African leaders issued a unified call on Monday to transform the continent’s vast economic and demographic potential into bankable projects at scale and speed, aiming to power development ambitions amid growing global uncertainties.
The call came at the 9th Africa Business Forum 2026, the continent’s flagship business gathering, which opened on Monday at the United Nations (UN) Conference Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, under the theme “Financing the Future of Africa: Jobs, Innovation and Creative Capital.”
The two day forum, convened annually by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in collaboration with the African Union (AU) and other partners, serves as a premier platform for high level engagement among African heads of state, private sector leaders and investors.
This year’s forum centered on fostering partnerships and leveraging blended finance to advance Africa’s youth economy.
Addressing the forum, Ethiopian President Taye Atske Selassie emphasized the crucial importance of harnessing the potential of Africa’s youth. Noting that the AU’s 50 year continental development blueprint, Agenda 2063, designates youth as the primary drivers of Africa’s renaissance, he said with over 70 percent of the continent’s population under the age of 30, Africa has yet to exploit its demographic potential.
According to President Atske Selassie, during this decade, 362 million young people entered the working age population, however, the current job market can only provide employment to 161 million people.
He added that this demographic reality can become Africa’s greatest strength if the continent succeeds in turning its youth into productive capital and its innovation into scalable enterprises.
Experts and policymakers at the forum stressed that while global capital has become more selective, Africa’s demographic and market fundamentals make it an irresistible frontier. They highlighted the need to address the existing gap between available funds and viable projects.
Emphasizing that transformation is already underway in multiple sectors across Africa, with the continent beginning to export value and not just commodities, UNECA Executive Secretary Claver Gatete said that despite these successes, the pace of transformation remains below potential.
Gatete stated that Africa faces a huge infrastructure financing gap and further loses billions of United States Dollars (USD) annually to illicit financial flows. Even so, the continent holds over USD1.1 trillion of domestic institutional capital in pension funds, insurance pools and sovereign assets.
According to him, the paradox is not a lack of capital, but the lack of mechanisms that connect capital to bankable projects.
Gatete proposed four strategic measures for collective action. These include scaling up domestic capital and deploying innovative financing instruments, stronger credit ratings and more credible African capital markets, full implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), and investing decisively in innovation, skills and data systems.
He stated that pension funds, sovereign assets and blended finance can support infrastructure and industrial platforms, adding that improving credit ratings, strengthening financial transparency and scaling up capital market development across the continent can lower borrowing costs and channel investment into productive sectors and youth enterprises.
Gatete emphasized that as tariff and non tariff barriers are removed under AfCFTA, regional value chains can emerge, enabling large scale production, industrialization and employment creation across the continent.
He added that the digital economy can generate millions of jobs, but only if African countries expand science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, research and development, and entrepreneurial ecosystems, so that African youth can participate competitively in the industries of the future.
A key feature of this year’s forum is the launch of the Jobs Wall Commitment Tracker, a UNECA facilitated platform designed to capture and monitor public and private sector commitments announced during the event. The mechanism is intended to enhance accountability, transparency and measurable impact in job creation initiatives across the continent.
The forum will also witness the official launch of the Least Developed Countries Report 2025 by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which provides new evidence and policy insights aimed at supporting enterprise growth, innovation and employment generation in Africa’s most vulnerable economies.
The Africa Business Forum continues through Tuesday, February 17, 2026, with deliberations expected to produce concrete partnership announcements and financing commitments.
