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/