Africa Forward Summit backs new financial architecture to drive investment and jobs across continent
NAIROBI, May 14, 2026 — The African Development Bank Group has secured strong political backing for the New African Financial Architecture for Development [NAFAD] at the Africa Forward Summit, with African leaders, international partners and development institutions rallying behind a transformative pan-African guarantee mechanism aimed at unlocking investment, reducing the cost of capital and accelerating job creation across the continent.
Held in Nairobi from May 11-12, under the joint leadership of William Ruto and Emmanuel Macron, the Summit brought together Heads of State and Government, multilateral institutions, global investors and private sector leaders around a shared objective: positioning Africa at the centre of global growth through a new partnership model grounded in co-investment, sovereign equality and African-led financial solutions.
During the discussions, African Development Bank Group President Sidi Ould Tah presented NAFAD as a bold African-led response to one of the continent’s most pressing structural challenges — the inability to convert abundant liquidity into investable capital at scale.
He argued that Africa’s challenge is not a shortage of capital, but rather a shortage of effective risk-transformation mechanisms capable of crowding in long-term investment.
“Africa is not capital poor. Africa is risk-transformation poor,” Ould Tah said.
He noted that while Africa faces an annual development financing gap of more than US$ 400 billion, the continent holds nearly US$ 4 trillion in domestic savings. Yet Africa attracts only 1 per cent of global institutional capital and just 4 per cent of global foreign direct investment.
Ould Tah further highlighted that between 12 and 15 million young Africans enter the labour market every year, while only around 3 million formal jobs are created. He identified an annual guarantee and insurance gap estimated at between US$ 40 billion and US$ 50 billion as one of the principal barriers preventing transformative investments from reaching financial close across the continent.
The Summit marked a major step forward in the operationalisation of NAFAD, which was endorsed by African Heads of State during the African Union Summit earlier this year and further reinforced through the Abidjan Consensus adopted last month. Under the NAFAD framework, the African Development Bank Group will leverage its triple-A balance sheet, convening power and strategic partnerships to strengthen African financial institutions capable of mobilising investment at scale.
At the centre of the initiative’s first phase is African Trade & Investment Development Insurance [ATIDI], the Nairobi-based pan-African investment and credit insurer identified as the flagship institution to anchor Africa’s continental guarantee architecture.
The initiative received strong support throughout the Summit.
President Ruto called for the recapitalisation of ATIDI, describing it as “a critical pillar of the new African financial architecture for development”. He stressed that Africa must increasingly finance its own development through stronger continental financial institutions and innovative risk-sharing mechanisms.
President Macron announced France’s intention to support the scaling up of ATIDI and endorsed the development of a continental first-loss guarantee strategy centred around the Nairobi-based institution. He described the initiative as part of “a new financial paradigm” capable of advancing Africa’s prosperity and strategic autonomy.
UN Secretary General António Guterres praised African leadership in advancing reforms to the global financial architecture and highlighted the African Development Bank Group’s role in “mobilising African resources for African priorities and prosperity”.
Discussions in Nairobi reflected a growing consensus that Africa’s future development model must move beyond traditional aid frameworks towards a system capable of mobilising African savings, attracting institutional capital, deepening local capital markets and scaling private investment into infrastructure, energy, industrialisation and job creation.
Ould Tah stressed that NAFAD is not intended to create a new institution, but rather to serve as a coordination framework aligning African and international financial actors around four key principles: subsidiarity, complementarity, coordination and disciplined risk transformation.
Referring to the scaling up of ATIDI as the first concrete deliverable under NAFAD, he said Africa now possesses both the institutional platform and the political momentum required to accelerate implementation.
“The political moment is now. The institution exists. The approach is endorsed. The capital pathway is mapped,” he said. “What remains is a collective decision to scale Africa’s financial firepower in support of Africa’s transformation.”
The Summit also recognised the African Development Bank Group’s leadership in identifying structural gaps in Africa’s financial architecture and advancing coordinated solutions capable of mobilising domestic savings, deepening local capital markets and crowding in long-term institutional investment.
The outcomes of the Africa Forward Summit are expected to feed directly into upcoming global discussions on international financial reform, including the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Evian, France, and broader efforts to reshape development finance around investment, risk-sharing, institutional coordination and economic sovereignty.
FINAL AFS 2026 NAIROBI DECLARATION 2026
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