buddha morgan regards good morning ministers members of the press of course vice president here with me this meeting is called to give a feedback on our very successful mission to the united nations and all other activities we undertook we have been having a habit of trying to give regular feedbacks and being available to the press but i must say unfortunately while we are informing the press isn't always reflected my prayers come to have authorial motives but at least we are calling this meeting to report back our mission to the united nations i went of a very important delegation and they are here they would as we are doing in during our mission have their own inputs so it is a collective attendance i will say it was very very successful we didn't start with general assembly uh address only but we had other side actions to promote namibia namibia is now in demand because of our green hydrogen it's very attractive to everybody and we are on demand so we had several meetings firstly i had virtual meetings dealing with the building resilience through hope to recover from covert 19 rebuild sustainability that was virtual address and thereafter several bilaterals of course another meeting virtual was also a global covert 19th summit convened by president biden again there was appointed virtually and participated in that of course we were an action to be taken and we have put down who is responsible to follow up etc in this case ministry of health and social services will be the one to carry out on the question of the covet issue we met i'm not going to mention all the people we met we met the president of latvia it was very interesting meeting they're very interested in working with us as small countries on many issues and they are of course good in e-governance and cyber security then we had a very very important meeting organized by namibia investment promotion development board with private sector business people this meeting was attended in person by some some of course virtually and the ministers who are sitting here we're all there and we're participating they are here they will also participate i'm not going to talk alone they will be called upon to have their inputs as we're doing when we're abroad and i thank them very much those are very impressive presentations as i was told by people so thank you very much we therefore call upon first we have the deputy prime minister who isn't here yet then we have here minister chairman of director general of learning commission who are sharing the meetings and therefore i would also give him a flow to introduce what was discussed there and how he viewed the situation we have the minister of finance who will also come in because it is a teamwork one-person show then we had the economic advisor who asked on the case in most cases making consultations with the area he is very good at that of green hydrogen it was very very much well received then we had deputy minister of tourism attending our address was public we addressed the general assembly on a situation namibia situation where crisis covet how no one is safe unless all of us are safe no one must be left out and also address the vaccination of action apartheid as i called it so this all went down very well well received but let me now go to the outside activities because uh assembly was addressing it publicly and it was covered here too but on the question of private sector or before that also meeting with the ambassador american ambassador to the u.n linda thomas greenfield old friend of mine a very very good meeting again they are all interested in what maybe i want to do with our green hydrogen then i will call on the chairman of the proceedings commit orbit to the leaders on the business sector what happened you good morning your excellency and thank you for the opportunity granted morning comrade vice president ministers present and of course the media we held up to about four or five events that we engage the business fraternity two events in new york that were actually under the flagship of his excellency the president where investors were contacted and showed interest in namibia in general and more specifically the green hydrogen and ammonia nation industries or emerging industries of namibia perhaps before i get there we've not done this with your permission your excellency sometime back his excellency put together a green hydrogen cancer of which the director general is the chairperson of that cancer and it is represented by the ministers of finance the ministers of agriculture mines and energy environment tourism and forestry the attorney general is also an invited member the ministry of higher education and then you have the economic advisor who serves as the green hydrogen commissioner of namibia joined of course by the chief executive officer of the namibia investment promotion and development board madame nangulawanja that's the official setup of the green hydrogen cancer it's set up for the following reasons it must map out the green hydrogen and ammonia new industries potential along our coastline especially as the first benchmark areas in the sparchebet namib desert around luderitz and of course moon and that's not to end there it will proceed along the entire 15 1500 kilometer coastline where we have wind capacity factors that will demand investment and of course harvesting as well as solar irradiation potential we know that namibia ranks amongst the very apex countries top countries in the world for that kind of business so we are very well positioned so that's the first one the second one is we must develop a whole road map to the conference of parties which is taking place in november so his excellency and his team must present the potential and the work done by piloting and james newpair will talk very extensively around that so that cop roadmap must be done we are busy and we almost are done with it third thing we must do is develop the entire legal framework and strategy around the green hydrogen and ammonia industries for the future we are busy with that with the pilot project as part of that will be based on all of that work and investors have already been nudged into the country through and a request for proposals bits that were put out to those that are interested to deal or wanting to deal with it and the interest is actually bulging we are unable to deal with all of that because just the sheer volume of people interested in wanting to participate just two months ago a month ago or so the green hydrogen commissioner and the performance delivery unit as well as all its members undertook a tour with investors 30 plus investors to ludwigs to actually physically go touch feel inspect these areas up for pilot projects and benchmarking studies that the investors are really interested in doing and that work was also now completed 55 other investors remained on virtual platforms whereas the 30 flew into the country and went out to ludwig so it's just to paint the work being done around that so as a consequence of all of that the the federal republic of germany also signed an mou between the republic of namibia and itself the ministry of education and research whereas where at that very mou the pledge is 40 million euro that the federal republic of germany is going to actually put up for pilot project studies for scholarships and for all other regimes that we need to do legal frameworks and everything around that so these are actually designed and dusted and we are working around that so in new york we took that very green hydrogen cancer and the work it is doing and put it out to investors to solicit the interest of whether or not there is any interest and believe you me the interests was fantastic everybody wants to get in the first group of the networking lunch spoke around exactly the whole green hydrogen and ammonia future industries the south end development corridor initiative which james will talk elaborately around that and the simplicity around it is there is a coastline there is water there is a pot there is air or oxygen and there is land available the concept is you harvest the water through electrolysis you put it through electricity green hydrogen produced electricity that means that's the green element of it you split the water molecule into the hydrogen atom and the oxygen atom and all you do is you use you capture the hydrogen and that hydrogen will be put through a series of power plants to create the power necessary you you use the liquid hydrogen to export that's your future industry and everything around it the oxygen will then also be used in the process once this chemical process is done and you capture your hydrogen you then move to the byproducts of that which is ammonia so simply put that's really the chemistry around the process that's what we put to investors why namibia it ranks number one amongst the number one countries with the best potential for green hydrogen it ranks number one for irradiation potential wind capacity factors are the best amongst its peers are countries like chile australia and many others the interests is from the united states it's from europe it's from australia and many other countries so investors stand ready and that's what we tested we put that to them along that we then decided who what is namibia where is namibia what is it offering and we went into the geographic setting its demographics its economy its financing and that financing component will be spoken to in detail by the minister of finance whereas james will be dealing with the actual concept when we take it apart unit by unit as to what is the interest the the money available is phenomenal that's the first event second event different investors brought into the room we then went on to look at should namibia succeed what are the modalities in terms of bonds in fundraising do we kind of need do we need sustainable green bonds and if we are to raise that what will it take only as an exploration we then went to nasdaq we taught nasdaq we asked the questions what would be required if we had to develop this new industry going forward that really was the new york engagement we then went on to washington dc with his excellency participating actively in all of this leading the opening remarks putting the country first from politics to everything else in washington on the friday we had 30 people in a room of this nature just like you guys and the four or five of us with opening remarks of the minister of of mines with myself participating the atlantic council facilitator and one other researcher who also took interest and 200 other people plus on the virtual platforms we repeated exactly what we did in new york with many more questions as to how is namibia dealing with this again i can't forsake to tell you the level of interest develop level of participation and we put out namibia again where is namibia what is it doing what sort of legislation is there there is haste in people wanting to put up the money for investment the level of investments could be anything between six to about 12 billion us dollars remember our gdp is about that number so the potential for us to double on the gdp through the green hydrogen and ammonia industries is phenomenal your excellency that really is what we've done in new york we didn't just have in washington dc we didn't just have those we then went on to the council for africa and we engaged similar investors around exactly that so the horizon of those that we covered was large and broad my own estimate of the numbers of people we could have seen could easily be between 80 and 100 people that we've seen all expressing significant interest wanting to be on the ground in the meantime the process of the request for proposal has come to an end and james will give us the feedback of what are the results what is the governance process around this before we hit the conference of parties later in november or at the end of this month without your excellency may i take leave from the podium with your permission thank you very good minister of finance what is involved good morning comment president good morning comrade vp and all the members of the media fraternity who are here and my fellow ministers and and senior officials in government i believe the president has already given us more or less an outline of what has happened and and the director general has also given us more details as to what happened in those meetings obviously the main meeting in the main agenda was the unga the united nations national assembly and and and of course the meetings that we are talking about were just side meetings supporting the main meeting um the director general has already talked about it the types of meeting we had for instance the first one with the fund managers and the idea and i'm just going to give you a bit more flesh on that the idea was really to raise namibia's profile this was organized by the board to to tell the world that we in namibia this is our profile this these are our ambitions these are aspirations we have aspirations to diversify the economy we have aspirations to help the continent and the static region to produce green energy and contribute better to a better environment because as we know we are facing an environmental threat and it's it's our responsibility to contribute to a better world and namibia's green hydrogen ambition is really one of our strategy to uh to decarbonize the region and decarbonize the the continent and help the world to build better energy green energy that is going to foster better and sustainable growth so why fund managers fund managers of course they are the ones who have got the capital so if we are going to go going to go back to them one day and say we we have these projects that need funding they already know they will already know namibia that's one many of these projects are going to be driven by the private sector so the private sector may go back to them and say we have assets in namibia or investments in namibia that we what we want to fund can you help fund these investments again by that time already the fund managers have information about namibia and understand namibia's aspirations the second meeting that the director general has talked about again is similar in in fashion we again sold namibia's narrative but it was more a mixture of of investors those that have interest in energy and and and those are already investing on the continent because these are the people that you want to talk to because they're already familiar with the region they're already familiar with with the continent so the idea was then to say here is namibia don't only invest elsewhere on the continent we have these ambitions we have these aspirations come come and work with us um i i will not go into the the um the atlantic council in dc but maybe before i come to that one i come to dc um the dg has already talked about visiting nasdaq why nasdaq nasdaq is really a stock exchange it's one of the main strong exchanges in the us we have heard about the new york new york stock exchange but there's also a nasdaq stock exchange these are the two main ones and the idea is really this is the stock exchange that supports in in a great deal the finance or the racing of finance to support and finance climate initiatives and and they have an experience in that you may already know that one of our banks bank vendors has actually already raised a green bond there so they are familiar with namibia to some extent but we went there to tell them that we may come back one day either us as government looking for finance to um to fund in supporting infrastructure that is going to support our greener bee ambitions or the private sector may come to you and raise funds to support similar projects in namibia so what are your rules what are the procedures that we have to follow if you have to come back one day so that was the purpose and i believe we had we had a productive discussion with uh with nasdaq and so we now have the information when we are ready to to raise green bonds institutional bonds we know where to start the discussion with the atlantic council in washington dc the director general has already given information on that one so we had other engagement with several other investors in in in washington dc maybe in addition to what this dg has said it's probably to mention that we also met through a meeting that was facilitated by members of the congress we met lionsgate that's a company it's a film a motion picture and a studio platform so many of you are probably familiar with netflix it's almost the competitor of netflix and and the idea was really to to discuss the possibility of them looking at namibia as a a as a country where they can shoot movies and you can you know if you talk to the to those that are in in the creative arts sector they they tell us that namibia has got a lot of potential and and that can create a lot of jobs so the idea was to talk to them and and and um and create awareness about namibia and and try to entice them to come to namibia and and we believe we had we had a productive discussion and um we will have to follow up on on on on that discussion and hopefully we'll have them here one day shooting movies and you probably when you when you connect with that platform you'll probably see some movies shot in namibia so i think that's um [Music] that was another productive discussion that we had um hello minister why don't you just say that congresswoman brought they are from california they were following up with us thank you president yes the congress the chair who actually helped to organize and and um facility that meeting told us that they approach it because she she's from l.a los angeles you know that's that's where the movie industry is uh and they approach here um that's now lions gate asking her for her views about which possible countries to invest in to shoot movies in on the continent and of course because she was here a few few weeks ago and probably some of you have reported on the the delegation that came to namibia a few weeks ago of congress um of congress members or members of the congress so she said the first country that came to mind was namibia because she was quite impressed when she when she had in namibia and she said yeah the president is coming here with this delegation it will actually be good if you can meet the president's delegation so that's that's how that meeting started thank you for reminding me comma president i believe all in all we had productive discussions the president and his delegation really raised the profile of namibia it's now for us to go back and follow up on these discussions but it's also more importantly is for us as namibia to implement our ambitions and and all of us have that responsibility even members of the media to really market namibia's story about these aspirations that we have the cherry on the cake is that um [Music] so the president raised this profile so much that one of the one of the participants in one of our meetings in new york was a senior person in in in the um the wall street street journal the wall street journal is a financial newspaper that is that has got a higher profile you probably have heard about the wall street journal so all the investors and financial market people read that journal so one of one of the senior people participating in our new york meetings they decided to follow us as a matter of fact they have a journalist in namibia right right right now or i think she's she's probably left already this morning but she came on monday i had the pleasure hosting here for lunch on monday that's the result of of of the presentation that we had we had in new york so i believe the president his profile and his delegation really raised the profile thank you very much common president thank you now the commissioner run through then we open up good morning everyone good morning your excellency vp honourable ministers and and members of the media it's always tough to try and follow up when the ministers have said all there was to say but i'll try and give some more specificity um with regards to the to the meetings that have been alluded to so i think first of all it's useful to just sort of really look at the meetings in really two broad categories you really had sort of policy orientated meetings and you had some meetings that were very sort of investment orientated i think uh other meetings in new york that were useful to highlight that maybe have not been touched on was a meeting with the belgian prime minister and of course a meeting with the minister of energy from colombia the belgians actually sought to to meet our head of state and they have expressed a great interest to collaborate with namibia as we look to incubate this young and fledgling synthetic fuels industry in namibia they have investors who are actually very keen to deploy assets in namibia today so they would love to start building a pilot plant worth 50 million euros in the iranga region today and they're doing so in collaboration with other namibian partners and their prime minister was absolutely magnanimous a great gentleman and came in paid great homage and respect to our leader for the visionary sort of step he's taking to develop this industry and in fact during his visit he said that he had spent three weeks here in namibia on on his honeymoon and he spoke extremely highly of of namibia the colombian minister of energy had heard of our aspirations as well i was in invited to witness the launch of a green hydrogen compact which is essentially pledges from various private sector companies and countries from around the world and i met him there and he heard our story and he wanted to meet our minister of mines and energy and so we introduced him to tom alwendo they had very good discussions and spoke about south south collaboration between two countries that are likely to be very well placed to export this clean energy so those were two meetings that i thought were certainly worthwhile to mention to you as well i think the other two investor meetings that were organized by nip were very well complemented by the visit to the nasdaq and they are really members of of of the media and members of the public the rationale for those meetings isn't just to attract fdi into namibia but it's to look for opportunities to lower our cost of capital as you know of course we do have some debt but you can imagine a situation where you have a mortgage bond yourself if you've raised that mortgage bond at a cost of capital of six percent and you get an opportunity to refinance your mortgage and raise that bond at four percent that is a conversation you should be engaging in and why that is um true for us it's a real opportunity for us at the united nations a key theme was climate change and what countries and financial companies are willing to do to help the world reduce its emissions and to decarbonize our economies and so investors are willing to give very cheap capital to help countries and companies build infrastructure that will help with decarbonizing and the nasdaq the investors we met i personally met other hedge fund managers some who manage more than 11 billion us dollars who are very keen to engage either our minister of finance or of course private companies who want to invest in namibia to to help with climate change to provide us with concessionary funding and i think that is a brilliant opportunity for namibia i think our green hydrogen uh council chair has described in quite a decent amount of detail what the green hydrogen opportunity looks like but one of the things we presented in new york was actually the bigger picture and the bigger picture for namibia is the southern corridor development initiative as has been captured by hpp2 which was obviously launched in this very room on the 18th of march and the southern corridor development initiative talks about how green hydrogen is at the core of building a decarbonized manufacturing industry in the karas region but it also highlights the surrounding infrastructure that needs to be built think about the luderitz port the rail network that could go into um into the northern cape the transmission lines that can go into the sapp and so the green hydrogen is the center and these surrounding infrastructure which by the way are worth billions of dollars if we needed to build them are the key enabling um opportunities for investment and so while we were talking and touring in the in in north america this was a holistic picture that we were painting to investors and and many of them were very interested in those other different pieces of infrastructure as well which of course for namibia is fantastic because those pieces of infrastructure would be expressed in our budget anyway typically through the developmental budget right you'll have your operational budget where you'll have your normal expenses your wages your operating expenses and in the development budget the minister of finance has to source capital to build infrastructure across the country to engender gross freaks capital formation and a growing gdp and it's that peace that these investors are very interested to have dynamic conversations with the minister of finance about the dg has mentioned pilot plants critical green hydrogen as you can begin to hear is a big big big undertaking right multi-billion dollars and as you've heard the technology is very cutting edge and some of it is still being proven so before you build a multi-billion dollar factory and you can start in 2425 you will want to test certain things some technologies some specifications etc to do that you want to launch a pilot plant and so we already now have some funding from the the jci we served with the bmbr from germany and other sources of capital that want to start launching some pilot plans one of those pilot plants we just mentioned for example is the potential 50 million dollar pilot plant in nirongo but there are other pilot plants that might come up in the karas region and lo and behold the green hydrogen narrative has now spread all the way even to the kunena region where the re the governor there has actually written to his excellency expressing a desire to start exploring the possibility of building a green hydrogen or a synthetic fuels industry in kuneni because they as well have exceptional wind and exceptional solar resources as well and so it's it's very good for namibians to see that because with pilot plants you can start that construction that deploying of capital and the creation of jobs now so within the next six months the green hydrogen council will work very hard to put together a framework that will allow us to choose and or allocate capital to some of these pilot plants to start work and that was some of the message that we also took to our investors in new york the rfp process has been mentioned as you know we closed the rfp on the 16th of september we've gotten nine multi-billion dollar proposals from six developers the colleagues are uh actually had at work as we speak um evaluating those proposals we we were praised in you know in new york and in other places we went to for a very transparent process that we're in and for a very comprehensive process so where we are now um there will be three people from namibia evaluating this process supported by two people from the united states and um actually two people from the u.s two from namibia and two from europe um and that ensures a very international transparent process in evaluating what is likely to be one of the largest industries that namibia has ever launched and we're going to be trying to work day and night to make sure that as his president as his excellency is making an address in cop 26 we can give a very fundamental update as to uh the progress made with that particular initiative i think uh comrade president the only other thing i wanted to mention was yes when we went dc we were also welcomed by the congressional members of the congressional black caucus um i think the three names i can definitely mention to you are karen bass congresswoman karen bust is a lady that came here and when we were there she invited us to talk to to lionsgate in the film industry she was joined by ilhan omar which is one of the longest youngest members of congress in the united states and she's in fact of african descent and then of course barbara lee very important because she holds sort of the budgets purse strings in congress as well um so that was really i think the the two sort of key visits in north america both new york and washington very comprehensive lots of support from a policy perspective lots of support from an investor perspective and now it's up to us here at home in namibia to really open the door to allow for these investors to come to our home and express themselves create some jobs and get our economy going and i think in conclusion for me you know if i'm a sort of a member of the press score and i'm sort of wondering where does this trip fit into the bigger picture one needs to remember that his excellency is the minister of finance in fact all of cabinet is in the middle of trying to engineer an economic recovery process from one of the toughest conditions and situations we have ever found ourselves of course induced by covid induced by the droughts etc we are coming from one of the largest deficits and gdp contractions we've ever seen and so you can see that the government is trying to do whatever we can to work extremely hard to be extremely open in trying to attract that fdi to really get our economy going and this particular trip was a key component of that economic recovery process just as the rfp and the announcements in november hopefully will continue that momentum that the government is working extremely hard to build for us here in namibia so thank you so much for your time and uh we look forward to your questions while you are there now we are back the interest of davos all of a sudden you can touch on that too what happened thank your excellency an extremely good point so namibia has been invited to the annual meeting of the world economic forum in davos switzerland in january this is the first time that i understand that we have actually been invited to this meeting in davos in january um really the largest economies and the largest company come together in switzerland and typically they they come together around a key theme and they look to support that theme i suspect climate change will be one of the key themes that will be discussed in davos uh you will see the heads of states from really the biggest countries from china to the us uk all congregate there and namibia for the first time has been invited to davos and the world economic forum didn't stop there of course they're inviting us there because of the visionary um uh sort of objectives that his excellency has infused in hpp2 world economic forum picked up on that and they thought it's very unique for an african country to have such an aspiration but they didn't just stop by inviting us to davos on monday as we came back you see we've been working extremely hard whether it was washington new york now we came back and landed in namibia and on monday we had the world economic forum hosted an energy round table for namibia which is the first time they have done that for any african country and that was amazing of course our president was the guest of honor he was introduced by the president of the world economic forum and that particular meeting congregated uh some really really large companies about 30 or 40 of them one of them of course was a country for a company from our neighbor here south africa called sassel sasso is the largest company in africa by revenue they're also the largest producer of hydrogen in the world they produce about 2.5 million tons of hydrogen and this very morning their president cyril ramaphosa is announcing south africa's green hydrogen ambitions and what we were being told in this particular west forum on monday was that south africa and sasel would like to collaborate and work with namibia because the amount of hydrogen that they need social to decarbonize their operations by 2050 and become a hydrogen major that project that they're announcing today is not going to be enough ours is much larger and so they came to speak to our president to say can namibia not collaborate with south africa to build connecting infrastructure from the karas region into the northern cape all the way to the secunda plant in in khao teng and i can tell you now you know that particular pipeline is up more than a thousand kilometers long in fact it was 300 kilometers long and it requires 6.4 billion euros is an estimate we've seen in the proposals that we're reviewing to build that pipeline now earlier this year this this month actually you would have heard the head of state from south africa saying that africans would need 240 billion dollars in grants in order to decarbonize our economies as envisioned by the developed economies and that is the opportunity that really really really namibia is faced with here as we build out the southern corridor development initiative we are one of very few countries in africa that can attract that concessionary funding and the world economic forum have been very impressed by his excellency and his government that they have resolved to partner with us all the way to davos and beyond in order to make that southern corridor development initiative a reality and so i think for any namibian it should really be a source of pride that our country that is that small is has been invited to davos you know to to really i suppose rub shoulders and engage and exchange ideas with the with the world's largest economies and the world's largest companies on show there of course so our ambition not having shoulders our ambition at davos of course would be to host a namibian house and within that namibian house we will be highlighting our own investment opportunities um our own uh progress that we have made with our own research and development initiatives and we'll be looking to take hopefully about 10 companies from namibia that are really have a world-class story to tell including the example that the minister of finance gave where bank vinduck was the first bank in southern africa to issue a sustainable bond on the sustain on the nasdaq sustainability networks right so those sort of stories we just listed or we're about to list mtc hopefully which is going to be the largest listing in our country ever those sort of stories you want to go and tell at davos then make sure that namibia arrives on the global stage absolutely as the president said in our own right and not just because we've been invited by others you top it off yesterday the people from that company what is the company we're eager that we connect with the president of south africa so being practical i surprised him i just brought him come and meet the president i told president cyril this young man would like to say something about green economy so the young men nearly collapsed but i brought them together and i've got president even us he's cut that's the success of his visit that's our story now you can see how we are trying to raise the level higher you have been too low this is a golden opportunity don't destroy it by pettiness grab this opportunity to pull the country out of maharashtra in it's honestly we are in a very bad situation in the whole world the economy was down first community crisis then severe drought then the covert all the years we have been running this country six years crisis now crisis mustn't go wasted good crisis so to say we are now cashing in on that to pull our country out of that morass we appeal to our business people to to the press to politicians to pull in the same direction i now have a loss and i'll keep on saying it in konena when traditional leaders came in to destroy that opportunity that that area could have been different today equally we can destroy these two golden opportunities our behavior our statements that can destroy and there are countries are waiting we are more attractive but there are others who can also grab this opportunity with that i would like to thank the ministers vice president thanks for coming and floor is now open to as you can see our pitching is very high and i hope that we are going to be thank you the floor is open morning mr president morning vice president and the delegation this is dwight from elsm i have one straight question [Music] one straight question in terms of looking at the especially to mr kanyode the director general and to you mr president all these all these meetings is it sort of like providing namibia the the ability to resist this the the the crisis that you mentioned earlier or just before you close is it to have that resistance for the country in terms of if we take knocks that the systems are in place the late the employment is in place so that people can earn money have their livelihoods and also still be a major player number one either in the green a hydrogen energy element and other factors and then secondly just to look at the the second question which is smaller one the davos meeting i know it's still in the early stages but to us directly the davos invite is there will that be the opportunity where we will then be able to lay down our plans on the international level with any other discussions that might have taken place and secondly is it for us then to see is this the next level to contact investors or not with the last one all the things you mentioned are what we are trying to do to lift our country up we have been down for too long as i said golden opportunity is now coming that all of us to pull in the same direction ask questions we'll give you answers don't destroy divers we must also take business people already some have registered keen real business people i'm talking about who we are going to be with us there there will be a desk a hall it's a whole namibian hall where we are going to have our meetings different business people presenting not us that i normally would open to say namibia is this democracy blah blah peace business people are going to be the ones to connect with the other business people they talk the same language and that's what diverse is all are going to be of course new thing will be this green energy that's what they want us to be there to start with but it's going to provide opportunity to our business people top ones and taking the people like small business people but already i have names of business people who have already asked to be part of it big big business bankers they must be there others will listen more if bengal other business people talk not politicians politician provides the environment in which the business must strive that we do it will be the business people in this country you'll be surprised who they are going to be who will be there otherwise it will be meaningless to go there with ministers only that's that's about how we're going to defend the country that's the first question first one was what i summarized the first one the second one was the toughest one the first one was looking at the resistance bullying building up the country's resistance firstly because like the crisis that you mentioned the drought now covered and then also i forgot the second element is this a way of developing the resistance definitely definitely oh you want to help me thank you very much for the question actually a brilliant one for that matter let me illustrate and it's a subject for another day it is so broad so deep so wide so analyzed in simple terms the macroeconomic institutions of the country national planning commission the bank of namibia ministry of finance and ministry of industrialization and trait on the recommendations of cabinet of course headed by yours truly with us to unbundle the economy look at the structural impediments of why we not attaining economic growth sooner and faster and what will that look like post quality and we sprung to work set up the teams and we assisted by a very research and resourceful institution of high learning including our own nast's unam and we set up the entire private sector with the public sector to look at the productive sectors sf start and in that we got up to four reports that gave us the diagnostic part of it and how the policy framework isn't contributing to this and that's a very direct way of how resilience will be inbuilt as the x as his excellency has just said so this is the first 12 months of the work done the ministry of finance the minister of finance is here the green hydrogen council and economic advisor is here what we then are looking at in the setup of that very work is how do we diversify the economy the simple conclusion to it is what we commonly known in namibia as the low-hanging fruits they are no longer low hanging we've exhausted harvested that they are far and few between what's left for us is to equip ourselves to tackle mount himalaya or kilimanjaro whichever you like with the best of policy framework the best understanding of what has dwindled in terms of economic recovery and we narrow it down and put a thousand type of products and compared that as an export basket of namibia vis-a-vis the rest of the world and countries that are peers and what we find is significant deficits and shortfalls the economy needs specialized skills is one of them a basket of products we put out amongst those thousand when compared to others they lack in their finesse in their complexities when on the complexity map of the world you put namibia we will fall off the radar so that means we have a whole lot of work to do around that and this what that we talked about now is simply a precursor of a whole lot more that needs done the entire public civil society public sector civil society private sector is involved in this work so we've done the first 12 months of the work productive sector productive sectors we are now going into the service sectors the tourism the finance and all that so we actually do exactly the same amount of work we will tailor back or taper back the kind of research and development that we need so we can actually identify the pitfalls we've done it for the productivity sector we're going to do it for several sectors so resilience and strength sustainability is therein built thank you your excellency god is economic recovery plan and we must all pull in the same direction yes newspaper now mr president another issue that has put namibia on the map aside from the green hydrogen is the alarmingly high unemployment rate there are concerns that we have reached crisis proportions with regards unemployment what immediate plans do we have in place or are we going to put in place to address that issue um then um commissioner you have said namibia really needs to open its doors and we've been talking about foreign direct investment for years yet our house is not an order as far as processes are concerned things like businesses registration remains a very big headache epcs was repealed but still nothing new how do we plan to attract these investors and get them here in the shortest time because we need that money right now um my last question mr president um dr hengari always insists that you remain the president of swappo all the time so um now the party has announced its think tank over the weekend and one of those members was mr vincent lucoro who is convicted of rape now my question is what what does this appointment say about this government's commitment to the issue of gender-based violence in this country and what do you say about the plight of his victim when you've made that appointment thank you very much well thank you very much i'm on a very high plane of protecting candy's future and i appeal to all of us to be at that that level of course what we are doing is to revive the economy if you revive the economy you will get jobs created without economy being revived there will be no jobs no jobs created so as for other side issues maybe we'll call a press conference for that at the body headquarters i don't need to be diverted people are used to diverting we are talking about very serious matter serious matter is going to pull our country out of this morass so my sister asked for the swap thing will go to our office and call a press conference there here i'm calling please come to the state house to report the nation to what we are trying to do seriously yes this can affect if people are going to hear a ruling party has appointed a person who did this and this and then i agree with that i agree with that i had a big problem was the person involved to when he was accusing me that i should reinstate him to his position of advisor because he is out of jail he is now unveiled i said look out of hell doesn't mean you have been freed and therefore i handed the case over to the attorney general that i am congratula he gave him legal opinion to say you are not freed yet you are out of bed but that's not to detract i don't have to be the headline that's a problem we have in this country we like to divert us from important issues and tomorrow's headline will be that one we are talking about serious business here we are trying to recount report on what we are doing to put the country on the map yes i believe comment president has already answered the question on unemployment and and again that's that's really at the core of the hpp2 now economic advancement the pillar too of the of of hpp2 is really about creating economic opportunities and when you create economic opportunities you create jobs and not only jobs you want to create quality jobs that that is going to improve the income level of namibians and the diversification strategy that the dg has was talking about is actually part of that it's part of the recovery it's it's part of the drive to create sustainable jobs that is going to employ more people more young people because part of the the information and the data that we are that we have analyzed we have also seen that especially for young people even those with degrees it has been difficult over the last five years or so to to find jobs now diversification talks to that which is part of that advanced advancement pillars now in terms of fdi domestic investment you want the whole basket so part of this diversification conversation is to we have as a dj has said we have identified about 97 products that we believe namibia has a comparative advantage to produce now how do you start jumpstart some of this industry some of these industries are already in place the next step is is to go to them and say what is constraining you what are the binding constraints how do you work with government to remove these constraints so that you can scale up your your production the continent is opening up we have now signed the agreement to be part of the continental free trade area therein lies an opportunity how do we help you to be able to scale up your production and take advantage of this market that is opening up so that that's part of the conversation the other part is to look at that is what is called a productivity task force you probably have had the digi talking about productivity task force is to go to the existing industry say how do we remove the binding constraints together to allow you to to scale up your investment the other part is fda that you have talked about because we need both we need domestic investment we need foreign direct investment we're not going to just have a general marketing drive on foreign direct investment we are going to be targeted the idea is to is to link it to these products that we have identified to say we have identified these potentials we know that you are in this industry because we are going to identify them you know we know that you are in this industry we will also know that you are already exporting and producing on the continent so you all have some understanding of what is happening on the continent in the region why are you not investing in namibia and then they're in again there's a conversation some of them will say yeah the market is too small but we then say we have a circle a soccer market we have a static market in as a matter of fact we have a continental market so that's really the drive that is that hpp2 is driving or is pursuing to create the necessary jobs and and and and to ensure that that the the unemployment rate rate is reduced significantly thank you common president yes please thank you so much for the question i mean super relevant and i thought i'd just uh supplement um i think what the minister of finance has already provided in terms of a response so your question was high levels of unemployment but you also sort of spoke about business registrations being very difficult and the epz's as well and i think the government really recognizes the urgency of the situation that you've articulated and one of the first things his excellency did at the beginning of this year was to register the namibian investment promotion and development board as a direct response to um the challenges that that you mentioned niptb is specifically mandated to help with attracting new investment and fdi into the country and in fact i know for a fact that they're working extremely hard together with beeper to try and reduce the amount of time that it takes to register a business i would know that because i'm on i'm i'm an advisory board member on fdb as well and i think results are coming along and and and more of them should be articulated you mentioned the ep z's um and i know the minister of finance and and and the cabinet committee on treasury and the cabinet committee on trading and economic development they're actually working extremely hard to try and finalize a new scc regime that would essentially take over from the outgoing ep z regime and i actually saw that particular policy at least a policy framework going in for discussions um i think a couple of weeks ago so that epz is actually being dealt with as well i think your other comments with regards to fdi were also super relevant so i wanted to give you a few practical examples and responses to your question one is the csd initiative of the central securities depository that is being worked on by the central bank and the ministry of finance that one would be aspiring to bring in more investors globally to be able to buy our instruments to help our companies and even our country to raise debt cheaper so if your paretos for example you don't just have to raise bonds from local investors and from pension funds because it now allows for digital settlement you could raise capital from an investor in switzerland who's very keen to uh see greater broadband development in namibia and therefore is willing to give pareto's money at a much cheaper level that actually begins to speak to fdi the joint communication of intent that the dg mentioned that's 40 million euros that we don't have so that is fdi as well but unlike you know you were saying green hydrogen might take a while that's 40 million dollars that gets unlocked today in fact it was unlocked whenever we signed that particular agreement and that's about 700 million dollars uh namibian dollars which is i would believe nothing to sneeze about and again is a direct response to his excellency urging cabinet to to get moving today i think the other one i wanted to mention specifically is the walvis bay industrial development initiative again being spearheaded by nam port nipdb cct and ccted they're they're looking to get world-class port operators into running namibia's container terminal putting together a special economic zone and of course doing the best we can to get a very competitive national single window that again is an initiative that's being accelerated with sort of approval at the highest level on government and that's happening today as well and the expression of interest has actually been put out already and we saw a media release that came out on the 4th of october and then lastly it's the mtc listing now one would wonder why does the mtc listing result in either fdi or jobs if government begins to reduce its ownership in specific sectors it can raise capital that it can then deploy into other sectors into the economy to diversify those sectors and to create new investment opportunities and we believe that with an mtc listing government would be in a very strong position to get capital out of an industry that it started nascent and now it's mature and government can divest uh from there and invest that capital in other sectors to to build jobs so i just wanted to give you a few specific responses to your question which i thought was very valid thank you so much well we discussed we came to report on what we went there for where we have and it looks like we are through with that that case yes good morning my name is sheligan peterson i'm a journalist with the namibian mr president we have a few locals here who say they have connections with we have a few locals here namibia who have partnerships and relationships with foreigners who say when they bring proposals given by these foreigners through them and they want to present it to ministers or to key people who can assist them they don't always have that opportunity or there's a block i don't know how can we perhaps maneuver this to ensure that some proposals that were perhaps discussed in new york for instance um the person has here as well how do we maneuver around that and ensure that there's a space where um namibians on any level is able to bring proposals um to the uh to the certain ministries or the ministries that it is um for and then um we have another question uh yes um perhaps you can just tell us um from this trip i know you mentioned uh multi it was a million a billion dollar deals perhaps you can tell us how many investor commitments have we secured during this trip and then um president when you say people should not destroy some of these moves because you are trying to build the company as a country sorry what exactly do you mean by destroy it thank you so much well for locals we are for the locals not for the foreigners it's the locals who are electing us those are our courses so if there are any of them we have problems let them come and see us let them mention the name of the minister or person who didn't help them i'm telling you let them and it's public now i'm saying that if there are locals as you are saying business people who have been blocked or not being helped let them come even tomorrow we will the ministers are sitting here and it will be good also for transparency to say so and so asked to see minister sau and so and he was not received so and so asked to see the president of a letter and he was not received or even replied that would be let's move that way let's not guess around things and so on we want to be serious and we see this definitely and let's move on i want on that level to keep it their eye not to go down we we made a report to the nation and what we have done and with that since i don't see any unless we destroy what we have built up i don't want to go on to destroying what we have elevated a different level yes um your excellency um we are talking about transparency transparency and they are there's a feeling that transparency is just a buzzword that is never implemented uh if we take the delivery unit for instance um the namibian son wrote about it that a joint venture consisting of the best friend of commissioner munoper was hand-picked to hand-picked to run the delivery unit how is that transparency the best friend is mr panacio daringo the other thing is also that there's a feeling that um the lack of public trust in government is because politicians always have a hand in the cookie jar whenever there are projects there's always a politician involved can you comment on that thank you can you mention them those were let me transparent also you are destroying what we have built up that's how we are mention the ministers the media reports arrive mr president the media reports arrive there are always stories about politicians having their hands in let's mention the minister's politicians listen are you denying this let's mention them you are having affects i'm asking are you denying that there's never been politicians involved give me the names we've had several ministers involved in the deal can you give them the name so we can talk i'm not going to give the names okay people travelize this conversation thank you you always come and try to to put us down here we want to move up at a different level we keep it that way if we have names of people mentioned they go to jail anyway we have this and we learn if it doesn't help to inform the nation we are going to be divided by low-level things when we are trying to really move the country we are going to move on definitely we want to inform the nation to inform the nation to be diverted always by some people same people we're not going to allow that thank you so you