Africa must urgently close its electricity gap if it is to industrialize, expand regional value chains and deliver on the promise of the African Continental Free Trade Area, Economic Commission for Africa Executive Secretary Claver Gatete said.

Speaking virtually at the Ministerial Compact Roundtable on Financing Africa’s Nuclear Energy Future, held during the Nuclear Energy Innovation Summit on Africa 2026, Gatete said reliable and affordable power would determine the continent’s economic competitiveness.

“No nation industrializes in the dark,” he said. “Africa cannot realize the promise of the AfCFTA or build competitive regional value chains on intermittent power alone.”

Gatete said Africa’s energy challenge is taking place at a time of overlapping global shocks, including climate extremes, high borrowing costs, tighter finance, and geopolitical instability. These pressures, he noted, are disrupting energy markets, trade routes and public finances, while limiting the ability of many African countries to finance the infrastructure they need.

He said the AfCFTA offers Africa a historic opportunity to deepen intra-African trade, expand productive capacity, strengthen regional value chains and build long-term resilience. But this transformation, he warned, will not happen without electricity at scale.

The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the Ethiopian Capital Market Authority (ECMA), FSD Africa and Ethiopia convened over 80 representatives from Ethiopia’s financial sector this week for the Stakeholder Validation Workshop of Ethiopia’s Capital Markets Master Plan (CMMP), a ten-year strategic roadmap designed by Genesis Analytics and Bourse Consult to develop a deep, diversified, and trusted capital market capable of financing the country’s economic transformation.

Held at the UN Conference Centre in Addis Ababa, the two-day workshop brought together regulators, government ministries, financial institutions, capital market intermediaries, professional associations, and development partners to review the draft CMMP, stress-test its implementation priorities, and build collective ownership of the reform agenda it sets out.

Ethiopia’s capital market has moved rapidly from institutional establishment into early market operation. The Ethiopian Securities Exchange is operational, the Central Securities Depository is advancing, and licensed intermediaries are active. The CMMP now provides the strategic framework to consolidate these gains and move toward a more mature, diversified market over the coming decade.

The UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize 2026 was awarded to the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate, in recognition of its courageous work defending press freedom amid the ongoing conflict in Sudan.

Over the recent years of conflict, the Syndicate has documented dozens of journalist killings and hundreds of violations against media workers, continuing to provide vital, reliable information under extremely dangerous conditions. With much of the country’s media infrastructure destroyed, their work remains essential to ensuring access to information in what has become a “zone of silence.”

The Award Ceremony was held in UNESCO headquarters in Paris on 4th May. UNESCO’s Director-General Khaled El-Enany awarded the Prize, on the recommendation of an independent international Jury, at the presence of a delegation of fourteen representatives of the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate (SJS).

The Africa NextGen Economist Prize, created by Jeune Afrique and The Africa Report, in partnership with the African Development Bank, has been awarded to Abdoulaye Ndiaye, a 37-year-old Senegalese economist, assistant professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and affiliated with the Finance for Development Lab.

Presented in Kigali, on the sidelines of the Africa CEO Forum, the prize aims to spotlight a new generation of African economists whose research helps renew economic thinking on the continent and inform public policy. For this first edition of the Africa NextGen Economist Prize, the jury chose to recognize Abdoulaye Ndiaye for the rigor, originality, and relevance of his research in addressing the economic challenges facing African states.

Selected from more than 70 candidates from 14 African countries, Abdoulaye Ndiaye is a graduate of École Polytechnique and holds a PhD from Northwestern University in the United States. He conducts research at the intersection of public finance, development economics, and political economy. His work seeks to identify the institutional and market constraints that limit African states’ ability to ensure households, mobilize domestic resources, and preserve macro-financial stability. His research focuses on unemployment insurance in economies with high levels of informality, tax productivity, and sovereign debt management, with findings that can be directly applied to the design and evaluation of public policies.