car go off of ship and where they need to go quicker. we got a connected vehicle in wyoming that's focusing on speeding truck traffic along interstate 80 which has a major weather events so how we are using technology to move it forward. we got a lot of really neat examples of committees trying to figure out themselves. columbus is proposing and they want to implement the ability to practice along smart corridor and better way to do urban parking. one of the neater ideas came from austin sharing urban delivery lockers chl. people will be able to picking up grocery and packets so they don't have to -- >> mr. davis, i think the average tractor trailer is like

six miles per gallon. anything we can do to increase the fuel efficiency there is going to be a huge saving. i know again d.o.t. has a super truck. is that what you were referring to? >> i did not get the acronym you used? >> freidt -- >> i know off super truck program and focused on getting more 10 miles mper gallon. >> how do you think it will help on timing and deliveries. >> it is really exciting technology and they're early stages. mr. monje has talked about a couple. technologies and trucks enable how they are being driven to be able to provide feedback to the driver how he or she able to drive efficiently.

we are seeing technologies al w allowing us to be cost effectively identifying the conditions of the high value break. so we know what it is and what kind of conditions it is being subjected to and to be able to use autonomous technology, to be able to identify containers t that's coming in on a ship and able to synchronize the way they are off loaded to take advantage of the trucks or traffic conditions to move materials effectively. we are seeing interesting early stage technologies and the challenges of how we make it more and more common across all of those applications to enable it at this scale. >> well, i think we learned in air transportation there is a cell lot. everybody hangs out in the cell lot.

that statistic is incredible of 45% increase. we want to sell things and move them. the congestion level is so great. a strategy that's moresing that traff that -- moving it in a systematic way is helping us so i hope that we'll stick with it. thank you madame chair. >> thank you. >> thank you madame chair. >> the internet of things. we also to the internet of threats. obviously, every device that has the internet built into it becomes subject to hacking. that's the bottom line. so you have to basically deal with the digital technologies. it is the best and the worst simultaneously, if you don't deal with the threat then all

you are doing is ignoring the problems that's going to be created. really today's new cars are just computers on wheels. that's all they really have become and that's why in 2013 and again last year, senathe ser and i asked 20 automakers, of what they are doing to protect computers on wheels. thieves don't need to break in your cod. they just need an iphone. last year we witnessed how easily cars can be hacked. we watched as hacker took control of the brakes and the acceleration of a jeep chrysler. chrysler had to recall 1.4 million vehicles to fix this cyber security problem. cyber security cannot be an after thought rather than addressing cyber security problems after a hack has occurred, we have to ensure

robust cyber security protection are built into technologies right from the beginning. that means we need enforceable rules and security. that's why i introduce legislation which senathe sena r senator -- the spy car act that directs high traffic safety and administration and the trait commission to secure our cars and protecting our drivers. so, for all of the panelists, please answer yes or no. do you believe that cars should have mandatory cyber security standards including hking protections that protect all access points in the car, date security measures that prevents unwanted access to all collected information and hacking litigation technologies that can

be detected and stop hacking attempts in realtime. doctor edelstein. >> definitely a yes. >> the one thing i would ask is finding what we need to accomplish and addressing things that you described and allowing technology to evolve quickly. >> but it evolves but still not installed. we should mandate that it is installed. >> yes we should define it. >> mr. kass. >> yes, i agree we need to do it in a balanced way that does not kill innovation. innovation is like a wacko, we need a way that ensuring and putting control in place it is not offsetting, the innovation that's about to take place but helping to make sure and that i can making sure it thrives.

>> do they do it to save money? >> people seem to never amaze me >> that conscious whack a mole, whacking a bad person. >> we cannot policy our way out of it. someone is going to innovate and it needs to be us. >> right, we have to do it. the same time we have to tell people who don't want to install the safety protections that they have to do it. >> fair enough. >> thank you. that's all i am really saying and miss reynolds. >> the answer is certainly yes. there is a role for smart infrastructure as well. one of the few benefits to having started ours connected system in the '80s. there will be a role for infrastructure to manage and not just for hacking. the software technologies that are out there. >> again, i didn't get the correct answer from the au

auaut auto manufactures. >> again, seat belt is good, we want technology to evolve a little bit more. >> where do you put in those hacking in. >> thank you senator and your lead ership on this issue. >> cyber security is continuously a challenge for the rest of the country. certainly from the manufactures and you know we are doing everything we can and we have a standards and from technology to ensure that those pact of information can be shared safely and we'll continue to work with industry and expert to mas and sure that we continue to fight this threat. >> doctor edelstein. do you think you should make

owner aware of driving data and providing owners the right to say no to data collection without losing access to key navigation and other features? >> yes. >> mr. davis? >> yes. >> mr. kass? >> yes and generally speaking with all of the information that's going to be available of this concept of opting out, i think it is important. >> excellent. >> thank you. >> yes. >> it is important to collect the information you need and make sure consumers know what you are sharing. >> thank you. >> i think it is a great balance here and not all good >> like any technologies there is the bad as well. we have to make sure we build in the protection at the same time that we build in the opportunities. if we do that, i think we are responsible as policymakers. i thank you members of the chair and i thank you for attending this hearing. >> doctor, edelstein, you

discussed several innovative projects that you are working on. you mentioned of sensors for the brooklyn bridge for cracks. what's the impact of realtime data monitoring of our nation's transportation and assets as it relates to public spending on maintenance. >> yeah, we are not monitoring the brooklyn bridge. that was a case example that other people are doing. it had nothing to do with us, i want to get it. >> my position, i really see it getting into annually, moving people in car go more efficiently but also access management in realtime. we can put sensors out on our bridges and monitor smart buildings with regard to energy system and we can monitor and we

can put sensors out on a water system to see if there is any potential leaks on the pipes. what i am looking at is a control center. it does not have to be one mass si i have of the building. by doing that, you will get more efficiency and it will go nicely with the smart city concept. the platforms allow everything to be interconnected. it needs to be something there in realtime to gain efficiencies of the system. >> as you have this control center that's monitoring, i would assume more timely and also more accurately manner, how do you see that affecting safety

in the future? and also looking at the reliability of our infrastructure? >> right, right. >> using example of the brooklyn bridge. >> okay. >> well, with regard to safe safety -- hopefully, by having the sensors out on the bridge, we'll be more proactive so we can make corrections to it before you have a catastrophy. >> the traffic center are already doing that. they were able to detect instincts of a lane closure or an accident and it is a lot faster in the way they used to do it. >> for example, we have been

wo working on a project off the last ten years. we first started it, it took about 15 minutes or so to clear a lane blockage incident and now it is about half that time. half the time it is safety benefit as well as travel time and liability. clearing that lane -- so if you take a 15-minute lane blocking event and you can clear 15 minutes faster, you are talking about it improving the probability that you won't have a secondary accident by 40%. in terms of liability the formula for every minute that you say translates to four minutes of saving so we got a 15

minutes improvement and translating back to an hour of backup delay that you are saving. it ties together of managing traffic and safety. >> do you see cities and states and also private businesses stepping forward and willing to embrace the new technologies? is there enthusiasm in their part or is it balancing with the reality and the cost? >> there is definitely enthusiasm, no doubt about it. >> but, many cities are struggling and just paying day-to-day bill and having to deal with potholes and infrastructure improvements that increase capacity and some of their road way systems. technology is nice, they're

looking at it as a long-term solution but balancing the firefighter issues they are dealing on a day-to-day basis and the evolution of technology, it is tricky. i will have to say most cities and states, they are enthusiastic about technology innovations >> again, it is just how much money that goes around >> senator booker. >> chair fisher and. >> thank you very much. >> i am the ranking member on this. we have al bill that we passed last year on sex trafficking. i want to thank all for coming and mr. kass who represents here of ch robertson head quarters in eden pairie, minnesota. >> ch robertson involved to a

major third party lodgistic providers and gross revenue of 25 2015. we are proud of the work they do and what they can bring to this discussion. mr. kass, could you talk about how you leverage the internet of things that your company can increase the efficiency of shipments. sth >> sure. >> bhwhen you think of our company, it is focused on technology platforms and services and optimizing supply change and the internet of things what it has done is allowed us to create algorithms that's quickly and easily and selecting the most optimal mode of transportation.

many shippers today cannot respond at the time and do not have the resources or expertise to take a look at their freight network looks like in realtime. it posing significant advantages. it is going to reduce the carbon footprint and it is going to lower the overall cost and it is going to take capacity off the road and i think putting it in a safer, environment. >> thank you very much. one of this things that we learned in our state and i guess we share with all three members that are here today, new jersey and nebraska and wisconsin is you have all the networks you want for transportation but if you have snow and the trucks cannot move and the trains cannot go, we have a problem. >> i know the u.s. department of transportation advance transportation and congestion

management, technology deployment program. it is quite a mouth full that used to improve the effectiveness of snowplows. our state are pretty proud of how quickly we clear our roads but technology can always make us better. lets say it works a lot better here and we work a lot better in minnesota than washington dc. >> doctor edelstein, will well the new internet of things improving safety and things like snow piling? >> well, if you look at it from, lets start with the end user, they're straight piles in certain time frame. by having the internet of things, this could provide the communication between the individuals and the agency

responsible for the plowing. so you open up communications to all and you are opening up potential to optimize where you have this snowplows and which roads are at the highest priority and you can monitor it in realtime so you can do multiple runs of the streets because the snow are coming down. you have the potential to using iot to optimize the routing of snowplows. >> that's a great example. i am stunned at how long it takes. my daughter went from public school of minnesota where she had no snow days for seven years and then when she got to the arlington public schools which are very good, she had two weeks off in her first year. >> so you know, i do think that there is got to be a better way to do that. i understand there is with more snow and effective. my last question along the theme

line, and the need to have broad band installation and making it work and one of the bill that is we have would require focusing more on -- when you have highway project when you are trying to put the internet in and making it more efficient and many of us are working on expanding ax access for broad band in rural areas as well. >> and having the need of wi-fi and making it all work? >> that's beyond my expertise. >> can you assume that we need of all things wi-fi to making sure that things work? >> yes, thank you. >> i want to finish on the question that we were in before of what the country is doing to be the global exporter of

innovations on the planet earth. i didn't know if you wanted to add more before i go to doctor kass. great technology for enabler, we see a number of countries moving quickly there. creating opportunities to do triumphs and we'll see not only in infrastructure that need to communicate back to the data center club. we are seeing jeremy agermany a they're running trials on autobonds maintaining high data rate activities. we see around winter olympics of the summer olympics coming up in the future in south korea and japan by doing early pilots and test beds. the more that we can do things to foster those. >> why are we doing those here?

>> with the 5 g's, is it because you have a predictable and understandable innovations. is that some of the reasons why? >> it is about creating the opportunity and we see bigger events like the summer olympics. that becomes vocal point for that country. lets put a lot of resources in. >> so we are not government and not creating sand boxes where people -- >> i think we want to look for more test beds and for opportunities, hey, lets go all in and creating a solution to really kind of force the technology to get deployed and understand where we need to do optimizations. >> mr. kass, we have a r

ridiculously tax in environment and i see it in biotech and a lot of scribnnew jersey firms. please don't think that i have not gotten to that point and how gay men joining your corner of conviction to change that. what else are other countries doing besides creating a better tax environment? >> first, thank you for reading my mind, i appreciate that. i was going to when i answer the question. secondarily, when i look at our global base of talents the diversities of it. there is something that's happening here. we are not developing mass students the way other countries are. i think that's core of engineering and it is core to where the internet of things is going. don't get me wrong, we got talent but if we are not developing the speed and the

pace -- >> we fall number one in the country for graduating engineers and math majors we are in the top ten. other countries are realizing this new economy is going to have stem folks and america is falling behind. >> there is a male bias to it and we need to figure out and how to neutralize it as well. i will point you in the direction of how to get it fixed? >> great. >> port efficiency and even the secretary and i have talked about how in the northeast, people are choosing canadian ports because they are more efficient than ours are. >> is there anything that other countries are doing in term of t of -- terms of the internet of thing that is s that we can be up here and catching up on. >> i will tell you what, my last question and try to get it in ten seconds each. if you had a government dollar

and we are going to be investing in, where would you focus your dollars in terms of getting the biggest return? >> quitting these partnerships and opportunities moving technology for private sector and the regulators and academia. >> infrastructures. >> specifics? >> the road of in sfra str you can -- infrastructures. >> you would see it on a map where it is unbelieverable constricted and major cities around the world. there is a trend of urbanization and it is clear. there are ten megacities and there are ten mega-cities ten years ago and now it is 23. people are moving into cities because they need access to product. if we don't fix infrastructures

and whatever we do of the internet of things, it is going to exploose the facts. >> i really like you mr. kass. [ laughs ] >> thank you. >> thank you very much and thank you for your help and service. because we have a vote, i am going to ask you one quick question. positive train control? what do we do to achieve it quickly and implement it around the country? >> i will start and thank you senator, we have been pushing positive train kcontrol. we are excited of the department of transportation that we got $199 million to spend and helping commuters to get on board and rails. still significant challenges and spectrum including equipment

issues. we are doing everything we can and working with the fcc and doing everything we can. we are working with short lines and community rails and everything we can to hold their feet to the fire and making sure we get this technology deployed quickly and safely. we know that technology would have prevented the crash in front of philadelphia. the opportunities for safety are substantial and we are dedicated to this technology. >> any other thoughts? >> how about centers at railway crossings? >> these are practical rail safety measures that will save lives. >> yeah, the idea is unfortunately, it takes probably a good mile or so for the train to slow down to get to the point where that railroad is crossing and where that person maybe in a railroad crossing would be

getting avoid of getting hit. a family of four was at the railroad crossing and three of them got out but one of them got hit by the train. the communication needs to be the driver of the train -- urban areas where you have railroad crossings for three or four miles, it becomes a real tricky situation. with the internet of things, it maybe managed efficiently. i think a lot of upside potentials in addressing these issues of railroad crossings. >> thank you all. thank you all for being here today. [ inaudible ] [ inaudible ]

>> i request written answers to the committee as soon as possible. with that, the hearing is adjourned.

with the release of the benghazi report, we want to open the conversation on the report to you, take your phone calls, e-mails and tweets. then we'll move the conversation with immigration policy in the u.s. including the recent supreme court decision on president obama's immigration order. and more from our recent visit from lor raedo, texas, where we talked with u.s. custom border officials and others in the border town about immigration. we will also look at the immigration debate surrounding the brexit campaign in the united kingdom. be sure to watch c-span's "national journal" beginning live at 7:00 eastern. as part of a push to find a cure for cancer, vice president joe biden and dr. jill biden host a summit at howard university in washington. watch live at 9:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span3. have a look at technology and innovation in africa.

investors and venture capitalists looked at how the u.s. government and the international community can encourage entrepreneurship and investment on that content. this portion is just under an hour. >> all right, everybody. we're ready to get started. please join me in welcoming to the stage truman fellow and co-director of the africa expert group, rose jackson. >> i'll pay you later for that one. for much of our lifetime, sub-saharan africa has been treated and described as a charity case. for governments, a problem to be managed. for businesses, a troublesome but rich source of natural resources and for the general public, a continent or sometimes a country of crisis and hunger.

while that misperception has only recently begun to change in the united states, young technologists and entrepreneurs in africa wasted no time in defining their own world. spe spinning up businesses and new technologies breaking ground in africa and beyond. last year the continent was home to 6 of the world's 12 fastest growing economies and the world's fastest growing middle class. while systemic barriers like corruption, poor infrastructure and a mismatched workforce still remain, the hype around the continent is growing. we brought together a great panel to explore what tech innovation means for the future of africa's economies and why people in the united states should care. today we have the privilege of hearing from three distinguished panelists who i will briefly introduce then let my colleague, rob, get to the fun part. first perhaps i can invite them on to stage. [ applause ]

trying to avoid the awkwardness of the single person standing. first, we have jonathan burman, founder of the j. burman associates, investor primarily working with businesses with high growth potential in emerging markets. previously mr. berman served as director of the corporate practice at dalburg and authored a book called "success in africa" about the ceos doing business on the continent. next we have carolyn campbell. going out of order. right here. founding partner, an equity firm focused exclusively on africa. stakes on everything from education, media, and internet ands to the famous kenya coffee jan chain, java house. thank you for that. jon gosier is a ted senior fellow and co-founder of an

audience intelligence company. mr. gosier is perhaps best known for founding africa and spent the last decade serving -- i'm pleased to hand this over to an africa expert group, co-director, rob tashima. the suit man with the tie clip. rob is the africa managing editor for the oxford business group, emerging markets advisory firm and adviser to soco insight, africa focused corporate data startup. given the expertise in this group, we're in for a very interesting conversation. i'll waste no more of your time and wek tlcome the panel to beg. thank you. >> thank you very much, rose. it's very exciting, i think we can all agree that we're actually talking about africa now. after several hours of foreign policy discussion. finally the continent is getting some overdue recognition today. i hope everybody's had their cup

of coffee for the afternoon because we are hoping for a very lively discussion. so if you haven't had any, go out and get some now. i do believe the beans are actually from africa. so it's thematic as well. technology certainly looks as though, as rose mentioned, it's played a central role in africa's recent growth spurt whether we're looking at the boosting of remittences, improving financial inclusion, supporting teachers, supporting farmers. and whether you're looking at nairobi or lagos or joburg, find plenty of examples of success storiy stories. all of these were involved in things from video streaming, to election monitoring, to e-commerce. but the big question is, how have these technologies actually impacted the daily lives of everyday citizens and what are the restraints that are limtitig

their impact on development across the continent, and equ equally importantly what role is the u.s.s playing in the private or public sector in helping leverage technology as a tool for prosperity? decades of experience in africa, we got a great panel here with carolyn and the two jons. i'm going to stop talking here and go ahead and get started. we have a lot of ground to cover. just to get things going, i'll start things off with a couple of questions. we'll open it up to q&a from the audience later on. the first question i'd like to ask all of you in turn, and jonathan, we can start with you, is to what extent do tech programs, startups, tech companies and tech initiatives actually play a positive role in encouraging development? to what extent have we seen that concre concretely? we've certainly heard a lot of hype about that. is that translating to action on the ground? >> yeah. i think from a commercial

perspective, i think there is a lot of hype and i think there are a lot of reality. first let's dispense with the hype. so there is an abundance of development and donor excitement around technology and investing. and they do -- and that excitement is expressed not only in a lot of hyperbole and speech but also in money i perceive as going sometimes toward programs that are not sustainable and certainly not commercially viable and in some cases as a result drawing talent away from more lasting, in my view, commercially viable investments. i think you also see sort of a proliferation, for example, of incubators around the continent which, in my view, is probably a little overwrought. there are a few that do great work. there are a lot that i think just sort of exist on, to my mind, on fumes.

i think there's certainly room to call that effort. but the reality is there, that there is an extraordinary amount of innovation going on in afr a africa. that now getting some of the capital that it needs both, somewhat from domestic sources but significantly from international sources including silicon valley now. and there are innovations coming from africa that are finding their way not only into impacting africa, but in fact, around the world. one of the things we thought about, is there homegrown technology coming out from africa elsewhere? and there certainly is in the area of internet security, in terms of safety and certificates, verisign is built on technology that came out of africa. in terms of open-source software. a software program that's used by millions of coders around the world that comes out of a south african company. you know, there's still, i'd say, still a small but growing set of additional technologies coming from there.

so there's a real reality around that technology. you asked about the impact. i'll leave it to others to discuss the developmental impacts. no longer a development expert, but i would say there's growing commercial impact and that's what i find -- frankly, you know, as i think some of the other panelists might concur with, to me, that's ultimately the most sustainable and come p compelling impact there s the creation of jobs and productivity and profitability extended over a broad inclusive base and we can get a little more into some of the technologies that are doing that. >> jon, you've been involved in this on the frontline, app development in places like uganda. are you seeing that sort of thing, proliferation of commercial opportunities as a result of those sorts of two development? >> yeah, i mean from my perspective, the goal has always been job creation and creating sustainable opportunities for

employment so when i look at this sort of, like, growing tech sector across the continent, growing incubators that are sometimes donor supported, it's -- the benefit that i see is that these are jobs that are being create e ed locally by lo entrepreneurs who are employing local talent and because they can survive on local and sometimes international ecosystems, they are truly sustainable. these are jobs that won't go away when, you know, some organization decides to pull its funding from the region. so that's how i've always looked at it. it's never really been about the tech or the, you know, or, you know, some of the other things that occur in the sector. it's just about how do we create opportunities for the people there that are talented, that are very self-motivated, et cetera. the other thing i was going to mention, you touched upon, i think, just a second ago, is the

opportunity for african technology ists and technologie to sort solve support global e demands, so the company i started while i was in uganda, moved there in twha2008, still there, still doing well, we have incubators/co-working space. from day one, we had a business model. a lot of -- we tried to encourage other people to adopt which is we actually service companies with our talent that's there in the space. and so this is a space in uganda. now with my new venturists in the state i can outsource work to my team in uganda, software development, data entry, data evaluation. it's actually been quite economical and, you know, sort

of set -- an opportunity i didn't expect when i started the company 2,000 -- 2008. >> a very old country. >> i didn't expect then i would still be doing business with my team there, you know, so many years later so it's been exciting. >> okay. carolyn, you, as a big private equity fund, withdrew guys get involved oftentimes in a lot more established firms and i thing it's sometimes worth reminding folks tech is not nimble startups and incubators and startups but often much bigger companies as well and stakes in things like isps and internet companies and telecoms from voiders like ihs towers. to what extent are you seeing this kind of excitement over technology also playing out on the grand scale with these bigger companies? >> yeah, so we've done some small investments. some startups. remittences you mentioned. that's a high growth, highly competitive industry, but you look at flows between south

africa and zimbabwe. we invested on our own balance sheet, not with our funds in that business. we looked at the data centers and those are all sort of on the fringes of what we've done, but what we really have done, and we've made over 60 investmentes and sold 34 of them, is ridden three sort of big technology waves. the first one was gsm. you know, 2% of the continent had any sort of connectivity and we did that from 2000 -- that was a very easy fund to invest and to exit and make money on and that was easy. then this second wave we have done was the cable companies. so the major shift for africa was the landing of the submarine cables. you add three bhad three big on the west, three big ones come to the right. that allowed them to enter the world of broadband internet and everything we do.

they want to be connected to their homes to high speed internet, go outside and have 4g. everybody has two, three phones there. so we're in the cable business, paid tv business and the broadband internet business in kenya which we're expanding in east africa. then the third one is the cellular towers. no 20 1 1, we bought a company the cables come to the coast but you have to get it into the terrestrial, the center of the country. even you land in nigeria, you have to get it into lagos and the big cities for the real change to occur, so you have to supplement that are satelliwith. our company has a dth, direct to home part to it as well so that you're covering everybody. we grew the company since 2011 from 727 towers to 22,000 towers. that's a pretty high rate of growth for a company in a small amount of time.

so what happens on the backbone of all this connectivity? well, we have a financial services company. we brought six really remote licenses in places like chad, gabon, togo, benin, and that was very exciting, but we didn't buy them really for those countries. we bought these licenses to then build them into bigger countries and make a banking platform. you've all probably heard of ecobank, to recreate that model. then with that platform, we acquired a group that had ivory coast, senegal and some other countries further up the coast. how do you build that out? you're not going to put in the bricks and mortar banks we have in the u.s. that's not a real viable solution and there really isn't the infrastructure for that but the mobile telephoning and mobile banking products that really enabled our growth, that company has grown exponentially. i think it grew, its net banking assets ten times in, like, two,

three years initially. so on the back of the real connectivity and the real penetration of the entire continent through all these forms of ict, yeah, we have a lot of businesses that are spawned by that kind of connectivity. i can't think of any of our businesses that aren't. every business we buy, the first thing we do is put in a new erf. >> right. >> enterprise resource procurement system. that requires connectivity. >> you raise a really interesting point about how africa has really changed over the past 15, 16 years in terms of going from, you know, sort of 1 % mobile penetration to -- >> 80%-something. >> yeah. it's gone -- basically the pop haitian of the u.s. times two has gotten mobile phones over the past decade and a half in africa which is pretty impressive. certainly the cable connectivity to international cable networks plays a big role in that. you know, you touched upon the importance of bringing, you

know, you've got all these gateway connectivity, so africa all of a sudden has access to terabytes of internet connectivity. getting it to the inside of the countries is a big challenge. so i wanted to ask, actually, all of you, what are the sort of challenges that if you're a tech startup, a company in aftrica, you have to deal with, and more importantly from the u.s. government, u.s. private sector perspective, what can we do to help alleviate some of those concerns? >> i'll leave it to someone who has an african startup to talk about the challenges they face, but, you know, i'll think of two things around capital and land connectivity. why don't we talk about those. i'm sure whatever else jon enlightens us with, that will come up. i do think especially in the short term, american sources of

capital are quite valuable. particularly at the venture stage all the way from seed to late venture getting companies ready for talent to buy up is something that's particularly useful in the current phase. from a variety of reasons. i don't believe in investing without domestic capital alongside. important proving point. for a variety of reasons, african capital has been slow to mobilize around technology -- around soft technology and around venture. so both, for example, software and venture are just very new spaces for african capital. so, you know, giving them in return the confidence of major global technology investors and major, particularly software investors, is a big boone and allowing them to come alongside is, i think, a significant play in the next several years for america and frankly, since we're talking to largely an oaudience

of public servants, phenomenal different yate eyat differentiat differentiat differentiat differentiater. you know, if you think about where wrueurope is literally to and where -- >> was. >> no, i mean, i think they're in worse shape today than they were yesterday. certainly london which has been a source of capital i think is going to face a lot of challenges, right, in the next couple years in africa. across the board. across all forms of capital. particularly on venture. the chinese are quite competitive in this space but late to the game. the u.s. brand around venture capital is -- can't be rivaled. so the opportunity to come, to establish a presence in the continent on topics that are of high interest not only to populations but especially to governments, is significant as opposed to, let's say, and i may

be a contrarian here, but opposed to infrastructure capital or power, right? power africa, large in the current administration's remit. maybe only in their perspective. but one of the reasons because we're a nation short of capital. we don't have the money to do a lot of infrastructure financing in africa. we got plenty of venture capital to turn that direction. that's why. so that's one. i can turn to connectivity in a moment. i think i've spoken my moment. let me ask jon. >> well, i totally agree. it's certainly building a company from almost any country in africa, your number-one enemy is the brownouts and the blackouts. but i think what would be more useful and get more capital flowing to the continent is either the financial sector to provide visibility and due diligence on the companies that are being invested in or public sector counterparts that could

help facilitate that process. the number one reason why there isn't more capital going into the continent is the lack of confidence in western investors about what's going to happen after the capital gets there. it's just nothing they can do and there's not a whole lot of resources out there to do what's called discovery and find out what's going on. you know, and it's still a huge problem. haven't seen very many solutions sort of pop up in that space. and until that happens, it's still going to be the slow trickle of capital to the continent that jonathan just spoke about. >> so there's legal and regulatory reforms for improving, for example, protection of investors are really kind of a crucial aspect for boosting u.s. investment, u.s. participation in these sorts of -- >> yeah, and i also think, you know, from policy perspective, i was reading something the other day about this talk of finally

sort of an african union for at least traveling within -- >> a passport. >> intra pan african travel. i would like to see something like that for the private seconder to do business with one overarking entity then let that entity deal with the intricacies of the various countries and domad domains across the continue innocent. >> okay. >> you speak about domestic capital which is very interesting because our last two funds had increasing participation particularly from ganaen pension funds and moroccan banks. they have a lot of money. the ketnyan pension funds have lot of money, too, and they want to invest it. what would be useful if someone could give them some -- either come here and hang out at a new york state common reserve fund, i'm sorry, retirement fund, or if someone were to go there and explain how does this work?

our first investor confidence, our lovely pension fund came and said, where's our money? you know, we invested last year. we haven't had a return in 12 months. we had to say, whoa, the j-curve. it's going to take five, ten years. it took years. the one tutorial did not work. they were upset. they're coming in again seven years later to our fourth fund. but i don't know, even our pension funds in the u.s. are very thinly staffed so that's one thing i would think of. then for the venture pools, you do have a new class of african billionaire, you know, and you mentioned -- they're one of our biggest investors. mark shuttlesworth, a billionaire out of southca, put a lot of money into two of our funds. but they're spawning their own venture capital funds and every day i read about a new tech fund or venture fund or something. would be great if we could team up so your silicon valley

investor and african -- from my prospective, what do we need besides growth and energy and lack of brownouts? we need some business plans. when we go and look at companies, if the business plan is kind of a shoddy power point or a couple of pages with a dream, that, you know, no one's investing in that. they can use some real expertise from the valley. how you make a business plan, how do you sell it to an investor and how does that go forward? >> in terms of building up the capacity, one hot topic in tech, africa, generally is entrepreneurship in terms of giving youth the opportunity to kind of pave their own way. not having to rely on the private sector as they traditionally did for employment and things like that and positive externalties that brings about. is there a role to encourage entrepreneurship and what kind of capacity-building schemes can help that?

>> i take a very dim view of the u.s. government teaching entrepreneurship to anybody. that's not even necessarily a knock on government or even on public service. it's just understanding you are able to invest on the things you do every day, right? so the models i've seen out of the public sector, clearly in the private sector i do see that. we just spoke of it, right? but, you know, as i say, our audience is largely public service. i think there is a powerful role to play in this regard. one is, i know this wumpasn't qe on question, what was referred to as supporting the enabling environment, particularly enabling environment for innovation. as the u.s. brand for venture capital is strong, the u.s. brand for an innovation-enabling environment, innovation regulation is very strong. the american government is very credible on that topic.

more credible maybe than some of the topics on which we proper advice. so i would think that to me is a strong opportunity for the public sector. the other -- you know, i was going to talk a little bit about providing funds or partial credit -- partial guarantees and other backstops like that for innovation, but, you know, i frankly have a little -- i don't know that i have seen the data that tells me that that's credible. it may be. the u.s. has done that in the past. opec has had funds, right, that put out to capable fund managers. and i'll let -- again, i can count on carolyn to have thing to say about the capability as an investor in that way. this enabling environment for innovation is very much missing. it's very much of the moment now

because those laws are being written right now. sometimes they're being written out of fear, right? a lot of legislation coming from holding data within certain individual countries of not -- of ensuring that -- of intellectual property, laws, the absence of loss that are undermining innovation. i think the view, the u.s. government opportunity to support sound innovation policy, to me, is the most obvious strong foot forward. >> jon, you obviously have been involved in this a lot particularly now that you were saying one of your ventures out there you now use as sort of an outsourcing destination for work now. to what extent are you seeing these kind of entrepreneurial initiatives take off really kind of among young students and recent graduates and things like that? >> well, i think very much so, i mean, it's absolutely an area of interest for them, but to just touch upon the last question, a few years ago i was part of a

partnership with the u.s. department of state who i had a small fund. i was investing in african technology companies. and we forged a partnership called apps for africa where they obviously couldn't invest because of the nature of the state tee apartment, but support and enable this program where we went around the continent and enabled me to discover a number of companies, benefit of supporting entrepreneurship at the grassroots level. it was very successful. we funded 16 companies out of that program and i mean, it's not great conversion, but two of those companies still exist. one of them now has about 20 people. we invested a very small amount of money in a company called farmer line, put in $5,000 specifically because of that partnership and they've just

skyrocketed. i mean, it's been absolutely great. and another one is a company in kenya which is not doing quite as well but still there. still doing well. still very relevant. and so i think that's absolutely the way i would like to see, you know, our public dollars supporting african development. it's just, like, where can we support what's working? and how can we accelerate it and not sort of get in the way of what happens after that? >> yeah, another strength we have, i love these strengths that you mentioned in terms of the venture capital industry in california, is our business schools and how we form the next generation of businesspeople in the u.s. so we've sent six analysts to harvard business school that have worked with us and when you go to the african clubs at any of the business schools across the u.s., those are your next generation entrepreneurs and if there was something to do with

them to, i don't know, to explain to them how the backdrop works here, i think there is a natural affinity between the u.s. and africa that doesn't exist between any other regions. you see the east asian, i mean, or the asian sovereign investors. they're going to fund infrastructure. the u.s. isn't. i mean, opec will a bit but the big dollars and the long patient capital will come from other places probably. but you see that people -- we love african and they love us for -- a reason that's different than a mercantile reason that comes -- that is inspired, you know, when you think of the european/african relationship. we want to help just because we want to help. the french are going to abejan to do business, absolutely, that's not hidden as their main motivation. to the extent we can form links with these young students that come here and probably already have business models and they're starting businesses, we could really influence policy that way because they're going to go back to their home countries, start

up these companies. they'll know how to raise money from the valley, but they might not know what to ask for from their home governments in terms of what do they need as a backdrop to their businesses, whether it's poll rights for a cable company, unlike the infrastructure in georgetown where every telephone pole has about 1,000 wires 90% of which don't work. in kenya, they want one wire, don't want that kind of mess going on so they're very, very careful about how they're laying out their infrastructure. >> so, carolyn said something before that that i wanted to come back to, but it occurs to me because just before i came here, i was arguing with the cable company -- >> don't get me started. >> -- why they needed two cables into my house and why couldn't they do one. there's kenya leapfrogging over my house again. >> way over. >> something else carolyn mentioned that reminded me of an enormous area of public policy influence to affect african entrepreneurship that people rarely talk about.

that is immigration policy to the u.s. we talk about this not nearly enough. we have a habit of taking the best talent from the world, bringing them into our education system by virtue of our phenomenal first-year education system here and frog marching them back to the airport. that's unimaginable. for us, and for them. the best thing we can do for both sides is let that talent work here for a few years and perhaps longer if it wants. always highly productive talent. let that talent cultivate. learn from our entrepreneurship. grow strong then return to their home countries. that's a force multipliers that costs nothing to -- that costs nothing in terms of u.s. taxpayer dollars. generates enormous strength in terms of our future relationships with that country. and has this -- enormous development impact. we rarely tie immigration policy to development impact as we should. >> it's an absolutely superb point to make and i think probably a rousing point on which to open this up to

question from the audience. yes, we have quite a few. >> from the new york chapter. a quick question as you look at the continent where you've seen, you know, tech take off or, you know, again, entrepreneurs, et ceteras. what are some of the anchoring factors? you talk about kenya, so is it multinational corporations? is it entrepreneurs. eco net, have they fostered -- or is it all three? so do you see -- or is it none of the above? is there an ask eanchor that he more easily facilitate these entrepreneur or tech opportunities? >> well, i mean, i think it's really hard to answer that question because it takes a little bit of everything and it's really hard to give any

credit to any of those things, but if you use paul as an example, he's got a very different approach to how he wants to foster innovation in his country. i don't think it's wrong, per se, but i don't see the -- i don't hear from very many rwandan startups. i hear a lot from kenya, from ghana, a lot from nigeria. pretty much every -- there's a lot of others plaatther places,e country operates, that actually stimulates a lot of innovation and startup activity in governments where you have a lot more control. fwr gobon, rwanda. i don't see it.

doesn't mean it's not coming but we don't have the evidence yet. >> question here up in the front row. >> thanks. i guess the question is for john or carolyn on early stage or late stage mature capital raising. what are some of the yunique challenges from the international investors in the united states and whether there's concessions or unique terms you're putting into these investment agreements you maybe wouldn't see for a domestic company here and can you just talk arnt that fund-raising as it pertains to the perceived or real risk or greater risk in africa? >> okay. >> first, to comment on the last question, i see three peels of in innovation driving the african innovation. homegrown innovation from companies that are on the continent, small companies that are launching. some of them larger companies. ihs.

it's on innovative company. then, pardon me, as you said, multinational corporations innovate -- multinational corporations bringing innovation, both innovation capables and capital in. i think ge is good at this but it's an exception. even ge, more of the innovation is coming from india over to africa. jay may be upset at me for saying that. i think i see that more. they're amongst the leaders. ibm, barclays, a british example, aren't doing as well. most companies do not innovate in africa for africa. and the third is sort of outside-in. that is to say, companies, not large companies, but startups and innovative tech companies that are in silicon valley or auckland, new zealand, two in particular that innovate, that bring -- that are finding that the innovation they're bringing forward to the mark coet comes forward best or fastest in an

african context. zip line international, take one, is a drone company based in silicon valley. had no plan to get into after are rica, but the launch of their first program, of their first significant commercial drone program is no rwanda. wanted that technology there, wanted the demonstration project and created the enabling for them to get the millions of hours of, say, flight, they needed that they were finding hard to get in california. all three of those, pistons in my view, need to be firing to get where we need to go. i think what jon said about government and government control, pretty interesting and contrary. interesting. then the question was -- quickly to the question about particular concessions around fund-raising. at least when i talk to investors about raising funds either for specific company or for a fund, i've done both of those things. that is africa focused.

i don't find they want any particular conditions. i find you have to address their concerns about risks. the biggest concern they have, though, is distance. you know, there's this adage that you shouldn't invest further than you can draw. anything you can't drive to. well, you know, in africa, that's going to heed you u to a pretty small number. on a bad traffic day, it's going to lead you to the people on either side of your house, right? so it's more -- it's less an issue that i found, at least, on concessional financing or special concessions for the capital. special terms. than it is overcoming certain preconceived codas of investing like that one or the aversion to having employees or human-based systems. that's another one i think is very common in silicon valley that i don't think really flies in africa. >> we found on our structuring

part our term sheets and deals are like they are in the -- looks like a series "a" or "b" or "c." the only area where we probably have a stronger approach in africa is on the exit. just because it's a little weaker environment. you don't have the stock market. there's not a ready pool of buyers, necessarily. there are a lot of buyers around the world. they're around the world. you have to find them and make sure it's the right sector, so forth. we marley boparticularly bolste- so our first fund had very little. el paso energy on a fluke gave us a big allocation for africa which the guy didn't do well internally after he did that because it was so out of their strategy or mandate. and we had aig and aig is no longer the big investor that it was. but after that, the money wanted a track record and wanted an institutional manager of the money. so now we're on our eighth fund.

we think we're looking kind of institutional at this point. but the perceived are risk is still huge. what you get when you go to the endowments or the pension funds in the u.s., you ask for $50 million, $100 million, is how am i going to due diligence this continent? box the risk up to one page for me because i can't start, you know, for all the money they have, they deent haveon't have team. or san francisco, cities' retirement funds. so they want it sort of packaged and africa isn't a one-page risk analysis. the risks in nigeria are completely different than the risks in kenya. the opportunity in the north of africa is complete lly differen than in south africa. that might be the distance. it's far. it's huge. there's 5 k44 countries. they keep kind of waiting. i think one goes, there will be

a lending effect. they'll say, hey, they did the due diligence, they took the risk. that guy was constitutional. you know, let's do it. i think we're about to tap into that, personally. >> i think in this you're hearing a little bit of a difference between private equity investing and venture investing, right? so i actually find that the tech community including those who have invested in it are well suited to africa because they both deal with uncertainty very well, right? by that i don't mean risk. risk is calculable. uncertainty is incalculable and unknown set of outcomes. that -- the tech community in the u.s. is well suited to that and that actually defines what's going on in lot of africa, at least smaller ventures. >> yeah. and i don't think it's for lack of interest. i hear a lot about africa when i'm in the valley. flaying out there tomorrow. and the conversations are more about how do we get in, how,

like, where is aare the opportunities, how do we due diligence these opportunities and so on? then it kind of simmers down. there's always this kind of push and then no one ever wants to take the leap because i think they get a little overwhelmed. i think the best thing that's happening for africa right now, now you have counterparts. you have tech companies that are rising up and they're succeeding and they're getting visibility. so now they're finding partners in, you know, in the silicon valley, entrepreneurs who they don't have to take the risk of taking their own company there but maybe partner with a company like brick or, you know, number of other african tech startups that are starting to get some visibility. >> great. got a question over here in the front row. >> sorry. i'll get some more depth after this -- >> yeah, quick question on official corruption. and then another one about traffic, actually. how does the official corruption

affect the work you do, organizations, out into the real world, into the wild. >> american corruption? >> corruption in africa. how much has that led to the failure of some of your startups and then on traffic, i've spent a lot of time in uganda. my parents are from uganda. jon, i'm sure i've seen some of the craziness you've seen. how does that effect the actual functioning of business when you can't get anywhere in time? >> that's some pretty broad-ranging questions. carolyn, do you want to -- >> sure. so the corruption points, another interesting and contrarian point for africa because -- i saw so much corruption before i got to africa, i can't tell you. in eastern europe.

that's a bit of a myth. the second thing is we really operate in the private sector. yeah, they issue gsm licenses or banking licenses but those are highly regulated by transparent, often regional organizations in africa and i don't see any major corruption. we've had now, of course, after almost 20 years have we had a company where we had a manager, or, you know, a sponsor who wasn't on the up and up. yeah. you have to deal with that and remove them, but it's been relatively low. look at nigeria's new president. he's gung-ho against corruption. so, then this second point about the traffic, i was in abejan this week. it was great. the traffic's flowing. they built a new bridge over the lagoon. it gets better and better. la zbr lagos, however, you'll make a three-hour window to when you'll actually get to the meeting. you're better off on a phone call. you start the meeting in the car. everything is two or three hours late. that's sort of what happens. that's too bad. they definitely need to deal

with that. kenya, it really is market by market. you guys have been in the meeting in kenya. the driver takes you off the main roads. you think he's going somewhere with you you may never return from. you emerge in some great place. they're using them -- working all over there. >> so, i always have this fear when i was doing business in uganda, i feared working with the government at all. i just didn't talk to anyone from the local government. i didn't, you know, go to any meetings where they would be because i just didn't even want to be on their radar. i figured if i could stay under their radar, we could just survive and, just survive for lack of better words. but, you know, the company that i started there now is a pretty -- it's like a destination for anyone doing anything with tech in uganda.

you know, anyway. i started to rethink that. this was after i left, but i was talking to the manager there, barbara, and i was like, i think i was wrong about that. i think that you are building a resource here for the -- for, you know, your fellow citizens. this could be a resource for ngos. it could be a resource for the private sector. it could be a resource for the local government. and, you know, if you figure out the best ways to make that relationship work, then i think it was an unnecessary risk on my part. i think that we hear a lot -- it's just bad marketing for africa, right? we hear a lot about the corruption. some of it is real. but just like everything else, it's also a lot of hype and that hype can be more intimidating than the reality. the traffic hype is real. >> so i agree with everything that's been said. maybe then i'll add to it by

turning the question a little by on its head and talking about how technology is the solution to both those problems rather than a victim. you heard carolyn prefer to it, a variety of ways in which technology is solving the way of traffic, with ways, i experienced going to the zept of a back road with a kenyan uber driver only to emerge exactly where i was supposed to be exactly when i was supposed to be there, right? literally with ride sharing and improved traffic technologies. ibm's lab is working on, you know, really innovative ways of gathering big data, the problem of traffic, right? you do' that happening. then on, you know, that's sort of intuitive. if write think about it for a minute, you'll realize it works. what you might not realize until you see it is the incredible contribution of technology to solving the problem of corruption. technology and automation creates a trail. and it reduces the opportunity

for corruption. every point at which a human being does something that is not tracked in some way, the opportunity for rent seeking, large and small, so take a small example, the ports. and automation of port entry. both by sea and by land. when that gets automated, when we know what truck is coming in with what bill, what truck left in what order they arrived, you eliminated a vast tax on the entire economy because it means no one can extract value from it, no one can extract value from it and put it in their pocket. when you go to the -- i remember i spoke to the people who were automating the bureau of land managements in kenya, they were getting death threats, right, from whom? the file clerks at the bureau of land management. once you turn that system to where anybody with a cell phone can see, can search for their tights l a tight title, they go to a kiosk and

can download the title. so, you know, technology is not just the victim of these two problems and many others. it's the solution to those problems. >> i think we're running out of time but we got room for just probably one more before i risk the rath of -- nate. >> hi, nate. as someone who has lived and invested in africa, i always appreciate these panels where we're talking about the good side of what's happening especially when that is not the perception. but among practitioners, maybe we can talk about some of the other sides to things. we can try to ignore or try to avoid interaction with governance. i don't deal with the government. then if you're investing in kenyan 2007 or the ivory coast in 2002 or mozambique, any of these countries, suddenly it becomes your problem. do investors have an obligation or an opportunity to contribute to long-term good governance in africa?

>> saving the hard ball questions for last apparently. who'd like to take that one on? >> i'm going to pass. >> i mean, i think my p perspective is there's absolutely an opportunity for that to be the case. should it be a requirement? no. yeah, you -- it's a way of sort of managing your risks as you're investing to have some sort of relationship. some sort of visibility to how the government is operating and thinking about things. you might be exposed to political uncertainties that wouldn't be visible if you didn't have the relationship. and so i think it's -- i think it's necessary. i mean, especially when you get pa past the, like, tiny startup stage and get to the level of, you know, where private equity's interested, it's almost impossible not to have some exposure to the government regardless of where you are.

>> we in our companies always just, not a policy, but we have at least one senior from the local community and they always have some relationship with the government. it's funny you mentioned a civil war, a coup d'etat. since 2000, we have been through two of each civil wars, coup d'etats and we run and -- we ran and still run the electric and water utilities of ivory coast since 2007. so we came right through that little civil war. we had an airline there during the initial coup d'état in the early 2000s. during the civil war, they commandeered our utility. came right on in. we had to answer to the u.s. government and the eu and, of course, we had to do something with the government. but our -- we had a whole government relations department of that investment there. and for cable, as i said, our cable company, we have to talk to government about poll rights

or the banking licenses, having to meet capital adequacy requirements all the time. so, yes, are we giving tutorials on good government to the government, though? no. we have our -- we have our lobbyists if we think something's wrong, like, kenya's competition commission is a bit zealous. you take a stake in almost anything, you got to get through them even if it's the first company, you know, regardless of market dominance so you do need to know what you're doing. i'm talking day-to-day. are we hanging out with the commission's inspector or customs guy? nothing like that, no. i would have to say, we're very similar with jonathan that we want to -- >> i think that probably is a good note to end on, sort of flagging up that there are obviously still risks and obstacles in terms of just kind of generally doing business in africa but also more specifically in the tech sector. but also there are obviously a host of opportunities as well and more importantly if you go into looking at africa, tech

initiatives with a different set of metrics and indicators that you night with a silicon valley firm, the sort of ranges and the options that you have available to you are sort of numerous. so with that, i'd like to thank our panel for taking time out on a friday afternoon and joining us here and obviously thanks to the audience for asking really good questions. give them a round of applause. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> we have a small gesture, as a small gesture of appreciation, we have for you guys signed pen and pencil sets with the inscription of harry truman's signature. >> fantastic.