HIS EXCELLENCY, MR. ADAMA BARROW, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF THE GAMBIA EVENT: 8TH TOKYO INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE Your Excellency, the Chairperson, Distinguished Heads of Co-organising Institutions, Your Excellencies, Ambassadors and Representatives of Bilateral and Multilateral Agencies, My delegation and I thank His Excellency, Kais Saied, President of Tunisia, for hosting this event and for receiving us graciously. I am particularly grateful to His Excellency, Fumio Kishida, Prime Minister of Japan for the honour of participating in this important Summit, guided by a relevant theme to our socio - At present, Africa is expanding and str engthening partnerships to fully harness the enormous potential of our youthful and diverse population . Yet, it is a population that urgently needs start -up support to explore green businesses and other development Amid such concerns and the current global crises, we applaud the Government and People of Japan for assuming greater prominence in the collective endeavour to build resilient economies, communities, Poverty and inequality continue to ruin communities in Africa . The undue stress on our economies and disruption of international trade and governance, have Also worrying are the issues of nationalism, unequal disaster financing, tougher terms of lending and other Consequently, the need to strengthen international solidarity around resilience building and sound integrated approaches to development financing is As a vigorous growing region, Africa certainly presents unique opportunities for closer cooperation with the world, but we must build enough capacity to sustainably finance and drive our development. While wise management of our natural resource base, biodiversity, and ecosystem services is essential, sharing best practices across the globe is vital to overcome our development hurdles. I urge that the Summit contributes to transforming our challenges into opportunities for the realisation of our