Ownership and accountability key to financing Africa’s agenda
Overarching consensus reached
Africa must move beyond dependency on external support and take full ownership of its financing and development trajectory.
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation released its 2025 Forum Report Financing The Africa We Want, combining the most relevant data and figures on Africa’s financing landscape with key outcomes from the three days of debates at the 2025 Ibrahim Governance Weekend (IGW), held in Marrakech, Morocco, early in June.
Africa faces mounting challenges: declining international aid, rising debt costs, and competition for private capital. The continent’s development needs, estimated in the trillions, cannot be met through aid alone. Instead, the report calls for smarter financing, rooted in African resources, strengthened governance, and strategic partnerships
Across the IGW, African leaders, civil society, businesses, academia, and youth articulated a unified stance: Africa must define its own financial priorities and development path; International partnerships should be interest-based and symmetrical; Domestic resources must be mobilised more aggressively; and strong governance, transparency, and public accountability are prerequisites, not optional extras.
Dr Mo Ibrahim encapsulated this: “Ownership comes with responsibility and accountability”.
Five pillars of the financing agenda
The report structures its recommendations around five key pillars, each reinforcing ownership and accountability:
1. Interest-based and symmetrical alliances: Africa’s partnerships must move beyond pledges to durable, mutually beneficial mechanisms. These should align with African strategic interests, emphasise capacity building, and support institution driven outcomes.
2. Capitalise on global demand: With rising global interest in Africa’s resources, the continent should transition from raw commodity exports to higher value, processed goods. This requires trade frameworks that support local manufacturing, green industrialisation, and technology transfer.
3. Shift the investment narrative: Africa must proactively reshape its image – from perceived risk frontier to creditworthy investment destination. Enhancing transparency, rule of law, and mobilising local capital are essential to attract global finance.
4. Scale through continental integration: Accelerating the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), pooling financing through integrated banks, and driving intra African value chains are critical to scale regionally owned financing models.
5. Ensure governance, peace, security and institutional ownership: Strong institutions, rule of law, public transparency, and conflict prevention are essential for domestic revenue mobilisation and responsible natural resource management. Development finance must align with African-determined priorities
Underlying Challenges and Opportunities
• Mobilising domestic capital: Africa holds as much as US$4 trillion in domestic capital, largely within pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and banks, but much of this remains under leveraged due to regulatory and governance constraints
Systems must be reformed to channel institutional capital into long term infrastructure and development investments, reducing over reliance on external finance.
• Reforming global and regional finance architecture: Existing mechanisms, like the G20 Common Framework and conditional aid channels, are outdated and often misaligned with African needs. Reform is needed to make global finance work for Africa, not against it. Multilateral development banks (MDBs) must partner more closely with African DFIs to leverage credit enhancements and scale capital flows effectively.
• Strengthening African DFIs and financial institutions: African Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) are increasingly taking the lead: examples like the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) and the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions (AAMFI) demonstrate how African-led capital mobilisation, blended finance models, and co-investment can attract global partners and retain value on the continent.
Structural reforms: From ownership to results
• Country-led development platforms: Country platforms that bring together governments, private sector, development partners and civil society have been hailed as effective means of aligning finance with national priorities. These platforms promote coordination, speed, and scale and are built on strong domestic leadership.
• Governance and peer review mechanisms: Regional initiatives like the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) and the African Governance Architecture (AGA) offer frameworks for peer learning, governance evaluation and public accountability. These are vital for institutionalising ownership and tracking progress towards Agenda 2063 and the SDGs.
• Private sector engagement and investment reform: The report urges African governments to rethink public private collaborations not as transactional, but strategic partnerships that embed local value creation and shared returns. Projects such as the Lobito Corridor, driven by African DFIs alongside multilateral support, illustrate how coordinated local leadership can attract credible international capital and deliver infrastructure aligned with African priorities.
Why accountability matters
Ownership built on weak institutions is hollow. Without clear public accountability, finance decisions – domestic or external – can be misallocated, corrupt, or unsustainable. The report stresses:
Transparency in deals, budgeting, and revenue use:
• Civic engagement in finance oversight;
• Institutional reforms that prioritize governance as much as growth;
• The report reflects inputs from over a hundred participants from governments, African institutions, civil society, private sector and youth. Stakeholders such as Dr Akinwumi Adesina (AfDB), Ajay Banga (World Bank), Nardos Bekele Thomas (AU NEPAD), and Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (WTO) contributed expertise grounded in a shared belief in African agency and accountability.
Towards Agenda 2063
and SDG delivery
The report aligns strongly with African Union Agenda 2063 and the UN SDGs, insisting that progress is only sustainable if financed and governed from within. Its core recommendations include reforming tax systems and revenue collection to mobilise domestic resources; structuring local capital markets and enhancing institutional finance; elevating private investment through African-led mechanisms; improving trade and integration via AfCFTA for intra continental resilience and scale; and embedding governance and accountability at the heart of finance decisions.
Africa’s financial new deal
Financing The Africa We Want marks a departure from traditional development finance models. It is a clarion call for African leadership in defining its own priorities; leveraging domestic resources at scale; strategic, capacity building partnerships rather than conditional aid; strengthened governance as the foundation for accountability; and institutional alignment around ownership and result based financing.
This report delivers a blueprint for Africa to stop being a passive recipient and to become a proactive architect of its future prosperity.
Africa faces mounting challenges: declining international aid, rising debt costs, and competition for private capital. The continent’s development needs, estimated in the trillions, cannot be met through aid alone. Instead, the report calls for smarter financing, rooted in African resources, strengthened governance, and strategic partnerships
Across the IGW, African leaders, civil society, businesses, academia, and youth articulated a unified stance: Africa must define its own financial priorities and development path; International partnerships should be interest-based and symmetrical; Domestic resources must be mobilised more aggressively; and strong governance, transparency, and public accountability are prerequisites, not optional extras.
Dr Mo Ibrahim encapsulated this: “Ownership comes with responsibility and accountability”.
Five pillars of the financing agenda
The report structures its recommendations around five key pillars, each reinforcing ownership and accountability:
1. Interest-based and symmetrical alliances: Africa’s partnerships must move beyond pledges to durable, mutually beneficial mechanisms. These should align with African strategic interests, emphasise capacity building, and support institution driven outcomes.
2. Capitalise on global demand: With rising global interest in Africa’s resources, the continent should transition from raw commodity exports to higher value, processed goods. This requires trade frameworks that support local manufacturing, green industrialisation, and technology transfer.
3. Shift the investment narrative: Africa must proactively reshape its image – from perceived risk frontier to creditworthy investment destination. Enhancing transparency, rule of law, and mobilising local capital are essential to attract global finance.
4. Scale through continental integration: Accelerating the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), pooling financing through integrated banks, and driving intra African value chains are critical to scale regionally owned financing models.
5. Ensure governance, peace, security and institutional ownership: Strong institutions, rule of law, public transparency, and conflict prevention are essential for domestic revenue mobilisation and responsible natural resource management. Development finance must align with African-determined priorities
Underlying Challenges and Opportunities
• Mobilising domestic capital: Africa holds as much as US$4 trillion in domestic capital, largely within pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and banks, but much of this remains under leveraged due to regulatory and governance constraints
Systems must be reformed to channel institutional capital into long term infrastructure and development investments, reducing over reliance on external finance.
• Reforming global and regional finance architecture: Existing mechanisms, like the G20 Common Framework and conditional aid channels, are outdated and often misaligned with African needs. Reform is needed to make global finance work for Africa, not against it. Multilateral development banks (MDBs) must partner more closely with African DFIs to leverage credit enhancements and scale capital flows effectively.
• Strengthening African DFIs and financial institutions: African Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) are increasingly taking the lead: examples like the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) and the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions (AAMFI) demonstrate how African-led capital mobilisation, blended finance models, and co-investment can attract global partners and retain value on the continent.
Structural reforms: From ownership to results
• Country-led development platforms: Country platforms that bring together governments, private sector, development partners and civil society have been hailed as effective means of aligning finance with national priorities. These platforms promote coordination, speed, and scale and are built on strong domestic leadership.
• Governance and peer review mechanisms: Regional initiatives like the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) and the African Governance Architecture (AGA) offer frameworks for peer learning, governance evaluation and public accountability. These are vital for institutionalising ownership and tracking progress towards Agenda 2063 and the SDGs.
• Private sector engagement and investment reform: The report urges African governments to rethink public private collaborations not as transactional, but strategic partnerships that embed local value creation and shared returns. Projects such as the Lobito Corridor, driven by African DFIs alongside multilateral support, illustrate how coordinated local leadership can attract credible international capital and deliver infrastructure aligned with African priorities.
Why accountability matters
Ownership built on weak institutions is hollow. Without clear public accountability, finance decisions – domestic or external – can be misallocated, corrupt, or unsustainable. The report stresses:
Transparency in deals, budgeting, and revenue use:
• Civic engagement in finance oversight;
• Institutional reforms that prioritize governance as much as growth;
• The report reflects inputs from over a hundred participants from governments, African institutions, civil society, private sector and youth. Stakeholders such as Dr Akinwumi Adesina (AfDB), Ajay Banga (World Bank), Nardos Bekele Thomas (AU NEPAD), and Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (WTO) contributed expertise grounded in a shared belief in African agency and accountability.
Towards Agenda 2063
and SDG delivery
The report aligns strongly with African Union Agenda 2063 and the UN SDGs, insisting that progress is only sustainable if financed and governed from within. Its core recommendations include reforming tax systems and revenue collection to mobilise domestic resources; structuring local capital markets and enhancing institutional finance; elevating private investment through African-led mechanisms; improving trade and integration via AfCFTA for intra continental resilience and scale; and embedding governance and accountability at the heart of finance decisions.
Africa’s financial new deal
Financing The Africa We Want marks a departure from traditional development finance models. It is a clarion call for African leadership in defining its own priorities; leveraging domestic resources at scale; strategic, capacity building partnerships rather than conditional aid; strengthened governance as the foundation for accountability; and institutional alignment around ownership and result based financing.
This report delivers a blueprint for Africa to stop being a passive recipient and to become a proactive architect of its future prosperity.
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