The sixth India-Africa Entrepreneurship & Investment Summit, which brought together more than 300 delegates from 26 countries in Cape Town from July 13 to 15, 2026, brought attention to the disparity between the potential of the Indo-African economic partnership and its actual realization, between declarations of increased trade and calls to convert the momentum into organized investments. The summit was hosted by the India Africa Entrepreneurship Forum (IAEF) at The Westin Cape Town, and for the first time, the City of Cape Town was one of its official sponsors. Along what the IAEF refers to as a strategic corridor, entrepreneurs, institutional investors, business leaders, and officials from India, Africa, and the diaspora convened to strengthen economic linkages. Together with Western Cape Premier Alan Winde, Ethiopis Tafara, Regional Vice President for Africa at the World Bank's private sector division, gave the introductory remarks.
6th India-Africa Summit Strengthening High-Potential Economic Corridor
The numbers displayed at the summit show both advancements and variations in measurement based on the source. The IAEF reports that trade between India and Africa increased from $7 billion in 2001 to over $98 billion in 2023, and that India has invested more than $75 billion in the continent, mostly in infrastructure, telecommunications, medicines, and agriculture. For its part, the City of Cape Town presented a more recent estimate: trade between Africa and India surpassed $100 billion in the 2024–2025 fiscal year, up from $56 billion in 2019–2020, according to James Vos, the city's Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth. This expansion ought to be "the first of greater advances, according to him.
A ranking of the 100 Indian-origin businesspeople from Kenya, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Botswana, Madagascar, and Mauritius—including Chetan Chug, chairman of the Winmart and SOMIKA Group in the DRC—was also released by the IAEF during the summit. The project presents Africa's Indian diaspora—roughly three million individuals, according to the IAEF—as a historic catalyst for trade between the two regions.
In addition to more than 190 lines of credit worth over $10 billion that benefit 41 African countries in the areas of drinking water, construction, mines, agriculture, transportation, energy, and digital connectivity, India's total investment in Africa is estimated to be around $80 billion over the 1996–2025 period, according to Indian officials cited during the event. The discrepancy between this government figure and the larger figure proposed by the IAEF for private investment alone highlights how challenging it is to measure a partnership that incorporates concessional lines of credit, state finance, and private investment amassed over several decades.
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