World Economic Forum meeting to return to SA shores in 2027

Summit set to be hosted in either Johannesburg or Cape Town.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa is set to resume after a 7-year hiatus in April 2027, WEF and SA government officials confirmed at the main annual meeting in Davos this week. And the event will return to South African shores.

WEF Africa was last held in September 2019 in Cape Town. It has been paused since the Covid pandemic fallout in 2020, which saw major conferences being cancelled, postponed or paused for a few years.

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CNBC Africa first broke news of the return of WEF Africa on Tuesday, with the WEF’s Africa Head, Chido Munyati, confirming that the summit will resume in 2027.

Spring Davos

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Speaking during a media briefing with the SA delegation at WEF 2026 in Davos on Thursday, Munyati dubbed the 2027 Africa event as a “Spring Davos”. He said it would be a global event “similar to the WEF’s Global Summit in Jeddah [Saudi Arabia] this year in April”.

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana and Minister of International Relations Ronald Lamola highlighted SA’s successful hosting of the G20 Summit in November and its resolutions, while Trade and Industry Minister Parks Tau and Tourism Minister Patricia De Lille spoke about Africa using the opportunity to leverage and bolster trade through the African Continental Free Trade Area and to boost the business and events tourism sectors.

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Earlier in the week, Lamola said that the WEF event in SA in 2027 will either be hosted in Johannesburg or Cape Town, with the decision and plans still to be finalised.

SA has hosted WEF Africa summits over a dozen times in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg since 1993. ADVERTISEMENT: CONTINUE READING BELOW

Other African cities that have hosted the event include Kigali (Rwanda), Harare, Windhoek (Namibia), Maputo, Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), and Nigeria’s capital Abuja. Cape Town has hosted the most WEF Africa events, while Durban hosted it several times in the early 2000s and again in 2017.

However, the WEF’s first Africa event actually took place in Geneva, Switzerland, in October 1990 and originally started as the ‘Forum on Southern Africa’, according to the WEF’s website.

SA had a strong presence and influence at that first Africa forum, with the country in the global spotlight in the years leading up to the end of Apartheid. The WEF’s website notes that the first forum featured “a multistakeholder cast of participants from business, government and civil society, including many ANC leaders”.

It adds: “The success of the meeting launched a global roadshow – led by Barend du Plessis, then [SA] finance minister, and Thabo Mbeki of the ANC – to gain international support for SA’s future.”

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