Time for Peace - Europe's challenge in Africa and the Middle East

Hella’s experience with Young Arab Voices started in 2014 and inspired her to immerse herself in civil society, grassroots activism and women’s empowerment. With the École Normale Supérieure debate team, she won the Tunisian national debate competition and was the fourth best debater. Hella is also a Co-Founder of Aspire to Inspire, an initiative aiming to promote English Spoken Word poetry in Tunis and is currently very active with the socio-cultural grassroots initiative called “Blech 7ess” (Without Noise), focused on pairing the promotion of art with social dimensions. Being a writer herself, she recently published a few works and is also writing lyrics for local bands. She has worked for the German embassy in Tunis since 2017.

Alexander de Croo is a Flemish liberal politician, economist and businessman who leads the Belgian government’s efforts to improve digital growth and development. Most notably, he initiated the establishment of an advisory board called “Digital Minds for Belgium”, made up of the country’s top ICT experts, and launched an ambitious action plan “Digital Belgium”, aimed at positioning the country as one of Europe’s top three digital member states. This digital revolution includes developing 1,000 new start-ups, creating 50,000 new jobs, and achieving an electronic government by 2020.

Investeq Capital Limited provides financing and financial solutions to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) across the African continent. Awendo has over 20 years of post qualification experience in audit, accounting, management consultancy and corporate finance advisory. Awendo is a board member of various SMEs as well as member of the advisory board of the Kenya Institute of Management.

In her current role, Rüttgers deals with matters such as management of the ACP Investment Facility, the business plan among other policy and institutional matters. Prior to this, she spent 16 years in the Operational Department as a loan officer in the West Africa, North Africa and Indian Ocean regions.

In his current capacity, Vervaeke is responsible the EU foreign affairs as well as the programming of the EU financial cooperation in the region. He has also been appointed Senior EU Coordinator for the Great Lakes region, working closely with the EU Delegations, the European Commission and EU Member States to advance European objectives of peace and prosperity in the region. Before taking up this post, Vervaeke was the EU Special Representative to the African Union and the Head of Delegation of the European Commission Delegation to the AU in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.