A man’s world: At a women’s panel discussion during the Africa CEO Forum in Switzerland last month
Siyabonga Gama is not sure he should be here. “Here” being wedged between a Mercedes-Benz Maybach, the red carpet and scores of security nodding in supplication to the suits.
“Every year Amir has asked me to come, so I thought I’d come see,” the Transnet boss says at the annual gathering of African chief executives.
The wealth represented at the end of that red carpet leading up the marble steps in Geneva, Switzerland, easily dwarfs the gross domestic product of the entire continent.
Started by Amir Ben Yahmed of the Jeune Afrique publishing group, the Africa CEO Forum has, in six years, grown into an event that attracts more than 1 200 business leaders.
The opening panel starts with “Reinventing the African business model”, but Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese-British communications billionaire, who is on the panel, thinks it’s a dumb topic and, after a short referendum in the cavernous main theatre concurs, the conversation rapidly changes to addressing the obstacles facing business growth.
Talks such as that on driving change in family businesses and digital transformation have rooms overflowing. More suits fill the networking lounges.
In a section dedicated to showcasing businesses a salesperson gets down to nuts and bolts as a shoddy suited man asks if their bank could finance $4-billion in real estate.
The presser of flesh in chief is Amir Ben Yahmed. “We really need the borders to be flattened in a commercial sense because that creates the scale,” says the founder of the forum.
With many of the business leaders at the helm of multinationals, regional and continental integration constantly crops up as a deterrent to greater volumes of trade in Africa.
And this is where Gama, an implementer, comes into his own. “It will cost R1.4-trillion.” That’s to convert all the rail infrastructure in South Africa and the rest of the continent to create rail gauge uniformity and facilitate mass movement of goods.
It would require all 54 countries of the continent to work simultaneously to effect the required change.
“The possibility of working in concert is virtually zero,” says Gama.
And there lies the rub. Inter-African trade stands at 18%, compared with 52% and 69% in Asia and Europe, respectively, according to the Africa CEO Barometer. The survey suggests chief executives believe the worldwide economic downturn has disproportionately affected the continent.
Successive sessions deal with public/private partnerships, the removal of institutional barriers and mobilisation of the youthful African market.
And to sum up the conference, Ghana’s recently elected president, Nana Akufo-Addo, confirms: “We’re open for business.”