The proceedings of the Africa Financial Summit (AFIS-2024) opened on Monday in Casablanca, with the participation of more than 1,000 leaders from the African financial sector, policymakers, and regulators.
The opening session was marked by the presence of the Minister of Economy and Finance, Nadia Fettah, the Minister of Industry and Trade, Ryad Mezzour, and the Minister Delegate to the Head of Government, in charge of Investment, Convergence and Evaluation of Public Policies, Karim Zidane.
Organised under the theme "The time for African financial powers has come", this edition, which is being held for the first time on Moroccan soil, brings together private sector leaders and government representatives to discuss strategies that allow African finance to become a driver of development, economic growth, and resilience.
Thus, reports the MAP, AFIS 2024 is focusing on five key priorities to promote the necessary transformations, namely: creating banking products and capital market solutions to direct local resources towards productive investments, reducing the cost and time of cross-border transactions and enabling the development of trade between African countries, strengthening capital requirements for financial institutions, consolidating the industry, and encouraging partnerships with international financial centres.
It is also about offering financial products to the informal workforce, which represents 83% of the African economy, by leveraging the digitalisation of insurance and banking services and building a pan-African stock market to tackle market fragmentation and stimulate intra-African investments, thereby creating a truly integrated financial ecosystem.
Founded by Jeune Afrique Media Group in 2021 and co-organised by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), AFIS showcases, through more than 30 high-level panels and round tables, the structural reforms necessary to strengthen the sector's resilience and remove obstacles to financing the continent's economies in times of regional and international upheaval.
