Excellencies,

Let me conclude with some final thoughts about how I see the EU-Africa partnership going forward.

We have agreed a lot of joint work. The political declaration and the road map we have adopted will offer us the basis to use to deliver and change the lives of our citizens for the better.

We have seen that our global challenges do not limit themselves to borders. That is why I believe that by working together we are stronger and we can get better results.

The European Union will continue to work closely with Africa in its aid programme, using its dedicated 28bn Euros between 2014-2020 to support Africa where we can add most value and have the desired impact.

We will also continue working with the continent to tackle the bottlenecks to growth, such as infrastructure gaps, and we need to improve the investment climate and regulatory environment, to name but a few. Of course, these significant differences exist between individual countries. Those that have seized the opportunity and implemented far-reaching reforms are now harvesting results.

But no matter what stage of development, all countries need investment; long term public lenders, such as the European Investment Bank – that is the European Union bank – have a crucial role to play. We need to join forces and combine grants with loans in a smart way, enabling us to attract additional investments, not only public investments, but also private investments. We will continue to encourage prosperity and sustainability through strengthened economic, business and scientific ties. For example, our 7th framework programme has financed 565 collaborative research projects, in association with African partners. 2111 African fellows, 4600 students and 980 staff have benefitted from scholarships under our Erasmus Mundus programme.

And we can do even more with our future research programme – Horizon 2020, the programme for the next seven years, which has been reinforced in terms of financial capabilities – as well as with our Erasmus Plus Programme. Because investing in human capital is the best investment we can make for the future, we have discussed this today in the part of our summit on people.

And here I would like also to highlight the special role of women and my admiration for African women. I think it was Dr. Zuma, Chairperson of the African Union, who said, and I quote her, “women are half of humanity and they give birth to the other half” so I really believe that we have a special responsibility towards women. And this will help to create sustainable inclusive growth and jobs. It will support the interests of our peoples, who are at the heart of our strategic partnership” As Jean Monnet, one of Europe’s founding fathers taught us, and I quote, “the best thing is not to balance national interests, but to merge them”. I believe this is true for European integration. I believe this is also true for African integration. And, why not, it can also

be a way to merge the interests between Africa and Europe, our hopes, our strengths, our weaknesses. But at the same time always with the collective idea of being stronger together.

I thank you for your attention.