Future Africa-Europe Summit

From 5 to 6 November 2024, the #FutureAfricaEurope Summit – hosted by the Africa-Europe Foundation (AEF) and Friends of Europe – will bring in resource mobilisation and strategic cooperation to explore strategies and practices for a paradigm shift towards a transformative cross-continental partnership in a context of change.

The Summit builds on the back of a far-reaching year-long process, from the work AEF multi-stakeholder Strategy Groups and the Future Africa-Eu Roundtable of July 2024 to Friends of Europe’s Global Europe programme and in the preamble of the State of Europe 2024. Throughout the year, the AEF community has had a strategic focus on ‘sustainable finance’ as a defining domain of cooperation for a forward-looking Africa-Europe Partnership on equal footing.

The Summit will take place back-to-back with Friends of Europe annual flagship event ‘State of Europe’ and has been timed to take place at a strategic moment for the Africa-Europe Partnership: with new institutional cycles of the African Union and the European Union (including the next EU College of Commissioners) and in the context of a ‘super-year’ of elections. It also builds directly on the UN Summit of the Future (and adopted ‘Pact for the Future’) and represents a stepping stone for the UN COP process and the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development to take place in Spain at the end of June 2025.

The gathering will feature confirmed participation from EU and AU policymakers, heads of leading African and European think-tanks and research institutions, as well as CEOs of international foundations including members of AEF's High-Level Group and Women Leaders Network such as:

• Dr. Mo Ibrahim, Founder and Chair of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation
• Etienne Davignon, President of Friends of Europe
• H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Former President of Liberia
• H.E. Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland
• H.E. Mahamadou Issoufou, Former President of Niger
• H.E. Hailemariam Dessalegn Boshe, Former Prime Minister of Ethiopia
• H.E. Dr. Ibrahim Mayaki, Former Prime Minister of Niger
• H.E. Dr Jean Kaseya, Director General, Africa CDC
• Arancha Gonzalez, Former Foreign Minister of Spain
• Dr. Donald Kaberuka, Former President of the African Development Bank
• Ambroise Fayolle, Vice-President of the European Investment Bank
• Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli, CEO, ONE Campaign
• Pascal Saint-Amans, Former Director of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration.

Event program will be uploaded soon.