Kinshasa, September 15th, 2025 (CPA) – The Inter-African Trade Fair in Algiers (IATF 2025), held from September 4th, to 10th, in the capital of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, served as an appropriate setting for raising awareness among delegations from African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), given the innovative approaches to be adopted for the development of the continent in the face of the reshaping of the global economic order.
At the opening of the meeting on Thursday September 4th, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Theboune has called on African countries to ‘not remain on the sidelines of the process of reshaping the global economic order’, given that the continent is rich in resources, potential and energy that remain under-exploited.
Faced with various events unfolding at an unprecedented pace across the globe, marked in particular by a sensitive and delicate economic situation, he has expressed his fear that African states would be the victims. ‘I am concerned that Africa will once again be among the main victims of this deterioration in the situation,’ he has said, recalling the marginalization of Africa’s voice and role in the process of reshaping the world order, despite the resources, potential and energy it possesses.
Speaking before delegates from 140 countries and 2,000 exhibitors, President Theboune has called on African states to recognize this reality, dictated by the balance of power across the world, and to stand together, demonstrating collective awareness, with a view to building an integrated continent, a continent with a strong will and fully active in its regional and international environment, he has said. These words from Algeria’s leader naturally reminded participants of the narratives of the fathers of African independence, notably Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, who sought a free, united and prosperous Africa.
Embracing the Algiers approach
For a meeting as important as the one held in the Algerian capital, the key is not to participate, as the Frenchman Pierre De Coubertin once said, with the participating countries in Olympic spirit.
Here, it is quite different, or rather the opposite. The objective is to bring Africans to a collective awareness that will lead each state to work to make a solid contribution to boosting the economic development of an entire continent. The contrast in the geographical configuration of the world is that African countries, most of which are rich in diverse natural resources but lack the infrastructure to process them, remain poor, compared to the countries of the North, which have the necessary infrastructure and are becoming increasingly wealthy.
The current challenge for African countries is to reduce this gap by gradually developing the infrastructure needed for such transformation, so that African raw materials are no longer sold in their raw state but are processed locally to add value.
African countries must consider initiatives that will consolidate the unity of the continent in order to promote trade and technology transfer within sub-regional, regional and continental organizations.
This is, in fact, the very raison of being of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), one of the structures that contributed to the 4th edition of the Inter-African Trade Fair in Algiers. Paradoxically, some African countries, which are essentially poor, prefer to arm themselves to wage war against their neighbors, causing fratricidal wars due to political intolerance, with the avoidable support of foreign powers.
The case of Rwanda’s war of aggression against DRC is an unfortunate illustration of this. Africa must have as its common adversaries the powers that are holding back its development. This is the very meaning of the struggle being waged by the Algerian state, which initiated this Fair in 2018. President Theboune made this clear during the fourth edition of the Fair, initiated by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) in collaboration with the African Union (AU) and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Organized by the Algerian government, this trade fair focused on the theme: ‘Gateway to new opportunities’. Its aim is to stimulate intra-African trade and economic integration, with a view to promoting local solutions for transforming raw materials into value-added products, strengthening the agri-food and creative industries, and facilitating access to finance and markets for African start-ups.