Written by Lennox Yieke
The inaugural edition of the Alamein Africa Forum brought together Africa’s top political and business leaders for high-level talks on how to drive the continent’s development agenda forward.
Held from 2 – 4 October in New Alamein City on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, the meeting was opened by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and drew heads of state and senior officials from across the continent, including President Évariste Ndayishimiye of Burundi, João Lourenço of Angola, John Mahama of Ghana, and Hassan Sheikh Mohamud of Somalia.
Also in attendance were Libya’s Presidential Council Chairperson Mohamed Al Menfi, Tanzania’s vice president Deogratius Ndejembi, Uganda’s vice president Jessica Alupo, and Kenya’s prime cabinet secretary Musalia Mudavadi.
The AU Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf joined the proceedings, which took place alongside the AU’s mid-year coordination meeting.
Top business leaders, investors, and representatives of regional and global economic institutions were also in attendance, including Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote and Afreximbank president and board chair George Elombi.
The forum, which will be hosted by Egypt biennially under the auspices of the AU, focused on trade, infrastructure, agriculture, healthcare, mining, technology, and renewable energy. Discussions emphasised private sector leadership, financing mechanisms, and the need to move from dialogue to delivery.
Boosting intra-African trade
President El-Sisi said Africa’s private sector is its main engine of economic growth, accounting for more than 70% of the continent’s GDP. He called for leaders to take decisive measures to make it easier for African businesses to invest, produce and trade in the continent under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
“It is essential to empower the African private sector to unlock its latent potential, actively advance the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), and contribute to fulfilling Africa’s developmental targets under Agenda 2063,” he said.
Youssouf echoed this sentiment, noting that despite progress towards deeper regional integration, trade between African countries still falls short of expectations.
African economies, he said, rely more on external markets than domestic ones, leaving the continent more vulnerable to global shocks. In 2024, Intra-African trade reached $220bn, accounting for 14.4% of the continent’s trade. By contrast, regional trade accounts for 60-65% of Europe’s total trade, 51% of Asia’s, 40% of North America’s, and 20-25% of Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
He called for sustained reforms to the continent’s financial architecture, and argued that the continent must free up more of its domestic capital to finance development and grow intra-African trade.
“To boost intra-African trade we need to work on systemic reforms such as payments in local currencies, better insurance and guarantee measures, and an ecosystem that is supported by African capital,” Youssouf said.
On his part, Ndayishimiye welcomed the strong political will on display at the Alamein Africa forum. He, however, underlined the need for follow-through. Continental initiatives like the AfCFTA must translate into tangible results that create real economic opportunity for Africans, he argued.
“Africa does not lack partners, but mechanisms that effectively translate partnerships into tangible projects, investments and production,” he said.
“AfCFTA should not remain only a legal framework but should become a functional market. That is why we should accelerate efforts to build regional corridors, harmonise rules, improve access to trade finance, and build value chains,” he added.
Nardos Bekele‑Thomas, CEO of the African Union Development Agency (AUDA‑NEPAD), called for the elimination of non-tariff barriers like the absence of harmonised standards and regulatory frameworks in some regions. These bottlenecks, she warned, impede intra-African trade and undermine the success of the AfCFTA.
“The AfCFTA is real, but intra-African trade is not. While we are talking about integration, we are facing fragmentation,” she said.
Bekele‑Thomas reiterated the need to create conducive conditions for Africa’s private sector to thrive. “We need more African businesses investing beyond national borders, building regional value chains, and competing globally,” she said.
Showing up in crisis
Elombi said that in the face of successive global shocks – from the Covid-19 pandemic to wars in Ukraine and, more recently, Iran – Afreximbank has emerged as one of the few financial institutions to intervene swiftly and decisively in support of African economies.
The bank approved a $10bn Gulf Crisis Response Facility after the Iran conflict sent energy prices soaring, deployed $4bn when the Ukraine war triggered inflationary pressures, and financed vaccine procurement during the pandemic.
“We did not ask any of you to rewrite your economic policies in making those interventions. We just supported it. We acted because it is our duty, “ he said.
He argued that Afreximbank’s ability to act counter-cyclically stems from its African ownership and governance, which enables it to leverage its balance sheet to protect and advance the continent’s interest – and to do so with commercial discipline.
“Your bank remains strong to this day, despite those interventions and all that which was said against it. The shareholders’ funds stand at $9 billion. In the first half of this year alone, our net income rose by 30%. The balance sheet is about six times what it was a decade ago,” Elombi said.
He commended African governments for backing Afreximbank’s efforts to shore up its balance sheet. “You have yourselves, as African countries which have been said not to have the capacity, injected tremendous capital in Afreximbank,” he said.
Questioning unfair credit rating methodologies
Elombi warned that some global ratings agencies are applying unfair rating methodologies that put pressure on African-owned multilaterals like Afreximbank to cede control of their equity to ‘non-regional shareholders’ – countries outside the continent.
“This year in June, one rating agency finalised its methodology for rating us,” he said. That methodology, he explained, gives higher scores to institutions “whose capital includes a significant share of highly rated non-African shareholders.”
This effectively rewards foreign ownership, he argued. “That explicitly suggests that the only way Afreximbank could receive credit uplift and credit increase was for Afreximbank to have amongst its shareholders those foreign entities, those countries which the rating agencies described as large, non-borrowing, highly rated.”
“We are not asking to be judged kindly but accurately. When Standard & Poor’s returned to rate this bank after more than a decade, it pointed to what we already know: we are a countercyclical lender backed by shareholders who keep injecting capital,” he added.
“Credit ratings should measure substance, not how we conform to others. Why is this bank under such focus at this particular time? It seems that an African bank that shows up in every crisis and grows using its own capital does not fit the story that was told about us,” Elombi said.