The fourth edition of the Africa Breakfast Convos (ABC) convened on Friday, September 25, 2026, at the World Trade Center in New York, bringing together senior professionals from business, finance, media, and philanthropy on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly. Hosted by BHM and Allison Worldwide, the gathering, themed ‘Africa’s Next Chapter: Trade, Partnership, Investment and Global Influence,’ centred on how Africa can turn its economic momentum into lasting enterprise value.
Closing the forum in a fireside chat moderated by Eden Harris of Connecting Africa, BHM Holdings CEO Ayeni Adekunle said Africa’s future will be shaped by the businesses it dares to build. “I like to look into the future and imagine what is possible if we build 10 or 20 global companies out of Nigeria,” he said. “If we keep building and investing for the next 5, 10, or 20 years, the global landscape will look completely different.”
Unlocking that long-term enterprise value, however, requires systemic foundations that make global scale possible. Earlier, Hackim Abdul, Director of Citi’s Public Sector Group for Africa, emphasised that trust serves as the essential bedrock for sustainable growth. Tracing how historic financial shocks like Ghana’s 1980s account freezes and the 2022 domestic debt exchange “breach trust, which is required to really deepen our financial institutions,” he noted that restoring institutional confidence is crucial if African enterprises are to secure domestic and international backing.
Despite these historical headwinds, capital is actively moving towards critical infrastructure that underpins business expansion, including Uganda’s $2.7 billion Standard Gauge Railway and the Lobito Corridor’s critical mineral ecosystem. Abdul also highlighted agriculture as a high-potential frontier for enterprise building, pointing out that Africa’s current cereal yields of 1.6 tonnes per hectare (compared to the global average of 4.2 tonnes) present an immediate opportunity to double or triple food production and catalyse agri-business value chains across the continent.
Building competitive enterprises across the continent also relies on cultivating human capital and enabling a mobile workforce. Addressing this, Yasamin Alttahir, Director of Global Marketing, Communications and External Affairs at The King’s Trust International, cautioned that population growth by itself will not yield prosperity. “Demography alone is not growth,” she stressed, emphasising that unlocking the potential of Africa’s youth requires freer movement of talent, skills, and services across borders.
This need for cross-border mobility aligns closely with current trade and investment momentum across the region. Africa currently attracts around US$70 billion in annual foreign direct investment, according to UN Trade and Development, while a World Bank report highlights that deeper services liberalisation could boost intra-AfCFTA trade by 60% to 64% by 2035.
This 2026 edition of the ABC made clear what the next chapter of Africa’s future demands of those writing it: the boldness to imagine bigger, and the discipline to make that imagination worth trusting.