Luanda Summit: AUDA-NEPAD Taps AI, Green Bonds as it Launches Marketplace for Africa’s Infrastructure Push
The African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) is set to debut a groundbreaking Infrastructure Marketplace at the Luanda Financing Summit on Africa’s Infrastructure Development, taking place from 28–31 October 2025 in Luanda, Angola.
Billed as the first platform of its kind for a continental AU-led summit, the Marketplace will directly connect African SMEs, startups, and innovators with global investors, project financiers, and government procurement agencies.
According to AUDA-NEPAD, the Marketplace will feature interactive exhibition booths, investor pitch sessions, B2B networking lounges, and matchmaking facilitated by the agency. Subsidised spaces and on-site coaching will be offered to high-potential African entrepreneurs, particularly youth- and women-led ventures.
“This is about moving from conference speeches to signed contracts,” AUDA-NEPAD officials said. “African innovators have solutions for our transport, energy, and digital challenges — they just need the right connections to scale.”
The Marketplace will run alongside the high-level summit sessions attended by African heads of state, global financiers, and private sector giants. It will showcase sectors including renewable energy, smart city technology, logistics solutions, and infrastructure-enabling digital tools.
In a similar development, the agency is putting artificial intelligence (AI) and climate-resilient financing at the heart of its latest infrastructure push.
At the summit this October, AUDA-NEPAD will lead summit discussions on how AI, fintech platforms, and digital data tools can enhance project selection, streamline investment processes, and improve operational efficiency in African infrastructure.
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Climate finance will also take centre stage, with panels exploring green bonds, blended finance, and partnerships with global climate funds to support projects that are both bankable and environmentally resilient.
“Digital innovation and climate-resilient design are no longer optional add-ons — they are prerequisites for future-proof infrastructure in Africa,” AUDA-NEPAD stated in its pre-summit brief.
The summit will gather government leaders, development financiers, and private sector executives to discuss cross-border trade corridors, renewable energy projects, and digital connectivity as catalysts for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
The third Africa Infrastructure Financing Summit comes amid an urgent push to bridge Africa’s vast infrastructure financing gap. While the continent needs between $130bn and $170bn annually, it currently secures only about $80bn.
AUDA-NEPAD, led by Nardos Bekele-Thomas, has been courting African investors, including the new Alliance of Multilateral African Financial Institutions launched in February 2024 alongside Afreximbank.
Business leaders from Dangote Group, Arab Contractors, MTN, Sonatrach, Sonangol, and major banks such as Ecobank, UBA, Nedbank and the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia are expected at the summit. They will join Western partners like the World Bank, IMF, and Blackstone Infrastructure Partners, alongside non-Western financiers such as ChinaEximbank, the Saudi Fund and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
At the political level, presidential dialogues will map out strategies for high-impact trade corridors, cross-border governance and African-led capital mobilisation.
Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu is expected to grace the summit. Other confirmed invitees include leaders from South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, Rwanda, Ethiopia and several others. Former Nigerien president Mahamadou Issoufou is also expected in his contested role as AfCFTA “champion.”
Angolan President and current AU Chair João Lourenço announced the summit at the BRICS meeting in Brazil last July, underscoring its alignment with the Global South’s rising economic agenda.
By PRNigeria
