ACCRA, Ghana – 2 September 2026 — The Africa Prosperity Network (APN) today launched the Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD) 2027 at a media briefing held at the APN Secretariat in Accra, confirming that registration for the fifth edition of the APD flagship high-level integration forum will open on Monday, 7 September 2026.
APD 2027 will take place from 27 to 29 January 2027 at the Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City, Accra, Ghana, under the theme “The Borderless Africa We Want: Move Freely. Pay Seamlessly. Trade More.” The briefing was addressed by APN leadership alongside two of the APN’s strategic partners, Amine Idriss Adoum, Director of Infrastructure, Industrialisation, Trade and Regional Integration, AUDA-NEPAD and Ziad Hamoui, Co-Founder, Borderless Alliance.
APD 2027 will take place at the Kempinski Gold Coast Hotel. The venue change has been driven by ongoing refurbishment of the Accra International Conference Centre, which hosted the previous edition. APD 2026 attracted approximately 6,400 delegates from 94 countries over three days, drawing participants from across Africa and beyond. For 2027, however, the venue, Kempinski Gold Coast Hotel, can only accommodate around 1000 participants, representing a significant reduction in capacity.
Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, Founder and Executive Chairman of APN, addressing the media, said that APD 2027 is built on actionable outcomes already underway. He highlighted APN’s track record of translating conference commitments into continental policy, pointing to the immediate impact of APD 2024’s deliberations:
Mr Otchere-Darko explained that following APD 2024, where digital economy and seamless payment systems featured prominently in the outcome compact, the AfCFTA Secretariat, working alongside Smart Africa, GSMA Africa and other stakeholders, passed the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol within weeks. APN then convened a symposium in July 2024 at the Labadi Beach Hotel, bringing together regional central banks, payment operators and telecoms firms, including Safaricom, Vodacom, Axian Telecom, Telecel, MTN and others, to chart a pathway toward continent-wide mobile money interoperability.
“We brought all the stakeholders together, the central banks of the continent, the NCAs, the payment operators, and they came up with a report on achieving the ability to buy and sell across the continent using just your mobile money,” he said.
That report was subsequently presented to the African Union’s Mid-Year Coordination Summit on 21 July 2024, also held in Accra, where it was unanimously endorsed by all regional economic communities (RECs) represented. Critically, the summit’s outcome included a commitment to have a continent-wide mobile money interoperability framework operational by 2027, aligning precisely with APD 2027’s theme.
“We need the media to help push that. The advocacy must be strong,” Mr Otchere-Darko urged, stressing that the continent’s young entrepreneurs and SMEs remain constrained by colonial-era borders despite their leaders’ policy commitments. “We can’t have a situation where our leaders meet, agree on policies that are good for our continent, good for our economies, good for creating jobs, but are limited by the borders that were created for us by those who colonised us.”
He underscored that APD 2027’s theme directly mirrors these continental priorities: enabling Africans to move freely across borders, transact seamlessly through interoperable digital payments, and trade more profitably by unlocking intra-African commerce.
Closing the briefing, Mr Otchere-Darko pointed to the breadth of partners already being brought into APD 2027, including the African Union, AUDA-NEPAD, Borderless Alliance, AfDB, Afreximbank, BADEA, and the telecommunications sector.
There are also ongoing engagements with Ghana’s Ministry of Communications, Digital Technology and Innovation.
Speaking at the briefing, Ziad Hamoui, Co-Founder of Borderless Alliance, said the dialogue’s theme reflected fifteen years of advocacy work with traders, transport operators and border agencies across West Africa:
“An agreement does not move a truck. A protocol does not move a person. And a market is not truly open if businesses cannot transact across the borders.”
Mr Hamoui noted that Africa has already built an impressive architecture for integration, the Abuja Treaty, the AfCFTA Agreement and the ECOWAS free movement protocols among them, yet intra-African trade remains at only 15 to 16 per cent, and African citizens still require visas for around 45 per cent of destinations on their own continent.
“We are not seeking another declaration. We are seeking implementation,” he said, confirming that Borderless Alliance is partnering with APN on the Make Africa Borderless Now! movement and the Borderless Africa Agenda 2030, which aims to mobilise signatures to be presented to the African Union Heads of State Assembly in February 2027.
Amine Idriss Adoum, Director of Infrastructure, Industrialisation, Trade and Regional Integration at AUDA-NEPAD, told the media that APD 2027’s theme sits closely alongside the African Union’s own theme of the year, which centres on regional integration and the Single African Air Transport Market. He pointed out that African carriers collectively control less than a fifth of the continent’s air transport market, and argued that the continent’s slow progress on integration is less a matter of finance than of harmonisation, of transport standards, energy transmission technologies and legal frameworks, between member states. He confirmed that AUDA-NEPAD would continue working with APN to help countries align their national instruments in support of a borderless Africa.
APD 2027 will be built around four thematic pillars, Move Freely (aviation, mobility and smart borders), Pay Seamlessly (payments, fintech and digital commerce), Connect Africa (digital infrastructure, telecoms and AI) and Trade More (logistics, trade finance and regional value chains) and will formally launch the Borderless Africa Agenda 2030, built around two flagship reforms: a Visa-Free Africa and a connected digital payments systems.
The three-day programme will combine a Business and Policy Leaders’ Dialogue on Days 1 and 2, producing an Outcome Document, with a Presidential and Business Leaders’ Summit on Day 3, at which Heads of State and business leaders are expected to adopt an APD 2027 Action Compact for onward presentation to the African Union Heads of State Summit in Addis Ababa in February 2027.
About Africa Prosperity Network: Africa Prosperity Network is a not-for-profit organisation registered under the laws of the Republic of Ghana. APN provides a platform for leaders, particularly in business and politics across Africa, to collaborate to achieve sustainable prosperity across the continent. The organisation’s flagship initiative, the Africa Prosperity Dialogues, serves as an annual forum for continental decision-makers to address critical economic development challenges and opportunities.
About Make Africa Borderless Now! Movement: Make Africa Borderless Now! is a pan-African movement dedicated to accelerating the free movement of people, goods, and capital across Africa, and to holding governments and institutions accountable to the continent’s integration commitments.
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For media inquiries, please contact:
Prince Moses, Director, Strategy | Africa Prosperity Network | E-mail: princemoses@africaprosperity.network | Accra, Ghana
Joel Krampa, Communication Lead | Africa Prosperity Network | E-mail: j.krampa@africaproserity.network | Accra, Ghana
APN Communication Directorate: comms@africaprosperity.network
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