Outgoing President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), Professor Benedict Oramah, delivered a stirring call for unity and transformation at the Future Africa Forum 2025, held at The Africa Center in New York.
Speaking under the theme “From Heritage to Prosperity: Leveraging Cultural Roots to Promote Global Africa,” he urged Africa and its global diaspora to harness their shared identity as the foundation for collective economic strength and cultural renewal.
The forum brought together prominent leaders from across Africa and the diaspora, including President Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo and Jendayi Frazer, Board Chairperson of The Africa Center, alongside investors, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and cultural figures. It served as an influential platform for Oramah’s message that ancestral bonds across continents must now evolve into a unified economic and cultural force.
Professor Oramah reminded participants that Africa represents not just a continent but a global civilisation of nearly two billion people of African descent, connected by shared ancestry and destiny. While historical forces dispersed Africans across the world, he said the future must now be built on reconnection through trade, investment, and cultural exchange. In his words, “the African in Accra and the African in Atlanta are bound by a common heritage and a collective destiny.”
He underscored the enormous potential of the African diaspora, whose remittances exceed US$100 billion annually, noting that its true value lies in human capital, professional networks, and expanding markets. “The Diaspora is not a distant relative, but Africa amplified,” he said, stressing the need to fully integrate diaspora energy into Africa’s economic and cultural development.
Oramah highlighted Afreximbank’s leadership in institutionalising the concept of “Global Africa,” a vision pursued since 2018 through the Bank’s Diaspora Strategy. This framework redefines intra-African trade to include all people of African descent worldwide, focusing on investment mobilisation, remittance-backed financing, skills transfer, cultural industries, and regional integration.
Among its flagship initiatives, he cited the Global Africa Gateway in New York, launched in September 2024, which serves as both a symbolic and practical bridge between Africa and its diaspora. Through its Diaspora Internship Programme, young African Americans have joined leading African companies to strengthen economic and cultural linkages.
He also referenced the AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum (ACTIF), launched in 2022, which has become a key platform connecting Africa and the Caribbean. The 2025 edition attracted over 2,100 delegates from 80 countries, including 11 Heads of State, generating more than US$300 million in trade and investment deals.
Oramah detailed Afreximbank’s tangible impact in the Caribbean, where 13 CARICOM member states have joined the Bank and 11 have ratified its Partnership Agreement, granting Afreximbank full legal mandate in the region. The Bank has established a regional office in Barbados, where a US$180 million Africa Trade Centre is under construction, and has committed US$3 billion in financing, with over US$1 billion already disbursed to projects in climate adaptation, tourism, sports, energy, SMEs, and infrastructure.
Ongoing collaborations include plans to establish a Caribbean Eximbank and a US$250 million Growth, Resilience, and Sustainability Fund with the Caribbean Development Fund to support climate adaptation and innovation.
