NAIROBI, Kenya — More than 30 African leaders gathered in Nairobi on Monday for the Africa Forward summit hosted by President William Ruto and French President Emmanuel Macron, with financing reform and investment access emerging as key issues on the agenda.
The two-day summit has brought together heads of state, global financial institutions, and development partners amid growing calls from African governments for reforms in how international markets assess risk on the continent.
Among leaders attending are the presidents of Botswana, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Senegal, and Zambia, alongside United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.
The summit comes as France seeks to deepen economic and political partnerships across Africa at a time when Paris faces declining influence in several former colonies on the continent.
Speaking ahead of the meetings, Kenya’s Prime Cabinet Secretary and Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi said African states would use the summit to renew pressure for changes in how global financial institutions and credit rating agencies assess African economies.
“Africa has always been regarded as a high-risk area. And therefore access to credit, both for governments and for businesses, has always been pegged at a higher interest rate,” Mudavadi said in an interview.
“We need to address that. We need to have a situation where the financial markets globally start looking at Africa differently,” he added.
African governments have long argued that international credit rating systems unfairly penalise the continent by overstating political and economic risk, leading to higher borrowing costs and reduced private investment.
Mudavadi said ongoing global conflicts, including the war in the Middle East, demonstrate that instability is not unique to Africa and that risk assessments should be applied more evenly across regions.
“Conflict risk was the excuse that was always bandied about Africa. But now it is clear that we have to have a relook at how we assess Africa,” he said.
Major international ratings agencies, including S&P Global Ratings, Moody’s, and Fitch Ratings, have consistently rejected accusations of regional bias, maintaining that their methodologies are globally standardised and publicly disclosed.
However, the African Union has been pushing for the establishment of an African-owned credit rating agency that supporters say would provide fairer assessments of sovereign and institutional risk on the continent.
Mudavadi described the initiative as “critical” to reshaping investor perceptions and unlocking financing for infrastructure, industrialisation, and job creation.
The debate over ratings intensified earlier this year after the African Export-Import Bank severed ties with Fitch Ratings over disagreements related to the agency’s risk assessment approach.
The Nairobi summit has also attracted global and regional lenders, including the African Development Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Mudavadi said their participation could help shape alternative financing mechanisms tailored to Africa’s development priorities.
“This dialogue should help produce better financing mechanisms to support Africa so that jobs can be created on the African continent,” he said.
The summit marks the first major France-Africa gathering hosted in a predominantly English-speaking African country, reflecting Nairobi’s growing diplomatic profile as Kenya positions itself as a regional financial and geopolitical hub.
