Heads of state, business leaders to gather in Sharm El Sheikh

The Ministry of Investment and International Cooperation of Egypt, and the COMESA Regional Investment Agency, on Tuesday announced a high-level forum, Africa 2017, offering participants an unparallelled platform for promoting trade and investment in Africa.

The forum will be held under the patronage of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, on 7th to 9th December, 2017 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

The three-day conference will convene high-level delegations of leaders in business and policy from across Africa and the world, including heads of state and some of the most important CEOs on the continent.

Also, Africa 2017 will kick-off with a Young Entrepreneurs’ Day, YED, which will bring together emerging entrepreneurs with more established buisnesspeople, in addition to mentors, start-up hubs, angel investors and venture capital firms, to share ideas, network and help spread the business ideas of tomorrow.

The Africa 2017 YED has partnered with top-notch incubators, entrepreneurship programmes and VC funds. Egypt is known across Africa and the Middle East to have developed pro-innovation ecosystems where emerging entrepreneurs have been able to flourish.

In 2015, Egypt hosted the Tripartite Summit where a free trade agreement was signed, bringing together three regional economic communities, SADC, EAC and COMESA, effectively creating, with its 26 member states, the largest trading block on the continent. This ‘borderless economy’ ranks 15th in the world, in terms of GDP.

Speaking about the forum, Dr. Sahar Nasr, Egypt’s Minister of Investment and International Cooperation, discussed the opportunity in Africa, based on business-minded reforms taking place across the continent.

"The forum has the objective of promoting investments into our continent, and especially cross-border investments. In Egypt, we have undertaken an ambitious economic reform programme, of which a key ingredient is improving the business environment and overall country competitiveness. Such efforts go hand-in-hand with our commitment to serve as a strategic gateway for Africa and the world," he added.

Source: Wam