African Trade in a Changing World
As global trade fractures along new fault lines, driven by US tariffs, supply chain realignments and shifting geopolitical blocs, Africa sits at a critical juncture. The continent's trade corridors, capital markets, natural resources and expanding workforce give it greater strategic weight today than at any point in a generation. Programmes like Manufacturing Africa have already helped close £2 billion in FDI and create over 100,000 jobs, proof that the opportunity is real and the momentum is building.
About the event
The question is no longer whether Africa matters to global trade. It is whether Africa can shape the terms on which it participates. Development finance reform, critical minerals demand, digital infrastructure expansion and new South-South partnerships are creating openings, but the gap between capital available and capital deployed, and between knowledge created and value commercialised, remains wide.
This closed-door dialogue convenes investors, business leaders, policymakers and capital allocators committed to closing that gap. Held at Birkbeck University of London, our academic partner for this event, the dialogue features an opening keynote address by Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu DBE, President of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge.
Themes we will explore
Global Context: How shifting geopolitics and capital flows are reshaping the operating environment for African businesses and investors
Doing Business on the Ground: What building and scaling businesses across African markets looks like in practice, from manufacturing and financial services to digital infrastructure
Strategic Partnerships: How public and private capital can work together to accelerate sustainable growth across the continent
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu DBE
President of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge
Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu, DBE, FMedSci is President of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UCL’s Professor of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience, a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a governor on the Wellcome board (one of the largest biomedical sciences research charities in the world), a member of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Council, as well as Chief Scientific Officer of Nanomerics Ltd, a company she co-founded.
Uchegbu is an inventor. Her company, Nanomerics Ltd, is a clinical-stage biotech company, developing medicines that address sight threatening illnesses, using technology Uchegbu invented in UK academia. Nanomerics has also out licensed medicines developed in her laboratory to a US pharmaceutical company. Technologies developed in Uchegbu’s laboratory have won prizes from the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Nanomerics Ltd. won the King’s Award for Enterprise 2024 in the Innovation category. The King’s Award for Enterprise is the UK’s most prestigious business award.
Uchegbu’s work has been featured in BBC Radio 4 programmes such as Desert Island Discs, The Life Scientific and BBC Radio 3’s Private Passions as well as on the BBC World Service’s Outlook and Lives Less Ordinary. Uchegbu’s work has also been featured in The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. Uchegbu has served as Chair of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Scientific Secretary of the Controlled Release Society, and she is the immediate past UCL Provost’s Envoy for Race Equality, a role in which she led on race equality work at UCL. Her work led to the removal of the names of prominent eugenicists from all of UCL’s buildings in 2020. Uchegbu has also presented to the UK House of Commons on the educational racial disparities that lead to a lack of ethnic minority representation in scientific research.
Uchegbu’s popular science book– Chain Reaction – was published by Hodder and Stoughton in 2026.
Uchegbu is listed in Bloomsbury Publishing’s Who’s Who.
Uchegbu was made Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in the King’s New Years Honours 2025.