In Person
Africa Summit 2026
Tuesday, November 10 - Wednesday, November 11, 2026
Lagos, Nigeria
Nigeria and West Africa as Anchors for Future Growth
Africa’s long-term growth will depend on deeper, more liquid, and more resilient capital markets that can mobilise domestic savings, expand local-currency financing, improve risk transparency, and connect African issuers with domestic and global investors. Nigeria is central to this agenda as one of Africa’s largest economies and a key West African financial hub, with the potential to shape regional capital flows, institutional investor participation, and sovereign debt market development.
The wider West African context reinforces this opportunity. Côte d’Ivoire’s growth momentum within WAEMU and access to the BRVM framework, alongside Ghana’s post-restructuring path toward renewed macroeconomic stability, highlight both the progress made and the need to build more resilient domestic markets that can support confidence, investment, and long-term financing.
The S&P Global Africa Summit 2026 will convene senior policymakers, financial leaders, investors, and capital markets stakeholders under the theme "Orchestrating Africa's Financial Architecture for Long-Term Growth". The summit will explore how policymakers, development finance institutions, investors, and market leaders can strengthen financial ecosystems and catalyse capital formation across the region. Drawing on S&P Global’s credit ratings, risk analytics, and research capabilities, the event will provide actionable insights into the credit, investment, and policy implications of an increasingly complex global environment.
Concept Note
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Africa’s ability to finance long-term growth will increasingly depend on deeper, more liquid, and more resilient capital markets that can mobilize domestic savings, expand local-currency financing, improve risk transparency, and connect African issuers with domestic and global investors. The challenge is not only the scale of financing needs, but the strength of the financial architecture required to channel capital into infrastructure, energy security, industrialisation, and private sector development.
Nigeria provides a critical anchor for this discussion. As one of Africa’s largest economies and a key financial hub in West Africa, Nigeria can shape regional capital flows, institutional investor participation, sovereign debt market development, and broader market integration; strengthening its capital markets can support private sector development, improve financial resilience, and create pathways for scaling investment across the region.
The regional context reinforces this opportunity. Côte d'Ivoire has become a key growth engine within WAEMU and benefits from access to the BRVM’s regional capital market framework, while Ghana’s post-restructuring path toward renewed macroeconomic stability underscores the importance of resilient domestic markets in rebuilding confidence and supporting long-term financing. Together, these markets highlight both the progress made and the scope to deepen capital markets, mobilise domestic savings, and expand investment across West Africa.
Against this backdrop, the S&P Global Africa Summit 2026 (SPGAS) will convene policymakers, regulators, development finance institutions, investors, issuers, banks, and market infrastructure providers to examine practical pathways for building deeper African capital markets. The Summit will connect the structural constraints facing issuers and investors with actionable themes around capital formation, market transparency, domestic savings mobilization, policy coordination, local-currency instruments, and scalable financing solutions.
The agenda reflects this logic by sequencing high-level plenary discussions, market-focused panels, and technical roundtables around the core constraints and enablers of capital market development, from domestic savings mobilization and institutional investor participation to local-currency instruments, risk transparency, and infrastructure finance.
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Rationale
Rationale
Volatile macroeconomic conditions continue to constrain financing across African markets, but the deeper structural issue is the limited depth, liquidity, and diversity of domestic capital markets. Narrow investor bases, limited long-term local-currency instruments, weak secondary-market liquidity, and uneven risk transparency raise funding costs, limit capital formation, and reduce the ability of public- and private-sector issuers to access stable long-term financing.
Nigeria illustrates both the opportunity and the challenge. Its economic scale, banking system, pension assets, sovereign debt market, and role in West African financial flows make it a critical anchor for regional capital market development, but unlocking this potential will require stronger market infrastructure, deeper institutional investor participation, improved benchmark yield curves, more transparent risk assessment, and greater alignment among policymakers, regulators, issuers, and investors.
The Summit will therefore focus on the practical conditions needed to move from financing constraints to investable market solutions, including stronger risk-sharing mechanisms, credible credit benchmarks, scalable local-currency instruments, and more effective links between domestic savings pools and productive investment.
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Objective
Objective
The SPGAS aims to provide a high-level platform for policymakers, regulators, development finance institutions, investors, issuers, banks, and market infrastructure providers to identify practical priorities for building deeper, more resilient African capital markets.
With Nigeria and West Africa as a central lens, the Summit will examine how to mobilise domestic savings into productive investment, strengthen local-currency financing, expand institutional investor participation, improve market transparency, and attract long-term domestic and international capital.
The intended outcome is a focused dialogue on market-building actions that can support capital formation, including risk-sharing mechanisms, benchmark development, credit enhancement, scalable instruments, and stronger coordination between public- and private-sector stakeholders. Technical roundtables will help translate these priorities into more detailed, practical solutions that can inform future market development efforts.
The agenda will use Nigeria’s market scale and West Africa’s regional platforms, including WAEMU/BRVM and Ghana’s market recovery experience, as practical reference points for identifying solutions that can be adapted across African markets.
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Target Audience
Target Audience
The event is aimed at senior decision-makers and market participants, including:
Development finance institutions
Policymakers and regulators
Institutional investors and fund managers, including sovereign wealth funds, infrastructure funds
Investment banks, advisors, and arrangers
Corporate and financial institution issuers
Legal, audit, and professional services firms
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Format
Format
The conference will be delivered through a mix of:
Presentations by S&P Global and external experts
Moderated panel discussions with market practitioners
Interactive Q&A sessions to encourage audience engagement
Technical roundtables designed to elaborate practical solutions, refine market priorities, and translate panel insights into actionable follow-up themes
Nigeria- and West Africa-focused sessions that connect country-level priorities with broader regional capital market development objectives
Location
Lagos Continental Hotel on Victoria Island
52a Kofo Abayomi St
Victoria Island 101241
Lagos, Nigeria
Contact Us
If you have more questions, please feel free to contact our team