For the roughly 1,500 African business leaders gathered this weekend in El Alamein, on Egypt’s northern coast, the talk of investment, trade and economic cooperation was never abstract policy. It came down to a practical question: who pays for Africa’s development, and how quickly ordinary businesses and communities across the continent will feel the difference.
The forum, which opened Friday and runs from Oct. 2 to 4, is co-organized by the Egyptian government, the African Export-Import Bank, and the African Union Development Agency. It also served as the backdrop for a larger occasion, the 25th anniversary of AUDA-NEPAD, marked on Saturday by a summit of the agency’s five founding nations: South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, Senegal and Nigeria.
Angolan President João Lourenço, current chair of the agency’s steering committee, co-chaired the summit alongside Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. Burundian President and AU Chairperson Évariste Ndayishimiye attended, as did AU Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf and AUDA-NEPAD CEO Nardos Bekele-Thomas.
The message from the leaders was consistent. Africa must fund its own future. Lourenço returned to the principle that gave birth to NEPAD in 2001, that the continent must take ownership of its own development, and argued that this ownership must now extend to how African institutions are financed.
“Predictable African financing is an essential condition for AUDA-NEPAD to plan effectively, respond to member states’ priorities, and drive programs from preparation to implementation at the scale required by Agenda 2063,” Lourenço told the gathering.
He urged all member states to make voluntary financial contributions to the agency, noting that Angola had led by example with such a contribution the previous year. He also stressed seamless coordination between the AU Commission, regional economic communities and member states, citing the recent Luanda Summit on infrastructure and the development of the Lobito Corridor as evidence of what coordinated African leadership can achieve. AUDA-NEPAD, he announced, will establish a local presence in Angola to help bridge the gap between continental decisions and national implementation, the point at which policies either reach people’s daily lives or fall short.
El-Sisi reinforced the same vision in blunt terms. True development, he declared, cannot come from the outside. “The time has come for Africa to rely more on its own resources and to build and adopt African financing mechanisms,” he said, pointing to the transition toward knowledge-based economies and the empowerment of young Africans as central goals.
Reflecting on Egypt’s recent tenure chairing the NEPAD steering committee, El-Sisi said closing the continent’s severe funding gaps had been a top priority. He highlighted the push to create a “Team Africa” development fund and the launch of the biennial Alamein Africa Business Forum as key steps toward mobilizing cross-border capital.
Both presidents agreed that the African private sector must serve as the primary engine of growth, which places a responsibility on governments to cultivate stable, well-regulated investment environments. For the entrepreneurs and executives in El Alamein, that commitment touches directly on their ability to invest, hire and trade across borders.
The summit culminated in the adoption of the Alamein Declaration, a document that reaffirms AUDA-NEPAD’s mandate as the continent’s flagship development agency, places the African private sector at the center of the second ten-year implementation plan of Agenda 2063, and codifies the Alamein Africa Business Forum as a permanent platform for continental economic integration.
For the leaders who attended, the anniversary was a moment to look back at a quarter century of the agency’s work. For the business leaders in the room and the communities they represent, the question now is whether promises of African financing, private sector leadership and coordinated implementation will translate into concrete change on the ground.