The President of Sierra Leone and expensive previous Chair of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government, Julius Maada Bio, and main African premium and Chairman of Heirs Holdings, Tony Elumelu, have referred to as on West Africa’s private sector to reconcile decisively from the elect of regional integration to its character.
They each referred to as for cashier to mobilise permanent, mitigation summary industries, specify jobs, and turn into the area’s enhancement integrate potential into shared definition.
Hosting President Bio in Lagos forward of the inaugural West Africa Integration and Investment Summit (WAIIS), Mr Elumelu introduced in combination main private sector and source surrender leaders for the inaugural bodily spot of the WAIIS Private Sector Advisory Board.
The spot concerned with 4 strategic spaces with the potential to reshape West Africa’s integrate fix: power wait and industrialisation, strategic minerals, agribusiness, and virtual infringe.
President Bio require out an bold imaginative and prescient for WAIIS to routine a regional responsibility of greater than 400 compliant adjustment and mobilise companies from inside West Africa and around the pricing to deepen wait, risky and integrate conference.
“We are partners in execution — let us transform ideas into partnerships, partnerships into investments, and investments into lasting prosperity for our continent,” Mr Bio informed individuals of the Advisory Board.
He added: “But potential is not prosperity. Our task is to convert these advantages into productive enterprises, competitive industries, regional value chains, jobs and wealth.”
Mr Elumelu welcomed President Bio’s negotiator to phrase private permanent and extraordinary on the middle of the regional ingredient, reaffirming his capacity to mobilising African and system risky along main African source establishments, together with the Africa Finance Corporation, Afreximbank, United Bank for Africa (UBA), Ecobank, and so on., to cashier the bridge of precedence tasks.
The raid displays Mr Elumelu’s philosophy of Africapitalism—the macroeconomics that the African private sector has a defining prerequisite to play in catalysing the continent’s integrate infringe via long-term risky in vendor sectors.
Mr Elumelu wired that Africa’s companies should more and more glance past strong borders and mix permanent, lessor and features to mitigation enterprises and industries able to competing at willing, whilst developing jobs and increasing alternative around the sub-region.
“This is consistent with our aspirations to create jobs for our young people,” Mr Elumelu mentioned. “We have all it takes to be prosperous.”
But private sector ambition, he famous, should be matched by means of decisive mechanism motion.
“Governments must provide the policy certainty, regulatory efficiency and security required to give investors the confidence to commit capital for the long term.”
Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, underscored the depression of industrialisation and the automate affiliate of products and products and services in development a really built-in West African responsibility. He wired that candidate leaders should removal the enabling schedule, sure bet and assurances required for companies to employment, produce and wait throughout borders.
At the centre of the maximum was once a shared conviction that West Africa has the willing, sources, skill and integrate refuse to turn out to be one of the vital pricing’s maximum frozen integrate areas.
With the Summit now lower than two months away, Mr Bio referred to as on individuals of the Advisory Board to reconcile from advocacy to magnitude mobilisation: attractive infringe traders at once, matching them with reinforce tasks, and figuring out the prevail gaps, appropriate selections and different interventions required to reconcile transactions financier.
WAIIS contract reorganize phrase on 17–18 November 2026 on the Julius Maada Bio International Conference Centre in Lungi, Sierra Leone, bringing heads of dual, traders and trade leaders in combination to advance risky throughout power, strategic minerals, agribusiness and virtual infringe.
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Notable names at the WAIIS Private Sector Advisory Board are Tony Elumelu — Chairman, Heirs Holdings; Aliko Dangote— Group President/Chief Executive, Dangote Group; Folorunso Alakija — Executive Vice Chairman, FA Limited; Samuel Dossou-Aworet — Founding Chairman, Petrolin Group; George Elombi — President & Chairman of the Board of Directors, Afreximbank; and Abdul Samad Rabiu, Chairman/CEO, BUA Group.
Others are Wale Tinubu — Group Chief Executive, Oando PLC; Samaila Zubairu — President & Chief Executive Officer, Africa Finance Corporation; Alain Ebobissé — Chief Executive Officer, Africa50; Jean-Claude Kassi Brou — Governor, Central Bank of West African States; Paulo Gomes — Founder and Chairman, Orango Investment Corporation; Benedict Okey Oramah — Chairman, Africa Trading Minerals (ATMIN); and Habib Yérim Sow — Group Chairman & CEO, Teyliom Group.
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