In 2017, when we convened the first Africa Shared Value Summit in Johannesburg, I could never have imagined where this journey would take us.

I believed deeply in a simple idea: that business could be successful while also helping to solve the challenges facing society. At the time, much of our work was about advocating for Creating Shared Value and encouraging African businesses and leaders to think differently about the relationship between profit and purpose.

Ten years later, I still believe that. But Africa – and Shared Value Africa – has taught me that the conversation is much bigger.

In May 2027, we will gather in Ghana for the Africa Shared Value & ESG Summit. We will open on Africa Day, 25 May, during the year in which Ghana celebrates 70 years of independence. At the same time, we will mark ten years since our first Summit.

For me personally, that convergence carries enormous meaning.

Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of taking the Shared Value conversation across our continent, listening to business leaders, entrepreneurs, young people, academics, governments and communities. I have watched the conversation change.

We started by asking African businesses to understand Shared Value. Today, we are asking a much bigger question: How does Africa create value for all?

Shared Value Africa has changed with that question.

We are no longer simply an advocacy organisation championing a management concept. We are building a pan-African institution working across private-sector transformation, entrepreneurship, gender equality, research, leadership, partnerships and thought leadership. Shared Value remains part of our foundation, but our purpose has grown beyond advocating for Shared Value towards contributing to a sustainable Africa where value is created for all.

That evolution matters.

For too long, Africa has been described through the language of potential. We have extraordinary natural resources, extraordinary people, young populations, entrepreneurs and growing markets. Yet potential means very little if we cannot translate it into value — and ensure that more of that value remains on our continent and reaches our people.

That is why our 2027 Summit theme, Africa – Vision to Value to Power, feels so appropriate.

Ghana is also a significant place for this conversation. Seventy years after becoming the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence from colonial rule, it provides a powerful setting in which to ask what economic agency, African leadership and value creation should mean for the next generation.

As I look back on these ten years, I am incredibly proud of what we have built. But I am even more conscious of how much remains to be done.

The next decade cannot simply be about advocating for change. It must be about creating it.

Africa is where we are building the global future. And the responsibility for shaping that future belongs to all of us.

By Tiekie Barnard
Founder, Shared Value Africa