Egypt is convening more than 20 heads of state, including Angola’s President João Lourenço, and a broad cross-section of African public- and private-sector leaders at the inaugural Alamein Africa Forum in El Alamein from 2 to 4 October — a gathering that signals Cairo’s deliberate strategic pivot toward the continent after decades in which its foreign economic focus was trained almost exclusively on the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
The forum, conceived as a permanent biennial business initiative, aims to align national political agendas with the priorities of business leaders at a moment when the Middle East conflict has prompted governments across the region to seek new markets and fresh alliances. Organisers describe it as the flagship platform where political will and business acumen converge on a continental scale.
Beyond rebuilding its influence in Africa, Egypt is also using the forum to shore up diplomatic support in its protracted dispute with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam — a project Cairo regards as an existential threat to its share of Nile waters and a persistent source of bilateral tension. ‘This is an African platform,’ Egypt’s Deputy Foreign Minister for African Affairs, Mohamed Abu Bakr Saleh, told Agence France-Presse, underscoring Cairo’s intention to turn the forum into a facilitation mechanism for dialogue and commerce across Africa’s sub-regions. Egypt already holds an estimated $14 billion in investments across the continent.
The event is co-organised by the Egyptian government, Afreximbank and the African Union Development Agency — New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD). It will encompass three concurrent gatherings: the Alamein Africa Forum itself, the AUDA-NEPAD Founding States Summit and the African Union’s 8th Biannual Coordination Meeting.
Confirmed heads of state attending alongside host President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Angola’s Lourenço include South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, Algeria’s Abdelmadjid Tebboune, Kenya’s William Ruto, Senegal’s Bassirou Diomaye Faye and Ghana’s John Mahama.
The speaker roster of 70 figures spans some of Africa’s most prominent business names. Angolan entrepreneur Agostinho Kapaia, founder and chief executive of the Opaia Group, features alongside Africa’s wealthiest individual, Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote, and Ralph Mupita, the Zimbabwean chief executive of South Africa’s MTN Group. The list also includes Corneille Karekezi, chief executive of Africa Re — the continent’s largest reinsurer and its pre-eminent pan-African institution in the sector — and Zambian Mwiza Mseteka, executive chief of the Lobito Corridor Development Platform.
Mseteka is scheduled to participate in a session dedicated to the development of logistics corridors, a topic of direct relevance to the Lobito Atlantic Railway linking Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia — one of Africa’s most closely watched infrastructure projects. Kapaia, meanwhile, will join a panel examining how Africa can establish itself as a strategic actor in global food systems, a sector that organisers say carries the potential to unlock a $1 trillion agri-food market and position the continent as a critical engine of global food security and supply.
The forum’s inaugural edition underscores a broader reorientation of Egyptian foreign economic policy, with Cairo now actively seeking to deepen trade, investment and institutional ties across sub-Saharan Africa rather than relying predominantly on Gulf and Mediterranean partnerships.
The full article appears in edition 896 of Expansão, dated Friday, 2 October 2026, available in print and digital format with payment in kwanzas.
Source: Expansão / Original article: http://expansao.co.ao/mundo/africa/detalhe/egipto-desvia-o-olhar-do-medio-oriente-para-continente-africano-75061.html
