Move Freely. Pay Seamlessly. Trade More.
Africa has agreed to build a single market. Now it is time to make it work.
More than 1.5 billion people. A combined GDP exceeding US$3.4 trillion. The African Continental Free Trade Area is the largest free-trade area in the world by participating countries.
The challenge is not the market.
The challenge is the friction between it.
Practical barriers to movement, payments, and commerce continue to limit what should already be possible. Visa delays. Payment corridors that route through Europe. Logistics that break at borders.
Three reforms, one ambition. When people and money can move more freely, African businesses can reach more customers, build regional supply chains, and trade more effectively. These are not three separate pillars — they are one connected system.
Visa-Free Africa
One African Digital Payments Network
A Functioning African Single Market
Two reforms. One ambition. APD 2027 brings together the governments, businesses, financial institutions, fintechs, telecom companies, investors, and institutions capable of accelerating implementation.
Move Freely
Pay Seamlessly
The Borderless Africa Agenda 2030 is the operational pathway from continental ambition to measurable implementation.
Four stories. Four pairs of African cities. The same continent, the same people — once the friction is gone.
A Ghanaian atelier lists her latest collection online. A buyer in Kigali pays in Rwandan francs through a pan-African payments rail. The order ships the same day. No visa delays. No payment friction. One connected market.
An auto shop in Zambia sources hard-to-find parts from a Lagos supplier. Prices are quoted in local currency, settlement is instant, and customs paperwork is digital. What used to take weeks now takes days.
A Kenyan freelancer builds software for an Abidjan-based logistics firm. She invoices in her home currency, gets paid in CFA francs, and the rail settles the conversion automatically. No correspondent bank, no week-long wait.
A smallholder farmer in Zimbabwe ships produce to an Addis buyer. Payment lands on her mobile wallet the moment the truck crosses the border — no middlemen, no FX delay. Working capital that used to be tied up for months is now in her hand the same day.
APD is the place where the people capable of influencing and implementing Africa's integration agenda come together — not to talk, but to commit.
From policy dialogue on Day 1, through private-sector delivery on Day 2, to presidential commitments on Day 3 — converging on the APD 2027 Action Compact.
Curated business-to-business and business-to-institution meetings. Investors meet fintechs. Banks meet telecoms. Governments meet operators. Deal Rooms are where partnerships become termsheets.
Capital raising, PE/VC meetings, project finance.
Fintechs, banks, telecoms, regulators — interoperability deals.
Buyer–seller meetings across supply chains.
SaaS, infrastructure, and digital ID partnerships.
Freight, last-mile, cold-chain collaborations.
Industrial capacity, sourcing, JV discussions.
Regional expansion and market-entry partnerships.
Projet Afrique is the APD exhibition — African companies, institutions, products, technologies, and investment opportunities on a continental stage.
Fintech & Payments
Trade & Logistics
Agribusiness
Manufacturing
Health
Energy
In 2026, the dialogue established the diagnostic: a continent with the market, the people, and the technology — held back by friction. In 2027, we move from analysis to the Borderless Africa Agenda 2030.
APD 2026 by the numbers
APD 2027 will go further. Three days. Two reforms. One continental compact.
APD connects the policy ecosystem with the commercial ecosystem — the people who set the rules and the people who operate under them, in the same conversations.
Heads of State, ministers, central bank governors, regulators.
CEOs, investors, banks, fintechs, telecoms, logistics firms.
DFIs, development partners, SMEs, women entrepreneurs, youth innovators.
Six pathways into the APD 2027 experience. Choose the one that matches your role.