Since 2022, Africa Week conversations have interrogated the concept of African agency in a multipolar world and how the continent navigates its position in the global political economic system. This discourse has been valuable in convening intergenerational exchanges, including the ALC’s flagship Africa Public Square (APS) debates, on this vital subject. These deliberations offer a basis upon which to move beyond the “why” and “what” of agency to the “how”.
Against this background, Africa Week 2026 asks, what resources—material, human, institutional and ideational—are necessary for actualising agency?
The current global context underscores this urgency. Resourcing emerges as a concern against the background of a current constrained context shaped by longstanding structural inequities in global finance and debt regimes that exhibit biases towards African contexts; hierarchical international institutional infrastructure that have failed to eradicate global injustices and; the decimation of collective continental and regional institutional architectures addressing peace, security, development and governance priorities, evidenced by the responses to the war in Sudan and the re-emergence of military rule in West Africa.
Events in the last year have deepened and reinforced the patterns of global disruptions with significant consequences for Africa. Especially pertinent has been declining commitments tomultilateralism from key Global North actors, against the background of global economic and political instability. This challenge to multilateralism has been delivered through attacks on international institutional infrastructure, including the UN, widespread funding cuts towards development and humanitarian assistance from Global North economies andinstabilities in global trade relations, underpinned by a US trade war with economies in Africa, Europe, Latin America, Asia and especially China.
Despite the challenges, opportunities for resourcing African agency persist within African contexts. The continent commands growing global interest in minerals and fuels, particularly green minerals, positioning Africa as a key target in supply chain security. Economic and trade interactions with Global South actors, including Middle Eastern economies and China, are deepening, while domestic private capital offers a substantial resource base, estimated at USD 4 trillion according to the African Finance Corporation’s 2025 report. Africa is also experiencing higher-than-anticipated growth levels and attempting to leverage a revitalised continental institutional architecture through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to enable higher-value intra-African and global trade. New debates on technological sovereignty signal a move toward innovation. The continent’s vibrant and resourceful youth population strengthens this picture as it exercises political voice through social movements and driving innovation across technology, creative economies, education and knowledge systems.
The Africa Week 2026 theme responds to:
- The imperative to mobilise resources beyond dependency, leveraging domestic capital and strategic partnerships.
- The need for institutional and intellectual preparedness to lead in a multipolar world.
- The urgency of collective action to navigate intra-African tensions, global negotiations, and technological sovereignty.
We consider the imperative of resourcing as simultaneously traversing material, ideational, institutional and people-based concerns across five priority areas:
- Collective agendas
- Articulating (multiple) African visions of change and transformation
- Navigating intra-African tensions and hegemonies
- Negotiating Africa—Global South/Global North relationships
- Technological sovereignty
- Natural resources
- Being strategic about mineral/oil and strategic resources
- Balancing commitments to domestic and global markets
- Prioritising sustainable industrial change and moving beyond extractivism
- Centring African energy access and new technologies
- Material Resourcing beyond dependency
- Mobilising domestic state and private capital
- Rethinking global partnerships from dependency to allyship
- Articulating and negotiating mutuality
- Education as strategic infrastructure
- Balancing African innovation, collaboration and global partnerships
- Aligning education systems with diverse continental priorities
- Articulating interdisciplinary value generation
- Next Generation Africans and Preparedness
- Balancing endowment, resources and priorities
- Advancing a leadership agenda
- Navigating the collective
- Opportunities: harnessing potential and enabling productiveness