Building Partnerships for Scale and Impact
Session Overview
Day 3 opens with a featured plenary on the partnership architectures required to take African policy successes from pilot through national rollout to continental adoption. Dr. Naledi Khumalo, Prof. Khadija El Mansouri, and Prof. Mamadou Sow anchor the conversation, with Prof. Sow moderating.
Substantive coverage runs across three partnership categories: state-to-state coordination within Regional Economic Communities; state-to-multilateral relationships with the AU Commission, ECA, and AfDB; and the private-sector and think-tank partnerships required to absorb risk and accelerate the diagnostic-to-policy loop.
Delegates leave with sharper criteria for evaluating partnership proposals — distinguishing political-cover partnerships from operational ones, and learning from concrete recent examples of each across the AfCFTA, the African Single Electricity Market, and the AU Year of Education.
Key Topics
- REC-level state-to-state coordination
- AU/ECA/AfDB multilateral relationships
- Private-sector partnerships and risk absorption
- Think-tank to policymaker handoff loops
- Recent examples — AfCFTA, AfSEM, Year of Education
Speaker
Dr. Naledi Khumalo
Director of Development Finance, Southern African Development Bank
Dr. Naledi Khumalo directs the Development Finance practice at the Southern African Development Bank, where she leads the institution's climate-aligned investment portfolio and the Just Transition Africa programme. Her work bridges public finance and private climate capital across the SADC region.
Prof. Khadija El Mansouri
Senior Research Fellow, Maghreb Development Studies Centre
Prof. Khadija El Mansouri is Senior Research Fellow at the Maghreb Development Studies Centre, where she leads research on Maghreb-Sahel integration, renewable energy policy, and EU-Africa industrial cooperation. She is a leading voice on Morocco's green-hydrogen strategy.
Session Materials
- PRESENTATION SLIDESAvailable after session
- VIDEO RECORDINGAvailable after session