President William Ruto has called for Africa to mobilise its own financial capital to develop the infrastructure needed to support growth and development across the continent.
Opening the first Africa We Build Summit in Nairobi, held from 23 to 24 April 2026, President Ruto said continued reliance on foreign capital was limiting Africa’s ability to deliver key infrastructure projects, including roads, ports, airports and oil refineries. He cautioned that Africa’s ambitions would remain unrealised if the continent continued to depend on external capital driven primarily by the need to secure raw materials for industries outside Africa.
The summit was co-hosted by Kenya and the African Finance Corporation (AFC), a continental financial institution headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria. AFC has also opened a regional office in Nairobi. Attendees included Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, AFC President and CEO Samaila Zubairu, Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi, and Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote, among others.
President Ruto called for the strengthening of regional development finance institutions and urged African countries to establish robust national finance mechanisms to drive infrastructure development. He cited Kenya’s National Infrastructure Fund and the proposed Sovereign Wealth Fund as examples of domestic capital mobilisation tools, saying these instruments are intended to attract public and private, domestic and foreign capital to fund priority projects valued at KSh5 trillion, approximately $40 billion, over the next decade.
He said the summit was taking place at a time of global economic disruption linked to the Gulf War, noting that although Africa produces approximately 10 million barrels of oil per day, about 10% of global output, the continent remains a net importer of petroleum products. He said Africa imports around 120 million metric tonnes of petroleum products annually, at a cost of about $90 billion.
Against this background, President Ruto said East African countries were discussing the development of a joint oil refinery at Tanga Port in Tanzania. The proposed refinery would serve the region and take into account oil resources from the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Uganda.
President Museveni said the region has the financial resources required to undertake world-class infrastructure projects, noting that local capital held in pension funds could be directed towards such projects if consumption was constrained.
President Ruto also called for deeper regional integration, arguing that countries should be able to benefit from complementary natural resources across the region. He said these resources must be connected through infrastructure, including roads, railways, ports and electricity grids, to allow raw materials and intermediate goods to move freely across borders.
He further called for the establishment of regional platforms for development, drawing a comparison with the European Union, which began in 1951 as the European Coal and Steel Community.
President Ruto said East Africa is richly endowed with renewable energy and minerals that are central to the global energy transition, including copper, cobalt, nickel, manganese, graphite, lithium and rare earth elements. He said the region should deliberately pool these resources and position itself competitively in global green manufacturing.
