Sophia Michaels
Yemi Osinbajo
The immediate past Vice-President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, addressed world leaders at the inaugural Future Resilience Forum (FRF), which was held in the United Kingdom on the 10th of October, 2023.
He spoke about how imperative it was for the global North to collaborate with the global South, considering the latter’s substantial renewable energy potential and abundance of critical minerals.
This collaboration, he said, should be characterized by openness and transparency, rather than a mere pursuit of influence and leadership over the South. Osinbajo insisted that failure to adopt this approach would result in a squandering of a pivotal opportunity to effectively address global challenges pertaining to climate change, peace, and security.
Speaking further at the event themed: “Resilient Systems: Managing Critical Dependencies,” Osinbajo said that “every day, it is becoming more obvious that what the global south requires is more collaboration, more thinking together, rather than the exertion of influence.”
According to him, a lot of the resources needed to develop along a climate-conducive trajectory are located in the developing world, and with the rise of several nations to world power status, these host nations of resources now have a wider choice than before in choosing their preferred partners.
Other world leaders who participated at the Forum include the Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak; the President of Senegal, Macky Sall; the President of Iraq, Abdul Latif Rashid; William Hague, Former UK Foreign Secretary; British Petroleum’s Senior Vice President (Europe) and the Head of UK operations, Louise Kingham, Independent Energy Policy Institute Chairman, Narendra Taneja, amongst others.
Naija Nicki swift understands that the inaugural Future Resilience Forum event started on Monday evening, 9th October, with Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak, and President of Senegal, Macky Sall, giving keynote addresses on the theme: “Resilience of the Global South and Why it Matters.”
Other discussions at the Forum covered subject matters such as Resilient Systems, Democratic Resilience, Resilient Information Ecosystems, Technology and Accountability, as well as Resilient Food and Health Systems.
FRF, founded by Fiona Hill, is the world’s first security conference focused on promoting global resilience. The Forum aims to foster pragmatic, depoliticized and long-term cooperation and believes that democracies must push the definition of success to go beyond election cycles, helping governments, businesses, and society understand the challenges they face from electorates navigating a divisive information age.
Osinbajo is expected to, later on in the month, lead a panel discussion on “Navigating the Energy Transition” at the 10th Anniversary of the Financial Times Africa Summit coming up on the 17th of October, 2023, in the United Kingdom.
