The renewed collaboration was announced during a High-Level Consultation Meeting held at the AfDB’s headquarters in Abidjan. The meeting established a common platform designed to shift cooperation from fragmented initiatives toward programmatic, large-scale co-investment aligned with Africa’s development priorities.
The consultation comes at a time when the continent faces a widening development financing gap, alongside growing pressure to mobilise capital at scale for energy access, climate resilience, food security, regional integration and private-sector-led growth. It also reflects a shared ambition among ACG members to expand their engagement in Africa through more coordinated and catalytic approaches.
Discussions focused on how the ACG and AfDB can jointly anchor Arab-African co-financing by combining their balance sheets, long-term and counter-cyclical financing capacities, sector expertise and country platforms. The aim is to unlock larger and more coordinated public and private investments that support Africa’s development agendas.
Participants explored ways to strengthen joint project preparation, harmonise financing approaches, deepen policy dialogue and leverage comparative advantages, while ensuring that investments deliver measurable impact and long-term resilience. The talks were also framed within the AfDB’s push for a New African Financial Architecture, which seeks to strengthen Africa’s financial sovereignty by better integrating development finance institutions, insurers, guarantee providers, capital markets and private investors.
The meeting concluded with the adoption of a Joint Declaration on a Strategic Partnership between the ACG and the AfDB. The declaration outlines a shared political vision and translates it into operational priorities, while setting principles for institutional follow-up to guide the next phase of Arab-African cooperation.
As a next step, the declaration calls for the development of a Financing and Operational Partnership Framework to be considered in 2026. This framework will define modalities for co-financing, pipeline coordination, mutual reliance and regular joint programming. It also highlights the central role of the African Development Fund, the AfDB Group’s concessional financing arm, in supporting low-income and fragile countries, and encourages closer collaboration between ACG institutions and the Fund.
Established in 1975, the ACG is a strategic alliance of 10 Arab national, regional and international institutions. It has provided more than 13 000 development loans to over 160 countries worldwide, focusing on sustainable development and policy harmonisation across its financing operations.
–AfDB/ChannelAfrica–
