What: Consultative Dialogue on the New African Financial Architecture (NAFA)
Who: African Development Bank Group; African financial ecosystem
When: Thursday, April 9, 2026
Where: Sofitel Abidjan Hôtel Ivoire, Côte d’Ivoire
The African Development Bank Group will convene a Consultative Dialogue on the New African Financial Architecture (NAFA) on 9 April 2026 in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. The event will take place under the high patronage of H.E. President Alassane Ouattara of Côte d’Ivoire and will be led by the president of the African Development Bank Group, Dr Sidi Ould Tah.
Participants will include African central bank governors, senior executives from sovereign wealth funds, regional and commercial banks, national development banks, and development finance institutions, as well as leaders of stock exchanges, capital market institutions, and regulatory authorities.
The Dialogue will also bring together representatives from credit rating agencies, pension funds, deposit and consignment funds, private equity and venture capital firms, guarantee institutions, insurance and reinsurance companies, and advisory and consulting firms. This broad and representative participation reflects the systemic nature of the financing challenge the Dialogue seeks to address.
Africa faces a structural development financing gap exceeding $400 billion per year. This gap does not reflect a lack of capital because the continent holds approximately $4 trillion in long-term domestic savings. Rather, it shows deep structural constraints, including institutional fragmentation, inefficient risk allocation, low balance sheet leverage, and insufficient coordination between public and private capital.
The New African Financial Architecture, championed by the African Development Bank Group, is rooted in Dr Ould Tah’s strategic vision known as the “Four Cardinal Points.” It proposes a systemic framework aimed at reorganizing how capital and risk are deployed across the African financial ecosystem.
The Dialogue will constitute the very first continental meeting of the African financial ecosystem under a single, coordinated architecture. It will mark a decisive turning point, moving from the consultation phase to execution, and diagnosis to implementation.
The Abidjan Dialogue seeks to build on previous consultations conducted by Dr Ould Tah with several institutional groups within the African financial ecosystem, since October 2025. It will focus on advancing concrete instruments, platforms, pilot transactions, and permanent implementation architecture, and will culminate in the adoption of an “Abidjan Consensus.”
The Dialogue will be structured around nine thematic Labs, organised along three pillars: system architecture, capital mobilization, and capital deployment. Each Lab is designed to produce a concrete instrument, platform, or framework.
Journalists are invited to cover the public opening ceremony at 9:00 a.m (GMT).
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