An annual invitation-only investment marketplace, known as AIF Market Days, convened by the African Development Bank Group with eight founding development-finance partners to move specific infrastructure and private-sector projects toward financial close through closed-door boardroom negotiations rather than public panels; the most recent edition ran 26 to 28 November 2025 in Rabat, Morocco, and the next edition has not been announced.
Africa Investment Forum, commonly shortened to AIF, is an annual investment marketplace convened by the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) together with seven other founding development-finance partners: Afreximbank, Africa Finance Corporation, Africa50, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the European Investment Bank, the Islamic Development Bank and the Trade and Development Bank. Launched in 2018, it is not a conference in the usual sense: its flagship event, branded AIF Market Days, is structured around closed-door "boardroom" negotiating sessions that pair specific bankable infrastructure and private-sector projects with commercial banks, institutional investors, sovereign wealth funds and development-finance institutions, with the explicit goal of moving deals toward financial close rather than holding public plenary debate. Participation is by invitation from the AfDB rather than open registration. The Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA) joined as an additional partner ahead of the 2024 to 2025 cycle, after the original eight founders; it is not counted among the founding partners here because the organiser's own "About" page still lists only the original eight.
Not publicly disclosed as of 3 September 2026: no 2026 AIF Market Days edition has been announced on the organiser's own site (africainvestmentforum.com) or on the African Development Bank's site (afdb.org), both checked on that date. The most recently confirmed edition, AIF Market Days 2025, ran 26 to 28 November 2025 at the Sofitel Jardin des Roses in Rabat, Morocco, under the high patronage of King Mohammed VI. AIF Market Days has run every November or December since 2022 (Abidjan 2022, Marrakech 2023, Rabat 2024, Rabat 2025), so a late-2026 date is the most likely pattern, but this is an inference from past cadence, not a published date. A third-party events aggregator (Liners) lists a "25 to 27 June 2026, Johannesburg" edition; this does not appear anywhere on the organiser's own site, breaks the established November-to-December cadence, and cannot be corroborated, so it is not used here as the answer.
The African Development Bank Group leads the forum and hosts its secretariat. Seven other founding partners share top billing on every edition since 2018: Afreximbank, Africa Finance Corporation, Africa50, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the European Investment Bank, the Islamic Development Bank and the Trade and Development Bank (formerly the PTA Bank). The Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA) joined the platform as a further partner ahead of the 2024 Market Days in Rabat, per an AfDB press release, but is not listed among the founding partners on the organiser's own "About" page. Each host edition also has been run in partnership with the government of the host country, most recently the Kingdom of Morocco for the 2024 and 2025 Rabat editions. The African Development Bank's president, Dr Sidi Ould Tah, co-opened the 2025 Rabat edition alongside Morocco's Minister of Economy and Finance, Nadia Fettah, who represented King Mohammed VI.
More than 1,700 delegates attended the opening of the 2025 Rabat edition, drawn from nearly 80 countries, against an organiser registration target of around 2,500 delegates and 41 vetted, investment-ready projects ahead of the forum; both figures are the organiser's own. Attendance is not open: participation runs by invitation from the AfDB, and the organiser's general terms and conditions state that "the Bank reserves the right to restrict both the number and seniority level of Participants." The audience is institutional and senior by design: government ministers, heads of development-finance institutions, commercial and investment bankers, sovereign wealth fund executives, insurers and export credit agencies, and project sponsors presenting specific transactions. No attendance projection exists for a 2026 edition because none has been announced.
Not answerable as of 3 September 2026: no 2026 edition, theme, host country or programme has been announced by the organiser. For reference, the 2025 Rabat edition ran under a theme rendered differently across press coverage, roughly "bridging Africa's investment gap through private capital" (exact wording varies between the AfDB's own release and syndicated press, and the organiser's verbatim theme text was not independently confirmed here), and closed with $15.3 billion in investment interest across 39 bankable projects, an increase from the $34.8 billion reported for the 2023 Marrakech edition and a decrease from figures reported for some earlier editions. Compared with 2025, a 2026 edition would need a host country announcement, which typically comes several months ahead based on past cycles (the 2025 Rabat host was confirmed in the months before the November event).
No 2026 programme exists because no 2026 edition has been announced. For reference, Market Days editions run over three days and combine an opening ceremony with high-level keynotes (heads of state, ministers or their representatives, and the AfDB president), plenary and panel discussions on continental investment themes, and the forum's core activity: curated boardroom sessions where a specific bankable project is presented to a room of potential financiers for direct negotiation. Sector coverage in curated projects has spanned agriculture and agro-processing, energy and climate, healthcare, information and communications technology, minerals and mining, and industrialisation and trade, per the organiser's own project-sourcing categories. Side initiatives such as the Mission 300 electrification push (with the World Bank Group) have run alongside recent editions. A single continental theme frames each edition's public sessions, while boardroom sessions themselves are closed to general attendees and not livestreamed.
Two distinct formats, not a single conference track. Public-facing plenaries and panels open each day, addressing continental investment policy and the edition's theme, with heads of state, ministers and executives on stage. Boardroom sessions are the forum's defining format: closed, invitation-only negotiating rooms in which a specific project sponsor presents a transaction to a curated group of potential financiers (development banks, commercial banks, institutional investors, export credit agencies), aimed at moving that project toward financial close within the days of the forum. There is no described exhibition floor or stand-based format for general attendees; deal-making happens in the boardrooms, not at booths.
Not documented as a fixed annual programme; side initiatives vary by edition and are tied to specific partner announcements. The 2025 Rabat edition ran alongside a session led by Nezha Hayat, General Director of the Mohammed VI Investment Fund, on scaling private investment, part of the host country's own programming rather than a standing AIF side track. Earlier editions have hosted Mission 300, a joint AfDB and World Bank Group initiative on African electrification, on their sidelines. No dedicated startup pitch track, awards gala or member network comparable to those run by sector-specific forums was found in the sources checked; Africa Investment Forum's side programming is smaller and less standardised than at comparable pan-African summits.
Not publicly disclosed. There is no public ticket price: attendance is by invitation, and the organiser's general terms and conditions state that "if a fee is payable for an AIF Engagement, such fee and the payment modalities will be communicated in advance" directly to invited participants, rather than published on the website. Project sponsors seeking a boardroom slot are expected to bring a bankable project, commonly cited at a minimum value of around US$100 million, for which feasibility and other key studies are already complete; this threshold was not found stated on the organiser's own current site during this research and should be treated with caution pending confirmation. Participants bear their own travel and accommodation costs regardless of any AIF Engagement fee.
Not publicly disclosed. No open call for speakers or submission form was found on the organiser's site. Plenary and panel speakers are heads of state, ministers, AfDB and partner-institution leadership and senior executives, evidently curated directly by the organiser and host government rather than sourced through public application. Project sponsors seeking a boardroom slot go through project registration and vetting, described in the cost entry above, which is a different route from a speaking slot on a public panel.
Not publicly disclosed as a conventional sponsorship programme. Africa Investment Forum's core structure is a coalition of founding institutional partners (see the organiser entry above) rather than a tiered corporate sponsorship model comparable to a trade conference; there is no described "become a sponsor" application route or public tier list of the kind published by other summits. Institutions wishing to associate with the platform, such as BADEA's addition ahead of the 2024 to 2025 cycle, appear to negotiate a partnership directly with the AfDB rather than purchase a sponsorship package. General enquiries and registration interest historically routed through a form at africainvestmentforum.com/en/form/register-interest, which was closed to new submissions when checked on 3 September 2026.
Not answerable as of 3 September 2026: no 2026 edition exists, and Africa Investment Forum does not publish a conventional sponsor tier list in the way some sector summits do. Its structural partners for the 2025 Rabat edition were the eight-plus institutions named in the organiser entry above (African Development Bank Group, Afreximbank, Africa Finance Corporation, Africa50, Development Bank of Southern Africa, European Investment Bank, Islamic Development Bank, Trade and Development Bank, plus BADEA as a later addition), alongside the Kingdom of Morocco as host-country partner. No separate roster of corporate media, logistics or industry sponsors comparable to other pan-African forums was found in the sources checked.
Read from the organiser's own sector categories for curated bankable projects rather than a published attendee breakdown: agriculture and agro-processing, energy and climate (including large-scale power and electrification projects such as Mission 300), healthcare, information and communications technology, minerals and mining, and industrialisation and trade. On the capital side, the room is dominated by development-finance institutions (the founding partners themselves), commercial and investment banks, export credit agencies, insurers and sovereign wealth funds rather than venture investors or early-stage funds; the forum's own eligibility signal (projects commonly cited near US$100 million and above) points toward infrastructure-scale finance, not small or growth-stage private equity. No percentage breakdown by sector or investor type is published by the organiser.
Not publicly disclosed. No dedicated press-accreditation page or process was found on africainvestmentforum.com during this research. Historical editions (2018, 2019) were distributed via free-to-air broadcast feeds, and CNBC Africa has served as a broadcast partner for past editions per contemporaneous press material, which suggests press and broadcast access exists in practice, but a public application route or eligibility criteria for individual journalists was not found. General media enquiries most plausibly route through the African Development Bank's own communications department, given AfDB's lead role, but this was not confirmed on the AIF site itself.
Coverage clusters around each Market Days edition and is dominated by the organiser's own press releases, republished closely by regional outlets. The AfDB's own newsroom and the AIF site publish matching releases at the close of each edition (for example, "$15.3 Billion, 39 Bankable Projects" for 2025 Rabat). Regional business press, including Ecofin Agency, Financial Afrik and allAfrica, reported the 2025 opening and closing figures in terms close to the organiser's own release. Trade-focused outlets such as Norwegian-African Business Association and the MFW4A (Making Finance Work for Africa) platform list the event as a fixture of the African investment calendar without independent reporting depth. No major international financial-press newsroom coverage independent of these regional and organiser-adjacent outlets was found in the sources checked.
Two tiers, not one. Organiser communications: the AfDB's own newsroom and the AIF site's news section publish the headline investment-interest figures directly; these are self-reported by the party running the forum and are not audited by an outside body identified in this research. Regional and syndicated reporting: Ecofin Agency, Financial Afrik, allAfrica and similar outlets covered the 2025 Rabat edition, but their figures and framing track the organiser's release closely rather than adding independently sourced reporting, based on the coverage reviewed here. No coverage found during research independently verifies the investment-interest figures against signed agreements or disbursed funds; see the why entry below on reading the headline figures with care.
Anyone without a specific bankable project or without decision-making authority over a financing transaction: the forum's core activity, boardroom negotiation, has no described audience-facing equivalent, and attendance is invitation-only rather than open registration. Early-stage founders or venture-style investors: the eligibility signal (project value commonly cited near US$100 million) points to infrastructure-scale finance, not early-stage equity. Anyone seeking a trade-show exhibition floor, a public speaking platform to build a personal or brand profile, or open networking with a general business audience: those functions are better served by a pan-sector event such as the Africa CEO Forum, which runs an open plenary and panel programme alongside sponsorship tiers that Africa Investment Forum does not publish.
Africa Investment Forum occupies a narrow, transactional niche distinct from the continent's broader pan-sector summits. Where the Africa CEO Forum (Jeune Afrique Media Group and IFC) and the World Economic Forum's Africa-focused convenings run open plenary and panel programmes for a broad business and policy audience, AIF Market Days exists specifically to move named bankable projects toward financial close through closed boardroom negotiation, run by development-finance institutions rather than a media or membership organiser. It typically runs in the fourth quarter (November or December in the four most recent editions: 2022 Abidjan, 2023 Marrakech, 2024 Rabat, 2025 Rabat), positioning it as a late-year deal-closing event on the African investment calendar rather than an early-year agenda-setting one.
Yes, though no 2026 host city has been announced. AIF Market Days has moved every year it has run in person: Johannesburg, South Africa (Sandton Convention Centre, 7 to 9 November 2018, the inaugural edition, and again 11 to 13 November 2019); no in-person edition in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic; a hybrid edition in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire (1 to 3 December 2021) whose full boardroom programme was disrupted by the Omicron wave and partly rescheduled as virtual boardroom sessions in March 2022; a full in-person edition in Abidjan again (2 to 4 November 2022, the first full in-person Market Days since 2019); Marrakech, Morocco (8 to 10 November 2023); and Rabat, Morocco for two consecutive years (4 to 6 December 2024 and 26 to 28 November 2025). This history is compiled from AfDB and AIF press releases and contemporaneous news coverage of each edition rather than one single reconciled organiser table, so exact figures for the earliest editions vary slightly between sources.
English and French, based on the bilingual official website (africainvestmentforum.com serves both languages) and on host countries spanning Anglophone South Africa and Cote d'Ivoire and Francophone Morocco. A dedicated statement on simultaneous interpretation at Market Days sessions was not found during this research.
Partially, and inconsistently across editions. Free-to-air broadcast television feeds were made available for the 2018 and 2019 Johannesburg editions, and CNBC Africa has served as a broadcast partner for past editions per contemporaneous press material, suggesting public plenary and opening-ceremony sessions are typically filmed and distributed. Boardroom sessions themselves, where the forum's actual deal-making happens, are closed and not broadcast. A dedicated on-demand video archive or livestream page on the current organiser site was not found during this research, so remote access to public sessions for any future edition is not publicly disclosed with certainty.
No participant refund policy is published. The organiser's general terms and conditions instead reserve rights to the African Development Bank: it "reserves the right to cancel or change the location, venue, dates and schedule" of an AIF Engagement with no stated liability to participants, and if it changes (but does not cancel) an engagement, a participant may terminate within thirty days of being notified of the change. The terms state that participants' own travel, accommodation and other costs are borne by the participant regardless of any such change or cancellation.
Not publicly disclosed. No accessibility statement was found on the organiser's site or in the general terms and conditions reviewed during this research.
Not answerable as of 3 September 2026: no 2026 host city has been announced, so venue-specific or city-specific travel guidance cannot be given. For reference, the 2025 Rabat edition was held at the Sofitel Jardin des Roses, Rabat, Morocco, served by Rabat-Sale Airport; the 2024 edition was held at the same hotel. Earlier editions used the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg (2018 to 2019) and venues in Abidjan (2021 to 2022) and Marrakech (2023), none of which is confirmed as a future host.
The closed boardroom, not the plenary stage, is what actually distinguishes this forum from the many pan-African summits competing for the same institutional audience. A room built to negotiate one named project against a curated list of possible financiers, with the explicit target of financial close, is a different product from a panel discussion about African investment in the abstract, and it is why development-finance institutions co-own the platform rather than a media group or membership body, unlike the Africa CEO Forum or comparable pan-sector gatherings.
Restricting general attendance to invited, senior participants, rather than open registration, is a direct consequence of that boardroom design: a negotiating room only works if everyone in it has standing to negotiate, which is also why there is no public ticket price to report.
The billions reported at the close of every edition, $15.3 billion at Rabat in 2025, $34.8 billion at Marrakech in 2023, are the organiser's own count of "investment interest secured," a term the forum itself uses rather than "committed," "signed" or "disbursed." Interest expressed in a boardroom is not a binding financial commitment, and no source reviewed for this fiche tracks what share of any year's headline figure later converts into signed agreements or disbursed capital. The AfDB has every institutional interest in reporting a large number: it is both the convenor and the primary judge of what counts as investment interest secured.
Official Africa Investment Forum site: africainvestmentforum.com. African Development Bank Group site (parent organisation, general portal rather than a forum-dedicated site): afdb.org. X (Twitter): @AIFMarketPlace. LinkedIn: Africa Investment Forum. Facebook: Africa Investment Forum - AIF. As of 3 September 2026, no page dedicated to a 2026 edition was found live on either site.