The Africa CEO Forum’s theme this year is “The Scale Imperative: Why Africa Must Embrace Shared Ownership.” That phrase is doing a lot of work. It is a diagnosis, a prescription and a provocation all at once. And it lands at a moment when the case for cross-border investment and shared African ownership of economic assets has never been stronger, or more urgent.
The ownership problem
Africa has capital. Its public pension funds, central banks and sovereign wealth funds collectively hold nearly $1 trillion in assets. And yet roughly 80% of venture capital financing on the continent still originates from foreign investors. In capital-intensive sectors like fintech, foreign venture capital and private equity typically hold 70 to 80% of equity in scaled companies. African founders and local institutions keep around 20 to 25%.
This is not just a financial question. It is a strategic one. When ownership is predominantly external, the decisions that shape Africa’s fastest-growing industries, where to expand, what to build, who to hire, how to exit, are made by people whose primary accountability is to investors outside the continent. That is not a conspiracy. It is simply how capital works. The solution is not to close markets to foreign investment. It is to build the African capital structures that give the continent a seat at the table in its own economic decisions.
Why scale requires crossing borders
The mathematics are simple. Most individual African markets are too small to produce companies of global scale on their own. Nigeria is the continent’s largest economy, but even Nigerian companies have limits if they operate only within Nigerian borders. The same is true of South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and every other market on the continent.
Scale in Africa has always been regional, not national. The companies that have actually achieved continental reach, Ecobank with operations across 36 African countries, Equity Bank spanning East Africa, Dangote with cement plants from Ethiopia to Senegal, pan-African telecoms players, mobile money networks, are companies that crossed borders deliberately and early. They built regional businesses rather than national ones. And in doing so, they created something that single-country operators cannot: genuine scale, genuine pricing power, genuine resilience across economic cycles.
The Africa CEO Forum’s call for shared ownership is a recognition that the next generation of African champions cannot be built within national boundaries alone.
The infrastructure is being built
The enabling environment for cross-border investment is more advanced than it was five years ago. The AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol, adopted in 2025, covers digital identities, cross-border payments, data transfers and cybersecurity across the continental market. Cross-border payments through traditional channels can cost between 7 and 20% of transaction value. The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System is designed to reduce that friction by enabling settlement in local currencies across borders.
Rwanda and Kenya signed the Kigali Declaration in March 2026, creating a fintech licence passporting framework that allows companies licensed in either country to expand into both markets with a streamlined approval process. It is a small but significant proof of concept: regulatory integration between African markets is possible, and when it happens, it changes the investment calculus for companies and investors alike.
Pan-African venture funds are increasingly co-investing across jurisdictions. Funds domiciled in Mauritius or South Africa routinely invest in Ghanaian healthtech ventures or Kenyan logistics platforms. Cross-border accelerators and shared investment structures are becoming standard rather than exceptional.
What the forum is being asked to deliver
The CEO Forum in Kigali this week is not just a space to observe these trends. It is a space to accelerate them. The forum has three strategic levers on its agenda: shared equity, to unlock cross-border equity investment and create multinational African champions; mobilisation of African institutional capital across markets; and shared infrastructure, to build the logistics, energy and digital networks that make regional business viable.
Each of these levers requires the same thing: decision-makers with capital on one side of the table and entrepreneurs and governments with opportunities on the other, in the same room, with enough time and trust to move things forward.
That is what 2,500 people in Kigali this week are there to do. The question is not whether shared ownership and cross-border investment are necessary. That argument is settled. The question is whether the conversations happening this week produce commitments that are still being executed twelve months from now.