Many thanks for the invitation to speak at this G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance Summit today.

I am told that many young entrepreneurs attending this Summit are already walking the talk on entrepreneurship, and have generated close to 100,000 new jobs.

You share with the United Nations the conviction that youth entrepreneurship will play a vital role in creating opportunity and livelihoods in the future – and that that will have beneficial effects for people of all ages and across societies and economies.

I thank our hosts today, the Enterprise Network for Young Australians for their determination to “encourage young people to be active, innovative, creative, and socially responsible citizens”.

This matters: today’s generation of adolescents and youth stands at 1.8 billion people – the largest our world has ever seen. Most of these young people live in developing countries.

The energy, enthusiasm, and innovation of this large youth generation can bring a huge demographic dividend to countries and to our world.

But, there’s a but: to get dividends one has to invest – and for youth that means investments in education, skills training, sexual and reproductive health services, availability of credit – and in all the other services which widen opportunity.