The AFRICA CEO FORUM 2014, one of the most important gathering of African business leaders taking place in Geneva from 17 to 19 March, has been officially opened.

This level of participation is already a measure of the success of this year’s AFRICA CEO FORUM, whose mission is to bring together economic actors from French and English speaking Africa to strengthen regional ties, promote public-private sector dialogue with the goal of building an environment conducive to new business development. It further stimulates African entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity.

The opening ceremony, chaired by Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank and Amir Ben Yahmed, Managing Director of the Groupe Jeune Afrique and Chair of the AFRICA CEO FORUM,  recalled the primary purpose of this major event.

“The year 2013 was marked by a new 16% progress of foreign direct investments. The IMF is forecasting a global growth of 6.5% for 2014. I have lost count of the number of Africa CEOs who are now part of the international rankings of the economic press. However, we cannot ignore the fact that most of the emerging countries which were considered only a few months ago as the engines of the world economy are today transforming into weak links. So when we elaborated the programme of this second edition of the AFRICA CEO FORUMwe intended to take hindsight and reflect together on the ways of accelerating the transformation of our continent”, recalled Amir Ben Yahmed.