain high growth going forward, while boosting job creation and accelerating structural transformation in the context of pervasive informality and the predominantly rural nature of poverty. But for others, notably the fragile states, the first priority remains to establish sufficient political and economic stability to join the ranks of the “African Lions.” At the same time, all of Sub-Saharan Africa is facing significant long-term challenges, including those stemming from climate change and demographic developments.

Moderator: Nikiwe Bikitsha (Television and Radio Journalist)

Panelists:

  • Aiuba Cuereneia (Minister of Planning and Development, Mozambique)
  • Linah Mohohlo (Governor, Bank of Botswana)
  • Ncube Mthuli (Chief Economist and Vice President of the AfDB)
  • Wang Yong (Vice President of the China-Africa Development Fund)
  • Mahktar Diop (Vice President for Africa, World Bank)
  • John Peffer President, Anadarko Mozambique

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12:30pm-2:00pm Lunch—Keynote Speech
  • Rokia Traore (Singer and Founder of Fondation Passerelle, Mali)
The afternoon sessions will look at specific challenges facing African economies. To discuss these issues, four panel sessions will cover four inter-connected themes.
2:30pm-3:45pm

Parallel Panel Session 1: Harnessing Africa’s Natural Resources for the Benefit of Current and Future Generations

In many sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, extractive industries—forestry, mining—account for a significant share of output and a major share of export earnings. Rising commodity prices have boosted economic growth and exports in many countries and new countries are joining the ranks of natural resource exporters. Yet, enormous challenges remain in managing these flows in often weak institutional and governance environments. Macroeconomic strains include competitiveness problems stemming from appreciating real exchange rates, narrow tax bases, and exposure to volatile commodity markets. But there are also microeconomic challenges, not least in the tax and regulatory frameworks. Despite the large trade and financial flows, extractive industries often make a relatively small contribution to budgetary revenue, and, consequently, the wealth of the state. Increasing the returns from these industries, while balancing the interests of investors,must be a primary objective of resource-rich SSA countries, but doing so remains challenging. Weak institutional frameworks, including poor transparency and accountability and strong vested interests, have often compounded this challenge.

Moderator: Geoffrey Lamb (Chief economic and policy advisor, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)

Panelists:

  • Esperança Bias(Minister of Mineral Resources, Mozambique)
  • Maria Kiwanuka (Minister of Finance, Uganda)
  • John Peffer (President, Anadarko Mozambique)
  • Caroline Kende-Robb (Executive Director, African Progress Panel)
  • Clare Short (Chairperson, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative)

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Parallel Panel Session 2: Financing Infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa

Infrastructure investment, rehabilitation and maintenance needs remain massive in most Sub-Saharan African countries. Limited availability and quality of transport, energy, and water infrastructure pose obstacles for productivity, business development and external competitiveness. In particular, power generation capacity in SSA has stagnated for the past two decades, in contrast to rapid expansion in other regions. Wide-spread and costly energy subsidies have absorbed increasing budgetary resources in many countries and have discouraged investment in the energy sector. But while increasing financing options are available, public investment and debt management capacity often remains inadequate.

Moderator: Wallace Kantai (Business editor, NTV)

Panelists:

  • Alamine Ousmane Mey (Minister of Finance, Cameroon)
  • Seth Terkper (Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Ghana)
  • Jean-Marc Gravellini (Executive Director of Operations Agence Française de Développement, France)
  • Hideaki Domichi (Senior Vice-President, Japan International Cooperation Agency
  • Daniel Sloper (Australia’s Special Representative for the G20)

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Parallel panel session 3: Creating Sustainable Deeper and Broader Financial Markets

Finance is critical for long-term growth. However, financial markets in many African markets lack depth, and therefore offer limited financing opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as insufficient access for the population at large to financial services. Yet, rapid increases in connectivity offer new opportunities to all, even the poorest land-locked countries. With microfinance institutions, mobile banking, and an intensification of the development of debt markets, innovations over the past decade have led to a broader range of institutions in a number of countries, but the reach of those institutions is narrow and the sector remains largely bank-centric. Most recently the fast growth of some African cross-border banks has raised concerns about maintaining financial stability in the context of rapid expansions of home-grown institutions, and about adequate cooperation among financial supervisors.

Moderator: Aly-Khan Satchu (CEO, rich.co.ke)

Panelists:

  • Ernesto Gove (Governor, Bank of Mozambique)
  • Benno Ndulu (Governor, Bank of Tanzania)
  • Tiémoko Meyliet Koné (Governor of the BCEAO)
  • Leonardo Mathias (Vice-Minister of Finance, Portugal)
  • Kitili Mbathi (Chairman, Stanbic Financial Services Kenya)
  • Lucio Vinhas de Souza (Managing Director and Sovereign Chief Economist, Moody’s Investors Services)

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Parallel panel session 4: Overcoming Fragility

Top priorities for fragile states in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere are establishing the legitimacy of political and economic institutions and fostering social cohesion to set the basis for stability and growth. Effective policies thus require due attention to the social, ethnic, and political environment and well-defined achievable goals for the near-term. Much progress has been made in recent decades, but exit from fragility is still a challenge for several countries. Against this background, this session will focus on the lessons to date and how best to overcome fragility, including how to deal with the governance challenges in natural resource sectors, which are particularly acute in an environment of weak institutions, and how to foster employment creation, especially for young people.

Moderator: Pascal Fletcher (Journalist, Thomson Reuters)

Panelists:

  • Bouaré Fily Sissoko (Minister of Finance, Mali)
  • Thomas Doe Nah (Center for Transparency and Accountability, Liberia)
  • Adam Elhiraika (Director Macroeconomic Division, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa)

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4:15pm-5:45pm to be webcast live

Plenary Panel Session 2:Fostering Inclusion and Job Creation

The over-arching objective for low-income countries is poverty reduction. How can SSA’s growth acceleration be translated into improvements in living standards for the majority of the population, particularly for the poorest? Recent IMF work shows that while the poor have generally benefitted from high growth, relative income disparities have widened and employment generation has been disappointing. Whether growth was inclusive or not depended in many countries to a large degree on developments in the agricultural sector, often neglected. Social safety nets, which can provide direct support to the poorest, remain limited in SSA.

Moderator: Eleni Giokos (Senior anchor, Bloomberg TV Africa)

Panelists:

  • Patrus Ananias (Former Brazilian Minister of Social Development and the Fight Against Hunger)
  • Sipho Moyo, Africa Director of the ONE Campaign
  • Antoinette M. Sayeh (Director, African Department, International Monetary Fund)
  • Lemma Senbet (Executive Director, African Economic Research Consortium
  • Lionel Zinsou (Chairman and CEO, PAI Partners)

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5:45pm-6:45pm Special session between the Managing Director and African Ministers and Governors

Wednesday, May 28

Registration opens

6:30-8:30pm Opening Reception

Media Partners

The Africa Report AllAfrica The Banker This is Africa
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