AEF at the Ibrahim Governance Weekend 2025

The Africa-Europe Foundation’s proposed programme combines meetings of high-level personalities from Africa and Europe, with dedicated sessions on areas of cooperation that hold promise.

Key activities include:

• Strategic Dialogues in the framework of the 2025 Ibrahim Governance Weekend (e.g. Illicit Financial Flows), underpinned by year-long engagement with South Africa’s G20 Presidency and UN DESA’s preparation of FfD4.
• High-Level Group meeting of the Africa-Europe Foundation and the AEF Women Leaders Network meeting
• Joint outreach/media engagement with MIF and the launch of the second edition of the State of Africa-Europe Report 2025.

Together with South Africa’s National Treasury, the Tax Justice Network and members of the Africa-Europe Working Group on Illicit Financial Flows, this strategic dialogue will look to define the future of international tax cooperation, streamlining conversations to strengthen domestic resource mobilisation and bridge SDG financing gaps.

With 2025 marking the 10-year anniversary of the Mbeki Report on illicit financial flows from Africa, it serves as a reminder that growing conversations at the UN and G20 on internal revenue collection and the reform of international financial frameworks must also be complemented by coordinated efforts to counteract illicit flows.

The bi-annual meeting of AEF’s High-Level Group brings together personalities from Africa and Europe, in addition to the co-chairs of AEF’s strategy groups and the CEOs of partners affiliated with AEF’s multi-annual programming (i.e. global foundations and regional institutions).

It offers an opportunity to officially launch the second edition of the State of Africa-Europe Report 2025 and to present key findings on sustainable financing and investment strategies of particular relevance to the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development taking place in Sevilla, Spain from 30 June to 3 July.

A closed-door meeting
AEF- Dalberg strategy meeting with key network members and institutional partners. The gathering will be the second in a series of consultations to finetune a proposal on the development of an African-European Investment Bank.

19:00 – 21:30 : Opening of the Ibrahim Governance Weekend and the African Leadership Ceremony

AEF will participate in the Ibrahim Forum via engagement in strategic sessions and working meetings with partners.

This in-person meeting of the Women Leaders Network will present the State of Africa-Europe 2025 report in view of the 7th AU-EU Summit. Recognising the mutual benefits of collaboration for a transformative Africa-Europe innovative finance partnership, the session will advance ongoing discussions on how to achieve the Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T in climate finance, in particular diving into the topic of domestic resource mobilisation from the point of view of solidarity levies and carbon markets.

The roundtable will focus on revamping Africa-Europe cooperation on transition minerals, focusing on unlocking new opportunities attuned with the two continents' partnership vision.

The meeting will lay the foundation for a renewed approach to cooperation and related investment in sustainable mining and processing projects on the African continent, building on lessons from the EU’s existing strategic partnerships with a number of African countries, and leveraging the recently adopted Africa Green Minerals Strategy (AGMS).

It will focus on how Africa’s vast reserves can be harnessed to build local value chains and manufacture clean technologies for Africa’s own demand and Europe's triple transitions (green, digital, defence). It will explore how to mobilise EU and Africa's public-private investments to best support Africa's local beneficiation and Europe's challenged competitiveness.