Ethiopian Informer
ADDIS ABABA (EI): African leaders and business executives at the 9th Africa Business Forum-2026 emphasized the urgent need for collaborative efforts to leverage Africa’s demographic dividend and position the continent as the global “growth frontier of the century.”
This came as the 9th Africa Business Forum-2026 opened Monday at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). This year’s edition of Africa’s flagship business gathering was held from February 16-17 under the theme “Financing the Future of Africa: Jobs, Innovation and Creative Capital.”
Ethiopian President Taye AtskeSelassie underscored the need to exert concerted efforts to harness the potential of Africa’s burgeoning youth by provide them with the necessary skills and capital.
“Our Agenda 2063 designates young people as the primary drivers of Africa’s renaissance. It also envisions the ending of youth unemployment and the marginalization of young people. With over 70 percent of our population under the age of 30, our continent’s democratic potential is in dis-immense,” Taye told the opening session.
As the two-day gathering centered on fostering partnerships and leveraging blended finance to advance Africa’s youth economy, the Ethiopian president stressed that financing alone is insufficient if it does not reach the innovators and startups that need it most.
“During this decade, 362 million users entered the working age population. However, our current job market can only provide jobs to 161 million people. This demographic reality can become Africa’s greatest strength if we succeed in turning our youth into productive capital and our innovation into scalable enterprise,” he stressed.
UNECA Executive Secretary Claver Gatete, for his part, highlighted that Africa’s continental advantage at a time of “profound global uncertainty,” characterized by slowing growth in many regions, rising debt vulnerabilities, and supply chains are being reorganized along geopolitical lines – while global capital has not disappeared, and become more selective, and investment now follows scale, security, and future markets.
“The question is not whether capital exists. The real question is: where will the next engines of global growth emerge?” the UNECA chief asked African leaders and business executives at the forum. “To answer that question, we must look not at today’s GDP size, but at tomorrow’s demand, workforce dynamics and market expansion.”
“Growth will emerge where the world’s youngest workforce lives, where urbanization is accelerating, where digital adoption is expanding and where new consumer markets are forming. That place is Africa,” he added.
Gatete stressed that with the world’s youngest workforce, accelerating urbanization, rapid digital adoption and expanding consumer markets, the continent is already undergoing a structural transformation anchored in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which is creating a single market of over 1.5 billion people.
To address the challenges, the UNECA chief put forward four strategic measures to promote collective action — namely, increasing domestic capital and utilizing innovative financing instruments, enhancing credit ratings and establishing more credible African capital markets, fully implementing the AfCFTA, and making significant investments in innovation, skills development, and data systems.
Participants at the forum emphasized the importance of adding value to Africa’s natural resources, which should be further complemented by focused investments in human capital.
President of Africa Finance Corporation Samaila Zubairu emphasized that sustainable transformation at scale is what creates jobs and drives innovation. “Jobs are the outcomes of transformation. Transformation that is the departure from our current dysfunctional extraction systems. I would like us to focus on outcomes. Let us build on what we are going to deliver and how we deliver,” he said.
“Our most urgent priority today must be how we define Africa’s value proposition to the world. From a supplier of raw materials to a talented workforce that will expand a global competitive supply chain. Africa’s greatest asset is not only what is under the soil, it is who is above it – our people, our youth, the talent we build,” Zubairu added.
