Today, July 8, African leaders will be hosted by President Azali Assoumani of Comoros, the Chair of the African Union (AU); the Deputy Chairperson of the African Union Commission, H.E. Monique Nsanzabaganwa; Ambassador Albert Muchanga, the AU Commissioner for Trade & Industry; to host some of Africa’s leading statesmen and business leaders at a Summit marking African Integration Day dubbed the “Boma of Africa”.
Some of the statesmen making an appearance include South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa; President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana; and ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria.
At the Boma, the assembled leaders will discuss and deliberate on how the might and reach of the African Union can be used to support the next generation of African unicorns (exponentially growing startups) that will revolutionise new sectors like biotech, gene editing and genomics, and artificial intelligence on the continent.
The goal, according to the AU, is to channel investments to create a massive impact on health, trade, local manufacturing and job creation through a new framework called the 4D pact, which derives its objectives from Agenda 2063, the AU’s overarching blueprint for making Africa a global force to reckon with in the next few decades.
Other eminent dignitaries, world leaders, and African principals expected to speak and deliberate on the 4D Pact today at the summit include Ethiopian president Sahle-Work Zewde, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, Ms. Reeta Roy of Mastercard Foundation, Dr. Jean Kaseya of Africa CDC, Mr. Wamkele Mene of AfCFTA and Professor Lisa Korsten of the African Academy of Science.
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The continental leaders are coming together to, in the words of the AU, “articulate a game-changing action plan to harness the power of technology as an enabler, to foster a culture of collaboration and to propel scientists, startups, university spinoffs, and innovators to new heights.”
Other major heads of agencies that the AU will be working with in the actualisation of the continental project in line with the new 4D Pact are also on the lineup. They include Nardos Bekele-Thomas, CEO, AUDA-NEPAD; Mamadou Biteye of ACBF; Professor Benedict Oramah, Executive Chairman of Afreximbank; and Adefunke Adeyemi, Secretary General, AFCAC, the agency promoting the Single Air Transport Market for Africa.
Tidjane Thiam, the prominent AU Special Envoy and international banker, who founded and currently chairs Freedom Acquisition Corporation, has been announced as the inaugural speaker at the Summit in a special lecture series on globalisation and its impact on Africa dubbed the “Sankore Lectures”.
Speaking about the event, Bekele-Thomas said, “Startups and even spinoffs from African Universities come up every year with clever and groundbreaking products and technologies but most of these fail to scale, holding back Africa’s industrialisation and leaving the continent dependent on critical technologies and commodities from overseas such as vaccines, medicines, AI models, biotech products etc. 4D will mark a shift.”
It was also revealed in briefing documents shared with this newspaper by AU strategists that African Union institutions like the AfCFTA Secretariat,
Africa CDC, AUDA-NEPAD, AFCAC, and ACBF will mobilise tens of millions of dollars from development finance institutions and aid agencies to implement the objectives of the 4D Initiative to make Africa self-reliant in some critical technologies. The AU disclosed that some major philanthropies, aid agencies, and development finance institutions have already committed to the vision.
The Africa Finance Corporation, BADEA and Afreximbank are early supporters of the overall vision.
According to a statement from the AU, the 4D initiative will build on the Trillion Dollar Fund (TDF) announced in 2020 by the Assembly of Heads of State, which focused on driving trade in goods manufactured in Africa under the AfCFTA. 4D will deepen the TDF’s initial focus by emphasising the role of neglected value chain actors in Africa’s stalled industrialisation drive and by providing “soft infrastructure” to strengthen the hands of such actors, like startups and university spinoffs, in the form of “mega-platforms” like the AfCFTA Hub, PanaBIOS, ProPer, Tranzyt and Transforma. These soft infrastructure platforms will greatly lower transaction costs and enhance public-private coordination to eliminate harmful and wasteful compliance barriers and duplicative cross-border regulations and therefore amplify the effect of the funds to be provided to private sector actors through 4D.
Speakers at the 2023 BOMA summit will deliberate on ways and means to make Africa competitive in carefully targeted technological domains such as biotech innovation, digital health, artificial intelligence and green economy & cleantech systems. A Value Chain Accelerator called, BioNovac, is being set up to speed up commercialisation collaborations across research institutions and the continent’s startup ecosystems.
In a similar vein, researchers at African universities through spinoffs will be supported by the initiative, while AfroChampions, one of the AU’s strategic partners, will advisory, advocacy, technical assistance resources and the like to sustain momentum at the country level.
The 2023 BOMA summit will, according to AU strategists, clearly provide an opportunity for the African leaders to mark Africa Integration Day with concrete pledges and commitments to accelerate continental development proving that the AU is not a talkshop but an engine for Africa’s transformation.