The African Union is rapidly increasing its partnerships with global regional and leading country partners, while simultaneously developing and promoting strategic sector plans for inclusive and catalytic growth in important economic areas such as: agriculture, mining, infrastructure and manufacturing.

At the same time, the continent’s supreme policy making body is also becoming more and more of an advocate for domestic private sector growth and seeking to pursue greater public-private sector collaboration and to stimulate increased intra-African trade and investment.

To support these efforts, this inaugural African Union Business Directory is intended to serve as a useful reference for both public sector policy-makers and private sector decision makers, within Africa, and outside of Africa. The aim is to help familiarize readers with key AU policies, the goals and structure of key AU partnership initiatives, and to provide contact information on key private sector enterprises (both domestic and multinational) across Africa.

The publication’s structure includes five key sections:

Section 1 – Africa’s Expanding Economy provides an overview of some of the developments in Africa that make the continent one of the leading global investment destinations for the future: a population that will more than double by 2040; rapid urbanization and increasing per capita GDP and aggregate GDP; attractive investment returns; arable land and an improving governance and general business environment.

Section 2 – Key Pillars of Africa’s Economic Growth Policy Agenda offers a review of the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program (CAADP), the African Mining Vision (AMV), the Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), and the Accelerating Industrial Development in Africa initiative (AIDA). These programs are today shaping and driving key strategic initiatives on the continent and provide the private sector with a bouquet of sector focused areas within which to pursue public-private partnership – with many incentives for mutual benefit.

Section 3 – Strategic African Economic Partnerships introduces readers to some of the leading partnerships that Africa has entered into over the past twenty years. Focused on facilitating collaboration in areas such as peace and security, technology transfer, health, education, training and skills development, trade, investment and political partnership and voting alignment within global organs such as the United Nations and the Bretton Woods financial architecture (World Bank and International Monetary Fund), these African partnerships exist with both regions and countries. Thus, the Directory provides insight into the Africa-EU Partnership, the Africa-South America Partnership, the Africa-Arab League Partnership as well as country partnerships that have emerged with Japan, China, India, the United States, South Korea and Turkey.

Section 4 – AU Leading Companies Directory provides readers with useful background and contact information (noted by sector and headquarters country) on over 400 of Africa’s leading corporations. The aim is to offer AU policy makers, bilateral and multilateral development partners, and readers more broadly the ability to engage with these institutions, to learn more about them, and to see them as important potential stakeholders in Africa’s development agenda as partners in initiative/ project development and implementation, counsel on how these initiatives can stimulate and accelerate domestic private sector growth and development – and related job creation, and strategic resources for technical assistance and shared-risk funding.

Lastly, Section 5 – African Country Economic Profiles provides short profiles on each of the countries of the African Union, and in particular the economic opportunities that each has to offer, including leading components of their respective economies, various statistical indices and an economic overview.

In years to come the hope is that this Directory will become an important and valued connector – within the African Union, within its partnership relations and among and between companies, currently and/or prospectively, active in the economies of Africa.

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» Download: The African Union Commission’s Africa Business Directory (PDF, 4.93 MB)