Five cities have become the meeting points of African business leadership: Lagos, Nairobi, Kigali, Cape Town and Accra, with Abidjan and Casablanca as French-speaking hubs. Around them, a landscape of networks has grown that outsiders rarely map correctly. Here is where chief executives, founders and their public and philanthropic partners actually meet on the continent.
The pan-African forums
The Africa CEO Forum, created in 2012 by Jeune Afrique Media Group, is the flagship annual gathering of the continent's largest companies, alternating between cities such as Kigali and Abidjan, with a strong presence of public decision-makers and financiers. Regional business councils and the African Union's private-sector platforms add institutional weight. These are events more than circles: excellent for meeting, less suited to the confidential work of a forum.
The chapters of the global networks
YPO has chapters in several African countries, from Nigeria to South Africa and Kenya, and EO has active chapters in the main economies. They offer the global forum method with the criteria of their parent organisations. For many African founders they are the first structured peer circle, and often the only one that connects them to peers on other continents.
The entrepreneurs' foundations and programmes
The Tony Elumelu Foundation's entrepreneurship programme has supported thousands of young African entrepreneurs since 2015 and created an alumni community of its own. The African Leadership Group, founded by Fred Swaniker, builds pipelines of leaders through education and networks. Endeavor operates in several African countries to support high-impact founders. These are programmes with communities attached, valuable for younger leaders more than for established chief executives.
What is still missing
Two things. A confidential peer circle where an African chief executive sits with a minister, a mayor and a foundation head, from Africa and from Europe, as equals: the decisions on infrastructure, energy, finance and talent that shape the continent are taken at exactly that boundary. And a bridge with Europe that is not a donor relationship but a peer one.
What the World Leaders Society is building
The World Leaders Society, founded in Paris in 2025, chose Africa as one of its two founding regions with Europe. Its 2026 WLS 100 selection counts leaders from Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, Ghana, Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Chad, Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Its programme includes an Africa peer forum, online, and a CEO roundtable in Nairobi on access, capital and talent. The forums apply the Chatham House rule and mix business, public service and civil society, with no age limit. Applications from African leaders and from leaders working with Africa are open for 2026.
Africa does not lack leaders. It lacks rooms where its leaders and their partners speak as equals.WLS Editorial
An editorial analysis from the World Leaders Society.
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