Programme

From Sawiris, Dangote and Ibrahim, to Tata, Rockefeller and Walton – they all have one thing in common: they entrusted their successors with leadership roles in their foundations first. Foundations can be a sandbox to test leadership capacity, ideas, markets, technologies, and delivery models. Deployed strategically, family giving is where legacy is shaped, risk can be taken where markets won’t go, trust is built faster than through transactions, and long-term relevance is secured. However, the misuse of philanthropy can have devastating consequences – from reputational to financial. So what’s the recipe for achieving impact with wealth?

Key points:

• How should next generation leaders strike the balance to ensure their giving builds relationships with government, institutions and communities, and not dependencies?
• Is philanthropy a credible arena for successors to build authority and judgment, or is early exposure to the realities of the family business the best route?
• Should the next generation apply the company’s expertise for good, or can any philanthropic activity unlock benefits for the core business?

Africa has undoubtedly entered a new cycle of transformative mega-projects, which will unlock growth across various value chains. Simandou is exporting ore through a rail corridor that opens up Guinea’s hinterland and will seed a $1bn wealth fund. The Zambia-Tanzania-Kenya Interconnector will create transmission links between East and Southern Africa, powering industry along the way. Morocco is advancing two new deep-water ports and LNG capacity, and the 2Africa subsea cable is rapidly expanding the continent’s digital backbone. McKinsey projects $5 trillion in infrastructure investment across Africa by 2040. Is now the time to relaunch Africa’s mythical mega-projects, from Inga to LAPPSETT? 

Key points:

• Is big beautiful?: What delivers more impact – jobs, power, opportunities – many small-scale players or an equivalent mega-project?
• Pitfalls of partnerships: What can Simandou, ZTK and other successful partnerships teach project promoters about coalition-building towards a mega-project?
• Who’s next – which mega-projects are expected to see the light in the coming 3 years? And why?

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Gulf investors are leading the Global South’s recent charge into Africa, accounting for 22% of greenfield FDI. This presents an opportunity to optimise how and where this investment is deployed. New GCC capital is expanding Africa’s investment pool, with North Africa’s big-ticket projects (UAE’s ADQ-backed luxury city Ras El-Hekma) drawing most interest and GCC backers also targeting African green energy to hedge falling fossil fuel demand. Yet much of sub-Saharan Africa and critical sectors such as agribusiness and health, have yet to appeal to such foreign investors, risking a repeat of past asymmetrical benefits. Can African markets widen impact, and negotiate favourable terms without dulling investor appetite?

Key points:

• What are the risks & benefits of Gulf investment strategies vs. the legacy FDI superpowers USA, China and the EU?
• Who builds, who benefits: What legal architecture could govern new Middle Power investment to limit debt distress and secure business for local suppliers – without spooking investors?
• What reforms will help overlooked sectors and countries stir up Global South investor fervour?

Build-(Own-)Operate-Transfer structures have long accounted for over 60% of new grid-connected power projects in Africa. With ports, terminals and logistics hubs benefiting from contracted revenues and trade-linked demand, transport BOTs are also back in fashion. So is BOT the right model for a continent that needs to quintuple its data-centre capacity just to meet medium-term demand? BOT is particularly well-suited to digital infrastructure where software is anchored in long-lived physical or institutional assets—from fibre networks to government clouds and national platforms—allowing states to internalise capability and sovereignty over time without delaying deployment. Where’s the catch? 

Key points:

• BOT/BOOT tenors in Africa are getting longer, averaging 25-30 years, signalling investor confidence. What are the risks to mitigate for private investors considering such PPPs?
• Capacity, Control, Credibility: Can BOTs genuinely address government concerns around privately operated digital infrastructure—or do they simply defer them?
• First Things First: From national ID systems to fibre-optic backbones, and from sovereign clouds to national payment switches, what should come first? 

Africa’s port-industrial complexes are becoming major economic engines – from Tanger Med’s 110,000-job platform to Durban’s automotive basin. Yet one often overlooked dimension is operational efficiency within these industrial sites that can span up to 20 km². Predictable, safe movement across these distances is no longer an operational detail but a strategic variable shaping productivity and competitiveness. Evidence from large-scale operational layout shows that optimising mobility flows can save thousands of miles and hundreds of labour hours annually per facility. Advanced hubs already act on this logic: France committed €222m to Le Havre’s Mobi Smart Port, while Amazon’s redesigned internal flows delivered double-digit throughput gains. As global manufacturers seek resilient supply chains beyond Asia, how African zones optimize internal logistics will determine their industrial competitiveness.

Key points:

• What is the measurable ROI of internal mobility optimization — and who captures it: the zone operator, the tenant, or both?
• Should zone operators become mobility orchestrators, or is a new public-private model linking ports, tenants, transport operators and city authorities required?
• Can smart mobility systems – with their lower operating costs and reduced fuel dependency – become a decisive advantage in attracting global manufacturers?

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Global trade through African ports is breaking records. But rising container volumes hide a critical divergence: the kind of goods being traded. Over the past decade, imports of machinery and industrial inputs have plummeted in some major economies like Nigeria (-9,4%), Kenya (-6,2%) and South Africa (-2,8%), while fuel and consumption goods dominate. In Nigeria, fuel alone recently reached 38% of all imports. This isn’t about access to trade routes – it’s about how trade is structured. Fiscal policies, port strategies, and special economic zones are actively shaping whether Africa uses global networks to build industrial capacity or to entrench dependency on foreign finished goods. This roundtable moves beyond logistics metrics to ask the strategic question: How do we ensure Africa’s integration into global trade drives industrial deepening, not just consumption?

Key points: 

• Policy or Plumbing? What explains why some economies exempt capital goods from duties while others stack levies to 30-40% effective rates? How have successful industrializers structured fiscal incentives?
• From Zones to Factories: What measurable shifts in import composition signal that SEZs and anchor investments are actually building industrial capacity rather than remaining empty real estate?
• The Logistics Lever: How can port authorities, trade corridors, and finance institutions actively reshape trade patterns toward production over consumption? What practical tools actually work? 

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Modern African retail is expanding rapidly. In South Africa, food sales exceed $40 billion, and Côte d’Ivoire’s market grows nearly 10% annually. Retailers like Naivas, Auchan, and Shoprite are expanding shelf space for local products. However, reliance on imports continues to increase, with EU and Chinese food exports to Africa outpacing domestic food supply. Fragmented aggregation, weak cold chains, and inconsistent quality are major barriers preventing African producers from supplying formal retail and organised distribution at the necessary scale and consistency. This session will explore the specific sourcing, contracting, and logistics solutions required to transform retail growth into a platform for scalable African food champions.

Key points:

• As retail and organised distribution expand, which sourcing and contracting arrangements can elevate African producers to reliable, national-scale supply?
• Which improvements in cold chains, processing, packaging, or certification offer the biggest competitiveness gains?
• What would it take for African producers to meet the quality standards that formal buyers require, from shelf-life to delivery timing?

By 2030, African consumer spending on food alone will near $1 trillion, with parallel growth across telecoms, housing, and mobility. Yet reaching these consumers means navigating markets that are informal, price-sensitive, mobile-first, and fragmented. Scale here depends on gritty execution: distribution reach, reliable quality, disciplined pricing, and earned trust. Building for Africa’s coming mass markets demands a different playbook. Groups like Flour Mills of Nigeria have moved beyond commodities into branded products that challenge multinationals. Local beverage producers win by tailoring to African tastes and price points. Affordable smartphones now function as core market infrastructure – enabling payments, data-driven distribution, and direct consumer engagement.

Key points:

• Meeting the Real Market: How to design products and distribution for informal, price-sensitive markets, avoiding misplaced middle-class assumptions?
• Competing with Giants: What strategies let African companies compete against multinationals with deep brand equity, R&D budgets, and global supply chains?
• Digital Edge: Which capabilities – mobile payments, data-driven distribution, or direct customer access – matter most, and how do African firms build them sustainably?

African businesses already pay for poor road infrastructure – through spoilage, transit delays, and logistics costs baked into every margin. The Abidjan-Lagos corridor moves over 50 million tonnes of freight annually, yet border crossings still average 24 to 48 hours of delay. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, roughly 80% of freight travels by road, yet the network remains critically underbuilt. Ambitious projects like the $15.6 billion Nigeria-Côte d’Ivoire highway are now set to begin – but construction is only half the story. Maintenance remains chronically underfunded, and the broader road financing gap exceeds $100 billion annually. If business is already absorbing the cost of missing connectivity, what would it take to turn that burden into a financing opportunity – and which models have already demonstrated returns at scale? 

Key points:

• The hidden tax: How much does inadequate road infrastructure cost African businesses in eroded margins and lost competitiveness – and who is actually bearing that cost?
• Paying to fixt it: What would it take to turn highway users – manufacturers, logistics operators, FMCG distributors – into co-financiers? Which structures have demonstrated returns, and what do governments need to provide?
• Compress the timeline: The Cape-to-Cairo highway took several decades to complete. What does it take to build the remaining Trans-African corridors in a generation – and who needs to be at the table?

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Africa’s M&A activity fell 24% in value in early 2025, even as global dealmaking grew. A key structural bottleneck is the lack of acquisition finance: flexible, deal-linked lending repaid in line with a target’s future cash flows. Without it, firms must drain working capital or surrender equity, stalling consolidation and fragmenting value chains. While bespoke deals such as MCB’s facility backing Invictus Investment Company’s $200–300m acquisitions show the model can work, few African banks offer such financing, many firms are unsure how to qualify, and DFIs that could provide the long-tenure instruments view it as too close to investment banking. This roundtable focuses on how banks and can share risk to turn acquisition finance into a scalable pipeline for African mid-cap firms. 
 
Key points:

• Which financing solutions are Africa’s corporate champions still not accessing to execute their expansion plans?
• Sharing the exposure with DFIs: Which extra partnerships are needed to expand the layered instruments within an acquisition finance facility?
• What must M&A-ready businesses demonstrate to qualify for flexible acquisition finance, and how should lenders codify those requirements? 

For decades, Africa’s cities have expanded faster than their industrial foundations. As urban demand accelerates, local production of the materials needed to build the African skyline – cement, steel, glass and clink – has not kept up. By 2050, Africa’s cities will be home to 800 million more people, yet in 2024, the continent produced only 22.3 million tons of crude steel – about a quarter of what is needed to house them. As demand continues to grow, industrial production capacity is constrained by power, logistics, financial and political challenges. How can Africa supply the ingredients needed so that Africa can carve out its fair share of the demographic dividend?

Key points:

• From Real Estate to Production Lines – Africa is adding millions of housing units yet barely adding to its manufacturing output. How can industries secure guaranteed offtake contracts, justifying new production facilities
• Baseload for Industrial Bases – Africa is not only short of megawatts; it is short of an industrial-grade baseload. How can grids, battery systems and industrial IPP models be integrated to deliver factory-ready electrons?
• Capex Without Patience – A cement kiln or steel furnace is a 30-year project. How can patient capital be deployed further up the value chain, into the overlooked inputs necessary for urban development?