With the Africa Forward Summit headed to Nairobi on 11 and 12 May, I have been reflecting on what this moment means. In my work championing For Africa, By Africa solutions, I have long argued that African leaders should stop travelling cap in hand to Paris, Brussels, Washington, Seoul, St. Petersburg, and Beijing, whether for the Korea-
Africa Summit, the USA-Africa Leaders Summit, the Russia-Africa Summit, or FOCAC, to receive commitments that rarely survive the flight home.
The agendas for those summits have invariably favoured the host. History has proven the principle plainly: if you are not setting the table, you are on the menu. For too long,
Africa has been on the menu, shaped by decisions made in rooms it did not control.
That the summit is happening on African soil is not a small detail. It is the entire argument – and opportunity. Botswana’s President Duma Boko put the principle plainly not long ago: the buyer must come to the seller. A shift toward economic sovereignty and control over the continent’s mineral resources, and rejecting the traditional model of traveling to the buyer’s country.
For the first time in the history of the Africa-France summit format, France has come to Africa – so to speak.
Historically, since 1973, France’s Africa engagement was almost entirely concentrated in Francophone countries, wrapped up in military presence, the CFA franc architecture, and political relationships that served French interests considerably more than African ones. But the Sahel nations have found their mettle and delivered its verdict on that arrangement. Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger reclaimed their sovereignty since independence in the 60s. President Emmanuel Macron declared an end to
“Françafrique” (paternalistic interference) and sought a “reset” with Africa by reducing military presence, promoting economic partnerships, and addressing colonial history, stating in 2023: “The age of Françafrique is well over,” promising a new era where
France does not interfere in sovereign African affairs.
Africa is henceforth to be engaged as an equal – if not superior partner – given its many economic opportunities and resources advantage. The Africa Forward in Nairobi is the most consequential expression of that reckoning.
What France is walking into in Nairobi is a continent that no longer needs to be persuaded of its own value. Africa’s combined GDP sits at roughly $3.4 trillion and isprojected to grow at over 4 percent in 2026 and 2027 according to the World Bank.
The continent holds 17 percent of the world’s population and is on a trajectory to reach 2.5 billion people by mid-century, 830 million of them aged between 15 and 35. Intra-African trade, still only around 15 percent of total African trade compared to 60 percent in Asia and 70 percent in Europe, represents the single largest untapped economic frontier on the planet. Full implementation of the AfCFTA is projected to deliver $450 billion in cumulative GDP gains by 2035. Everyone is looking at Africa right now. The question is whether Africa is setting the terms of that engagement or merely receiving it.
Much has been made of South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa’s non-attendance due to prior commitments. The context is not simple. A recent G7 episode left South Africa caught between
Washington’s preferences and Paris’s diplomatic pivot, with both governments offering disputed accounts of what actually happened. His absence has been read as a snub to Kenya, as a signal that the summit lacks continental credibility, as yet another European summoning of
Africa, and as France once again treating Africa as a single country rather than 54 sovereign nations. On the face of it, it can read that way. But it is worth reflecting deeper.
South Africa has carried an outsized share of the continent’s diplomatic burden for decades. It was the founding African member of BRICS. It was the first African nation to host the G20 in Africa, where it used that platform to centre African priorities in global economic governance. With South Africa’s G20 leadership – it expanded membership for the global South and in particular, drove the agenda for the continental body, the African Union, securing its permanent seat at the G20 table. South Africa does not have to be present at every forum to validate the continent’s relevance. The truth is that the collective African interest require multiple nations, at different moments, to carry different parts of the agenda forward.
Rwanda hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kigali in 2022, attended by then Prince Charles. Uganda hosted the Non-Aligned Movement Summit in 2024. South Africa shaped the G20 around African priorities when it had the platform to do so. With South Africa now focused on resetting its relationship with the United States, it makes strategic sense that another African nation steps forward. Kenya, with its standing as East Africa’s economic hub, its infrastructure, its record of hosting consequential global forums on the continent, and as home to the United Nations’ largest African base, is well placed for this moment. This is not favouritism. This is how a mature, multi-polar continental approach works. What matters is not which country is holding the baton, but the direction it is running. Kenya, in this moment, is convening more than 30 Heads of State and Government from across the continent, Francophone and Anglophone, East and West, the RECs, the AU, development banks, and UN agencies. This is not a narrow Kenyan or East
African story. It is a continental moment that should not be viewed through a narrow national lens.
The question that should be asked of this summit, and of every engagement Africa has with external partners, is not who France or any other power is favouring. Or whether it’s once country or a bloc being engaged. The real question is whether Africa is shapingthe agenda or being shaped by it. Whether the Nairobi Declaration that comes out of these two days will be a document that African governments hold their partners to, or one that quietly disappears into a shelf of well-worded communiques. Whether the commitments on financial architecture reform, on technology and innovation, on the blue economy and health sovereignty, reflect African priorities or Western convenience dressed in African language.
Africa accounts for only 3 percent of global trade despite holding 17 percent of the world’s population. That gap is not the result of a lack of resources or talent. It is the result of decades of engagements that served everyone’s interests except Africa’s own.
What is different about Africa Forward Summit is the geography. The summit is held on Africa soil. That geography matters. The stated agenda for “Africa-France Partnerships for Innovation and Growth” matters because this time, the buyer has come to the seller.
While the summit is being shaped around mutual interests, there is no question that with the opportunities mostly African, this time the buyer has come to the seller. And Africa is ready. In my industry, marketing, we understand the Latin legal principle caveat emptor (“buyer beware”) which places the responsibility on the buyer to examine, research, and evaluate what they are acquiring before committing. There’s no doubt France is arriving in Nairobi having done some of that work. But the more instructive doctrine for this moment is its counterpart: caveat venditor (“let the seller beware.”) This is a different Africa that is alert, informed, and knows its worth. Any buyer who arrives in Nairobi assuming otherwise will leave disappointed.
Thebe Ikalafeng is the founder and chairman of Brand Africa and the chancellor of Sol Plaatje University, and best selling author of Rooted & Rising: Reclaiming Our Culture and Redefining our Global Influence. He has been to every country in Africa and every continent in the w
What the Africa Forward Summit means for the continent in a
new global order.
