African and global business leaders will gather for the Initiative for Global Development’s Spring Frontier 100 Forum on May 13-14, in Nairobi, Kenya. The Forum was originally scheduled for April 24-26 in Rabat, Morocco.
Under the theme, ‘Engines of Growth: Powering African Companies to Create Employment and Accelerate Development,’ the forum will focus on how African companies and multinational corporations can drive job creation and capitalise on today’s business environment for growth.
The Initiative for Global Development (IGD) is a US-based organisation that engages an influential network of global business leaders in creating sustainable growth and poverty alleviation through strategic business investment.
The Frontier 100 Forum is an exclusive, invitation-only biannual event that convenes the IGD Frontier Leader Network, a network of CEOs and senior executives from the US, African, European and South Asian companies operating in Africa. More than half of IGD Frontier Leaders hail from the African continent.
“The African region is experiencing unprecedented economic growth and Africa’s homegrown companies are at the center of that growth, creating more than 80 percent of jobs on the continent,” said IGD’s President & CEO, Dr. MimaNedelcovych.
“The Frontier 100 Forum will bring together global business leaders and leading economists to address how to advance economic growth to bolster employment opportunities through greater investments in growth sectors, industrialisation, as well as regional cooperation,” he added.
The forum will open with an afternoon session on May 13, on trade promotion and facilitation.
The half-day session, Achieving Inclusive Growth through Greater Trade Opportunities, will uncover the details on how African companies can take full advantage of trade opportunities to boost their export potential and drive Africa’s economic transformation.
The two-day forum was designed to encourage business leaders to offer insight, collaborate, and identify bold, action-oriented strategies to promote a business-driven development agenda on the African continent.
Forum sessions will range from strengthening Africa’s private sector to fuel job creation, harnessing the current global business climate for growth, industrialisation and matching African companies with multinational corporations to build supply chains.
The Forum will also launch report findings from IGD reports, including work with the Rockefeller Foundation on the Yieldwise initiative to tackle post harvest loss and the summary of impact assessment with the Niger Delta Partnerships Initiative.
With the fast-growing working age population in Africa projected to increase by 70 per cent or about 793 million by 2030, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Forum will address how to build a skilled workforce and absorb Africa’s “youth bulge” to meet the needs of an expanding workforce.
