Ford Foundation’s West Africa head, Chichi Aniagolu-Okoye, and the President/CEO of ONE Campaign, will headline the third Africa Impact Summit (AIS) scheduled to take place June 11–13 in Accra, Ghana, organizers said.
The event, hosted by the Africa Impact Investment Group (AIIG), aims to deepen Africa’s access to alternative finance by connecting policymakers, private investors, and social entrepreneurs seeking to close the continent’s multi-billion-dollar development funding gap.
This year’s summit, themed “Transforming Systems: Redefining Impact for Real Change in Africa,” will focus on mobilizing long-term capital, particularly from pension funds and impact investors, toward sustainable infrastructure, SMEs, and climate-resilient sectors.
The summit comes amid renewed efforts by African governments to increase domestic resource mobilization and attract more blended finance, as foreign direct investment into the continent continues to trail global flows. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, Africa received just 3.5 percent of global FDI in 2023, down from 4.4 percent in 2022.
“Africa’s transformation is highly dependent on robust collaboration between governments, private sector investors, development finance institutions, and social enterprises,” said Etemore Glover, CEO, Impact Investors Foundation, Nigeria.
“We strongly believe that dialogue at the summit will shape a prosperous future for our continent.”
Over 500 delegates are expected at the Accra event, with a pre-summit study tour scheduled in Nigeria on June 9–10. The agenda includes curated deal rooms, policy dialogues, and case studies on scaling impact-led businesses across health, education, agriculture, and energy.
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Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen, CEO of GSG Impact, and Ibukun Awosika, Vice Chair of GSG and former Chair of First Bank of Nigeria, are among the confirmed speakers.
“For far too long, we have been proposing solutions to Africa’s development challenges. Now is the time to take meaningful and measurable action,” Amma Lartey, CEO of Impact Investing Ghana, said in a statement.
“At this year’s summit, our focus must be on unlocking local pension funds, supporting impactful SMEs, fostering collaboration, and building the systems that will make Africa’s Sustainable Development Goals a reality.”
Africa’s funding shortfall for the SDGs is estimated at over $200 billion annually, according to the African Development Bank. The AIIG hopes to address this gap by fostering cross-border investment coordination and policy alignment across its advisory networks in over 20 countries.
Past editions of the summit in Cape Town (2023) and Nairobi (2024) led to multiple SME financing commitments and collaborations between public and private actors.