Kenya's President William Ruto on Tuesday used the Africa Forward Summit 2026 platform in Nairobi to rally African nations behind a new continental financial order to reduce dependence on Western lenders and unlock trillions of dollars in African capital for development.
- •Speaking alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, Ruto declared that “Africa must increasingly finance Africa,” unveiling a sweeping vision built around an alliance of African multilateral financial institutions to coordinate capital mobilisation, risk-sharing and infrastructure financing across the continent.
- •African governments are seeking to redesign the continent’s development financing architecture amid growing frustration with high borrowing costs, external debt pressure and what leaders describe as persistent bias in global financial systems.
- •At the centre of the proposal is a coalition of African financial institutions including the African Development Bank, African Export-Import Bank, Africa Finance Corporation, Trade and Development Bank, Africa50 and African Trade & Investment Development Insurance.
“The era in which Africa’s development was principally framed through aid, dependency and unsustainable borrowing must give way to a new paradigm grounded in investment, innovation and domestic resource mobilisation,” Ruto told delegates drawn from governments, international organisations, development banks and the private sector.
Ruto said the institutions would form the backbone of a coordinated African financial architecture capable of financing infrastructure, industrialisation, energy transition and regional trade corridors “on African terms.”
According to Ruto, the continent currently holds more than $4 trillion in long-term domestic savings, including over $1 trillion in pension and insurance assets and more than $500 billion in central bank reserves, even as governments continue to struggle to finance roads, energy systems, logistics corridors and housing projects.
The remarks came amidst an extensive showcase of new Africa-Europe investment partnerships spanning energy, digital infrastructure, entrepreneurship, sport and climate finance.
On the opening day of the summit, the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and its partners unveiled a series of initiatives targeting sustainable growth across the continent.
In West Africa, AFD, its private-sector arm Proparco and the West African Development Bank signed agreements aimed at scaling up financing for climate action, blue economy investments, energy efficiency and resilience projects across the West African Economic and Monetary Union region.
The summit also produced a €173 million electricity access programme for Benin under the PEDER+ project, backed by AFD, European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Union.
The initiative is expected to deliver 120,000 electricity connections and extend power access to about 600,000 people across 750 localities through the construction and rehabilitation of nearly 4,500 kilometres of electricity lines.
The programme forms part of the wider Mission 300 initiative led by the World Bank and the African Development Bank, which aims to connect 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa to electricity by 2030.
Digital Infrastructure and AI
AFD Group and the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development announced a partnership to establish a pan-African and European high-performance computing network designed to support research and innovation in climate modelling, health, agriculture and sustainable resource management.
At the same time, Kenya hosted a high-level Africa-Europe dialogue on sovereign artificial intelligence organised alongside the summit by the Kenyan government, the Africa-Europe Foundation, Digital Africa and AFD Group.
The discussions focused on AI governance, digital infrastructure and talent development, with organisers insisting that Africa should shape the future rules governing artificial intelligence rather than merely consume imported technologies.
“Africa must be a co-author of the rules and uses of global artificial intelligence,” AFD Group said during the discussions.
The summit also highlighted the expanding role of entrepreneurship and cultural industries in Africa’s economic transformation agenda.
Under the Choose Africa initiative led by Proparco, nearly €3.5 billion has already been channelled into more than 40,000 businesses across the continent, supporting over two million direct and indirect jobs.
French development partners used the Nairobi gathering to unveil the next phase of the programme, which will expand access to financing for small businesses while supporting African and French firms seeking to scale operations across the continent.
Sport and youth development also featured prominently, with AFD Group announcing that it had already met, four years ahead of schedule, its €500 million investment target in sport-for-development projects across Africa.
As part of the initiative, AFD Group partnered with NBA Africa to renovate basketball courts at the University of Nairobiunder the Basketball Experience project.
