About the event
Two-day conference emphasises need for balance between global and local.
Do Africa’s leaders face a choice between deepening ties with global partners and prioritising domestic and regional alliances? The overwhelming message from the 2025 Oxford Africa Business Forum was: it’s not either/or but both/and. The only question is how. Fuelled by a young and growing population, plentiful natural resources, vast potential for innovation, and opportunities in diverse sectors from agriculture to pharmaceuticals, the continent is on the cusp of decisive change. But it still faces challenges rooted in its own history, myths, and identity, to say nothing of the shaken kaleidoscope of geopolitical norms, whose pieces have yet to resettle.
The Forum featured a dazzling line-up of speakers, including the University of Oxford’s new Chancellor, Lord Hague of Richmond; Governor Dikko Radda of Katsina State, Nigeria; Farouk Gumel, Vice-Chairman, TGI Group; BUA Foods Managing Director Ayodele Abioye; KGL Executive Chairman Alex Dadey; Dayo Okusami, Partner, Templars; former international footballer and now CEO of his own foundation Didier Drogba; and singer-songwriter KiDi.
During two full days of keynote presentations, panel discussions, interviews, and a gala dinner, participants analysed and debated a range of issues and questions facing the continent in its quest for growth and stability.
Growing and scaling local solutions
How can the continent establish more manufacturing and processing plants to make African companies a greater part of the value chain, not just the place that people extract from? And how can African innovators move faster to patent and exploit their own ideas?
‘Entrepreneurship’ is still too often seen as an easy answer to youth unemployment, but the sector needs to be taken seriously, with government support and finance at the right level. There is little finance available between the micro-loans of a few hundred dollars and massive investment of hundreds of millions. Financial institutions need to meet SMEs and start-ups ‘where they are’ so that finance can work for them.
Reducing reliance on aid
President Trump’s summary withdrawal of USAID has exposed the vulnerabilities of sectors such as healthcare, which is heavily reliant on aid. Arguably, it could be seen as an opportunity to rethink and build ecosystems and infrastructures that are resilient and sustainable.
Understanding where the money is
‘Capital’ does not have to mean ‘foreign capital’, and many participants felt that much foreign capital had in any case come at too great a cost. How much can African growth be funded from within, via pension funds, stock exchanges, and sovereign wealth? Blended finance is increasing in popularity, especially as a means to support the energy transition, but there is potential to make mistakes and end up either in continuing dependency or feather-bedding the private sector. Participants were keenly aware, too, that investment moves in cycles, and that it is unwise to expose critical development projects to the whims of investor sentiment.
Advancing technology
Education and healthcare remain the biggest challenges on the continent. Participants prioritised universal access to both of these public services. But technology access matters too, and enables financial inclusion and many aspects of healthcare and education. Global partnerships have been essential to creating connections and scaling, but there is also an important role for context-specific development, such as creating LLMs in African languages.
Embracing unity without uniformity
The African Continental Free Trade Area was ratified just before the COVID pandemic hit, and participants expressed frustration at the slow pace of operation, blaming the colonial legacy of artificial borders, uneven development, and the lack of currency stability. They argued for adopting the best features of the EU and ASEAN trading blocs to create a uniquely African model without the need to reinvent the wheel.
