Ladies and gentlemen, you will all agree with me that we have had a stimulating evening. We could stay here till late, but we also respect your time. We are aware that tomorrow this conference will continue, and we want you to come back for more, those of you who can, and are not flying out. We are happy that you have been able to join us to celebrate our own Prof Aki Sawyerr. The testaments that have been made about him; his convictions, his open mindedness, his love for debate, his fairness and respect, humility, simplicity, are all inspiring We have also been reminded that one of the perils oflong life is that you get to write about your life, so we are waiting for Aki's memoir. It will be an unrestrained memoir.

I couldn't begin to summarise our keynote address, but as I said Prof Olukoshi has given us a very succinct history lesson however old you are. Taking us through our different phases and brought us right back to where we are. The remarkable thing is that the issues that confront us are so similar. Over the past few days, we have seen the xenophobic attacks in South Africa on other African citizens. Completely unacceptable, the High Commissioner of South Africa to Ghana has made some very unhelpful comments but at the same time, she strikes at some of the issues that have been discussed here. The poverty, the disillusionment, the fact that elections are useful, they are necessary, but they do not solve all our problems, and we have not tackled the existential issues. Our speakers have characterised it as a surrender of our social and economic policies and this is something that is not going away that we really need to deal with. Some of the questions have brought up the issue of organisation; how do we begin to organise against these mighty political parties with all their money? How do we find alternatives to this situation that we are in? And it has been suggested that we start with ourselves, and it is so easy to point a finger at the next person.

But we start with ourselves. We question many of the things; we all vote so we subscribe to something or other. However, that should not blind us to the realities that we are living in, and that this issue of active citizenship which is sometimes dangled before us, it is like just be an active citizen.

We really do not know what it means, but being an active citizen is going to lead to a lot of questioning about our modes of operating, of our institutions, the business as usual, to begin to address the chasms between the middle class and the rest of society, the deepening inequalities that we're seeing, the political violence. We would be dealing with some of those socioeconomic issues that have been hinted at today but have not really been addressed.

The icing on the cake is that tomorrow we get to hear some remarks from the celebrant. So, this should be enticing and should bring us all here if we can and I look forward to seeing all of you. We thank you for your presence and for your solidarity. See you tomorrow and many thanks to our panel.