The Executive Committee of the Pan African Business Forum (PABF) has made two new appointments to its senior management structure.
After a Special Annual General Board Meeting (SAGM) held in Johannesburg (South Africa) a unanimously decision was made to adopt the proposition of the chairman of the PABF Board, Dr Ladislas Prosper Agbesi for the appointment of Noureddine Ayed as senior Vice President – Head of Energy while Claude Ibalanky has been given the nod as Senior Vice President and Head of corporate government Africa- Millenium Development Goal, Agenda 2063.
The African Business Forum is a private initiative, devised by Africans, to accelerate the socio-economic development of the continent, through a combination of carefully considered programs and projects developed both by Africans locally, and in collaboration with development partners outside of the continent.
The African Business Forum’s activities involve lobbying for a better operating environment for businesses which are of mutual benefit to both those businesses and their host countries; actually, securing the requisite funding for projects and programmes that can further this objective and ensuring that those projects and programmes are implemented for the best possible positive effect.
With a vision to promote an Africa that enjoys a renaissance at both the national and regional levels, the forum is seeks result through its work to ensure that Africa vastly improves quality of political and economic governance for both public and private international investment and tourism that impact positively on the fortunes of the communities across Africa that host them.
To this end we are an organisation with a continental membership and perspective, but which will necessarily operate at national, as well as international levels.
The PABF engages in two separate lines of activity, in order to achieve its singular mission and vision which includes policy advocacy. The Forum’s other line of activity is the promotion and establishment of an African Investment Fund, which would mobilize capital from both the public and private sectors, within Africa and from outside the continent, to fund initiatives, projects and programmes that can transform the continent’s economy.
The concept involves making progressive African governments shareholders in this fund. Other contributors would be foreign (non-African) donor governments and institutions, African-Americans and other Africans in the Diaspora, as well as all sorts of well-meaning organizations willing to identify with the objective of accelerating Africa’s socio-economic development.
The Africa Investment Fund would be used to support governments and non-governmental organizations to provide access to basic social utilities like electricity, water, and economic infrastructure such as roads, transport, farming, railways, harbour etc., with a view to creating an environment conducive to economic growth, job creation and poverty eradication.
The Fund’s activities would maintain a realistic balance between the economic and social aspects of development. The fund will be managed in accordance with international best practice, including registering with all the financial regulatory bodies.
In order to qualify for a loan under the fund, the applicant (African country) shall have a democratically elected government, a judiciary independent of the executive, the rule of law and a free and vibrant media and press as well as an investment friendly environment.
The fund will be managed by an 11-member Board of Trustees, with membership drawn from across Africans and non-Africans who share the Pan-African Business Forum’s vision.
Any project to which the funds will be committed must prove itself economically viable and have a positive social rate of return and the country in which a project or programme is to be undertaken must have investor-friendly laws. Unutilised funds, would, pending commitment to projects or programmes, be invested in high yielding commercial ventures or financial instruments, to increase the fund’s size and value.
