Agriculture is fundamental to development on the continent. It employs more than 65% of the continent’s populations and contributes 32% of Africa’s GDP. Yet the continent’s smallholder farmers, who comprise 80% of its agricultural labour forces, continue to face challenges from plant disease, unproductive soil, pests and droughts to gender disparities, unreliable markets, poor pricing information and a lack of appropriate financing. Yesterday, the PEI hosted the first in a

On the 25th October, the PEI held a successful Africa Breakfast Club meeting focused on Financing Renewable Energy in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities. Featuring a keynote presentation from Yvonne Ike, Managing Director, Sub-Saharan (Ex-RSA), Bank of America Merrill Lynch, our guests included African Heads of Mission, senior diplomats, academics, and high-level representatives from the private sector. First, Ms Ike provided a comprehensive overview of Africa’s energy landscape, and the varied access

On Tuesday 27th February, we held our first Partners Forum event of 2018: an Africa Breakfast Club meeting held in collaboration with longstanding Partner, IBM Research-Africa. Featuring a presentation from Rashik Parmar, IBM Distinguished Engineer, the ABC focused on the possibilities created by ‘new collar’ work. This refers to jobs in emerging technologies such as cloud computing and data science that require specific skills and knowledge, but don’t necessarily require a four-year