PAN AFRICAN BUSINESS FORUM

The Pan-African Business Forum is a multilateral, private sector driven organization founded by a group of statesmen and new generation of entrepreneurs from several African countries who share a vision of an African social and economic renaissance driven by good political and economic governance at both the national and continental levels, acceleration of the provision of infrastructure and services that can improve living standards, and improvements in the attractiveness of Africa as an investment destination.

Our vision is an Africa that enjoys a renaissance at both the national and regional levels resulting in vastly improved quality of political and economic governance for both public and private international investment and tourism that impact positively on the fortunes of the communities across Africa that host them. To this end we are an organization with a continental membership and perspective, but which will necessarily operate at national, as well as international levels.

The Pan African Business Forum is a non-profit organization and membership is open to Africans both on the continent and in the Diaspora and non-Africans who share our vision of the acceleration of the continent’s socio-economic development through public-private partnerships that can attract direct capital for economic activities that benefit all stakeholders, including the African people themselves and the inflows of requisite indigenous and foreign capital to transform the continent’s socio-economic situation.

The Pan African Business Forum engages in two separate lines of activity, in order to achieve its singular mission and vision, namely, policy advocacy and the African Investment Fund.

• Policy Advocacy

On the issue of policy advocacy, the PABF actively lobby both national governments and regional institutions as well as other multilateral organizations to adopt and implement well-considered socio-economic development, political and economic governance policies and strategies which can improve living standards directly and just as importantly, provide a better operating environment for private investment which in turn can further impact positively on those living standards while at the same time adequately rewarding the investors themselves in terms of both social and economic rates of return on their investments.

Some of the issues addressed by the PABF in consultation with African governments and other institutions include:

• Food security (essential commodities).
• Agricultural and Agribusiness.
• Health.
• Education.
• Oil and energy security.
• Natural resources.
• Support for entrepreneurship.
• Macro-Economic environment.
• Conflict prevention and resolution.

• The African Investment Fund

The Forum’s other line of activity is the promotion and establishment of an African Investment Fund, which would mobilize capital from both the public and private sectors, within Africa and from outside the continent, to fund initiatives, projects and programmes that can transform the continent’s economy.

The concept involves making progressive African governments shareholders in this fund. Other contributors would be foreign (non-African) donor governments and institutions, African Americans and other Africans in the Diaspora, as well as all sorts of well-meaning organizations willing to identify with the objective of accelerating Africa’s socio-economic development.

The Africa Investment Fund would be used to support governments and non-governmental organizations to provide access to basic social utilities like electricity, water and economic infrastructure such as roads, transport, farming, railways, harbour etc., with a view to creating an environment conducive to economic growth, job creation and poverty eradication. The Fund’s activities would maintain a realistic balance between the economic and social aspects of development.

The fund will be managed in accordance with international best practice, including registering with all the financial regulatory bodies. In order to qualify for a loan under the fund, the applicant (African country) shall have a democratically elected government, a judiciary independent of the executive, the rule of law and a free and vibrant media and press as well as an investment friendly environment. The fund will be managed by an 11-member Board of Trustees, with membership drawn from across Africans and non-Africans who share the Pan African Business Forum’s vision.

Any project to which the funds will be committed must prove itself economically viable and have a positive social rate of return and the country in which a project or programme is to be undertaken must have investor-friendly laws. Unutilised funds, would, pending commitment to projects or programmes, be invested in high yielding commercial ventures or financial instruments to increase the fund’s size and value.