European Commissioner Hadja LAHBIB at the EC-WEF InvestFrontier high-level gathering
6 November 2026
Contents updated on 6 Nov 2026
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European Commission
Follow its sittings00:00 - 02:31
Speaker 1
Good morning. Good morning everybody, dear Sheba, excellencies, dear colleagues. It's a real pleasure to be with you this morning. Welcome to the launch of InvestFrontier. I love the word frontier.
On a map, it is just a line. But for explorers, it was always the place where the known world ended and new possibilities began. I hope we bring that same spirit here today, explorers with the courage to try something new. And I'm sure we are all explorers in this room. And I want to thank especially those of you who've crossed oceans and continents to be here, and a special thanks to Tom Fletcher, dear Tom, for joining us today.
InvestFrontier is a new platform we have created with the World Economic Forum to bring businesses and investors together with humanitarian organizations. Today, we have 70 representatives around the table from UN agencies and NGOs to financial institutions, private companies, philanthropies, and governments, of course. We don't always speak the same language, we use different acronyms, we come from different worlds, but we all believe we can make difference. So let me reassure you, we are not here to talk about moral duty or lofty ideals, we are here to talk business, to explore opportunities, attract investment, open new markets, and find new ways of working. More than half of you around these table come from the private sector, and I certainly don't intend to waste your valuable time.
Today, 2 billion people live in areas hit by conflicts and crisis. That's one in four people on this planet. This is an enormous humanitarian challenge, but it is also one of the greatest untapped economic opportunities of our time. Picture a displaced refugee, struggling to grow enough food to feed her family, and now imagine that same refugee having access to an innovative irrigation system developed on the other side of the world. The reality on the ground could look radically different for her.
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