World Bank Group Youth Summit—Live Sessions

Day 1 | Fireside Chat with Ajay Banga [Watch here]

[Marco Fayet]
It is a tremendous honor for us to have President Ajay Banga. Ajay, if I can start with a simple question and ask you, what are you doing here? You must have the busiest schedule out of everybody in this building. I can’t even imagine to begin with what that looks like. So, why take the time to come and speak to the young people here in the room and watching us online?

[Ajay Banga]
Because you can twist my arm really hard.

[Audience laughs]

[Ajay Banga]
So I don’t know how to say no to you. Second, you wear a man bun like mine, so that’s the second good reason. I can give you plenty of reasons. The real reason, jokes aside, is that I’m trying to orient the entire World Bank Group towards the issue of caring about young people in the emerging markets. I just think that the demographic dividend that everybody talks about will only be a dividend if we invest in these people and give them good healthcare, education, clean water, clean air when they’re growing up, and then a chance for the degree of the dignity that comes with the job. So, I want to get us away from focusing on projects and inputs to outcomes, and the outcome is getting young people the chance to have a future which gives them hope and opportunity. That’s why I want to be at any place where young people collect, because you guys are not only the message carriers, you’re also the guys who will make a difference, and it’s your generation that we’re talking about. So, it’s an important time.

[Marco Fayet]
Thank you. I know that young people often talk about the feeling of not being heard. I think I can speak for our audience when I say that it means a huge deal for us for you to be here today.

[Ajay Banga]

[Laughs]
My daughters would say I never hear them, but my daughters are now no longer that young. They’re like 39 and 34, with three grandkids and a 4th one on the way. So…

[Marco Fayet]
Let me ask you about the changes that you implemented as you came into your tenure into the World Bank Group. You made jobs maybe the organizing principle of this institution. I’ve been working at the Bank for almost five years now, and even the first couple of years I was confused about what the Bank actually is and what it does. Before joining the Bank, it felt like a completely opaque institution to me. Now it seems that everybody is aligning onto this jobs’ narrative. Why did you do this? What does that mean for the people in the room today?

[Ajay Banga]
So, let’s come back to that opaque thing, not forget that for a minute. That I think is a real issue. My view of life on the development world after being here three years, I didn’t understand how fractured it was when I first took the role on. And when I started traveling to get elected by the countries, there’s a whole process, you gotta go and meet countries and get voted upon. I learned from a lot of the country leaders and people I met, civil society and CEOs and young people when I was traveling, that not only was the institution opaque, but that development as a whole was very deeply fragmented. So, if you think about this, it’s good intentions but unfortunate outcomes in some ways that everybody pursues an individual cause. But the reality of the person at the other end is, I don’t just need a vaccination. I don’t just need a healthcare checkup. I don’t just need to go to a good school to get primary education. I don’t just need skilling. I need my life to work, and my life doesn’t work with fragments. My life works when it comes together. I, as a young person or an older person, I need to have some ownership of how I bring things together. I’m not saying you need to be spoon-fed, but we all who are trying to do the right thing for them also need to find a way to get together and make one plus one equal three. If you read any estimates of the kind of money that needs to be spent in the emerging markets to do whatever you want to do with development. It’s all in the trillions of dollars. And when you write those estimates, it all sounds very impressive. It just makes people very nervous that there’ll never be enough money. I’m trying to change that. Let’s not talk each about individual thing. Let’s talk about young people and their future, their optimism, their hope. That’s what I got when I was a young guy. Optimism, hope. What about you? And so, that unites people and cuts across this fragmentation. Now, how do you deliver it? You deliver it through doing all the things that development institutions and governments should do. The first thing is you build physical infrastructure, bridges, roads, airports, power, electricity, water. The stuff that you’ll notice is all our commitments come from there. The second thing is you have to do human infrastructure: skills, education, healthcare, because otherwise you build all the physical stuff, you don’t have the people who can take advantage of it, that’s not going to work. That’s one pillar. The second pillar is the right governance. You know that one of the biggest challenges in the developing world is quality of governance, both because of capacity in those countries, but also because of all kinds of absence of laws and systems. You need a land law, labor law, bankruptcy law, right of way law for creating digital fiber laying. You need mobile collateral guarantee laws. You need domestic resource mobilization so finance ministers have enough money to spend on building infrastructure. You need anti-corruption measures, you need digitization to help drive anti-corruption. All that’s government. So, these first two things, in a truly emerging market, the government plays a very large role. Although, as the market develops, the private sector could play a bigger role in the first pillar of physical and human infrastructure. The third part of the pillars is private capital mobilization. The problem is everybody only discusses the last part and forgets that I run a private company. I’m not going to bring money where there’s no infrastructure, no skilling, and no governance. I’m not going to do it. And capital doesn’t go where philanthropy wants it to go. Capital goes where it earns a reasonable return on its investment, a risk-weighted return. So, that’s what we are focusing on. And that’s what I’m trying to bring the institution to do. All the things we were doing earlier fit into this framework. We build bridges, we connect people to electricity, we care about water, we care about farming, we care about food, we care about people’s healthcare, we care about their education, we care about skilling. Just do it in the context of the outcome of giving people a good shot at life. That’s what I’m trying to do. That’s the focus.

[Marco Fayet]
The mandate of the Bank is enormous. It’s almost all-encompassing and you sit at the helm of it. How did you get here? Your own career went through continents and industries. What, I guess, what is your take on success? What would you do differently if you were to just start out your career today?

[Ajay Banga]
I wouldn’t do anything different. I have no regrets about my life, none. And I hope you guys never have regrets about your life. You… It’s one precious life, man. It’ll be gone before you know it. I’m 66. I’m on the last part of this journey, right? You guys are young. You’ve got a whole life ahead of you. Please, don’t look back when you’re 66 and say, “Oh, I wish I had done this, I wish I had done that.” You’re not going to relive your life. It’s too late. So, do it now. Enjoy it. I just mean work hard. Don’t just party and watch soccer. That’s a good thing, but don’t do that. And you should party. I party, trust me. But don’t regret anything. That I would tell you upfront. Please, don’t do that to yourself. Ever. You’ll make mistakes along the way. I’ve made them. There are mornings when you wake up with a hangover that you shouldn’t have had. That’s fine, right? That day you play really good golf because your head stays down. And so, look at it positively and have a sense of humor about your life. But have a sense of faith in your future. And it’s not easy. The world is very complicated right now. It always is. Every generation thinks it’s very complicated when they are young. You will think so too. AI will be a huge change in your lives. Some people are addressing it with honesty, some people are dodging around it. The reality is it’s going to change everyone’s life in the coming five, seven, eight years. I said I’ve got two daughters; and therefore, two husbands who are married to these two girls. Good luck to them. And then I’ve got four grandkids and a furry dog, and who knows what else these kids will produce over time. So, I worry about this, but I don’t regret anything. That I would never do. How did I get here? I’ve said this a hundred times. Life is 50% luck and 50% what you do with your luck. What a lot of people don’t understand is they’re either too arrogant to recognize they need luck or they’re too timid to understand they should seize their luck when it comes by them. If you’re in the middle, neither arrogant nor timid, you will take your risks along the way. You’ll get knocked around once in a while. You’ll do fine another time, and it’ll be okay. And that’s the one thing I would tell you: don’t stand on the platform and watch the train leave the platform waving goodbye to your luck. That’s a really bad idea. When it does come on, you’re standing there and the train shows up, you get on so you get to the other place. That you’ve got to be willing to do. So, if you look at my life, I grew up in India, army officer’s family, and we moved every two years. Now, half the time you’ll hear people saying, “Oh, you can’t move every two, three years, the kids will get very unsettled.” I’m not unsettled, neither are my brother nor my sister. My kids have moved. My elder daughter has been in nine schools before finishing high school across the world. My younger one went to eight. I’m telling you, they’re perfectly fine. They’re magna cum laude, and they’ve done all kinds of good stuff. And they’re my kids, but they’re crazy, but they’re happy. And so, you have to think about seizing things as compared to always finding reasons not to do something. And then you’ll be fine. And you’ll make a few mistakes, but you’ll be fine. So, that’s why I’m saying, take a risk, don’t ever have regret. That’s the worst thing you can do. And be a little humble about yourself, but don’t be timid. Like, don’t think that… One thing that happens, for example, with women is that you will find in meetings they will not raise their hand to speak, but the man will speak all the damn time, including speaking over a woman who’s speaking. I find that incredibly irritating. And now you can say, you can tell men not to do it, but how about telling women to change and be willing to speak your mind? That’s what I call the middle point. Don’t be too timid, don’t be too arrogant, be somewhere in between. A job comes up, most men will raise their hand and say, “I am just completely suited for this job.” They have no goddamn idea what the job is. A woman who’s in that field as an expert will say, “Maybe I’m not the right person for this job.” That’s crazy. And that’s what I’m trying to tell people to understand. Take a risk. Don’t be too humble. Don’t be too arrogant. Don’t be too timid. Go. Go with the flow. Go with the flow.

[Marco Fayet]
You spoke about the importance of optimism. There are so many challenges facing us. In closing, what is your call to action to young people who want to engage with the World Bank? To face those challenges? We talk a lot about co-creation and mainstreaming youth. What can they do concretely to tackle those challenges with us?

[Ajay Banga]
I mean, they don’t have to do it only with the Bank. They can do it in every part. Listen, every person makes a difference. Somebody once asked me who are the people you admire the most? A long time ago. And I repeated this in South Africa last week. I had said Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. And it sounds pompous, but the reality is, they were two people who showed that one person makes a difference. Because if they had said, “Oh my God, I can’t do this, it’ll never happen, I can’t make it happen,” where would South Africa and India be today? And so, you got to realize everybody can make a difference. And what really bugs me is when people say, “I really think this is the right thing to do, but I can’t talk about it openly, I’m too scared, my boss will hassle me, my colleagues will hassle me.” In this Bank, you hear that all the time. And they’re all wimps. You shouldn’t be like that. Everybody can make a difference. But if you’re going to be the guy who stands and watches and waits for someone else to lead, then you’ll be the person on the platform waving goodbye to the train. It’s just… It’s fundamental. And so, don’t think about engaging with the pathways of development only through the Bank. We are a useful instrument. We are opaque. I’m trying to make it less opaque. We have a public sector arm, a private sector arm. We need to work well together and do the right things. Focus on jobs, bring money to work, create private capital to be mobilized. By the way, private capital mobilization, first 11 months of this fiscal year, 89.9 billion, up 54% over last year. It can be done. It’s feasible. And so, you have to have the desire and proof points to do it. But if you want to engage with the Bank, first of all, come join us if you’re not already in the Bank. We do have job vacancies regularly. We do a YPO. A YPO, what’s it called? Yeah, Young Professional. YP? YPO is something else. Okay, so the Young Professionals program, that’s how we get a lot of people in. You should get them in. Come and join, come and join in other places. Go work elsewhere, not only here. I look at my career, I’ve worked in three, four different companies, and in retrospect, so many things I did in those companies have made me a little better prepared for what I need to do today. I’m still not an expert in a lot of what we do, but I understand how to drive organizations. I understand how to prioritize. I understand how to recognize good stuff. I understand how to call a spade a spade. Things prepare you for that. So, don’t think there’s one way to help. Just think you are here to help. You’ve got one precious life. You’re not going to waste it. You are here to help while also enjoying yourself and building a great life for yourself and your family. I’m not asking you to trade off anything. It’s about your life. It’s one life. So, that’s all I’ll say.

[Marco Fayet]
Ajay, you honor us with your presence. Thank you for taking the time to come.

[Ajay Banga]
Thank you.

Day 1 | Fireside Chat with Makhtar Diop  [Watch here]

[Raaga Akkineni]
Good morning, everyone, and welcome once again to the World Bank Group Youth Summit. My name is Raaga, and though today I’m representing the Youth Summit as its senior strategic advisor, what I do, what we call our day jobs, is I work for IFC’s impact reporting team and what that means is that I work very closely with IFC’s investment and advisory teams and quantitatively try to understand if we have delivered on the promises that we have made through IFC’s investments and advisories.

Today, we have the privilege of hearing from the Managing Director of IFC, Mr. Makhtar Diop, who has been leading IFC’s effort since 2021. Thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the World Bank Group Youth Summit. Though you need no introduction, I will attempt to summarize your work as quickly as possible for those who may not be as familiar with you. So, since his start at IFC, Makhtar has been championing innovative financial solutions, leveraging the power of blended finance, de-risking mechanisms, and public-private partnerships to attract private capital to high-impact projects, specifically working towards expanding access to financial services to women small businesses and to rural communities.

So, Makhtar, as you may know, the theme of the Bank generally right now is jobs. We are trying to close— IFC specifically is trying to close the jobs gap in emerging markets. This will be requiring mobilizing private capital at scale. IFC itself aims to unlock billions in financing to support small and medium-sized enterprises across emerging economies. The businesses that— these are the businesses that will power growth and create jobs of the future. But despite the critical role that they play in emerging markets specifically, they still struggle to access the financing that they need to grow. But before we get into the nitty-gritties of that, I think I just wanted to pick your brain on where you come from. You have worn different hats throughout your career.

You have been a banker, you have worked at the IMF, you have worked at the World Bank itself, you have been the Minister of Economy and Finance for Senegal, and now you’re leading the largest development finance and financial institution that is for the private sector in emerging markets. How have these experiences shaped the way that you approach these problems and largely how IFC approaches these problems, specifically not just MSMEs, but youth-led MSMEs?

[Makhtar Diop]
Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me to the event. We’ve been working with the Youth Summit for— at its inception, I remember, and some of the alumni are here somewhere. I saw someone travel from my front office. Maybe you want to stand up. She was in my front office and was one of those who were at the beginning of the Youth Summit and we work together.

[Applause]

[Makhtar Diop]
When I was approached at that time, approached myself, the leadership of IASC, to support that initiative, we thought that it was a no-brainer because one of the things that I learned in my career is that often people, in the name of the youth, don’t let them speak. It’s often the way people are doing is often people talking in the name of women without giving the floor to women, about some of the minorities without giving them the opportunity. So for me, I’ve always been struck by the fact that if you want to be really engaged with the youth, you need to give them a voice. And I was lucky to be able, in my career, to have a responsibility at a very young age, therefore, I was in a sense still a young person while dealing with complex issues that were affecting— was when I was advisor at the President’s Office, working on reforms, when I was lucky to be Minister of Economic Finance at less than 40. It was something that you start still have an understanding of what is happening in your age group even though you have to mature and grow faster than you have maybe would have expected to. What he brought me is that first of all, I’m trying to bridge everywhere I go, the bridge between the real life, so your life of everyday and the life at work. Often you talk to people and one of the experiences that I (had) was interesting. When I was Country Director in Kenya, we were asking people what they think about the World Bank staff, and it was quite interesting because it was basically schizophrenia. I would ask them two questions. When you go and talk to your friends eating

[indiscernible]
in Kenya, nyama choma and things like that, what can you discuss? And they would tell me what they discussed. And I say, when your friends were saying that about the World Bank, what was your reaction? And they were scratching their head, say, “In fact, I agree with them.” “So, okay, so now when I ask you the same question as a World Bank staffer, you give me a totally different answer.” You wear your World Bank staffer hat and suit, and you give the politically correct answers that you think that institution want to hear. And I think that one of the things that we need to do more, and I think the youth can help us a lot, is to close that gap and to say, “Okay, what I’m hearing in them.” So what do you hear when you talk to your friends who are in country offices, your friends you grew up with, your everybody? (Who are your age mates,) and you have a dinner with them and have a chat. In fact, you will see a lot of the things that you put in our report in diagnostic, that they can tell you that is the same. They don’t have collateral because they just started their professional life. The bankers are not looking at them seriously because they consider, say, they don’t have a steady flow of income. They consider as being risky because they’re irresponsible young, etc., etc. You hear it. The question that we try to do is, what instrument do we have to be able to tackle these challenges that the youth entrepreneurs and the young people want to create their own business and therefore create jobs, and starting with employing themselves, are facing and addressing? And all the conversations that we are having now and will be deepening in the coming months and years is about solving the specific issues that are facing. What is a young person in the city, in the rural space, working in light manufacturing, in services, whatever it is, what is this person telling us? And I will really count a lot on your help, help to tell us those stories. Because when I was your age, the kind of reality I was living in was very different. People of my generation, you finish your studies, your parents tell you, “Go and do this,” and you are an obedient child and you go and do what your parents are telling you. I’m joking, but it was pretty linear in the way we are evolving. But the level of issue that the youth of people are facing are very difficult. Actually, it’s tough to be a young person today. You are facing mental health issues, you have issues, pressures that we didn’t have. We didn’t have all this social media which were putting ton of pressure on us. We have this innocent youth where you can just live your youth and do whatever. We didn’t have that competition with AI in terms of finding a job. You go university, you do well, you get a job if luckily. So, it’s a totally different way. Entrepreneurship was something that was not necessary in our space. So, it’s a totally way and a big difference between young of people today is the level of uncertainty in which you are living compared to previous generation, but that uncertainty also come with a lot of opportunities that people didn’t have in my generation in being able to work. So, when I reflect about the commonality of experience that I have throughout my career and looking at the youth agenda is that. And lastly, as you grow and take more age, stay young at heart, okay? It’s very important, I believe. I personally try to, I don’t know if I am, but I try to be just curious to understand too. So, I want to know the music that you are listening, who is the last Afrobeat person, so that when I’m in conversation with you, I don’t look totally ridiculous when you tell me, “Oh, you don’t know this person, you know?” You know, you don’t know Tems, you don’t know Davido, you don’t know— yeah.

[Laughs]

[Makhtar Diop]
Okay. So I try to know about them, so when we talk, I want also to be able, when I have a conversation with you, to understand your problem, to be able to— As you grow in your career and your life, stay young at heart, because that’s where you will be able to innovate, that’s where you will be able to take new ideas, and try just to process them. I don’t know if I answered your question.

[Raaga Akkineni]
That really did. And it also made me realize that I need to up my Afrobeats knowledge.

[Makhtar Diop]
You see, I can impress her now.

[Raaga Akkineni]
Okay, so talking about having candid conversations, having dinnertime conversations and trying to understand each other’s problems, I myself have been at the IFC for a year and a half, two years. And to be super honest, I sometimes get lost in the jargon of things that what IFC does. So there are these different instruments that IFC has been building, these different platforms that IFC has been building to instrumentalize and catalyze private investment in MSMEs. You have blended finance, first loss guarantees. Just very recently, about three months ago, IFC announced that they are partnering with Global Insurance insurers to expand access to financing in emerging markets through a 6-billion-dollar facility. All of these sounds super cool, really. But why should a young entrepreneur, a budding entrepreneur, or somebody who wants to put together small businesses, and somebody like a young entrepreneur sitting in Dhaka or Lagos, why should they care about these things? How are these things being leveraged to reach these last mile young MSMEs and catalyze private sector capitals for them and unlocking this persistent financing gap that they seem to feel.

[Makhtar Diop]
You’re perfectly right. What does it mean concretely, all these terms sometimes can be— Actually, we need to simplify all these jargons, make it simpler, more understandable for people and more— so that we have to do more work on it, and I’m with you on that. When we look at a small company and the nature of our organization, we cannot reach individually everybody who has a small business and create it. It’s just physically we are not equipped for that. What we have been doing is try to use the financial intermediation to be able to reach those groups, either banks or other type of it. We realize that by doing that, when you talk to a banker, they will tell you what I just tell you earlier. These people are geographic, which is risky. There are kids, they don’t know what they’re doing, I don’t want to give them money, etc., etc. And we tell them, we don’t believe that what you said is truth, and just as the proof is in the pudding, is that we are ready to give you guarantee where if you lose the first part of your losses, if you make any loss, with this group of people, will be borne by us. We are putting our resources, our balance sheet, or resources that we mobilize from other people to tell you, ‘Okay, you can go in those demographics, don’t worry. If you lose a little bit of money, we take part of the bill.’ That’s what was If we want to simplify, blended finance, risk first to loss, that’s what it is. Give more incentive for people who didn’t want to take that risk to take that risk. But what happened is that sometimes themselves are not equipped to have the people who can look at those types of projects, because if you talk to a banker— when I start my job in the financial sector, you are here, you are doing a target, you want to you have to reach your target, you don’t want to spend your time with small projects. You want to go to things that will allow your bank to increase its profit. This is a very specialized way of understanding business because it will require people to think about how to approach an investment when you don’t have collaterals. When you go as a banker, the first thing that you are trained— I need collateral, I need securities, I need to guarantee, and I need to have— there is a credit bureau in the country that allows me to get a better understanding of the risk associated to that demographic. These are the tools that you have, and you are thrown on a sudden as a credit officer in a bank in looking at the demographics which is totally not meeting those criteria. So, this is the kind of things that, even though we gave them credit line, we do them, we still feel that now that is not sufficient to be able to get to that demographic. We are pivoting now and complementing it more with non-banking financial institutions. Those non-banking financial institutions, the things they have is this, is that they have a lot of data of people which are behavioral data, which allow you to better understand the risk, and they have developed a lot of algorithms that allows in no time to assess the risk of someone because of the— and to move from, what do you say, collateral asset-based lending to a cash flow lending. I am a young person, a creator, I am a singer, I have 20 concerts a year, this is my flow, my cash flow. I don’t have a house, I don’t have things, can you lend me money against the fact that I have secured 25 concerts in this year and this concert in average give me X? Are you, banker, comfortable with lending me that basis? So, this kind of difference and that people will say that because they say, “Oh, this person, we know from his iPhone that he has or she has already been paying their bill, their telephone bills, they never missed a payment on these, they never miss a payment. So, this is what we have.” What it requires in terms of policy change is that we need to have more and more mobile banking or non-financial— non-banking financial institutions be able to make credit. One thing is to do e-payment, is another way is to be able to give credit. Those now, we are seeing more and more growth in the finance world, on non-banking financial institutions of startups. We are now ready, once they have a banking license, to be able to give loans, small loans to all this group of younger people who want to asset or MSMEs. On the regulatory side, we are working with IBRD, to push more and more the regulator to give those people a mobile banking license so that they can move from e-payment to these credits and be able to— so this is element of thing. We are now— Ajay, you heard him yesterday, he has been really asking us to work on two or three things that would be very relevant for you. The government creates this fund, a VC fund, that will be given to a private sector manager, fund manager, who will be managing this fund, and us to invest in it at the same time as the government investing in it, and not to make it a public sector so-called startup fund, which sometimes are not managed in the ways the private sector should be doing it. So this is the direction that we’re going, and we will try to have many, many of them put in place in the near future. It’s one of the KPIs that we are setting to ourselves, and we will be moving in that direction. But what also I would just have to say something about it, because as you know, I’m a big fan of creative industries, and just some ad, I have a podcast that you might want to listen to, where we bring some artists and sports people and we talk about that industry because I think it’s important to bring it more and more in our business. We are investing also in a fund which will be helping to build some infrastructure for creative industries, small arenas, small stadium, so that we can create a condition for this, because I think that creative industry is an important part of offering for young people. If you want to refer to my life, when I was a Minister for Finance, something that I am a bit proud of having done, which is totally out of the natural world of a Minister for Finance, was to have a project with the World Bank on PSD, and I can tell you that at that time, the TTL (at the Bank) was a bit surprised that I asked to have a component on creative industry in a private sector development project with the World Bank, and it was very helpful because it allowed us to revise the copyright regulation, and you can imagine also my colleagues in cabinet telling me, “What the heck, Makhtar, is happening to you to worry about creative industry as Minister of Economy and Finance?” But the link was that we create jobs there. That’s why every young person in Senegal at that time wanted to have Pro Tools, Cakewalk, or any software of music on their computer so that they can have a rap song that will make them the star of tomorrow. So, these people needed to be helped to be able to monetize their asset, their creativity.

[Raaga Akkineni]
I will keep my next question very short, but because I also want to open up the floor to the delegates here and those online for a quick Q&A. So, if you have any questions for Makhtar, this is your chance. This was going to be a longer question, but I think you answered most of it, And when you were answering the second part of the question as well, but I think, could you very quickly give— how can young entrepreneurs make themselves attractive partners for IFC? What can they do? I mean, IFC is trying to reach out to them, yes, but what can they do to step forward and show themselves as great partners for IFC to drive the future, specifically, in digital economy, since that’s the flavor of the month and the year.

[Makhtar Diop]
Actually, I will revert the question. It’s not them to find us, it’s us to find them. I mean, the onus should be on us more. I think that we give them some tips and some way to be able to better identify why we are offering, but the effort should be more on our side to make sure that we can do two things: to give them an offering which is solving their real problem, so to reshape and to be listening to them in terms of what is the specific needs and constraints in the ecosystem to be able to reach them, to be able to find a mechanism to interface more systematically, more consistently, and at larger scale with our demographics instead of each of them, young people who don’t have a lot of means, to chase us and find where we can do. So there is a— I will slightly reverse the question and say that we are working on some things like interacting more with the Chamber of Commerce because the Chamber of Commerce often regroup a lot of MSMEs. We have a partnership with the International Chamber of Commerce, but we want to deepen it country by country. We need to start thinking about ways of using our partnership teams to engage with groups, have much more focused group when you go to country. For instance, try to say, not talk about the youth in general, say, “OK, we want to do something today.” In French, they say, as they call it,

[speaking in foreign language]
. I don’t know what you say in English for that, which is kind of open-door meeting. We need to have more of this kind of thing. Say that, “OK, today is an open door for creative industry people who want to think. We’re calling a meeting and bringing in the room 200 people.” And bring the people that we are financing— that’s what I would like— so bankers and so forth, do some matching and say, ‘These are the 100 people who want to access your service. We are giving you a credit line with a guarantee. Why are these people still asking for resources?’ Try to be part of that conversation and get a feedback loop of what we are offering. Is it really meeting the needs of the demographics that we want to touch, and vice versa. I would put much more pressure on ourselves to be able to better reach out to those groups, and we will share with you all the information that we have in country offices, where we have teams who are very dedicated. We’ll be working with the Chamber of Commerce. I want to have more focal groups and specific interaction with the group. By starting also looking at some sector, I think that we will be reaching more of the youth SMEs. I think that the work we are doing on venture capital is helping us a lot. I mean, the work that we’re doing on creative industry is helping us a lot. I think the work that we are doing now on AgriConnect in the rural space will help us to reach more people in that sector, and we can think about it. What I would like to do is to have more and more people in the sector, like we have a gender lens, to have a youth lens. It’s some things that people have always in the back of their mind when they look at issues in a sector.

[Raaga Akkineni]
That sounds great. Does anybody— I’ll open the floor to— can we have a mic going around, please? Please let me ask somebody. Let me, over there. Yes, there we go. We’ll take maybe two because we don’t have a lot of questions, so.

[Makhtar Diop]
I recognize you. Weren’t you last year here?

[Audience Member 1]
Me?

[Makhtar Diop]
Yeah.

[Audience Member 1]
You recognize me?

[Makhtar Diop]
Yeah. Why weren’t you here last year?

[Audience Member 1]
I was, no, I was at the Annual Meetings.

[Makhtar Diop]
Okay, yes, I recognized you. You’re always properly dressed.

[Laughs]

[Tolu]
Hello, Makhtar. Thank you for being here today. My name is Tolu. I used to work at the IFC. I was with the IFC NextGen Advisory Council, and there was a group of young professionals who were doing amazing things across the World Bank, and we got to sit down in a room with you, and I saw firsthand really how passionate you are about young people doing amazing things. Thank you for constantly supporting us. My question is really simple. There’s a lot of young people here who are either working a regular 9 to 5 and thinking of going into entrepreneurship, and there’s other young people who are not working a 9 to 5 who are doing entrepreneurship. There are people running NGOs, there are people running businesses on social media. What is the advice you have for young people who are navigating this uncertainty—9 to 5, entrepreneurship, and doing innovative things outside? Thank you.

[Raaga Akkineni]
Can we have one more question? Then we ask— okay, let me do— let me just ask you. Yeah, go ahead.

[Ibrahim Rostom]
Hello, my name is Ibrahim Rostom. I’m actually the Executive Director of the American Chamber of Commerce Egypt Inc.’s Youth and Young Professionals Program. I think a big talk that we’ve talked about is artificial intelligence. And obviously talking about entrepreneurship, I’m just really curious to know your stance and the IFC stance on AI and how you’ve tried to integrate it, as well as a message about how we can integrate AI as young professionals to make it more attractive in the future. Thank you.

[Makhtar Diop]
Thank you very much for your kind words. I mean, it’s really encouraging to see that we’ve been able to— This is a tough question. This is a tough question because entrepreneurship is a tough sector and there is failure, okay? The idea that everybody who tries a new idea will be succeeding the first time is not reality. If you look at the bio of any of the— even the more famous and successful entrepreneurs, they say he had a lot of failures in the process before getting to the— So the question is that, which is a tough question, how to sustain that resilience even if you are facing sometimes some obstacles is something— I think that what I can say is that having the right network around yourself, around you. I was just talking to a colleague, and her daughter was also doing— was having a startup, and she was telling me that they have developed a very strong network among them because she was trying something, it didn’t work, but the competencies that she had was very useful for another startup, so now they were calling her to be an advisor to the new start— there was a startup. It was not

[indiscernible]
and she was providing. And that skill allowed her to keep on working on her own project while— as a second phase of a project which was not maturing as a space, the space she wanted. But she had something to hang on in the meantime because she was advising other people on continuing. And I asked her, “How did it happen?” She said because they kept very much— they were very much connected after school and when they started the startup. So, one thing, don’t be alone, okay? I think that is an important part of it, just to build that network where you can exchange, but also you can use your network as, I would say, as not a safety net, but then when things are a little bit less profitable and good as you think, you have somewhere to rebound on. So that will be something that talking to the startup and young people, that’s one thing. The second thing is I will continue not only focusing about the money, okay? People want to say, “Do I have enough money for my project?” Continue fine-tune your idea of your project and find it, and just be resilient. You have to have guts and chase people, push them, with them. I think that it’s not the same feature of someone who likes to work in an office full-time and someone who wants to be an entrepreneur. It’s different type of personality, of drive, and each of you have it differently. But I would just say don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t work the first time, the second time, the third time. Just continue digging if you are convinced that you are the— lastly, if you can be part of a supply chain, that helps also always because it allows you to have much more things on your off-takers. If you can think about activity which is part of a slightly more robust ecosystem, that could be also something that can help you on that. So, see, just three cents of advice that I could give, AI and things. We are working actually with a Greek campus in Cairo, which is a great place where a lot of startups are. I think AI is interesting. You watch the news, there is a lot of concern about it. You saw some in the US even, some people demonstrating against it and so forth. But I think that there is a— particularly what Ajay calls a small AI is something that can give a lot of possibilities for developing countries. Let me take the case of creative industry. You can take a song and try to create it from scratch, just copying a style of someone. It might be a success, it might be not a success, but also you can be a creator and say, “Okay, I have a song, I have a nice melody I have good harmonies, but I’m not a good arranger. I need to have a kind of arrangement for a big band for this song.” Hey, I can help you to get quickly an arrangement of big bands that you have never been able to afford because it’s too expensive to get a big band to— I’m just using this example as music, and you can multiply it to other things. If you are someone in sports, today you don’t have necessarily the facilities that you will have in big cities and big countries. AI can help you a lot to simulate and improve your skill. So it just depends if you are a farmer, it allows you to get the right fertilizer and what. So I will think very much about application of AI for entrepreneurs, and I will be less— I think it’s less of a challenge for entrepreneurs than it is for people maybe who are in entry jobs, in white-collar entry jobs, which is the one where you have a conversation about if AI will substitute some of the actions. But for the entrepreneur, I think that it gives you a lot of opportunity to accelerate, to do it. Just a simple thing: in the past, young entrepreneurs would have to pay a lot of money to get the business plan. Today, Claude can help you develop your business plan in no time, okay? So just to think about the money you’re saving, okay? And you say, “I want to have a pitch to my project,” which is you describe the project, give it to Claude, boom, give it to you. It’s a lot of benefit for a younger entrepreneur.

[Raaga Akkineni]
Thank you so much, Makhtar. Unfortunately, that’s all the time that we have.

[Makhtar Diop]
If they want two to three minutes, I’m happy to give them to them. Unless you have someone else who wants to say something important.

[Raaga Akkineni]
You have maybe one more question.

[Makhtar Diop]
I enjoy talking to the younger people. Okay, no worries.

[Raaga Akkineni]
So like one quick question.

[Djenaba]
Yeah. Thank you so much. Hello everyone. My name is Djenaba.

[Speaking in foreign language]
. So I have a question regarding diasporas and women entrepreneurs, knowing that 30% of women entrepreneurs are in Africa and also knowing that Senegal in particular and other countries such as Benin are really investing in their diasporas, notably towards a more shared entrepreneurship, how does the IFC get involved in that strategy to create shared entrepreneurship and to boost women entrepreneurship, as well as include diasporas in those trends? Thank you.

[Makhtar Diop]
This is a very interesting question. I think I will see two dimensions in this diaspora. I don’t know the word you use now to people who have back, second generation.

[Djenaba]
Repats.

[Makhtar Diop]
Repats. Okay, there is this concept? More and more people who are born from parents from Senegal, from Mali, from Guinea, for name it, in Europe are going back to their parents’ country and settle there. And this is not something that was existing in the past. And I think that is a category that is interesting to cater for. Because they came with standard and technology which is very much the one of the most advanced economies. Therefore, when they run a business and come, they come with that experience, which is extremely useful to be able to meet the standard of the international demand. So that’s a group that I’m very, very interested in and I’ve spoken to the team to see how we could help them come back, develop businesses, because they have already an experience that is very useful. Actually, by the way, I have some repats in IFC. People were born from parents from the diaspora, wanted to come to join IFC because they wanted to work in the country of their parents of origin, even in IFC. So we have some repats somewhere, somehow. So this is something. The second thing that we haven’t yet done enough— there are a lot of attempts in various— but I haven’t seen someone who nailed it— was how to mobilize the savings of the— so you have diaspora bonds, you have things like that. But what I want to do, me, is not to mobilize the savings for the sake of it, but to mobilize it, to direct it to productive investment. So. a diaspora bond or another type of bond is good, but it mobilizes for general consumption. So. what I would like us to do, and there’s some things that I’m thinking about, is that if you can develop a certain set of assets, okay, I am from Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Georgia, whatever country in the world it is, I want to I contribute to the country of origin of my parents and where am I coming from, but I don’t have time to look at the business, I don’t have any knowledge of it. We should be able to develop a portfolio where we guarantee them a flow return to that investment. This portfolio will be for renewable energy in the Sahel, so anybody in the diaspora who is interested in contributing to access of electricity in a group of country, this is a very good way you can buy bonds or whatever, and we guarantee you a little bit kind of impact investment around something, around themes which are important for the diaspora. So. I think that’s what I would like us to start putting more thinking and making much more targeted than— because each of these people in the diaspora have a particular motive. Something which drives them. Is it agricultural growth? Is it investing in energy? Is it investing in something? There’s something which just drives them, so you need to identify those and maybe organize some structure to be able to give them a return on their investment while helping them, contributing and being all the discipline and rigors that we have in impact investment.

[Raaga Akkineni]
Thank you, everyone.

[Applause]

Day 2 | Fireside Chat with Paschal Donohoe [Watch here]

[Shrey Addagatla]
Well, I want to take a chance first to welcome you, Paschal, to the Youth Summit 2026, both on behalf of our steering committee, the delegates we have here and in person, and the many, many more joining us online. I want to say thank you for taking the time to make it here today.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Great. I’m delighted to be here. And thank you. Something’s wrong?

[Shrey Addagatla]
I don’t think so.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Hello? Yeah. Shrey, delighted to be here, and good afternoon, everybody. I hope the summit is proving really interesting and very enjoyable, and I’m thrilled to be here to try to respond back to your question, Shrey, and respond back to any questions from the audience too. And happy Friday.

[Shrey Addagatla]
Happy Friday.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Happy Friday. Happy Friday.

[Shrey Addagatla]
So first, I wanted to talk because yesterday we had President Banga here, and we also had IFC Managing Director Makhtar Diop, and you will be the next in our leadership series, but your title is a bit less familiar, I think, to most of the people in the audience, the Chief Knowledge Officer title. And the idea of a Knowledge Bank might be a bit more abstract to people in this audience. So, would you mind telling us a bit about what that means and how that impacts your work at the Bank?

[Paschal Donohoe]
Of course. Firstly, to introduce myself, I’ve been with the World Bank for now just over six months, and prior to joining the World Bank, I was a politician. I was a politician back home in Ireland and a Member of the Parliament of Ireland over since 2007, and I was also a member of government. I was the Minister for Finance in Ireland for nine years, and at the end of last November, I left elected public service to become a non-elected and appointed public servant, and I am very early now in a whole new adventure in my own life. If I had met any of you a year ago and you had said to me a year ago that I would be at the Youth Summit of the World Bank Group in Washington, D.C., I would have said, “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” and here I am. So, as all of you here as youth delegates will be aware of, the future is so full of opportunities and developments you can’t see coming, and I feel unbelievably lucky and privileged to be here in the World Bank having the chance to talk to all of you, and I’m living proof that you never know what is around the corner, and that good opportunities can come your way if you keep at things and keep working away. So, in terms of what the role of the Chief Knowledge Officer is, I mean, it’s quite a title, but basically what it involves is ensuring that the knowledge that the World Bank has and those that we work with that we use that knowledge in a different way to achieve more when the resources that are available to us are under increasing challenge because of all of the changes that are happening around the world. But at the same time, the need for that knowledge to achieve more is also growing because the level of need within the world is growing. But also, the opportunities within the world are unbelievable. There are opportunities that will be open to all of you that a few years ago would have looked inconceivable, just as the level of need and demand that many of you are facing at the moment also feels higher than it would have a few years ago. And in order to realize that, and to work on that knowledge, and to look at what it can achieve, President Ajay Banga, who I know you met yesterday, reorganized the World Bank Group, that we have then within us what is called the Knowledge Bank, which is a very big organization that’s then organized in five different pillars around people. So, this is health policy, social policy; around planet, which is economic policy, around infrastructure, around the work that we need to do with regard to knowledge and digital knowledge in particular; and then, finally, all of the work that we need to do then with regard to food, with regard to climate, and with regard to energy. So, Shrey, that’s what it is. It goes without saying, Chief Knowledge Officer does not refer to the knowledge within my own mind, because if it did so, it would need a very small organization to make it happen.

[Shrey Addagatla]
Don’t be so modest.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Instead, it’s the knowledge within the World Bank Group and the knowledge that we have built up with working with governments and societies all over the world.

[Shrey Addagatla]
That’s great to hear. And speaking of the governments and societies that you’re working with across the world now, this is definitely not the first time that you’ve done that, as you mentioned. You were a politician before and then appointed. You were the Finance Minister for Ireland and then President of the Eurogroup, which means that Paschal coordinated policy for 20 different countries, economic policy that is. And in that same vein, you’ve had such a bird’s eye view of the economy and how it’s developing. For all of those in the audience that are wondering about the future of work, from where you sat, from that experience, what do you see unfolding and what do you think are the opportunities for growth for youth today?

[Paschal Donohoe]
The opportunities are gigantic, but of course I always know making the case for those opportunities always feels difficult to do when you’ve lots of change happening at the same time. And I see within our economy the opportunity has been very broad across the global economy, but within the World Bank Group, we are looking at what we believe are those sectors that can maximize opportunity and offer the most opportunity to young people. And we would see those existing in areas such as high-value manufacturing. We would see existing within healthcare. We would see that existing within food and agriculture. We believe those opportunities will be very resilient to some of the other more disruptive changes that will be taking place. And I know that developments such as AI, know that developments such as what is happening within the global economy can feel very challenging and very, very acute at the moment. And I’m just back from Mozambique myself and South Africa. I got back to DC yesterday afternoon, and the scale of that challenge was underlined to me all over again. But on the other hand, the creativity, the imagination, the resilience that young people all over the world have, I also believe it is at a higher level than we’ve had at other points in our recent history. So, I would be making the case to all of you for being optimistic and for looking at the future very positively and for being reassured that the World Bank Group wants to be a very, very good partner to countries all over the world to help deal with the challenges but also maximize the opportunities which we believe still are many.

[Shrey Addagatla]
Thanks. I know you touched on this a bit already in your response where you were mentioning the World Bank Group and the pillars that it’s identified or the sectors it’s identified for youth jobs, but would you mind elaborating a bit more on basically how the Knowledge Bank is making the World Bank more fit for purpose, in that the purpose being creating youth jobs or enabling that sort of job creation?

[Paschal Donohoe]
So, what the Knowledge Bank in particular wants to do is, number one, ensuring that knowledge that we build up in one part of the world regarding how to create and keep a job, to ensure that knowledge is more efficiently shared across the rest of the world. Number two, to ensure that we are doing good and original thinking regarding what can help with the employment challenge. And number three, to ensure that we are making good use of technologies that exist within our own Group to share that knowledge in efficient and original ways. So, for example, last week I presented to tourism leaders in South Africa what we believe can work in helping South Africa develop its tourism potential. Over the weekend, I visited some high-value tourism assets and opportunities in Mozambique, and we want to share with those countries the knowledge that we have built up in other parts of the world regarding how tourism can be done well. So that those countries can access quickly good learning and good policy, and they don’t have to begin afresh in doing that work. So practically, that’s what it looks like.

[Shrey Addagatla]
Yeah, that is very, very necessary, especially given the situation of the economy today and the way that jobs are moving forward. One thing I really don’t like about being moderator is that means that I am asking all the questions, so this will be my last question before we turn it over to you and the online audience for questions. But it’s very important to everybody in this room because we are all youth. We are all searching for ways to create a career, whether it is like yours or like many of the other leaders we talked to. So, you said that you were in elected politics and then appointed politics, but before that, I understand that you started in the private sector. You have a little bit of everything. What’s the secret sauce? How did you do it?

[Paschal Donohoe]
The first job I had was selling truckloads of Pampers nappies to cash and carries in London and Birmingham, and I worked in sales for Procter & Gamble. And I recoil, I’m always a little bit uncomfortable with… Different paths that people take in their own lives, the measure of success is, has it given you meaning? Have you enjoyed it? Have you been able to look after yourself and those who depend upon you? And so many different careers or journeys are successful if they can deliver that for people. And I’ve had a very varied path in my own life to trying to find a way of doing that. And from, as I said, working in the private sector to now working within the World Bank, with a long and very happy life in politics in between it. And I’ve had lots of ups and downs, lots of challenges, made many mistakes. But if I was to pick out one quality that I would encourage everybody to be aware of and attentive to, it’s just the value of keeping going and being resilient and keep on doing your best every day. Work hard, be kind, look after people, do your best. And the title, the job that you do, is far less important than the impact you use it to have. And for all of you at the start or the early part of your careers, I would— they’re the kind of things that I have found helpful to think about.

[Shrey Addagatla]
Thank you. It’s really, really important because I think I speak on behalf of many of us when I say that we are ambitious and the titles do matter a little, but this guiding beacon is what we should be following and thinking about when we are applying for these jobs and achieving our—

[Paschal Donohoe]
I couldn’t encourage you enough not to think about the title.

[Audience laughs]

[Shrey Addagatla]
Yeah.

[Paschal Donohoe]
And not to think about competition and not to think about where you are in how other people define your career.

[Shrey Addagatla]
Right.

[Paschal Donohoe]
It is so unimportant and ultimately totally counterproductive.

[Shrey Addagatla]
Oh, I totally agree. We should focus on what is important for us and what we actually want to achieve and live our life how we mean to.

[Paschal Donohoe]
And the impact you can have on others.

[Shrey Addagatla]
Exactly. So, I do want to take a moment to, as promised, open the floor to the online delegates. Juanita over here will have the microphone. So, if you’d like to do the honors, you can, I guess, select someone.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Well, you probably…

[Shrey Addagatla]
Sure, we can go to the gentleman up front over here.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Yeah.

[Joey Dobrowski]
Thank you, I’m Joey Dobrowski, I’m a student at Trinity College Dublin.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Oh, my God!

[Joey Dobrowski]
I know, a place also close to you.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Yeah.

[Joey Dobrowski]
And I wanted to ask you about planning career and… planning career. And back in your student years or graduate, did you envision yourself that one day you will be here at the World Bank at this position? And were there any people in your life that really supported you in your journey? And are there any factors you consider important to making this journey come true?

[Paschal Donohoe]
So, I will answer all the questions honestly that are put to me, because what I… The answer I give may disappoint. I absolutely did not envisage or plan getting to this point, and even when I was in politics, which is a hyper-competitive environment, I rarely looked too far ahead. I always focused on where I was at each point in time. And those that had the biggest impact on me, the impact they had was utterly profound because there’s no way at all I would be here today, let alone have held other roles that I’ve had in the past, if it wasn’t for my mom and my dad and my wife and my children. And they are most of the reason why I’ve been able to work like I’ve worked, and been able to serve in the roles that I’ve had over my career.

[Applause]

[Paschal Donohoe]
But wonderful to meet a fellow student of a college that was very good to me. A very small world, yeah

[Nkafo]
Hi, my name is Nkafo. I’m from Canada.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Nkafo, there we go. Sorry.

[Nkafo]
Yeah, I have a question for you. As a former Minister of Finance and current World Bank Knowledge Manager, how can the Bank better package youth employment data into actionable high-level knowledge that can be financed by a government in any country?

[Paschal Donohoe]
Thank you very much for your question. I think the way in which we need to do that is by making the knowledge as practical as possible. I believe the work that many have already done in the Bank in thinking about job potential sector by sector appears to me to have the largest chance possible of having a practical impact on the ability of public and private authorities in countries to create and keep jobs. So, the way I like to think about it is pitch or advice below the macro and above the micro when it comes to thinking about labor markets. And our colleagues all over the world are doing that at the moment, and we’re working with them to try and do it as effectively as possible. Right, here we go. I think there’s some questions over there.

[Shrey Addagatla]
I have some questions from the online audience too…

[Paschal Donohoe]
Okay, perfect.

[Shrey Addagatla]
Because we have thousands online viewing you right now. So, one question that I like in particular was an experience that shaped the style of leadership. You’ve spoken a bit about your style of leadership so far, but is there any particular experience that formed that? And also, a second one from the online audience, how has the definition of leadership evolved throughout your career?

[Paschal Donohoe]
Oh, my God…

[Shrey Addagatla]
Tough ones, tough ones. I know.

[Paschal Donohoe]
They are brilliant questions. So, the experience that had the biggest effect on my judgment as to what leadership is, was the COVID-19 pandemic. Because by some way it was the most demanding professional experience I’ve ever had, because I was involved in making decisions that affected people’s health, and I was involved in making very big economic decisions very quickly with very little information that kept on changing. And the bit that refocused in my mind in how you have to conduct yourself is the importance of getting the balance right between being positive and hopeful, and honest. Because we were in such a demanding environment that being positive without being honest would have been risky, and being honest without being positive would have made things harder. Trying to get that balance right is something that I spent a lot of time on over two years. In terms of how my thinking regarding leadership has evolved over time, it’s… I’ve become even more aware as time has gone on of the importance of thinking of yourself as serving others rather than putting yourself first in any way. And anything I’m able to achieve in work I had done in recent years and where I am now in the World Bank and the work that I’m privileged to be part of is entirely due to the people who I work with and it’s all about the people we work for. So, when I was in Mozambique or South Africa or any of the others, they’re only on my mind because I’m just back, how to meet their human and economic development needs that they have is all that we are here to do. And meeting that need is more important than any of the internal considerations that we have. So, it’s putting those needs and serving those needs at the middle of your agenda at the center of your agenda all the time is the key thing I have learned.

[Shrey Addagatla]
That was really valuable. I know right now I feel like someone asking you questions on the stage, but that really spoke to me deeply. I think we have time for one more question from the in-person audience, and then we will have to wrap up.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Well, I will do… There’s a lot of hands that have just gone up, so we’ll take more than one, but I’ll answer them all together.

[Shrey Addagatla]
Okay. Okay, sure, yeah.

[Paschal Donohoe]
If it’s okay with you. We’ll get as many people in as possible.

[Shrey Addagatla]
We can take one from the section over here, and we can spread the love a little. See some more hands in the back as well.

[Diana Sendejo]
Hi, this is Diana Sendejo from Mexico, a rural developer.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Congratulations on the win last night.

[Diana Sendejo]
Oh!

[Applause]

[Paschal Donohoe]
And of course, sorry to all our friends from South Africa as well for saying that.

[Audience laughs]

[Paschal Donohoe]
But my God, I’m sorry for our South African friends. Sorry about that. I can see a few hands going up. But in sport, you can congratulate somebody without feeling pejorative to anybody else. But Raúl Jiménez, that goal, what a story. What a story. Sorry.

[Diana Sendejo]
Thank you.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Yeah.

[Diana Sendejo]
I’m a rural development practitioner and what could be your advice for a practitioner like me that wants to create a career in finance and international cooperation agencies with the knowledge that we have in file development projects implementation? Or we can translate that.

[Paschal Donohoe]
No, got it. Perfect question. Okay, will we take a few more? Few more questions, yeah? So, yeah, hi there.

[Ethel Balderas]
Hi. Hi, good afternoon. My name is Ethel Balderas, and I work in public finance in Mexico.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Oh

[laughs]
.

[Ethel Balderas]
Hi. Hi.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Well, we better get a question in from somebody from South Africa now, or it will feel imbalanced.

[Audience laughs]

[Ethel Balderas]
Drawing on what you’ve learned from countries around the world, where do you believe governments should invest today to create the greatest long-term opportunity for the next generation?

[Paschal Donohoe]
Brilliant. Okay. And can we get two or three more in? So, I… You’ve had your hand up from the very beginning. So yeah, yeah, we’ve got that lady there, yeah.

[Woman 1]
Thank you. Um, I used to measure MSUs for Pampers as well, and also Gillette to trade off the supply chains in Brazil.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Oh, my God. Did you work for Procter & Gamble?

[Woman 1]
Yeah, I was a sales manager there until last year.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Oh! Brilliant.

[Woman 1]
Yeah. And I also had a social sector experience, public sector experience. So, I really love your profile and you’re kind of a role model to me. So, I’d like to ask, how do you give tips to navigate transitions in the career and maybe to reduce the downsides of it that might happen when you change from one level to another one in a different sector? And also on a private dimension, how do you use your like personal drivers to guide you for taking hard decisions? Because if you, for example, had continued in Procter & Gamble, you’d be like a C-level nowadays. So, this would be the professional and personal dimensions. Thank you.

[Paschal Donohoe]
And one more, because then… Yeah, there we go. That. Yeah, yeah. So, two more. Okay, because there’s a band there. Yeah.

[Shrey Addagatla]
You have a great memory.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Yeah.

[Woman 2]
Hello, my name is

[unintelligible]
. I’m a PhD at TU Delft, but I’m originally from South Africa. So…

[Audience applauds and laughs]

[Paschal Donohoe]
Oh, brilliant.

[Woman 2]
Yes, we lost terribly yesterday

[laughs]
.

[Paschal Donohoe]
I mean, you have the best rugby team in the world.

[Woman 2]
Yes.

[Paschal Donohoe]
So I mean, if you can’t win this, you mightn’t win this World Cup, but you’ve got a great chance of winning the World Cup next year.

[Woman 2]
Yes, yes.

[Paschal Donohoe]
But you’ll probably meet Ireland in the final though, is the only problem. So…

[Woman 2]
Yeah, yeah.

[Paschal Donohoe]
At least I hope so.

[Woman 2]
Cricket and rugby, those are sports.

[Paschal Donohoe]
I hope so.

[Woman 2]
Yeah. Crossing fingers.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Great.

[Woman 2]
The question that I have is actually related to your visit in South Africa.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Yeah.

[Woman 2]
Were there any key reflections that you had based on the discussions that were had with locals there regarding any opportunities or strategies that aren’t actually being used within the tourism space that they could actually capitalize on?

[Paschal Donohoe]
That are not being used?

[Woman 2]
Currently.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Okay, very good. Okay, great. And then, your colleague just in front of you there, yeah.

[Himakshi]
Hi, thank you so much for your talk today. My name is Himakshi. I’m a 20-year-old student studying in Philly at Penn. My biggest question is really about the thirst for knowledge. How would you say what makes it and what allows you to share knowledge in the best way possible? What skills do you associate with being good transferable skills for sharing knowledge? Thank you.

[Paschal Donohoe]
Very good. Okay, so I’ll try and remember all the different questions that have been put to me, and if I don’t, somebody will correct me. So first, to begin about our friend from Mexico and the question you put to me there regarding a career in this area. The advice I would give about a career in this area is quite similar to what I would say about any career at the moment, which is just keep on knocking on the door and keep going. When you’re beginning your career and you’re in the early phase of it, you always… Most of the time you have a feeling that the opportunities are few and they’re hard to get, but that’s a common feeling when you begin. Keep going, keep knocking on the door, always be open to new experiences and try new things. And never… Your setbacks are never as big as you think they are, and your defeats or your retreats are never as big as you think they are either. Just keep going, because there’s so many opportunities across the world and so many different ways you can learn and build. So, then our friend over here, I think, was the next question. I’m sorry, that question was about… About what was it again? Sorry. Yeah, just… Yeah, it’s about knowledge.

[Ethel Balderas]
Yeah, drawing on what you learn from countries around the world, where do you believe governments should invest today to create the great long-term opportunities for the next generation?

[Paschal Donohoe]
Education, education, education. It’s the secret sauce. It is the foundation of everything. You will never, no government, no government will ever look at an investment decision on education and look back and think it didn’t yield a return. And I’m not just saying this because I’m in front of a very young audience, because the way in which educational policy has changed is it now applies to all ages. But access to education, making teaching being a good job, one that’s valued in a society, supporting teachers, ensuring that access is at the maximum possible level. So, I’d pick that up as being the key thing. In terms of the next one then, or one of the other questions about tourism and its role within South Africa, I think South Africa does an amazing job in relation to tourism. It’s such a beautiful country, so much to see within it. And when we think about tourism and the policy framework with tourism, we also have to think about how you can renew tourism and how you can renew the assets and destinations that people travel to. And I do think for countries like South Africa that are so successful in it at the moment, it’s not just about how you can continue to get new people to go there, it’s about how you can sustain and rehabilitate the assets within tourism that already make it very successful. And I think that’s something that will be valuable not only for the economy and tourism of South Africa, but for many other similar countries like that across the world. In relation to my friend from Procter & Gamble and making different transitions, it’s being very open to the fact that when you make a very, very big change, it may not work out in the way you intended. So, I resigned from Procter & Gamble to try and become a politician, and I lost the election that I needed to win to become a politician. So, I resigned from my job to contest an election, and I didn’t win. And I found myself in a situation where I’d left a job to get a job and I didn’t get the job. And I learned more from that experience than I think I would have learned if I’d won the election. Now, what happened afterwards is a few months later I stood for the other House of Parliament within Ireland and I was fortunate to get elected to that. But that wasn’t my original plan. But actually, going that route over the span of an entire life actually worked out in a far different and far better way for me. And then just in relation to knowledge and how we try to communicate that, I do think it goes back to the point I made earlier on about the practical value of it. And making the case for expertise, making the case for knowledge, but pitching it in a way that’s practically helpful to the governments that need that knowledge to be delivered to them, and then to our teams across the world who are really busy facing many different competing demands and depend on us to be able to help them, just like we depend on them to help governments and support societies. There we go. So, I’m being urgently told I need to wrap up because I’m sure there’s lots of other good discussions to come. And Shrey, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. There’s a great future ahead of everybody here in this room, and be confident in it. Be resilient, look after yourself, and keep going. So, thank you very much.

[Shrey Addagatla]
Thank you, Paschal. Thank you.

[Applause]