World
Janet Yellen: United States Focuses on Business Investment and Infrastructure Development in Africa
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
United States officials, at least, are strategically moving to reset multi-dimensional relations with Africa after the last African leaders’ summit held in Washington. President Joseph Bidden and Vice President Kamala Harris, in well-coordinated working agenda, with the White House, the Department of African Affairs and the US Treasury, are up to the task. This challenging task is backed by a $55 billion budget publicly announced during the African leaders’ gathering.
It all began with a series of working visits to Africa in late December and early 2023, which underscored the message delivered by Biden at the last summit: “The United States is all in on Africa, and all in with Africa.” The $55 billion budget and along with private sector investment for Africa, well-built institutionalized structures and the African-American diaspora, are distinctively linking together the United States and Africa.
On January 20, the US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, went on a 10-day trip to three African countries that aimed to revitalize and expand US-African ties and address challenges such as climate change, food security and debt in Africa. After decades in which China has dominated investment on the continent, the US is pitching itself as a more sustainable alternative. In the sub-Sahara, Yellen visited Senegal, Zambia and South Africa.
That will be followed by the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who travelled to three Republics of Ghana, Mozambique and Kenya starting Jan. 25 and another round trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken official visits to Eastern Western and Southern Africa.
In Dakar, Yellen had extensive and fruitful discussions with Senegalese President Macky Sall, who is also the rotating Chair of the African Union. The African Union is a 55-member continental organization with headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. With President Macky Sall, she highlighted the United States’ efforts to boost economic ties with the region “by expanding trade and investment flows,” according to official reports.
Later, she also interacted with Senegal’s Minister of Economy, International Planning, and Cooperation, Oulimata Sarr, who, like Yellen, is also the first woman to serve in her current role. In a meeting with Finance Minister Mamadou Moustapha Ba, Yellen said the two officials had “much to discuss on how best to meet the challenges both of our countries face, including in the context of global financial tightening and an increasingly uncertain global economic environment. The U.S. is committed to working with Africa to realize that promise because we know that a stronger African economy is good for the world and good for the United States.”
In a speech delivered at a business event in Senegal’s capital Dakar, Yellen mapped out the United States’ vision for strengthening African relations, eyeing the massive economic opportunities created by its demographic boom.
Currently, Senegal is participating in a G-20 programme that helps finance a shift from fossil fuels to clean power generation, it’s also on the verge of becoming a significant fossil-fuel producer. A new offshore project straddling its border with Mauritania is projected to bring Senegal $1.4 billion in oil and gas revenue from 2023 to 2025. The project may also provide Europe with energy relief as it turns away from Russian gas and oil.
Reports indicated that Treasury Yellen gave the concrete go-ahead on the rural electrification project in Senegal. The new rural electrification project is estimated to bring reliable power to 350,000 people while supporting some 500 jobs in 14 American States.
Our monitoring shows that Yellen travelled to the site of the project, headed by Illinois-based engineering firm Weldy Lamont. The new project received technical assistance from the US Power Africa initiative, capacity building through the US Agency for Trade and Development, and a $102.5 million loan guarantee from the Export-Import Bank.
“Our goal is to deepen our economic relationship further and to invest in expanding energy access in a way that uses renewable resources spread across the continent,” Ms Yellen underlined in her remarks. Senegal has among the highest rates of electrification across Sub-Saharan Africa – between 70% and 80% – but access to electricity remains far more limited in rural areas.
Such disparities can hinder opportunities for households and businesses in areas otherwise ripe for economic development, Yellen said. The project includes an important renewable energy element with a solar grid to power 70 villages. “This groundbreaking will create a higher quality of life in many communities, and it will help Senegal’s economy grow and prosper. It will also help Senegal get one step closer to its goal of universal electricity access by 2025,” she said.
Yellen, who met women and youth entrepreneurs in Dakar, said the electrification project would allow Senegal to rely on energy sources that are within its borders, cost-effective and not prone to the kind of volatility in energy prices sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The US Power Africa project has helped connect 165 million people to reliable electricity across Africa. Its goal is to add at least 30,000 megawatts (MW) of cleaner and more reliable electricity generation capacity and 60 million new home and business connections by 2030.
Yellen then travelled to Zambia to meet President Hakainde Hichilema as well as other finance officials. President Hichilema, who took office in 2021, has promised to restore the copper-rich nation’s credibility and creditworthiness after inheriting a cash-strapped economy. Here, she spoke on efforts to improve global health and prepare for future pandemics, as well as on food production.
Yellen cited $11 billion in commitments by the US Development Finance Corp and $3 billion in programmes by the Millennium Challenge Corp in 14 African countries, with more in the pipeline. On a wider scale, the G7 group of wealthy Western nations also planned to mobilise some $600 billion for global infrastructure investments over the next five years.
“We are saying that African countries firmly belong at the table. Their communities are disproportionately vulnerable to the effects of global challenges. And any serious solution requires African leadership and African voices,” she said.
In South Africa, which recently assumed the chairmanship of the BRICS emerging economies group, Yellen held talks with Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana and South Africa Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago. She also visited the Ford assembly plant to showcase successful examples of US-Africa economic relations.
Washington provided about $13 billion in emergency aid and food assistance last year and was now setting up a US-Africa strategic partnership to address the short-term food needs of more than 300 million Africans, Yellen said. It is also helping to build more resilient and sustainable systems for the future.
In practical terms, Yellen focused on building relationships and understanding the barriers to investment and business in Africa. Our monitoring shows that Chinese trade with Africa is about four times that of the United States, and Beijing rapidly expanded its lending by offering cheaper loans, although the opaque terms and collateral requirements are now being questioned by some African countries.
The United States is currently looking to broaden investment in South Africa, which is developing new legislation to speed up energy projects. There are a number of external players showing interest in the energy sector; these include Russia, China, United Arab Emirates and others in the Arab world.
Former US ambassador Susan Page told AFP that despite positive developments like the major summit in Washington last year, “the proof is in the pudding” when it comes to pledges of support for African countries. “Are they really going to come up with the serious money… Or is it going to be a trade-off?” asked Page, now a professor at the University of Michigan. She added that while US moves have been largely framed as countering China’s advances, it “is a shame because African countries want to be treated as Africa, and not as a wedge between great power competition.”
Joseph Siegle, who leads the Africa Center for Strategic Studies research programme, said the scope of Yellen’s visit was far broader than the matter of China’s influence. “From an emerging market standpoint, there is a lot going on there – with its resources and growth and a large African diaspora in the US. Arguably, the US has not paid enough attention to Africa with the rigour that’s warranted,” he said. “I think the significance of this trip is trying to rectify there hasn’t been enough high-level engagement on the part of the US in Africa.”
In fact, despite criticisms especially over neo-colonialism and unipolarism, the United States and Africa are culturally, and by biological blood, inseparable. According to the latest World Bank report, remittances from the African diaspora to the continental was $49 billion in 2021.
With rivals China and Russia competing for influence and opportunity in Africa, the United States has been working to stave off an erosion of its once-powerful position in the region. But as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen strongly noted, the histories of the United States and Africa were “intimately connected” by the “tragedy” of slavery, as Washington seeks to strengthen relations with the continent. Speaking at Goree Island off the Senegalese capital of Dakar, the largest slave trading centre on the African coast.
For their part, many African countries say they are keen on increased investment and financial support for infrastructure development across Africa. And that Africa is only ready for potential credible investors and not for active anti-American sloganeers and ideological choristers. Africa is not a field for confrontation but for cooperating on transforming the economy and operating the single continental market.
In the emerging multipolar world, the United States still shares cultural values and democratic principles with Africa. The trans-Atlantic slave trade is an integral part of both American and African history. The United States is their second home, nowhere else. The United States and Africa are ‘intimately connected’ by slavery, have culturally indivisible bondage, and currently, with the growing African-American diaspora, it is completely absurd and awkward for external geopolitical rival countries to ask African leaders and Africans to abandon their history and the United States.
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
One year after launching a continental initiative designed to make excellence in public governance the foundation of a new drive to transform Africa, LEAD, the Africa CEO Forum’s pan-African leadership programme, takes stock of its first cohort and announces the launch of its second class. Built around a community of senior public decision-makers committed to modernising the state and to the continent’s digital transformation, this new cohort gathers for three days, from 28 to 30 August 2026, on the campus of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) in Rabat, Morocco.
A second cohort that confirms the programme’s durability
For its second class, LEAD brings together 50 fellows, senior public decision-makers engaged in the design and implementation of the continent’s economic and social policies. Over three days, participants take part in collective and collaborative working sessions, peer exchanges and meetings with figures from the public, business and academic spheres, in order to compare their practices and build shared responses to the major challenges of governance.
Speakers include Mehdi Jomaa, former Head of Government of Tunisia, Donald Kaberuka, Managing Partner & Founder, SouthBridge Group, and former President of the African Development Bank, Serge Ekue, President of the West African Development Bank (BOAD), Sanjay Jain, co-creator of India Stack and Director of Digital Public Infrastructure, Gates Foundation, and Mauricio Cardenas, Professor of Professional Practice in Global Leadership, Columbia SIPA, and former Finance Minister of Colombia (2012-2018).
They share their reform experience, their public policy trade-offs and their view of continental priorities. Throughout the programme, the cohort benefits from the dedicated support of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Asafo & Co, BOAD, BCG and the African Development Bank, LEAD partners that have chosen to invest in the transformation of African public action.
LEAD, a pan-African community serving public action
Created by the AFRICA CEO FORUM, LEAD is a leadership programme whose ambition is to reposition Africa’s administrative elite as a driver of reform, of performance and of dialogue with all the continent’s stakeholders.
Designed for senior African public decision-makers, LEAD sets out to build a lasting community of public officials able to share their experience, compare their practices and build common solutions to the major economic, technological and institutional transformations under way in Africa. That community is structured around three pillars: modernizing the state, improving public services, and strengthening cooperation between governments, development institutions and private-sector players.
From fellows to alumni: a long-term initiative
Made up of 36 fellows drawn from a range of administrations and institutions and representing 24 countries across the continent, LEAD’s first cohort demonstrated the quality and the potential of this community from its very first year. In less than twelve months, six of its members have taken a significant step forward: two have been appointed ministers, two have moved into strategic positions at the highest level of the state and two have been promoted to chief executive roles. These moves, which account for 16.7% of the first class, show the role LEAD plays as an accelerator of impact within African administrations.
By bringing together a new cohort of fellows every year, each of them joining the LEAD alumni community, the initiative follows a long-term trajectory: in time, to unite several hundred African public decision-makers around a shared culture of transparency, performance and regional cooperation.
A first year devoted to public service and digital public infrastructure
Throughout the year, the fellows devoted their work to strengthening African public action, to make excellence in public governance a central lever of transformation. An awareness campaign, run as part of Africa Public Service Day, brought to light those who, within the continent’s administrations and institutions, are concretely transforming public policy and improving the services offered to citizens.
Members of the cohort also took part in a special round table held in Kigali during the ACF 2026, in order to carry their thinking to a wider community of public and private leaders. That forum reinforced LEAD’s role as a platform for dialogue between the administrative elite and the continent’s economic players. Digital public infrastructure (DPI) formed the main thread of this first year of work.
Discussions covered issues at the heart of the digital sovereignty of African states: digital identity, payments, secure data exchange, interoperability, governance and the protection of citizens. This work examined the conditions under which African states are developing, in some cases, and can develop, in others, shared, open infrastructure robust enough to improve the quality of public services while supporting local innovation and preserving the capacity of public authorities to set the rules of the game.
A white paper to move from consuming technology to creating value
This year of work concludes with the publication, in collaboration with BCG, LEAD’s Knowledge Partner, of a white paper on Africa’s place in the digital economy and in artificial intelligence. With the digital economy still accounting for around 5% of African GDP, against close to 15% worldwide, the paper calls on the continent to shift from a logic of technology consumption to one of value creation.
The white paper identifies three structuring priorities for African public actors:
- Building shared digital infrastructure that serves as the backbone of public services and private innovation.
- Pooling investment in order to reach critical mass and avoid the fragmentation of efforts across the continent.
- Favouring open and interoperable architectures, with trust and governance built in by design, so as to protect citizens while stimulating the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The white paper is available here to all public decision-makers, technical partners and institutions concerned.
“LEAD’s first cohort confirms a simple conviction: Africa already has the women and men capable of profoundly transforming public action. Our responsibility, either with our partners, is to give them, at pan-African level, a space in which to compare experience, build common solutions and bring forward a new generation of public policy. With this second cohort, we want to accelerate the move from ambition to execution, in particular on digital public infrastructure and artificial intelligence, two decisive issues for sovereignty, for the effectiveness of the state and for value creation across the continent,” says Amir Ben Yahmed, President of the Africa CEO Forum.
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
Africa is set to make history as it hosts the World Public Summit for the first time, with Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, welcoming global leaders and changemakers from July 29–30, 2026, for the landmark gathering under the theme “New World: Africa in Shaping a Shared Future.”
The inaugural African edition of the World Public Summit marks a significant milestone in the continent’s growing role in shaping international dialogue on governance, sustainable development, human-centred leadership and global cooperation.
Hosted by the World Peoples Assembly in partnership with African and international organisations, the summit will convene government officials, diplomats, business leaders, academics, journalists, youth representatives, civil society organisations and cultural leaders from across Africa and around the world.
According to Andrey Belyaninov, General Secretary of the World Peoples Assembly, “the Summit is not just a meeting—it is a space for unity. A space where the ‘values that unite us’ come to life: respect for people, openness to the world, responsibility for the future, and a commitment to creation.
“Today, we understand more clearly than ever: the future cannot be built alone. It is born in dialogue, in trust, in the ability to listen to one another and to act together.”
The programme begins on July 29 with a series of high-level roundtables and expert discussions covering Pan-African economic integration, civil society, education, scientific cooperation, cultural diplomacy and humanitarian partnerships.
The opening plenary, “Values, Development and Partnership as the Basis of a Sustainable and Just World,” will explore how African values—including Ubuntu—can help shape a more inclusive and sustainable global future. Discussions will also focus on youth leadership, innovation, civil society, ethical AI, public initiatives and international partnerships.
The summit will also showcase Africa’s creativity and innovation through the “Innovations for the Future” exhibition, the contemporary African art exhibition “Unity,” and the international exhibition “The World Paints Happiness.”
Another featured initiative is “The Zambezi River: Economy, Society, Soul,” an international interdisciplinary project exploring the river’s socioeconomic importance across Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, highlighting the shared heritage and development potential of one of Africa’s most important waterways.
The event will conclude with the adoption of the African Communiqué, reflecting the summit’s shared vision for stronger international cooperation, sustainable development and people-centred leadership.
Tsegaye Chama, General Secretary of the Global Black Centre, promised that, “The Summit will be delivered with exceptional distinction, reflecting the magnitude and spirit of the World Peoples Assembly. It embodies a unity that is not transactional, but purposeful and conscious, a unity that shapes new contours for a world that works for all peoples of the World.”
As delegates prepare to arrive in Addis Ababa, anticipation continues to build for what promises to be one of Africa’s most significant international gatherings of 2026—one that will place the continent firmly at the centre of global conversations about the future.
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria regained its position as Africa’s leading destination for equity startup investment in the first half of 2026, raising $214 million in equity financing and a total of $254 million across equity and debt, according to the latest Africa: The Big Deal report.
The report, titled H1 2026: Mapping the Money, showed that Nigeria ranked second on the continent in total funding, behind Egypt, which attracted $327 million, while Kenya and South Africa followed with $126 million and $83 million, respectively.
However, the report noted that Egypt’s top position was largely driven by a single fundraising by electric mobility company Spiro, which secured $327 million, including $270 million in equity and $57 million in debt. Excluding debt financing, Nigeria emerged as Africa’s largest equity funding market in the first six months of the year.
According to the breakdown by Africa: The Big Deal, Nigeria’s equity funding of $214 million was higher than Egypt’s $183 million, while South Africa and Kenya attracted $66 million and $46 million, respectively.
Beyond funding value, Nigeria also led the continent in the number of startups that raised at least $100,000 during the review period, reclaiming the top spot after what the report described as an “underwhelming” second half of 2025.
The publication observed that Nigeria’s fundraising performance has remained relatively stable over the past few years and exceeded the $250 million mark for the first time since 2022, pointing to renewed investor confidence in the country’s startup ecosystem.
It also found that while the Big Four startup markets—Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya and South Africa—continued to dominate Africa’s investment landscape, their combined share of total funding stood at 58 per cent in the first half of 2026.
“Zooming back on the Big Four (110 out of 190 $100k+ deals, i.e. 58%), Nigeria is head and shoulders above its peers, with Egypt and Kenya almost tying, and South Africa in fourth position again,” the report noted.
The report highlighted contrasting performances among the continent’s largest startup ecosystems. While Nigeria and Egypt maintained strong funding momentum, Kenya recorded its weakest funding performance since early 2021 after a strong second half of 2025, and South Africa failed to attract $100 million in funding during the period despite leading the continent a year earlier.
Africa: The Big Deal also noted a broader shift in investor behaviour, with funding increasingly concentrated in larger transactions while early-stage investments continued to decline. According to the publication, the drop in smaller funding rounds reflects growing concerns about limited capital available for early-stage startups across Africa.
