Uganda will host the 2025 Africa Industrialization Week (AIW 2025) from November 17 to 21, 2025, with all major sessions scheduled to take place at Speke Resort Munyonyo, the African Union (AU) has confirmed.
This year’s edition will run under the theme “Transforming Africa’s Economy through Sustainable Industrialization, Regional Integration and Innovation.”
The announcement, made on Friday, reaffirms Africa’s push to shift from exporting raw materials to building strong value-addition industries capable of creating jobs, enhancing skills, and increasing economic prosperity across the continent.
Africa currently supplies more than 70 percent of the world’s mined cobalt, largely from Central African countries. The AU says this should be a springboard for developing homegrown processing, manufacturing, and technological value chains instead of exporting the mineral in its raw form.
A promotional AU message captures this vision vividly: “Africa must build the technology value chains that cobalt powers.” The visual depicts hands trading cobalt for smartphones, symbolizing the continent’s ambition to anchor industrial growth on its rich mineral base and advance the objectives of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
AIW 2025 is being organized by the Government of Uganda in collaboration with the AU Commission, UNIDO, UNECA, AUDA-NEPAD, and the Afro-Champions Initiative.
The week-long gathering will focus on closing gaps between policy, financing, and innovation. It will also spotlight scalable industrialization models, harmonize efforts among AU Member States and Regional Economic Communities (RECs), and introduce platforms for youth start-ups and women-led enterprises to connect with investors.
The program will include high-level discussions marking Africa Industrialization Day on November 20, expert panels on emerging industrial priorities, and exhibitions showcasing value-added products and new technologies.
Organizers expect the event to generate key outcomes such as stronger intra-African trade, actionable policy guidance for expanding industrial parks and production hubs, and renewed commitments under the Action Plan for Accelerated Industrial Development of Africa (AIDA) and IDDA III.
With Africa’s manufacturing output still contributing only about 10 percent to the continent’s GDP, significantly below global averages, the 2025 gathering at Speke Resort Munyonyo is being positioned as a pivotal moment to accelerate industrial diversification, especially as the global green transition unlocks greater demand for critical minerals.
