The recently concluded Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi was presented as a defining moment for Africa’s future. It was promoted as a platform to reshape partnerships between Africa, Europe, global investors, and international institutions. Leaders spoke passionately about renewable energy, digital transformation, green industrialization, innovation, and economic sovereignty. Large investment commitments were announced, and governments described the summit as the beginning of a new era of equal partnership and cooperation.
However, for many activists, grassroots organizers, and communities living on the frontlines of climate change, poverty, displacement, and environmental destruction, an important question remains unanswered: who is truly benefiting from this vision of Africa moving forward?
For many last mile communities across the continent, the summit appeared to be another high level conversation dominated by political leaders, financiers, multinational corporations, and development agencies, while the voices of ordinary Africans remained largely unheard. Communities affected by mining activities, climate disasters, energy poverty, land grabbing, and unemployment were not meaningfully represented in shaping the summit declaration or influencing the investment priorities discussed in Nairobi.
Africa’s development cannot continue to be designed in luxury conference halls while the people most affected by these decisions remain outside the room.The summit placed significant attention on renewable energy transitions and green growth. Yet there was little serious discussion about how these investments would directly transform the lives of millions of Africans who still rely on firewood and charcoal for cooking, live without electricity, struggle with poor infrastructure, or face displacement from large infrastructure and extractive projects.
Across Africa, communities are demanding affordable and decentralized renewable energy systems, protection of land rights, direct climate adaptation financing, local ownership of green investments, transparent development agreements, and fair sharing of benefits from natural resources. Communities are also demanding protection from exploitative projects that are increasingly being presented as development opportunities while leaving local people poorer and more vulnerable.
Unfortunately, many of these concerns were not strongly reflected in the summit outcomes.Africa has witnessed decades of major investment promises that rarely improved the daily realities of ordinary citizens. In many cases, development partnerships have benefited political elites, foreign corporations, and urban business interests while rural and marginalized communities continue to face poverty, unemployment, environmental degradation, and lack of basic services.
There is growing fear that the current wave of green investment and energy transition financing may repeat the same mistakes under a different name. Without strong accountability and meaningful community participation, renewable energy projects risk becoming another form of exploitation. Carbon offset initiatives may lead to land dispossession. Green industrialization may exclude local workers and small businesses. Critical mineral extraction for global clean energy markets could further intensify environmental destruction and human rights violations across vulnerable African communities.
Africa cannot speak about a just transition while excluding the very people expected to bear the burden of that transition, the language of green growth and sustainable investment sounds promising, but if these commitments do not result in affordable clean energy for villages, decent employment opportunities for young people, stronger local economies, resilient farming systems, and genuine community ownership of energy infrastructure, then these promises risk becoming empty political slogans disconnected from everyday realities.
Many leaders at the summit emphasized Africa’s strategic role in the global energy transition. However, climate justice is not simply about attracting billions of dollars in investment. Climate justice is about improving the lives of people who have contributed the least to the climate crisis but continue to suffer its harshest impacts.
Across Uganda and many parts of Africa, communities are already facing devastating floods, prolonged droughts, food insecurity, pollution from mining activities, destruction of ecosystems, rising energy costs, displacement caused by infrastructure projects, and widespread youth unemployment. These realities require development approaches rooted in local participation, inclusion, and justice rather than top down investment frameworks designed far away from the communities they claim to serve.
If the Africa Forward Summit genuinely seeks to build a sustainable and inclusive future, then future declarations must place communities at the center of decision making. Grassroots organizations, women leaders, youth movements, indigenous communities, smallholder farmers, and local innovators must become active participants in shaping Africa’s development agenda rather than remaining symbolic observers.
The summit repeatedly highlighted Africa’s youthful population and innovation potential. Yet millions of young Africans remain excluded from economic opportunities, investment systems, and policy spaces. Young people across the continent are already building climate solutions, community recycling initiatives, agroecology projects, renewable energy enterprises, digital innovations, and grassroots movements for justice. What they need is not another speech about youth empowerment, but meaningful investment, mentorship, infrastructure, and direct access to opportunities.
Africa’s future cannot continue to be shaped solely by political and corporate elites while the continent’s largest population group remains economically marginalized, for Africa to genuinely move forward, international partnerships must move beyond viewing the continent primarily as a source of raw materials, a destination for carbon offset projects, a market for foreign technologies, or a geopolitical battleground for global powers. Partnerships must instead support Africa’s own vision for sustainable, people centered, and locally driven development.
This requires investment in community owned renewable energy systems, local manufacturing, climate adaptation, public education, research institutions, food sovereignty, circular economies, and locally led enterprises capable of creating dignified livelihoods for ordinary Africans.
Development should no longer be measured only by the size of investment announcements made at international summits. True development must be measured by the dignity, resilience, and well being of ordinary people.
The Africa Forward Summit demonstrated that the world increasingly recognizes Africa’s economic and strategic importance. That recognition is important. However, real transformation will only happen when last mile communities become central to development planning, financing, and implementation. Africa does not need partnerships that simply repackage old inequalities using the language of green growth and sustainability. Africa needs partnerships grounded in justice, transparency, equity, accountability, and community ownership.
The true measure of the summit’s success will not be the billions announced in Nairobi, but whether ordinary Africans experience meaningful change in their daily lives. It will depend on whether a rural woman gains access to affordable clean energy, whether a young person secures dignified green employment, whether mining communities receive environmental justice, and whether local communities finally become beneficiaries rather than victims of global development agendas.
Until that happens, many activists across the continent will continue to ask a difficult but necessary question ,Africa Forward for who?