By Kayode Fayemi
I was pleased to join leaders, thinkers, and practitioners from across the continent and beyond for the Cape Town Conversation 2025, where I spoke on the panel titled “NextGen Africa: Africa’s Strategic Imperative.” The gathering, hosted by the Observer Research Foundation and the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, has become an important space for candid reflection on Africa’s place in a rapidly changing global landscape. This year’s Conversation took place shortly after South Africa hosted the first G20 meeting on African soil, which gave our discussions a deeper sense of relevance and urgency.
Our discussion focused on how Africa can harness its demographic advantage, deepen state capability, build resilient economies, and secure its strategic interests in an era marked by geopolitical competition, climate pressures, and shifting global governance. I stressed the need for an African approach to innovation, energy transition, and value addition that strengthens sovereignty rather than widens dependency, and the importance of investing in the next generation of African leaders as a central pillar for the continent’s long-term renewal.
I was also honoured to listen to former President Thabo Mbeki deliver the closing reflections for this year’s Conversation. His remarks were, as always, clear, direct, and based on the history of continental struggle and global engagement. He reminded us that the call for a just global order rests on the reality that the current order leaves too many behind. His challenge to us was that if Africa seeks a fairer system, we must first strengthen our own internal coherence, define our interests with clarity, and organise ourselves to advance them. His reflections on global inequality, on the unfinished business of the Sustainable Development Goals, and on the historic lessons of NEPAD and the G8 Africa Action Plan were a provocative call to action.
As we look ahead to the next edition of the Cape Town Conversation, the question before us is how Africa can contribute significantly to shaping a fairer world while addressing its own internal constraints. I leave Cape Town encouraged by the energy and insight that this platform continues to generate, and hopeful about what we can build together through sustained engagement and collective purpose
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