“We regret to inform you that due to circumstances, the Africa CEO Forum is postponed to a later date, which we will announce shortly,” stated the organizing team of the 8th edition of the Africa CEO Forum on 4 March. The event mobilizes nearly 1,800 private sector decision-makers each year.
Groupe Jeune Afrique is the parent company of The Africa Report.
“Africa needs business meetings, economic integration, rapprochement between East, West, North and South. It also needs constancy and determination. We remain at the side of the continent and its companies in good times and bad,” wrote the President of the Africa CEO Forum, Amir Ben Yahmed, listing the measures intended to be implemented to ensure the health security of participants: strengthening health teams at the Abidjan airport, medical teams on site, and other preventative measures.
Major world events affected
“But within a few days, all the global groups and many of the pan-African groups had activated protection plans prohibiting their executives, and sometimes even all their employees, from participating in outside events,” said an organiser within the group. These serial cancellations led to the postponement of the event.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic in China at the end of January, a series of economic events have been cancelled, including the World Mobile Congress, the global meeting of the telecoms sector in Barcelona from 24 to 27 February, and the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCA) conference, from 20 to 24 April in Dakar.
Other organizations have opted for digitalising their events, such as the global giant Google, which will organize its developers’ conference on video conferencing screens, or the IMF and the World Bank, which will hold “virtual” spring meeting.
Other events, such as the Africa CEO Forum, have been postponed to a later, as yet unknown date.
This is the case for the Facebook developers’ convention and the Next Einstein Forum, the continent’s scientific meeting which the organisers on 4 February, announced would be postponed.
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