The Africa Forum on Business, Investment and Security (AFBIS) brings together leading figures from business, investment, politics and security to discuss important issues for decision-makers involved with Africa’s growing economies, organised in partnership with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

AFBIS focuses on a number of security-related issues that are of crucial importance for businesses and investors in Africa’s growing economies. These include:

  • The ICT sector and cyber security
  • Agriculture, food and water
  • Logistics (including trade, freight, transport, ports, airports and maritime security)
  • Insurance
  • Investment
  • Regional Security

The Forum builds on the success of 2012’s Africa Forum on Business and Security, which was held in Nairobi, with the support of the Kenyan Government. On that occasion, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon. Uhuru Kenyatta, who has recently been elected to the Presidency of the Republic, joined Government ministers, international business leaders and security experts for a wide-ranging discussion of the security-related challenges facing African business and society.

“We are here,” he said “because the unique conditions of our time make the discussion on security ever more important and ever more personal to each one of us.”

As African economies continue to grow, offering unique opportunities for investors and raising the prospect of significant improvements in the standard of living of millions of people across the African continent, there is an urgent need to deal with a range of pressing security challenges.

“There is a fundamental link between security and growth,” says Dr Harold Elletson, the Chairman of the New Security Foundation, co-hosts of AFBIS. “A failure to overcome some of the serious security problems facing African countries could block the path to growth and prosperity. These problems include threats to information systems, as well as to physical infrastructure but they also include the need to deal with issues of governance and to create a secure and stable climate for investment.”