[As Delivered]

For anyone who doesn't know Andy Herscowitz, and I'm hopeful that you all do, I'll ask him to stand up and just to say hi. He is our leader from Power Africa. You will also get a chance to meet just after I conclude my colleague Gayle Smith from the White House, because Power Africa is in fact a presidential initiative that the President cares deeply about, and I think you'll see that in her remarks.

I just want to note that I'm honored to be here. It's truly been an extraordinary week. On Saturday in Davos, I saw representatives from many of the world's largest financial institutions and corporations rally around the idea that companies and investors can play a much bigger role in global development in emerging markets especially in these next 10 years.

Exploring life in Africa without access to electricity

On Sunday in India, I was with President Obama and Prime Minister Modi as they made clean energy access central to the relationship--the newly reinvigorated relationship--between the United States and India, which we hope is an anchor of our work and our presence throughout Asia.

And on Tuesday in Berlin, on the way home, I led a U.S. group that committed more than $1 billion to Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization because we know that that effort works to save children's lives, and we believe that investment will help save more than 5 million kids over the course of the next 5 years.

So today it is in fact the reality that American leadership and partnership is delivering better results around the world than we have seen in a long time.

We just concluded a discussion with President Obama where we talked through how when he erected a larger United States-led response to the Ebola crisis in Liberia there were as many as 500 new cases a week. Over the course of the last week, there were fewer than 1 new cases per day, on average. And I think that's an illustration for how when we work together we can achieve extraordinary goals.

And it gives us confidence, it gives our president confidence to stand before the joint session of Congress three years in a row during the State of the Union address and commit the United States to working with others to help eradicate extreme poverty within the next 2 decades.

Two and a half years ago, as part of a discussion of how we would get, there a few of us gathered in the dead of winter for a discussion on how we tackle perhaps the greatest barrier to growth across the African continent. At that time I would not have imagined that Power Africa would grow into such a vibrant and exciting public-private collaboration to achieve exactly that objective.

Progress has come not from putting a whole lot of new money on the table, or even because we have so many new partners that are engaged - and both of those are areas where we have made real progress - but our progress actually comes from a willingness to embrace a new model of development.

A model grounded in the principles of transparency, partnership, private investment and a relentless focus on delivering actual results that people can benefit from.

In the energy sector, as we have applied this model to power projects throughout the continent, we have taken an approach that means instead of writing a check to a contractor or simply drafting yet another 100, 200, maybe 500 page study on the enabling environment of what needs to happen for a project to actually move forward, we are trying to bring together, learn from and work with captains of industry, world class technical experts, and committed country leaders to in a very focused way determine which transactions we can all make happen.

By taking this transaction-centered approach, we hope to not only double access to power on the continent, but connect entrepreneurs to business opportunities in the markets of the future.

That was President Obama's vision, when he traveled to Africa in the summer of 2013 and launched this incredible partnership. It was his vision that led us during the African Leaders Summit to triple our goals to achieve 30,000 new megawatts of production and 60 million new connections for homes, families, and businesses throughout the continent.

And we have made these commitments because we are confident in your all's efforts to deliver amazing results. Today more than 90 private sector partners have stepped forward with more than $20 billion in investment commitments in power and energy in Africa.

In the past 2 years alone we have achieved financial close on more than 4,000 megawatts of new power generation and moved another 15,000 megawatts into the planning stages.

As a result, in Kenya, a 310-megawatt wind farm with 365 turbines is now ready to break ground after years of languishing, and negotiating, and working on paper work. The project drew on the creation of Power Africa to secure approval for investment guarantee from OPIC, a partial risk guarantee from the African Development Bank, and help from USAID and the Government of Kenya to make sure the grid could integrate intermittent wind power and documents could move through the system.

In Ethiopia, the same technical experts who helped close Lake Turkana are now helping pioneer Ethiopia's first independent power project, a geothermal energy facility that has the potential for upwards of a thousand megawatts of clean energy.

In a country without a geothermal law, without drilling regulations, without experience negotiating a Purchase Power Agreement, this has been a monumental task, but Power Africa has worked closely with the government and the Corbetti investors at every turn. As a result we have not only driven the deal nearer to financial close, but provided a signal to the world that Ethiopia's energy sector is open for business.

Thanks to a remarkable team—a Power Africa team of 12 transaction advisors, who are working around the clock to shepherd these transactions to completion—you are seeing similar progress in deal after deal, country after country.

Nigeria, despite some challenges in the lead up to the election, has had the historic hand over of power companies to the private sector.

In Ghana, domestic natural gas is producing electricity for the first time.

 In Liberia where the Ebola epidemic consumed the country this past year, Power Africa moved to quickly buy more than 17 generators locally so that health workers didn't have to work in the dark and cold protect themselves as they served those who were ill.

The creativity and speed of this effort has helped make a huge difference, and here in the United States Government we are drawing on the full range of our talent and expertise to ensure that Power Africa is a defining feature of how America engages with Africa for years and years to come.

The USTDA's feasibility studies; the Export-Import Bank’s support for helping extend Ghana's grid system more broadly; the political risk insurance offered from OPIC; and the technical experts that come from the Department of Energy are all part of our interagency effort working with USAID and others – inducing MCC - to make sure that we are bringing to these projects the full capabilities of the United States Government.

Power Africa's strength is, in fact, this diversity of partners and the tools they bring to the task. And we hope that this is just the beginning. Just as mobile phones replaced landlines and transformed business across Africa, we hope that this effort will empower and develop new energy technologies that can provide directly access to power to millions of people who will continue to live off the grid.

Through a competition launched by USAID, GE Africa, and the African Development Foundation we received nearly 500 ideas to turn on the lights in rural homes and schools across the continent.

And with a seed grant from USAID, Off Grid Electric, and I believe Graham Smith is here with us today - congratulations Graham - has delivered clean affordable energy to 35,000 homes in Tanzania by enabling customers to prepay for electrical services weekly, using their mobile phones.

Because they were so successful, we have reinvested in them with a million dollars to take their model to scale.

That million dollars help crowd in an additional $16 million of equitable investment from an American company called Solar City to help reach up to 200,000 Tanzanian homes and businesses in the next year.

This is what we are trying to do together, bring investors, entrepreneurs, governments, companies together to deliver novel and exciting results.

The year ahead is full of exciting potential, for the principles of Power Africa are actually not unique to just energy: infrastructure touches every aspect of human development around the world.

And I think we all know in the lead up to the Financing for Development conference this summer and the world's aspiration to set the target of ending extreme poverty by 2030, the only way we will achieve that goal, the only way, is if we actually enable nations and their people to benefit from modern, effective economic infrastructure.

Energy is an important part of this, but the deficits in emerging markets' infrastructure are extraordinary. And at the same time the global economic situation with very low interest rates and expectations of even lower interest rates in the future mean that there are huge pools of capital sitting on the sidelines eager to be exposed to investment returns in emerging markets - power, and a broad range of infrastructure assets, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, many of whom have engaged with us through Power Africa out of a desire to figure out how to safely and effectively partner with many of you.

This reality presents a tremendous opportunity to bridge the gap; to take the transaction centered approach to Power Africa to get capital moving toward power plants, water and sanitation projects, ports, and roads.

In the coming year this approach will form the foundation of an impressive new partnership with Citi, SMBC - Sumitomo Mitsui - Capital Peak Asset Management, Swedish Sida, and USAID, and other U.S. Government partners, to build an infrastructure platform for the developing world.

Through it, Citi Bank and SMBC have already committed to work to catalyze billions of dollars of lending for critical new infrastructure transactions that are nurtured through this system. We are eager to hear your suggestions and explore how to partner with you going forward. And Andy and Agnes Dasewicz, who I believe is also here, are eager to talk to you about these types of efforts further.

The outpouring of interest we have seen in Power Africa, in emerging markets and investment opportunities in infrastructure, agriculture really do give real credit to the comments David Humphrey of Standard Bank made in recent Financial Times editorial. He said, "It's really no longer a question of whether [this progress happens], but rather when."

Now, as excited as I am about the progress that we've already had, we are not unaware of the tremendous implementation risks ahead. And I want to take a few minutes to share them with you so you can use the rest of this session to talk about them and think about them.

I know they’re concerns that any U.S. Government entity over time will fail to deliver on our end of the bargain; that we'll lose our focus on transactions and revert to generic policy dialogue that doesn't really help specific deals get done faster.

We ask you to reach out to us if you are facing obstacles and concerns with your projects and programs. I am eager to tell you,: you should call Andy often to make sure the team is being responsive on a transaction-by-transaction basis.

I know there are concerns about the price of oil, the impact of falling energy prices on long-term sustained investment, and we are committed to working through that as well.

I know there are concerns that our partners will fail to prioritize larger projects, and fail to build the kind of regional political commitment to certain larger scale energy projects that we know have to be a part of Africa's power mix going forward.

That's a tough challenge to tackle, but I'm proud to note that just earlier today the African Union endorsed the Africa Power Vision, an effort that has been under way - as you know - for a while in order to start to build exactly that kind of political support around specific investment opportunities. And we are very proud of the Ambassador and of the entire team at the AU that has made this happen today.

And more than anything we want to hear from you, which of our tools, which of our agencies, which of our programs, are actually helping you get deals done, and which ones are just taking up your time with chatter.

Yesterday I met with 90 Power Africa partners for the sole purpose of sharing the point of view that this project will only succeed if we all remain determined and focused on getting deals done faster, and making sure we smooth the way in that kind of transactional approach.

So let me just conclude by thanking you for being committed to the enterprise, for asking you to continue to work with us through our growing pains as we continue to evolve a new model of development.

Because at the end of the day Power Africa is really not just about getting deals done and expanding the megawatts available to the African people; it's about demonstrating that it's possible - in a year when the world is actually debating this issue at the highest levels - to end extreme poverty.

It's about taking long standing challenges, like the lack of energy, the lack of infrastructure, the lack of investment capital, the inability of governments to get paper moving quickly and structure deals effectively; it's about taking those challenges and proving that we can do things differently.

And if we succeed this year, I'm confident we will succeed in the next 15 against the larger and more meaningful task of ending extreme poverty around the world.

Thank you for the opportunity to be with you, thank you Andy for your leadership, and for the team, thank you to the partners who make this happen, and we are here to support you every step of the way. Thanks very much.