Your Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, colleagues, friends of the African Union, Representatives of Africa's Innovation ecosystem, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Good morning.
I am honoured to join you for the opening of the inaugural AU Innovation Festival 2025, a powerful demonstration of Africa's creativity, collaboration, and confidence in its talented young people.

Allow me, foremost, to acknowledge the African Union Women, Gender and Youth Directorate for convening this trailblazing multistakeholder initiative through the AU Innovation Lab, bringing together African Union Departments, development partners, policymakers, private sector and Africa's young innovators to forge a path towards Repositioning the African Union for Youth-centered innovation Leadership. I would like to emphasize that Innovation and digitalization stimulate job creation, economic transformation, and efficient service delivery. Our ability to innovate determines how effectively we can respond to Africa's priorities.

The AU InnoFest'25 theme is a timely echo of our aspiration for Locally relevant solutions that are built by Africans, for Africans, fueled by Africa's youth force.

Innovation has always been at the heart of Agenda 2063, our blueprint for "The Africa We Want". We are enjoined to leverage innovation to drive Africa's transformation, achieve self-reliance, and compete globally. This is with a vision of an innovation driven Africa, powered by youth creativity, entrepreneurship, and digital transformation as the foundation for home-grown, scalable innovation.

Distinguished guests,

At the centre of Africa's innovation story are its young people, the driving force of creativity, digital transformation, and entrepreneurship on the continent. Africa's youth are not merely beneficiaries of innovation; they are its architects.

Our continent's greatest competitive advantage lies in the energy, adaptability, and bold thinking of our young innovators. Across sectors, from agriculture to fintech, health, and civic technology, young Africans are designing solutions that are redefining how governments operate, how communities connect, and how opportunities are created.

The African Union recognizes that empowering youth with the right tools, skills, and platforms is not an act of inclusion, but an investment in Africa's collective future, a future where innovation is driven from within, by those who best understand the challenges and the promise of the continent.

Initiatives like the AU Digital and Innovation Fellowship have embedded young African innovators in AU departments to co-create solutions.

May I request the young innovators from the 2nd cohort of the AU Digital and Innovation Fellowship to please stand up.

I'm aware that over the past twelve months, you've worked tirelessly on innovations that will improve our organizational efficiency. Your presence here demonstrates the confidence we have in our young people, in the spirit of Aspiration 6 of Agenda 2063. I wish you the best as you graduate later today. Thank you for your service.

I also wish to welcome the first cohort of AU Go Gal innovators. May I request the young women from this cohort to please stand up. Being part of this NextGen challenge for budding women innovators gives you the opportunity to receive technical support, mentorship and to polish your ideas for impact. I wish you the best at tomorrow's Spark Tank, where you'll have the opportunity to pitch your ideas to an expert panel of judges. Thank you, also, to the Go Gal Mentors for your dedication to nurturing these young innovators.

While the amazing 2nd cohort of the AU Civic Tech Fund is not here with us, I know that the recently concluded phase of this initiative was a success, amplifying the least heard voices in policy processes, through Civic Technology.

I'm also aware that the selection process is almost complete, and the third cohort of the AU Media Fellowship will join us soon and continue to work with our Information and Communication Directorate to reframe Africa's narrative, presenting balanced, accurate, and development-focused stories about the continent, correcting stereotypes and highlighting opportunities in line with Agenda 2063.

Our partnership with German Development Cooperation, through the GIZ Office to African Union has been instrumental in advancing innovation across the continent. We also acknowledge our collaboration with Afrilabs, UN WOMEN, UNICEF, UNITAR, WORLD BANK, and the Data Innovation Lab.

Ladies and gentlemen,
As we open this festival, I call upon all departments, organs, and partners to champion innovation not as a project, but as a principle of how we work. Let AU InnoFest'25 mark a new chapter, one where the African Union stands as the home of African innovation, for Africa and by Africa.

The African Union's approach to innovation should be grounded in the development of functional ecosystems that enable collaboration, coherence, and continuity across institutions and sectors.

These ecosystems bring together policymakers, innovators, researchers, and private sector actors within a shared framework that supports knowledge exchange, resource alignment, and scalability.

By strengthening linkages between innovation hubs, academia, development partners, and AU departments and organs, we ensure that innovation is not an isolated activity, but an integrated process that advances Agenda 2063.

Through frameworks such as the Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa, the Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa, the AU Data Policy Framework and the Continental AI Strategy, innovation is positioned both as a developmental tool and a systems approach, connecting ideas, institutions, and implementation across the continent.

I hereby declare the meeting open.