About The African Business Roundtable

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African Business Roundtable is a Non-Governmental Organisation in special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

Brief History

In 1988, a group of 25 prominent business leaders convened at the Headquarters of the African Development Bank in Abidjan, to advise the then Bank President on strategies to enhance the role of private enterprises in African development. As a result, a Private Sector Development Unit was set up in the Bank for direct ADB financing of African private enterprise.

After a span of two years, this informal grouping of business leaders saw the wisdom of mobilizing the African private sector into a coherent body capable of re-engineering the continental role of private enterprise as the engine of growth for Africa. Thus in March 1990, at a historic meeting in Cairo, the African Business Roundtable (ABR) was born.

Legal Status

The African Development Bank Group (ADB) set up the African Business Roundtable (ABR) in 1990. The ABR is Africa’s foremost and continent-wide association of businesses and business leaders. It is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit private sector funded organization, committed to fostering African private sector-led economic growth and social development in Africa.

At inception it was fully funded by the African Development Bank Group, which also provided it (ABR) an office space at its Head Office in Abidjan Cote D’Ivoire, until 1997 when the Secretariat was relocated to Sandton in Johannesburg South Africa.

ABR Chapters

The ABR presently has seven Chapters namely:

The South African Chapter - Johannesburg ( Sandton)

The East African Chapter - Tanzania (Dar es Salaam)

The West African Chapter - Nigeria (Abuja, Lagos)

The Central African Chapter - Cameroon (Yaoundé)

The North African Chapter - Egypt (Cairo)

The Senegal River Basin Chapter- Dakar

The International Chapter - Washington DC, London, Geneva

Each Regional Chapter has a Secretariat with a Regional Coordinator as the Head of Administration, an Executive Committee that is chaired by the Executive Vice President, and various other Sub-committees like Membership, Programmes, Finance and General Purpose, Research, etc.

ABR Core Values

The ABR is committed to the realization of its Vision through the commitment of its members, who shall be policy level executives of member companies and individuals, to the following Membership Core Values:

1. Conviction that an African private sector-led development is the key to unlocking the potential of African economies.
2. Ethical business practices are the foundation of an enduring private sector.
3. Good economic and corporate governance is essential to sustainable economic growth and development.
4. Open dialogue and the free flow of ideas foster innovation, change, reduced conflict, improved understanding and consensus.
5. Regional integration based on competition and open market systems.
6. Attractive climate for intra-African trade and investment and foreign direct investment.
7. Objective research.
8. Economic reforms that would generate sustainable economic development, equitable income distribution, peace, social stability and improved standard of living for the peoples of Africa.