The Africa Prosperity Network (APN), organisers of Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD), in collaboration with Africa-America Institute (AAI), a premier US-based international organisation dedicated to strengthening the human capacity of Africans, will jointly host the second edition of the Global Africa Forum (GAF) on the sidelines of the 79th session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York City, United States of America.
The Global African Forum serves as a platform for connecting the African continent with its diaspora to foster collaboration and take advantage of economic opportunities aligned with the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
The second edition will be held on Wednesday, 25 September 2024, in New York, at Dentons — the world’s largest global law firm by number of lawyers.
FOCUS OF FORUM
The forum will, among others, seek to connect the skills, technology, and financial investments of Global Africans to the development of key sectors, such as energy, health, education, housing, transportation, and digital infrastructure, on the African continent.
It will also seek to encourage global investments, including from Global African investors, to capitalise on Africa’s single market of 1.4 billion people as well as to encourage public-private partnerships for infrastructure projects that connect and integrate African markets.
The Global Africa Forum will also seek to unpack US-Africa economic policies that have the potential for creating funding opportunities for large-scale infrastructure projects that will help to connect and integrate the African continent.
Stephanie Diatta, head of international relations at Africa Prosperity Network pointed out that “the Global Africa Forum is an important platform to connect people of African descent across the globe to economic opportunities in Africa as the African Union (AU) works on building a single market.”
“Hosting it in New York annually as a side event of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is convenient for mobilising interest and networking,” she added.
MAIDEN GLOBAL AFRICA FORUM
The maiden edition of the forum, held last year (2023), witnessed the launch of the Global Africa Network by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, President of the Republic of Ghana, with the support of notable personalities such as Ahunna Eziakonwa, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Director, Regional Bureau for Africa.
Others were Professor Benedict Oramah, pcesident and Chairman of the board of directors at Afreximbank, Albert Muchanga, African Union (AU) Commissioner for Trade and Industry, and Wamkele Mene, secretary general of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat in attendance.
The Global Africa Network has a clear objective to mobilise and connect Global Africans consisting of over 200 million people and their enterprises, to the all-important project of building the world’s largest single market through the AfCFTA.
SCALING INVESTMENTS
The 2024 Global Africa Forum is hinged on a number of key areas to scale up investments in Africa’s infrastructure and they include (among others):
i. Pooling global investments in Africa’s infrastructure
ii. Leveraging investments from Global Africa
iii. Making public-private partnership projects (PPP) more attractive to global investors.
GAF and APD 2025
Curated under the theme: “Mobilising Global Africa Investments to Address Africa’s Infrastructure Financing Deficit,” the 2nd edition of the Global African Forum aligns with the theme for the 2025 Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD 2025), which will focus on strategic infrastructure development to enhance the continent’s single market agenda.
Positioned as an annual event, the APD provides a unique platform for Africa’s private sector actors to build relationships and collaborate with the public sector in order to expedite the realisation of Africa’s single market. APD 2025 scheduled to take place from Thursday, 30 January to Saturday,1 February 2025, in Accra is themed: “Delivering Africa’s Prosperity through Infrastructure: Invest. Integrate. Connect.”
AFRICA PROSPERITY NETWORK (APN)
The overarching vision of APN is an Africa beyond aid. APN seeks to work to bring prosperity to Africa by creating platforms for holding critical dialogues that will reshape the thinking of African leaders and encourage them to take bold steps in the areas of trade, the structure of national economies, political conduct, and culture.
APN is also motivated to mobilise African leaders and initiate partnerships that place the people of Africa first while enhancing their standard of living. APN is guided by values such as trust, diversity, integrity, boldness, innovation, and accountability as it works toward attaining its vision.
The APN holds the view that for Africa’s growth and prosperity to be sustainable, it must be inclusive; prioritising the participation of small and medium scale Enterprises (SMEs), women, and young people in the economic narrative.
To achieve its vision, the Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD) represents APN’s flagship event; a platform dedicated to leaders of Africa’s business, political and social sectors to discuss how to enhance intra-African trade as a catalyst for economic prosperity.
AFRICA-AMERICA INSTITUTE (AAI)
Founded in 1953, the Africa-America Institute (AAI) seeks to promote the continent’s development through higher education and skills training, convening activities, programme implementation, and management.
Africa-America Institute’s primary model is that it identifies capacity-building projects and coordinates the programmatic, financial administration, and evaluation necessary to deliver high-impact results.
The Institute raises funds to provide scholarships to smart and under-resourced students to attend top-performing universities in Africa. It also develops programmes that focus on increasing the skills of the next generation of African youth to make them globally competitive. AAI alumni are at the forefront of Africa’s public, non-profit, and private sectors.
