Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to talk about Africa's economic situation, particularly as it relates to energy. Africa's sovereign debt has risen quite substantially in the last number of years. According to the data I have, the debt load has increased about 183% since 2019, far faster than the increase in GDP in Africa. We've had African growth on the entire continent essentially stall out since the great financial crisis of 2008.
Presently, Africa uses four million barrels of oil a day for a population of 1.4 billion people. To put that in perspective, we in Canada use 2.5 million barrels of oil a day for a population of 40 million people. What will likely happen over the next number of years, as African growth gets back on track, is you'll see a substantial jump in energy consumption on the continent. Most developing countries have three times the oil consumption per capita that Africa has, at roughly three barrels of oil per day per capita. That would mean that in the entire African continent, we would be going from four million barrels a day in oil consumption to 12 million barrels of oil a day.
I just wanted to put those numbers on the table and seek your comment on that.