Nairobi, 9 January 2020 - “Cities for people” will be the key topic at Africa Day 2020, a conference hosted by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and UN-Habitat. The event will be held in Dakar on Thursday, 27 February 2020.

High level speakers, from Africa and Europe, will attend Africa Day 2020 to share their experiences and expertise. EIB President Werner Hoyer, EIB Vice-President Ambroise Fayolle and other high-level speakers will join the President of the Republic of Senegal, Mr. Macky Sall, and UN-Habitat Executive Director, Ms. Maimunah Mohd Sharif, to share their experiences and expertise.

EIB Africa Day is a well-established conference that attracts high-level participants across many sectors. It offers an effective and progressive platform for discussion among professionals based in Africa and Europe alike. Past conference themes have included the importance of private sector development, jobs for the young, and the role of digitalization and smart technologies.

This year’s conference will be dedicated to sustainable urbanisation on the African continent, looking at the very rapid growth of African cities and towns. Africa’s population is growing and urbanising at a very high rate, which brings increasing demands on services and infrastructure for the cities of today and of tomorrow. Two-thirds of the urban space that the continent will need by 2050 don’t exist today. They will only be built over the next 30 years.

Africa Day 2020 will address the challenges of managing this rapid urbanization as a key driving force for successful implementation of growth agenda designed to deliver on the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The speakers and attendees come from diverse sectors, backgrounds and regions. The event has become an agenda-setting event and networking platform for African and European representatives from national and local governments, commercial banks and development institutions, urban planners, CEOs and CFOs, members of academic institutions, NGOs and the civil society.

The conference programme will present comprehensive policy development and offer insights on successful integrated planning of urban infrastructure and technologies. The event also seeks to stimulate cooperation among cities, countries, and the African sub-regions. It foresees the adoption of good practice studies in project planning and implementation, project financing, identification of new funding sources, positive exploitation of technical cooperation and other options seeking to provide adequate answers to the most pressing challenges of urban development.

Africa Day 2020 will be a platform for sharing, discussing, networking and forging new partnerships while deepening existing ones. Together we can find different ways to have positive impacts for Africa and make its cities a better place to live.

  • For more information on Africa Day, visit this web page.
  • To participate, you must register by clicking here.
  • Date: 27 February 2020
  • Conference venue: Radisson Blu Hotel in Dakar, Senegal