OVER 500 participants from Asia, Africa, and around the world came together to Singapore to attend AFRICA-SINGAPORE BUSINESS FORUM 2023. The forum served as an excellent platform for attendees to learn, connect, and explore partnerships in Africa. The forum, which helps businesses to find partners, and connects two fast-growing regions: Africa and Southeast Asia, witnessed the arrival of participants largely drawn from Singapore and Africa. The 3-day event was wrapped up on 31 August 2023.

Held under the aegis of Enterprise Singapore ASBF returned as its seventh edition, after a two-year gap because of the pandemic, in a real-time physical format. This year’s forum was themed “Driving Africa’s Growth through Digitalisation, Manufacturing and Sustainability”. The spotlight on the African market emphasizes how it presents strong potential for businesses, arising from a growing consumer market and the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). Africa, comprising 54 nations has a total population of 1.4 billion people.

The borders now being unsealed provide a greater impetus for more companies to suss out further opportunities for business, investment, and growth in digitalization, manufacturing, and sustainability. Gan Kim Yong, Minister for Trade and Industry of Singapore was the keynote speaker at the forum, which also featured other distinguished speakers such as Alvin Tan, Minister of State for Trade and Industry and Community, Culture, and Youth of Singapore, and several eminent panellists who shared their insights on the African growth story.

The conversations in the insightful panel discussions, held in an enabling environment of the ASBF for networking for potential partnerships, also took cognizance of critical issues such as geopolitical conflicts, pandemics, growing protectionism, and the climate crisis. Gan Kim Yong, Minister of Trade and Industry noted that the best response to such challenges “is to deepen our cooperation with one another – not just within our regions but across regions.”

In his keynote address Gan Kim Yong, Minister of Trade and Industry gave a rallying call to “To go far, go together”, thus kicking off the agenda for developing deeper partnerships, open connectivity, and regionalism, for Singapore and Africa. While pointing out the excellent potential for cooperation and collaboration on this front the Minister said: “We should, therefore, strive for closer ties between Southeast Asia and Africa, a process that Singapore could help catalyse as a node in Africa-Asia trade. Singapore trades with almost every country in Africa. In the past 12 months, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has made official visits to Rwanda, South Africa, and Kenya to strengthen bilateral ties, including business linkages.” 

Sharing his observations on the important issue of sustainability Minister Gan Kim Yong, pointed out that last year, Singapore and Ghana substantially concluded negotiations on an Implementation Agreement on carbon credits cooperation. The Singapore company GenZero, he elaborated, signed an MOU with carbon project developer AJA Climate Solutions to invest in a US$30 million landscape restoration project in Ghana. The project will restore degraded and deforested landscapes in the Kwahu area and generate high-quality carbon credits in the process, he said.

The Minister also announced that Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Trade and Industry will soon offer a capacity-building course in trade negotiations as part of the Singapore Cooperation Programme’s Singapore – Africa Partnership Package. The course is designed to meet the needs of African trade negotiators, even as it helps to foster stronger relations between our governments and officials.

Insightful Learnings

The event provided a platform for excellent insights from the likes of the Secretary General of the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat, Wamkele Mene, as well as African business leaders Samaila Zubairu (President and CEO of Africa Finance Corporation), James Mwangi (Group Managing Director and CEO of Equity Group Holdings), Iyinoluwa Aboyeji (Founder of Future Africa), Kuseni Dlamini (Chairman, Massmart & Aspen Pharmacare), Karim S. Anjarwalla (Senior Partner, ALN Kenya), and Sophia Alj (Co-Founder, Chari).

MoUs Underpin the New Resolve

As shared by Minister Gan Kim Yong there are about 100 Singapore companies present in 40 countries in Africa today. Five commercial Memoranda of Understanding and Agreements were inked at ASBF. All five were aimed at expanding the grounds for greater partnerships between African and Singapore companies; the MoUs were related to fresh developments in the fields of manufacturing, digitalization and technology, sustainable development, transport, and logistics.

One MoU was inked between three Singaporean firms – Robust International, Adatos, and Trames – to collaborate on projects in Africa. Robust is a home-grown global commodities trader. It will work in tandem with Adatos to deploy its partner’s AI solutions to provide agricultural know-how in Nigeria. Trames will provide bespoke logistics management solutions for Robust’s supply chain in Africa and globally. A Memorandum of Association (MOA) appoints PE Energy as DFINITI Technologies’ sales agent in Nigeria for industrial thermal and electric solutions. An MoU was also inked between Singaporean engineering firm NivéSal and Ghana’s SKY 40-40, to set up manufacturing operations in Takoradi, Ghana, to produce polymer-based sustainable building material products.

“Helping to form such partnerships between global traders and SMEs is part of Enterprise Singapore’s Trade 2030 strategy to expand Singapore’s trade and networks to Africa, as well as other parts of the world,” said Minister Gan Kim Yong.

Furthermore, to ensure better access to trade financing, Enterprise Singapore is expanding the pool of participating financial institutions in the Enterprise Financing Scheme to include selected foreign-based financial institutions and multilateral development banks with strong expertise and willingness to finance Singapore enterprises venturing into Africa and other emerging markets, the Minister said.

Bilateral Trade

As reflected by the records of Enterprise Singapore (EnterpriseSG), Singapore’s bilateral trade in goods with Africa has stepped up by about 15 percent every year between 2019 and 2022, to the tune of $19.4 billion in 2022. Investments in the African continent by Singapore firms as at 2021 cumulatively stood at $32.1 billion as at 2021. Singapore is presently looking to negotiate new deals to improve connectivity with African nations – bilaterally as well as with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Earlier on, in August this year, the Kenya-Singapore Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement also came into force.

Ever since it was established in 2010 the Africa Singapore Business Forum (ASBF) has been recognised as the premier biennial plank for business exchange and fostering trade between Africa and Asia. Bolstering its primary aim for this purpose-built platform for dialogue and opportunity has been the incredible support of 5,000 business and government leaders from 40 countries questing for lucrative partnerships and growth opportunities between these two dynamic regions.

This year’s event was of deeper significance for having coincided with the 10th anniversary of the Africa Southeast Asia Chamber of Commerce, commemorating a decade of ongoing dialogue and collaboration.