Ruto’s Powerful Speech Leaves African Leaders Speechless at Africa Forward Summit!

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Investment, Enterprise, Innovation, Industrialization, and Mutually Beneficial Cooperation And we are very clear about this: The current international financial system remains structurally unequal.

[00:00:19]African countries continue to face disproportionately high borrowing costs, constrained access to concessional financing, and distorted risk perceptions that are frequently disconnected from the economic reality that exists in this continent. The biases embedded in global credit rating systems continue to penalize African economies, increase the cost of capital and disrupt long-term investment in productive sectors. This imbalance is nowhere near sustainable; it is one of the principal constraints on Africa's ability to finance infrastructure, industrialization, climate adaptation, and economic transformation. At the same time, what is required is why Africa has supported the establishment of the African Credit Rating Agency. Another step toward Ensuring FERA evidence-based and context-sensitive assessment of African economy and investment opportunities. Its purpose is not to replace existing global institutions but to correct long- standing distortions in risk perception that continue to increase the cost of capital for African countries and continue to discourage long-term investment in productive sectors. At the Same Time, We Must Recognize That the World Bank and the International Mori Fund Alone Cannot Finance Africa's Development Ambition. We Have to Be Realistic Even as Reform Efforts Continue. The Scale of Africa's Transformation Requires Us to Rethink the Sources, Structure, and Instruments of Development Finance Itself.

[00:02:26]Africa Must Increasingly Finance Africa.

[00:02:31]Let Me Repeat That Africa Must Increasingly Finance Africa. What Do I Mean?

[00:02:44]Across Our Continent: Many Pools of Domestic Capital Remain Underutilized.

[00:02:52]Africa Today Holds More Than $4 Trillion in Long-Term Domestic Savings, Including Over $1 Trillion in Pension and Insurance Assets, and More Than $500 Billion in Central Bank Reserves. I'm Not Talking About Europe. I'm Talking About Africa.

[00:03:18]Yet Paradoxically, While This Capital Exists, African Economies and Governments Across Our Continent Continue to Struggle to Finance Critical Infrastructure and Transport. Corridors, energy systems, industrial parks, logistics networks, and even affordable housing. There is capital in Africa, but Africa's development projects remain.

[00:03:52]The issue to be addressed is not liquidated. It is risk architecture, that is why Africa is laying the foundation for a stronger, more resilient, and more self- sustaining financial architecture. There is very strong support for the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions as a strategic platform for coordinating capital mobilization, risk sharing, and project execution across our continent. You remember the codes that we did endorse at the last AU Summit. The Alliance of African Multilateral Institutions, starting with the World Bank and all the other institutions through such institutions: the African Development Bank, the African Export-Import Bank, and the Africom Bank. The African Finance Corporation, the Trade and Development Bank, the Shelter, and the African Development Bank. Africa 50 and Africa Trade and Investment Development Insurance Africa is steadily strengthening its capacity to finance infrastructure, industrialization, trade, housing, climate resilience and economic transformation.

[00:05:28]These institutions are more than financial intermediaries; they are instruments of African agency, strategic sovereignty, and collective self- determination.

[00:05:42]Friends, we must believe in ourselves.

[00:05:48]That is why we strongly support the recapitalization of African trade and investment.

[00:05:55]Development insurance is a critical pillar of the New African Financial Architecture for Development. And I must thank the President of the African Development Bank, who is right here, for bringing this effort together with all the other multilateral institutions.

[00:06:17]This is because Africa does not need more fragmented institutions.

[00:06:23]Africa needs coordinated financial firepower capable of financing infrastructure, industrialization, trade corridors, and energy transformation in our continent on our terms.

[00:06:39]It is in this spirit that we proposed the New African Financial Architecture and Development Framework. We are calling it six to align African multilateral institutions, on investment platforms, pension systems, development banks, and private capital behind a coordinated continental investment strategy.

[00:07:10]Its objective is simply and simple, but transformative: to retain more African Savings will be in Africa and channel them into productive, viable sectors across the economy. Nafed aims to unlock long-term domestic institutional capital by creating a credible project pipeline, harmonizing investment frameworks, strengthening regional capital markets, and establishing mechanisms that can reduce risk. Strategic public investments will be better positioned to invest confidently in infrastructure, industrialization, energy, housing, and vision, connectivity projects across our continent. And by the way, I am still talking about resources that are African, our own resources. Ultimately, Nafed represents Africa's collective effort to build financial sovereignty by aligning African institutions, African savings, and African capital markets behind Africa's development priorities.

[00:08:40]And Kenya has already Begin implementing the elements of this vision through the establishment of the National Infrastructure Fund. A platform is [music] to mobilize long-term domestic capital into strategic national projects. Already, our new National Infrastructure Fund has mobilized approximately one billion dollars in the last four months, demonstrating the enormous potential that exists to win African economies among ourselves, and this is money. We have just mobilized that. As governments, we are effectively partnering with the private sector to build confidence, reduce risk, and crowd investment into transformative public infrastructure. Our objective is simple: to create credible mechanisms through which private capital can participate effectively and profitably in Africa's growth.

[00:09:42]Our experience demonstrates what domestic resource mobilization can achieve.

[00:09:49]Over the last three and a half years, we have mobilized nearly $4 billion locally for our affordable housing program.

[00:10:01]Through innovative domestic financing mechanisms. We are investing in housing, creating jobs, supporting enterprise, and expanding homeownership while restoring dignity to millions of African citizens.

[00:10:18]This experience demonstrates a fundamental truth: Africa can generate substantial development resources internally when institutions are strong, policies are credible and predictable, markets are trusted, and citizens themselves become active participants in nation-building excellence.

[00:10:46]Infrastructure development remains one of the most decisive foundations of African economic transformation and continental integration.

[00:10:56]Africa's infrastructure financing gap continues to constrain productivity, continues to increase the cost of trade, we reduce industrial competitiveness, and fragment markets across our continent.

[00:11:12]According to the African Development Bank, Africa receivables between $ 130 and $170 billion annually for infrastructure investment.

[00:11:24]Financing gaps are estimated. At between 70 and 100 billion dollars every year, this gap will not happen through public borrowing alone. It requires innovative financial instruments, blended finance mechanisms, risk-taking facilities like the one I have talked about.

[00:11:45]Unstrong public- private partnerships are capable of unlocking institutional capital at scale, but the broader challenge before us is continental. We must accelerate investment in transport corridors, imports, rail systems, roads, connectivity and integrated logistics ecosystems capable of binding Africa together into one competitive economic space within the African continental feet area because Africa cannot trade effectively with itself while its economy remains disconnected from one another. Connectivity is not merely about infrastructure; it is about competitiveness; it is about regional value chains; it is about food security; and it is about industrialization; and ultimately, it is about shared prosperity.

[00:12:52]Equally critical is a question of energy that is why we must fundamentally restructure and strengthen Africa's financial architecture to mobilize the scale of capital required to finance this transformation. On African terms, excellence in Africa possesses some of the greatest renewable energy potential anywhere in the world, from geothermal resources in the region and on to immense opportunities in solar, wind, hydroic power, and green hydrogen across our continent. Africa, there for it, has a historic opportunity not merely to participate in the global energy transition but to help lead it. But for Africa, the energy transition must also be a development and an industrialization transition. We must accept a future, and we cannot.

[00:13:58]Let me repeat: We cannot accept a future in Africa. Africa simply exports green minerals while industrial value addition. Advanced manufacturing and technological innovation take place elsewhere that model belongs to the past.

[00:14:21]Africa must become a competitively industrial hub powered by clean energy, modern infrastructure, innovation, and strategic investment partnerships.

[00:14:35]Green industrialization presents our continent with an opportunity not only to contribute meaningfully to global climate solutions, but also to create jobs, expand manufacturing capacity, strengthen exports, and have a deep vision of value, channel, and accelerate structural economic transformation excellence.

[00:14:55]Ladies and gentlemen, our purpose is that Africa's greatest strategic asset is its people. This demographic and the demographic reality that it presents will profoundly shape the future of labor markets. The future of technology, urbanization, consumption, innovation, and, of course, economic growth. Our youth population is not yet ready to be managed. It is an extraordinary strategic advantage to be invested in.

[00:15:34]But demographic potential does not automatically become demographic power. It must be liberally cultivated by education, skills development, research, digital inclusion, entrepreneurship and technological innovation. We must equip Africa's young people not merely to seek jobs but to create enterprises, build technology, drive industrial transformation and lead the next frontier of artificial intelligence and digital innovation. And across our continent, this transformation is already underway. From Nairobi to Lagos, from Gigali to Cape Town, young Africans are redefining finance through fintech, transforming agriculture through technology, expanding digital commerce, building global – globally competitive startups and creating solutions capable of shaping industries far beyond our borders. What they require is access.

[00:16:46]Access to quality education, access to digital infrastructure, access to affordable capital, access to markets and of course they will create the opportunity that is necessary.

[00:16:59]Ladies and Gentlemen, none of this ambition can be fully realized without peace, stability, and effective multilateral cooperation.

[00:17:11]Peace, security, and development remain inseparable foundations of sustainable progress. Yet, across parts of Africa and beyond, protracted conflicts, violent extremism, unconstitutional changes of government, terrorism, organized crime, and climate-related issues in security continue to undermine stability. Weakened institutions and costly economic advancement.

[00:17:38]Current estimates indicate that Africa accounts for nearly 40% of active armed conflicts globally and close to half of all internal displacements worldwide.

[00:17:53]This figure underscores both the scale, but also the agency of the challenges facing our continent. We must give them our collective support for African-led peace and security mechanisms, including the Africa Union peace and security architecture. Predictable financing, institutional capacity, and international cooperation. Support of Lasting Peace But Lasting Peace Cannot Be Secured Through Military Response Alone Peace Recurring The Structural Drive of Instability Poverty Exclusion Unemployment Inequality Weak Institutions Climate Vulnerability and the Absence of Economic Opportunity Particularly for Young People That is why strengthening Africa's strategic autonomy in matters of peace and security remains It is why there is clarity and the necessity of securing global peace Unsecurity Governance Particularly the United Nations Security Council It is both insensible and unanswerable that a continent of nearly 1.5 billion people represented by 54 sovereign states and constituting one of the largest blocs within the United Nations continues to remain excluded from Permanent Representation on the Security Council Such Inequality Ladies and Gentlemen Such Inequality Legitimacy undermines credibility and diminishes confidence in multilateral systems itself No global governance architecture can credibly claim to be democratic, to be representative, to be just and fit for purpose while a substantial part of humanity remains absent from the table Where the world's most consequential decisions are made The time has come for the international community to recognize that without and without delay Africa is not and will not and must not remain subject to decisions taken without its equal voice on the table The reform of the Security Council is not merely an institutional adjustment It is a moral obligation It is a strategic necessity It is impossible to restore trust, legitimacy, and confidence in the international order Itself can remain state first in its support for the common African position as articulated in this consensus and the Declaration Which Calls for Africa to Be Accorded Permanent Representation on the Security Council with All the Progress and Privileges of Permanent Membership Alongside Additional Non-Permanent Seats ( Ex. Ladies and Gentlemen, Africa Does Not Need Privileges)