Inaugural Alamein Africa Forum Explores Ways to Bridge Gap to Realize AU Agenda 2063

The inaugural Alamein Africa Forum took place in New Alamein City on the Mediterranean Coast in Egypt. Established under the African Union Mandate from the AU Summit in February 2026, it is a biennial African Business Forum. The event will be permanently hosted by Egypt and is co-organized by the Government of Egypt, the African Union, or the AUDA-NEPAD to be more specific, and the Afreximbank.

Originally planned for June 2026, it was postponed due to public health concerns. Some 1,500 delegates from more than 60 countries converged on Alamein during these two days. Several African heads of state or government and business leaders attended the Forum.

In his welcome address, Egypt’s President Abdel El-Sisi noted the large gap to be bridged to achieve the AU’s Agenda 2063. Intra-African trade is still hovering at a paltry $220bB, accounting for only 18% of all trade, and African SME still face high hurdles to do business in neighboring countries. He proposed more public-private partnerships (PPP) to realize the goals set in #Agenda2063

Rotating AU Chair and Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye proposed that NEPAD implement a ‘smart dashboard’ for tracking projects with committed financing, implementation timelines, and actual results. He commended the great efforts in bolstering economic corridors, regional value chains and cross-border payments as significant progress.

AUDA-NEPAD CEO urged Africa to invest more in Africa by leveraging underutilized Africa Pension Funds and Sovereign Wealth Funds, Blended finance can serve to crowd in private capital after the public sector derisks the project and inject seed money.

The participants came up with the Alamein Declaration that basically called for measurable outcomes from the Forum, The Declaration called for the creation of the Alamein Investment Platform to better track projects, the curation of a flagship bankable project pipeline, the creationg of SME value chain and the operationalization of at least one African-led derisking / blended finance instrument, built upon the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions (AAMFI) Infrastructure Financing Facility (AIFF).