At the center of the discussion is a concrete question: can Africa build the critical mass needed to matter in the emerging global geoeconomic order?
The chosen theme — “The Scale Imperative: Why Africa Must Embrace Shared Ownership” — is already a political statement. Growth alone is no longer enough. The issue is participation in the control of the value generated by capital, infrastructure, technology, and supply chains. “Scale or Fail” means that Africa must achieve the necessary level of economic and industrial scale to compete, or remain vulnerable to fragmented markets, dependence on external capital, and difficulties in retaining value.
Africa no longer wants to be framed solely as a future promise or as a theater of competition among global powers. It wants recognition as an economic, industrial, and political actor of the present.
Africa inside the new geoeconomic order. In recent years, the narrative around the continent has changed. Africa is no longer viewed only through the lens of natural resources, demographics, or future opportunities. It has become one of the central arenas where the energy transition, food security, critical raw materials, digital infrastructure, and the restructuring of global value chains are being shaped.
- What is new is that many African countries no longer intend to simply receive investment flows. They want stronger negotiating power, greater retention of value, the development of continental champions, and the ability to leverage competition among external actors to expand their own strategic autonomy.
- The Forum’s agenda clearly reflects this shift. The opening panel starts from the assumption that global trade is being reorganized, multilateralism is weakening, and competitive scale is increasingly becoming a form of protection. The challenge is to turn shared ownership into an economic reality by strengthening African capital, common infrastructure, and rules capable of supporting a continental market.
The negotiating power of scale. Making scale part of the Forum’s slogan carries a clear political meaning. Scale means industrial capacity — the ability to produce not only for domestic markets, but also for regional and global ones. It means finance, with banks, investment funds, and capital markets capable of supporting long-term projects. It also means governance, with more efficient customs systems, harmonized standards, interoperable payment systems, and functioning logistics corridors.
- This is where the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) becomes a critical framework. Its credibility will increasingly depend less on political declarations and more on its ability to produce tangible effects for businesses: reducing customs delays, lowering logistics costs, facilitating capital flows, harmonizing regulations, and improving digital interoperability.
The meaning of shared ownership. Perhaps the most sensitive concept at the Forum is “shared ownership.” Who owns infrastructure? Who controls data? Who defines investment priorities, absorbs the risks, and ultimately captures the benefits of growth?
- For years, African development was largely framed around the ability to attract foreign capital. Today, many African governments and companies are raising the bar. Creating value is no longer sufficient; they also want influence over how that value is generated and distributed.
Infrastructure, energy, and digitalization: where scale becomes tangible. The Kigali Forum agenda shows where the debate becomes concrete: ports, corridors, energy, data centers, payments, healthcare, mobility, agribusiness, logistics, and industry.
- The panel “Think Bigger – Enter Africa’s New Age of Mega-Projects” focuses on a new generation of transformative infrastructure projects, from the Simandou corridor to the Zambia–Tanzania–Kenya interconnection, Moroccan port developments, and the 2Africa subsea cable. The core question is how to make these projects financially sustainable and capable of generating broad-based benefits.
- Energy is the second pillar. The panel “From Cargo to Kilowatt: Can Africa’s Gas Boom Power Africa?” examines how natural gas — often export-oriented — can instead support domestic productive capacity. Linked to this is the “mineral-power nexus”: the integration of mining, energy, and industry, visible in projects across Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Namibia that aim to connect renewable energy, mineral processing, and industrial development.
- Digital infrastructure is the third battlefield. “Rise of the BOTs” will focus on data centers, sovereign cloud systems, digital identity, and payment platforms.
- Investment is a cross-cutting issue throughout the Forum. One panel dedicated to the new wave of South-South capital flows highlights the growing role of Gulf countries in African greenfield projects, especially in energy and infrastructure. The challenge will be attracting investment without reproducing past asymmetries.
Italy’s role. In this context, Italy has an opportunity to present itself in Kigali with a proposal aligned with its industrial and diplomatic tradition.
- The presence, on the May 15 program, of the side event “Italy Africa: A Partnership for Sustainable Growth” reflects Rome’s intention to position its relationship with Africa within a broader conversation on growth, sustainable investment, and long-term economic partnerships, in line with the Mattei Plan.
- If “shared ownership” is the key concept, Italy may seek to emphasize a distinctive approach based on less vertical, more industrial, and more locally rooted partnerships. Not only infrastructure and technology, but long-term relationships combining capital, know-how, training, and local capacity-building.
What to watch in Kigali. Kigali will not produce definitive answers, but several signals will be worth watching closely.
- The first concerns Africa’s ability to transform competition among global actors into greater room for independent initiative.
- The second concerns the AfCFTA and its capacity to generate concrete effects: goods moving more easily, capital circulating more efficiently, more predictable rules, and companies capable of thinking beyond their national markets.
- The third concerns Italy itself. Kigali offers an opportunity to understand whether Italy’s engagement with Africa can become more continuous, industrial, and strategically recognizable — not a presence built around isolated dossiers, but one capable of accompanying projects of continental scale through co-design, shared value, and long-term responsibility.
“Scale or Fail,” then. But with an important qualification. In Kigali, the debate will not focus only on the risk of failure. Above all, it will focus on the possibility of growing together within a new phase of shared responsibility.
