Even as the AfCFTA, the African Union and its institutions are working with sovereign governments around the continent at the multilateral level to create a regional bloc, Ghana has resumed its leadership in this regard through the efforts of two private organizations. TOMA IMIRHE identifies them, examines their activities and assesses their impacts.
Last week The Business Executive (TBE) Communications Group, a pan African, Accra headquartered publishing and corporate/institutional events organizing group of companies, held the latest in its growing portfolio of business, trade investment, corporate governance, socio-economic development and gender advocacy and affirmative action events. One of last week’s events was the fourth in its periodic series of Ghana Development awards, aimed to coincide with the country’s 69th independence celebrations which came off the very next day.
The other was the 2026 edition of its Africa – Global Trade and Investment Conference and Awards, one among several of its multi-pronged efforts to promote, encourage and facilitate the evolution of Africa as an integrated socio-economic bloc that is increasing its intra-continental cross border activities, while at the same time becoming more globally competitive in its trade and investment relationships with the rest of the world.
Interestingly, these two events were held almost exactly a month after the African Prosperity Network, also pan African in scope of activities and also headquartered in Accra, held the fourth edition of its African Prosperity Dialogues, an annual event it organizes in collaboration with the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat, which is similarly headquartered in Ghana’s capital city. The annual dialogues and its array of associated events and programmes seek to bring Africa’s public and private sectors together to enhance ongoing efforts to achieve a continent that is effectively devoid of national borders with regards to socio-economic activities.
Between the TBE Group and the APN, their initiatives and efforts have placed Ghana at the forefront of the collective efforts towards Africa’s economic and social integration, thus bringing it full circle back to the era when the continent was still wresting its political independence from the erstwhile colonial countries from the western hemisphere, back in the 1950s and 1960s; and when the then Prime Minister of Ghana, the revered Dr Kwame Nkrumah famously declared that Ghana’s independence in 1957 was meaningless without the independence of the rest of Africa.
It is instructive that the domiciliation of both TBE and APN in Ghana masks the scope of the pan Africanism behind their efforts. Baroness Dr Paulette Kporo, the founder and CEO of the TBE Group is a Nigerian; and while Gabby Otchere Darko, the founder and Executive Chairman of APN is a Ghanaian, its CEO , Sidig Faroug El Toum is not.
The TBE Group is the older of the two, having started out over a decade ago when if commenced publishing the pan African The Business Executive magazine before diversifying first into conferences, and awards, and then adding on the creation of several professional, corporate/institutional and female gender focused groupings and associations.
Today, the TBE Group organizes and hosts several awards in Ghana, other African countries and in the international arena including its flagship Ghana Industry CEOs Award (Most Respected CEOs Awards) annually. In addition, TBE periodically holds the Business Executive Excellence Awards, Feminine Ghana Achievement Awards, Ghana Development Awards, Environment Trade and Commerce Awards, and Ghana’s regional Business Merit Awards, among others.
TBE also organizes the Nigeria Most Respected CEOs Awards and Liberia Most Respected CEOs Awards.
At the international level, TBE organizes the Africa Global Trade and Investment Awards, Africa Industry CEO Awards, the Global Feminine Achievers Awards Africa’s Most Promising SMEs Awards among others too.
TBE organizes various business forums to enable private enterprises and public institutions to network and forge partnerships and alliances such as The Boardroom, for award-winning CEOs; Corporate Hall of Fame, for seasoned Board Chairpersons and top-notch CEOs; TBE Corporate Executives Network, a get-to-gather for TBE clients to socialize and bond; and SHE Achievers, for award-winning female executives, entrepreneurs, professionals and public officials
TBE is currently in the process of creating a direly needed Ghana-Nigeria Chamber of Commerce to promote and facilitate bilateral trade and investment between the two largest economies in West Africa following its establishment of an African Chamber of Commerce to facilitate pan-continental multilateral trade and to forge business and investment collaborations and partnerships, and the International Business Council to guide African enterprises in their trade and investment relationships with counterparties in the other continents of the world. In furtherance of the latter objective the Group has recently established TBE International, domiciled in the United Kingdom to facilitate and coordinate the networking and business relationships of African enterprises with the global economy.
Confirms TBE Group’s Founder and CEO, Baroness Dr Kporo: “We have facilitated cross border transactions and relationships for more than 100 private enterprises and public institutions across Africa which is why our clientele keeps growing in number and geographical scope.”
Although the APN is much younger it has already achieved a sterling reputation and institutional pedigree, working hand in hand with the AfCFTA Secretariat, the AU Commission and several multilateral institutions such as the United Nation’s Economic Commission for Africa and the African Export Import Bank, Afreximbank. Every year since 2023 it has organized and hosted the biggest joint gathering of the international private sector and top tier African sovereign national and multilateral institutional representatives on the continent.
Launched in Accra, the African Prosperity Dialogues were conceived as a high-level forum bringing together political leaders, private sector executives, policymakers, development partners and civil society.
From the outset, APN positioned the APDs as a bridge between policy ambition and commercial execution. “The AfCFTA cannot succeed as a purely governmental project; it must be co-owned by Africa’s entrepreneurs, investors and workers,” APN Chairman and Founder, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko says. “The Dialogues were designed to align political will with market reality.”
One of APN’s most significant achievements through the APDs has been reframing the AfCFTA as not merely a trade agreement, but as a socio-economic transformation project. Discussions in Accra have repeatedly emphasised the free movement of skills and labour as integral to competitiveness, echoing the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons that underpins the AfCFTA vision.
The APDs have also influenced discourse at the sovereign national level in various African countries. Finance and trade ministers returning from Accra have cited the Dialogues as events where peer learning accelerated domestic reforms, from adopting digital customs systems to aligning national AfCFTA strategies with industrial policy. The presence of heads of state and former leaders has lent political gravitas, reinforcing the message that integration is a strategic imperative rather than a technocratic exercise.
While the African Prosperity Dialogues are APN’s flagship events, the network’s impact extends well beyond its annual conventions. APN has invested in sustained advocacy for a continent without sovereign national borders in economic terms, using research, strategic communications and coalition-building.
Through policy briefs and opinion leadership, APN has consistently argued that Africa’s fragmented markets are a self-imposed constraint. APN has also worked closely with business associations and regional economic communities to promote AfCFTA readiness. By supporting private sector coalitions across west, east and southern Africa, the network has amplified business voices calling for faster implementation of tariff schedules, mutual recognition of standards and interoperable payment systems.
Another area of APN’s influence has been labour and investment mobility. Recognising that capital and skills must move as freely as goods, APN has hosted targeted dialogues with migration experts, regulators and employers. These engagements have fed into broader AU conversations on aligning the Free Movement Protocol with AfCFTA objectives.
With regards to investment within Africa, APN has advocated for harmonised incentives and dispute resolution mechanisms to reduce uncertainty for cross-border investors. Its engagements with sovereign wealth funds, development finance institutions and multinational firms have reinforced the message that Africa’s single market must be predictable to attract long-term capital.
APN’s latest initiative is its people driven Make Africa Borderless Now campaign, formally launched in early February this year, which is advocating for the full implementation of existing African Union (AU) protocols to achieve a truly integrated and borderless continent for the free movement of people, goods, capital, and services. The campaign aims to gather over 10 million signatures from across the continent and the diaspora to demand action from their leaders, using a blueprint built upon 12 core pillars, and comprising a practical plan, grounded in existing AU treaties and protocols.
Ghana is renowned as the black star of Africa and both TBE Communications Group and APN are ensuring that its light shines upon the pan continental effort to create a regional bloc for trade, investment and social activity.
