Africa Industrialization Day

This high-level side event marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and explores how gender equality drives inclusive and sustainable industrialization. It will highlight the critical role of women in shaping the future of industry and economy, especially in the context of digitalization and the green transition. Watch Empowering Women, Transforming Industry: Leadership for a Sustainable Future! Meetings & Events

  The African Women in Processing (AWIP) Forum and the Africa youth Start-ups Forum (AYSF) will address the following key thematic areas: Women-Led Industrial Parks and Clusters : Design, development, and operationalization as transformative engines. Policy and Regulatory Frameworks : Gender-responsive industrial policies and investment frameworks. Access to Finance and Markets : Leveraging DFIs, commercial banks, venture capital, and public-private partnerships. Skills Development and Capacity Building : Certification, quality standards, digital tools, and ESG compliance. Innovation and Digitalization : Use of technology to enhance production, competitiveness, and market access. Exhibitions and Showcasing Innovations : Highlighting women-led products and integrated value chains. scalable youth-led industrial innovations across Africa, enhanced access to finance and partnerships, policy recommendations to strengthen youth participation in the continent’s industrial agenda, impro...

  The world faces a stark reality today. Despite notable strides in poverty reduction between 2000 and 2015, progress has slowed significantly. By 2022, the number of people lifted from extreme poverty compared to 2013 was only one-third. Currently, around 10 per cent of the global population—nearly 700 million people—still live in extreme poverty while nearly 800 million suffer from chronic hunger. The ambitious goals of eradicating extreme poverty and achieving zero hunger by 2030 now seem increasingly unattainable, especially in developing countries, where the impacts of recent crises, including the COVID19 pandemic, armed conflicts, and climate change, have further exacerbated inequalities. Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, continues to grapple with deeply entrenched challenges, with poverty more pervasive than it has been in decades. The labour market presents an equally troubling picture. Although some recovery from the COVID-19 crisis has been reported, a notable jobs gap6 ...

At its most basic level, artificial intelligence (AI) refers to computer systems and algorithms that can perform tasks typically requiring human cognition, such as problem-solving, decision-making and language comprehension. While  AI , has garnered significant commercial interest over the past decade, it is part of a broader digital transformation that began with the shift from analogue to digital technology in the 1970s. This Digital Transformation , known as the Third Industrial Revolution , saw the rise of computers and the proliferation of the internet, laying the groundwork for today’s AI-driven innovations in the 4IR . These advancements have evolved into a wide range of applications, including advanced robotics, natural language processing and machine learning. The Fourth Industrial Revolution ( 4IR ), driven by recent technological breakthroughs in Digitalization , is fundamentally reshaping industrial production . Cutting-edge technologies such as AI , bigdata a...

A widening technology gap between developed and developing countries threatens to exclude the world’s poorest from the ongoing industrial revolution and a technology market projected to soar from USD 1.5 trillion in 2020 to USD 9.5 trillion by 2030. Advanced economies, which are at the forefront of developing and adopting these technologies, stand to gain the most from increased efficiency and productivity. In contrast, less developed countries risk falling further behind in technological progress and innovation, becoming ever more reliant on imports of technology-intensive products. Many LDCs still use analogue technologies for nearly 70% of their manufacturing processes which could potentially be digitalized. The United Nations High-Level Advisory Panel on AI notes that Data, computing power and talent are currently concentrated among a small number of private sector players in an even smaller number of countries. However, AI and digitalization also present inherent risks. Irrespo...