The 4^th U.S.- Africa Futures Summit brought the conversation onto African soil. What emerged in Addis Ababa was not simply a call for a better partnership, but a practical test of whether Africa can convert global competition into collective bargaining power, and whether the United States can turn its new language of investment into visible delivery.

On 25 August 2026, the U.S.- Africa Futures Summit met in Addis Ababa for the first time, after three editions rooted in Washington, D.C. The move mattered. Addis is the political and diplomatic capital of the continent, the home of the African Union.

Seven takeaways stayed with me.

1. Beyond the Corridors of Power

In my opening framing, on behalf of the Open Society Foundations, co-host of the Summit, I argued that the future of U.S.- Africa relations can no longer be designed exclusively in presidential palaces, foreign-ministry corridors or the boardrooms of international institutions. It must also be shaped by young people, women entrepreneurs, civil society, artists, researchers and communities. That was not a ceremonial appeal for inclusion. It went to the heart of why this gathering mattered.

The participation of the U.S. Mission to the African Union and the representative of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission gave the exchange particular weight. Both acknowledged that the relationship must evolve. Both placed economic opportunity at its centre. Both recognized the importance of the African Continental Free Trade Area and cross-border infrastructure.

2. Competition is real, but Africa must organize its leverage

One of the most candid statements of the day came from the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires to the African Union Mr. Walter Parrs: competition is real, and the United States intends to compete, but competition alone is not a strategy for partnership. That distinction matters.

U.S.- Africa relations are increasingly described through rivalry with China. Europe, India, the Gulf states and other actors are also expanding their economic and political footprints. Africa is courted because of its markets, diplomatic weight, young population, strategic geography and resources essential to the energy and digital transitions. Yet renewed attention does not automatically create African leverage. It can just as easily produce a new scramble in which countries compete against one another, bargain bilaterally from weak positions and accept short-term deals that undermine long-term transformation.

Africa should not be pushed into choosing one geopolitical camp. Strategic multi-alignment is not indecision. Properly organized, it is leverage. But it works only when African countries know what they want, negotiate around common positions and possess the capacity to make partners compete on African priorities. Fifty-five states do not become a geopolitical bloc simply by sitting under one continental flag. Agency must be organized.

3. The partnership must be measured by delivery, co-creation and greater sovereignty

The representative of the African Union Commission’s Chairperson, Mohamed Sougal, offered the most useful measure of success. He argued that the U.S. – AU Strategic Infrastructure and Investment Working Group should be judged by what people can see and feel: jobs created, businesses supported, infrastructure delivered, trade expanded and opportunities opened for young people.

That is not rhetoric. It is a measurement standard that governments, citizens and civil society can use. The Working Group now needs a transparent pipeline of projects, public measures of local procurement, value addition, jobs and regional trade. Otherwise, it risks joining the long list of mechanisms that sounded promising at launch but never became visible in people’s lives.

The AU representative also called for a move from assistance to investment, from isolated projects to strategic cooperation, and from consultation to co-creation.

The fashionable phrase “from aid to trade” is equally incomplete. Trade can reproduce extraction, and investment can concentrate wealth or leave governments carrying risk while private actors capture the gains. Cooperation should instead strengthen national systems, mobilize domestic revenue, transfer capability and build the infrastructure, skills and industries that reduce dependency over time.

This is also why financial sovereignty matters. When I attended the AU Ministerial Joint Specialized Technical Committee meeting in Abidjan in July and watched the African Credit Rating Agency move from concept towards its Port Louis launch, I saw the same struggle from another angle. A continent constrained by high borrowing costs and permanent fiscal dependency cannot co-create partnerships on equal terms.

4. Critical minerals are important test of the new relationship

No issue captured the contradictions of the emerging partnership more clearly than critical minerals. The world already knows that it wants Africa’s cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese, graphite and other strategic resources. The question I posed at the opening was: how much of the value generated by those minerals will stay on the continent and help meet Africa’s development needs?

If African countries continue negotiating one by one, exporting largely unprocessed ores and treating environmental and community rights as secondary, the current rush will repeat an old story. The commodities will change, but the structure will not: value created abroad, few jobs at home, weakened public institutions and communities left with the environmental and social costs.

Critical-mineral diplomacy must become industrial diplomacy. Agreements should connect extraction to power generation, transport, processing, research, skills, supplier development and regional markets. Legal and geological expertise should be pooled. Local-content rules must be credible and coordinated. The AfCFTA should help create regional value chains at a scale individual economies cannot achieve alone.

Beneficiation cannot be pursued at any price. Free, prior and informed consent, environmental safeguards and fair community benefit-sharing are not obstacles to industrialization; they are what make it legitimate and durable. The United States wants diversified and resilient supply chains. African countries want industrialization and greater value retention. Those interests can align, but only if agreements distribute opportunity as seriously as they distribute risk.

5. Mobility, peace, democracy and rights are part of the economic agenda

The Summit rightly refused to treat migration, peace, security, democracy and human rights as side issues. They determine whether economic gains are shared, whether institutions remain legitimate and whether partnerships endure.

The migration discussion challenged the portrayal of African mobility as principally a crisis at Europe’s or America’s border. Much African migration occurs within the continent, through cities, regional labour markets and displacement caused by conflict or climate stress. Restrictive policies do not remove the pressures that make people move. They make movement more dangerous, expensive and unequal.

A serious partnership should expand safe and regular pathways, protect migrant workers, improve the portability of qualifications and rights, and support Africa’s free-movement agenda. It should also treat the diaspora as more than a source of remittances. The diaspora brings knowledge, investment, professional networks, cultural influence and political access that can connect the two continents on more equal terms.

Peace and security raised a parallel warning. ‘African-led solutions’ cannot become diplomatic shorthand for burden-shifting. Ownership requires predictable resources, capable continental and regional institutions, sustained diplomacy and meaningful participation by affected communities. Security partnerships that ignore corruption, civic repression, exclusion or the economic frustrations of young people may contain immediate threats while deepening the conditions that produce instability.

6. Representation is only the beginning; influence requires capacity and accountability

The African Union’s permanent membership in the G20 was a historic achievement, but a seat at the table is valuable only when the person occupying it arrives with a negotiating positions and the machinery to follow through.

I have made this argument in previous writings on Africa’s place in global governance: institutional inclusion is a beginning, not an outcome. Africa’s demographic weight, resources and moral claims do not automatically shape decisions. Influence comes from preparation, coalition-building and the ability to connect continental positions to national implementation.

The same principle applies to civil society. Inviting citizens’ groups into a room is not meaningful participation if decisions have already been made or if those groups lack the resources and access to monitor delivery. Civil society must help define priorities, scrutinize agreements and hold governments and investors accountable. In a period of shrinking civic space and increasingly transactional diplomacy, that role becomes more important, not less.

The Summit demonstrated the value of placing government, diplomatic, research, philanthropic, business, diaspora and civil-society voices in the same conversation. Its next test is whether those voices remain connected when the conference room empties.

7. The Summit must now become a year-round platform for action

The 4^th Summit did not produce an intergovernmental declaration, and that was not its purpose. Its value lay in the clarity of the diagnosis and the possibility of turning an annual gathering into a platform that influences policy throughout the year.

The organizers signalled several immediate next steps: a substantive synthesis of the proceedings; recommendations for African governments and institutions as well as U.S. policy; mapping the policy windows where those recommendations can travel; stronger research and communications; and a follow-up process to narrow priorities and identify leadership. A future “doers” track was also proposed so that the next Summit can assess what changed between gatherings.

Those commitments should now be organized into a simple inter-Summit architecture. 1^st, the partners should select two or three issues on which collective action can realistically make a difference, rather than trying to carry the entire U.S.- Africa agenda. 2^nd, each priority should have named co-leads from African and U.S. institutions, supported by experts, civil society and practitioners. 3^rd, the platform should map its advocacy calendar across the UN General Assembly, the African Union Summit, international financial meetings, business forums and diaspora convenings. 4^th, small working sessions should be held between Summits to test recommendations, unblock specific problems and connect decision-makers with those implementing policies. 5^th, a short public progress tracker should record commitments, action taken, obstacles and results.

Communications should also continue between convenings. High-quality research needs to be translated into accessible policy papers, commentary, media engagement and targeted briefings. African experts and practitioners should be supported to carry the platform’s ideas into Washington, Addis Ababa and other decision-making spaces, rather than being repeatedly invited to restate them at side events.

The next Summit should begin with an accountability session, not another diagnosis. We should be able to answer: What changed? Which institution acted? What project moved? What policy was influenced? Who benefited? Where did implementation stall? This ‘doers’ track should become the institutional memory of the platform and the bridge between annual gatherings.

If that happens, the Summit can become more than an event. It can serve as a modest but credible mechanism for agenda-setting, coalition-building and sustained pressure for delivery.

The future is being negotiated now

What stayed with me after Addis was not a new slogan. It was a clearer understanding of the choice facing both sides.

Africa does not come to this relationship only with needs. It brings markets, ideas, culture, diplomatic weight, a young workforce, strategic geography, natural resources and solutions to global problems. But potential does not negotiate. Institutions do. Common positions do. Technical knowledge, infrastructure and coordinated markets do.

For the United States, the choice is between episodic engagement driven by competition and crisis, or a relationship of strategic depth. The latter requires consistency across political cycles, respect for African priorities, investment in regional integration and a willingness to share value rather than merely secure access.

The Addis Summit did not resolve the contradictions in U.S.-Africa relations. It did something more useful: it placed them in the open and gave us a clearer standard for judging what comes next. The relationship’s next chapter should be measured less by the warmth of its language than by the strength of the institutions it builds, the fairness of the agreements it produces and the opportunities ordinary people can actually see.

The future is being negotiated now. Addis made clear which future Africans want. The work between this Summit and the next is to build the power, coalitions and accountability required to secure it.

Addis Ababa, 25 August 2026

Excellencies, distinguished guests, colleagues, partners, friends, good morning, and welcome.

On behalf of the Open Society Foundations, it is a great pleasure to welcome you to the U.S.-Africa Futures Summit.

I would like to begin by thanking our co-hosts and partners, and especially everyone who has travelled from across Africa, the United States and beyond to be part of this important conversation.

We gather at an extraordinary moment.

The world around us is changing rapidly.

The international order that has shaped relations between Africa and the United States for decades is under pressure.

Geopolitical competition is intensifying.

Development assistance is being reconsidered.

Debt burdens are constraining governments.

Climate change is accelerating.

Artificial intelligence and new technologies are transforming our economies and our life.

Friends, the future of U.S.-Africa relations cannot be designed exclusively in presidential palaces, foreign ministries, boardrooms or international institutions.

It must also be informed by young people, women, entrepreneurs, civil society, artists, researchers, communities and citizens themselves.

That is one reason why gatherings like this Summit matter.

We need spaces where government can speak with civil society;

where policymakers can hear entrepreneurs;

where Africans can challenge Americans and Americans can challenge Africans; and where we can move beyond diplomatic language to ask difficult questions about what is working, what is failing, and what needs to change.

Against this backdrop, the questions before us are:

What is the future of U.S.- Africa relations?  

What kind of relationship do Africans and Americans want to build together for the future? And who gets to shape it?

For too long, discussions about Africa’s relationships with major global powers have often begun somewhere other than Africa…

The future cannot be constructed that way.

At the Open Society Foundations, we believe that Africa must not simply be a ground in which global competition plays out.

Africa must be a full actor of the emerging global order.

Africa possesses resources essential to the global energy transition. It is building the world’s largest free-trade area by number of participating countries.

Today, African countries are engaging with multiple partners not necessarily because they want to choose one geopolitical camp over another, but because they are seeking partnerships capable of advancing their own development and strategic interests.

That requires us to move beyond an old paradigm.

Beyond aid to agency. Beyond donor and recipient.

On critical minerals.

The global transition toward clean energy is creating enormous demand for resources that Africa possesses in abundance. But the fundamental question for Africa is no longer simply whether the world wants its cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese or graphite. We already know that it does.

The question is: How much of the value generated by those resources will remain in Africa?

Will African countries simply export another generation of raw materials?

Or can this moment, help finance infrastructure, build industries, create decent jobs, expand regional value chains, develop skills and accelerate Africa’s economic transformation?

Friends, Partnership must increasingly be measured not simply by what comes to Africa, but by what Africa is able to build, own, and shape.

And this conversation is not only about economics.

It is also about democracy, human rights and the relationship between citizens and power.

And perhaps we should also be comfortable with disagreement.

A genuine partnership does not require us to agree on everything.

It requires us to respect one another enough to have difficult conversations about democracy and human rights, about trade, about migration, about security, about global governance, about historical injustices, and about the distribution of economic power.

At OSF, we see another dimension that is increasingly important: Africa’s role in shaping the global system itself.

The African Union’s permanent membership in the G20 was an important recognition of Africa’s growing geopolitical weight.

But representation must now translate into influence.

Africa should not only have a seat at the table. Africa must have the capacity to shape what is on the table.

As we begin this Summit, I would invite us to resist the temptation simply to diagnose the problems. Let us use this space to identify possibilities.

What would a genuinely modern U.S. – Africa economic partnership looks like?

How do we move from extraction to value creation?

How do we ensure that young people on both sides see opportunities?

How can Africa and the United States work together to strengthen democracy, rule of law and justice.

How do we reform international institutions so that they reflect today’s world rather than the world of 1945?

And perhaps most importantly: What can the people, gathered in this room, actually do differently after this Summit?

Because ultimately, the success of our conversations will not be measured by the elegance of our declarations.

It will be measured by the partnerships we build, the policies we influence, the assumptions we challenge, and the opportunities we create for people.

At the Open Society Foundations, we are proud to co-host this Summit because we believe deeply in the value of bringing together diverse voices to confront difficult questions, and in ensuring that African voices are not simply present in global debates, but powerful in shaping their outcomes.

The future of U.S. -Africa relations is not predetermined. It is being negotiated right now. And everyone in this room has a role in shaping it.

So let us be ambitious.

Let us be candid.

Let us listen to one another.

And above all, let us imagine a U.S. – Africa relationship that is not defined by the structures we inherited, but by the future we are prepared to build together.

On behalf of the Open Society Foundations, thank you for joining us.

Welcome to the U.S. – Africa Futures Summit.

And I wish us all a productive, courageous and forward-looking conversation.

I thank you.

On 25 August 2026, I will join policymakers, diplomats, civil society leaders, researchers and diaspora voices in Addis Ababa for the 4th U.S.-Africa Futures Summit. I participated in the previous two editions in Washington, D.C. and have seen the platform develop into an increasingly important space for examining Africa’s place in a rapidly changing world.

Following last year’s Summit at Howard University, I published an article titled “From Aid to Agency: Africa at a Crossroads in a Divided World.” I argued that moving from aid to agency was not simply a compelling slogan. It was becoming a survival strategy for a continent navigating intensifying geopolitical competition, weakening multilateralism, rising debt, institutional fragmentation and a renewed global race for its natural resources. One year later, that argument became even more urgent. You can read my reflections from last year’s Summit here .

This year’s edition marks an important turning point. For the first time, the U.S.-Africa Futures Summit will be held on the African continent. Bringing the conversation from Washington to Addis Ababa, the diplomatic capital of Africa and the home of the African Union, is more than a change of venue. It helps place African institutions, priorities and perspectives closer to the center of a relationship too often interpreted and designed elsewhere.

The timing could hardly be more consequential. The international system is undergoing profound reordering. Multilateral norms are weakening. Development cooperation is becoming more transactional. Competition for Africa’s critical minerals is intensifying. Migration is increasingly approached through restrictions and security concerns. Meanwhile, internationally sponsored peace processes continue to raise difficult questions about African ownership, institutional legitimacy and long-term sustainability.

But Africa is not simply a passive victim of these global disruptions. The continent has strategic assets, demographic weight, diplomatic reach and growing geopolitical leverage. The real question is whether African countries can convert these advantages into collective bargaining power, stronger institutions and better outcomes for their people.

Across five interconnected sessions, the Summit will examine what African agency should mean in practice.

1/Africa in an Emerging Multipolar World

The opening session will examine how geopolitical competition, evolving U.S. strategic narratives and the erosion of the international rules-based order are reshaping Africa’s position in the world. This mix of African policy, peace and security, governance, foresight and U.S. foreign-policy expertise should allow for a serious examination of both sides of the relationship.

The challenge is not only to secure more African representation in global institutions. Africa already has an expanding diplomatic presence, including the African Union’s permanent membership of the G20. The deeper challenge is to translate representation into influence, through coordinated positions, stronger negotiating capacity and the institutional power to implement continental priorities. Africa must not become merely a theatre in which the United States, China, Europe, Russia and emerging powers pursue their rivalries. It must be a strategic actor capable of defining its interests and negotiating with all partners from a position of clarity and strength.

2/ Redefining Development Cooperation

A second session will explore how Africa should respond as traditional aid models contract and new partnerships become more conditional, bilateral and transactional. This discussion will examine emerging health compacts, the America First Global Health Strategy, lessons from the Ebola response, domestic resource mobilisation, external financing and the role of civil society in holding governments and international partners accountable.

The fundamental question is not whether Africa still needs international cooperation. It is what kind of cooperation can reinforce African priorities instead of reproducing dependency.

As development budgets shrink and donor priorities change, African countries will need to expand domestic resource mobilization, reduce illicit financial flows, improve the governance of public resources and negotiate external financing more strategically.

The future must be built around mutual responsibility: African governments strengthening accountability and domestic capacity, while international partners respect policy autonomy and move away from relationships defined by short-term geopolitical transactions.

3/ Critical Mineral, From Extraction to Transformation and Beneficiation

The global energy transition has placed Africa’s mineral wealth at the heart of renewed geopolitical competition. Yet strategic importance does not automatically produce development.

Africa can possess the minerals the world needs and still remain trapped at the bottom of global value chains, exporting raw materials while importing higher-value technologies and manufactured products.

The key question is therefore not simply who gains access to Africa’s minerals. It is who determines the terms, who captures the value and what productive capacity remains after extraction. African governments must use the current competition to negotiate investments that integrate processing, infrastructure, energy, technology transfer, skills development and industrialization. Mineral agreements must also be transparent, environmentally responsible and respectful of communities and workers.

The transition we need is clear: from extraction to transformation; from exporting geological wealth to building industrial capability; and from fragmented bilateral agreements to regional strategies connected to the AfCFTA and the African Union’s broader development ambitions.

4/ Migration, Mobility and Diaspora Power

The Summit will also launch and discuss new African Futures research on migration, demographic change, urbanization, displacement and labor mobility. Too much of the international debate portrays African migration primarily as a crisis directed toward Europe or the United States. That framing ignores the reality that much African migration takes place within the continent and that mobility is also a driver of trade, knowledge, innovation and regional integration. The conversation must move beyond border enforcement, deportation agreements and visa restrictions.

A forward-looking U.S.-Africa partnership should create safe and regular pathways for mobility, protect human rights and recognize the strategic contribution of the African diaspora, not only through remittances, but through knowledge, investment, political influence, professional networks and bridge-building. Africa’s own frameworks, including the AU Migration Policy Framework, the Protocol on Free Movement and the AfCFTA, must form part of this discussion.

5/ Peace, Security and African Ownership

Finally, the Summit will assess internationally supported peace processes and their implications for conflicts in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other affected regions. External diplomatic engagement can be valuable, but it should reinforce rather than displace African institutions and locally grounded processes.

Peace agreements cannot be judged by the visibility of the mediators or the speed of their announcement. They must be judged by their legitimacy, inclusiveness, implementation, protection of civilians and ability to address the political and economic drivers of conflict. The long-term objective must be to strengthen the African Union and regional mechanisms so that they can prevent conflict, coordinate diplomacy and sustain peace—not simply respond after crises have escalated.

The Bigger Questions!

These five discussions are connected by one central issue: African agency.

Can Africa define its priorities rather than merely react to the priorities of others?

Can it coordinate across national borders and negotiate from collective strength?

Can it transform its resources, demographic weight and diplomatic presence into industrial power, policy autonomy and improvements in people’s lives?

A modern U.S.-Africa relationship must be measured not by the number of summits, declarations or investment announcements it produces, but by the mutual value it creates, the rights it protects, the African institutions it strengthens and the durable capabilities it leaves behind.

Africa is not waiting for a new global order to be designed elsewhere. Across diplomacy, finance, resources, mobility, development and peace, African actors are already negotiating how the continent will exercise greater agency and shape fairer partnerships.

The 4th U.S.-Africa Futures Summit provides an important space to take that conversation forward, from analysis to concrete policy choices.

I am proud that the Open Society Foundations is co-convening this timely dialogue alongside Humanity United Foundation, the Global Futures Collaborative and the Institute for Security Studies.

In-person registration is now closed, but you can still register to receive the Summit recordings.

More information:
https://humanityunited.org/us-africa-futures-summit-2026/