mr. christopher furmunya. central director and associated directlier at the national democratic institute. we'll recognize mr. dia first with his opening comments and if you would follow. thank you both for sharing your knowledge with us today. go ahead, sir. >>> i'm really honored as director of the region bill of africa united nations program to be invited as a panelist. this is my brief appearance. i have submitted a longer text so i will try to limit my remarks to within five minutes. my purpose today will be two-fold. first i want to briefly update you on what we have learned about establishing africa and second i will share our view on the possible diplomatic approach to mitigate the threats to what is referred to as africa's arch of instability. let me before i start put a sense of perspective even though we are discussing africa, the continent is doing extremely great. for the last 15 years it has grown 5% per year since 2000. violent extremism is among the risks to parts of africa. the growth has been