Kagame Urges Africa to Come Together to Leverage its Demographic Weight and Resources Wealth
The 13th edition of the annual Africa CEO Forum took place at the Kigali International Convention Center in Rwanda from the 14 to 15 May 2026. This edition attracted a record-breaking 2,800 delegates from 70 countries, including heads of state or government, business people and civil society. For this edition, the theme was: ‘Scale or Fail: Why Africa Must Embrace Shared Ownership.’
President Paul Kagame set the tone for the Forum by underscoring that Africa must come together in a spirit of solidarity and to coordinate policies in order to get its fair share of the global cake. He denounced the hypocrisy of certain powers that be that preach one thing, but do another.
“These powers you see that come here lecturing people on democracy, human rights, and … They are doing it with one arm, and with another taking everything that we own. This is why Africa, leaders of Africa, CEO and Africans must be give ourselves value of some kind. We can’t just be people who are waiting to be ripped off by someone who are fraudulent and has the power to do so. We must be able to say ‘no’!”
Rwanda President Paul Kagame
Kagame called for Africa to collectively take advantage of its single market enabled by the AfCFTA and to leverage its rich natural resources to achieve its rightful place in the global value chain (#GVC). To do so, the focus must shift from projects at the national to the regional, if not continental level. As a case in pint, the Lake Victoria – Meditteranean Corridor will slash logistics costs by up to 60%.
Elsewedy Electric and the Rwanda Development Board signed a MoU to localize manufacturing in Rwanda to produce smart water and electricity meters, transformers and chargers for Electric Vehicles (EV). Sunrise Resorts is investing nearly USD 2 billion to build a luxury and groundbreaking is scheduled for 2027, at latest. Africa50 is financing the Kigali Innovation City Econosystem to the tune of USD 400 million to the project to develop the necessary infrastructure and amenities in the #HiTech zone.
Within the regional economic community (REC), Kenya’s President William Ruto promoted the East Africa Community Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and Regional Oil Refinery. In that context, Ruto revealed that the Kenya National Infrastructure Fund will contribute to finance the project. Uganda confirmed that it is going ahead with its refinery in Hoima with a capacity of 60,000 barrels per day at a an estimated cost of USD 4 billion.
UAE-based Alpha MBM will provide USD 2.4 equity capital for the Hoima Refinery and end up with 60% controlling stake, with the remaining 40% going to the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC). Relevant stakeholders are coordinating the EACOP and Hanoi project to become operational around the same time.
As part of the broader drive for the #EnergyTranstion, Rosatom and Rwanda signed an agreement to deploy Small Modular Reactors (SMR) and promote nuclear technology for medical and other civilian applications. Small nuclear reactors are increasingly seen as a good alternative to enhance #ElectricityAccess for communities as it does not produce any emissions, although the risk of radiation is present.