By Tiekie Banard, CEO Shared Value Africa

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For the past eight years, Shared Value Africa (SVA) has worked across the continent with a clear conviction: Africa’s future will not be built through profit alone, but through businesses that create value for all.

What started as a pan-African alliance advocating for the Shared Value business management concept has now evolved into something far more significant. Shared Value Africa is intentionally transitioning from an alliance into a Pan-African institution.

This shift is not cosmetic. It reflects organisational maturity, growing continental credibility, and the increasing demand for institutions capable of moving beyond dialogue into execution.

When Shared Value Africa was established, the priority was awareness. Businesses needed to understand that societal challenges such as inequality, unemployment, unsafe workplaces, and exclusion are not simply “social issues” – they are material business risks that directly affect competitiveness, workforce stability, market growth, and long-term sustainability. The alliance model served its purpose. It helped introduce Shared Value thinking into African business discourse and created important momentum across the continent.

But the market has changed.

The ESG, sustainability, and impact space has become increasingly crowded. Businesses are no longer looking only for conversations and positioning. They are looking for implementation capability, strategic guidance, governance support, impact measurement, and systems-level solutions. Africa now requires institutions capable of helping organisations translate intent into measurable action.

That is why Shared Value Africa is institutionalising.

Shared Value Africa’s 2026–2028 strategy marks what we internally call a “reassertion year” – a deliberate move toward sharper focus, stronger authority, clearer governance, and deeper systems leadership. Our role is not to add to the growing noise around ESG or purpose-led business. Our role is to enable systems change.

This means shaping how African business leaders understand value creation and helping organisations embed that thinking into strategy, governance, leadership accountability, measurement, and long-term economic and societal outcomes.

Today, Shared Value Africa operates as more than a convening platform.

We are building a continental institution focused on:

• Thought leadership and private sector convening
• Impact measurement and systems advisory
• Gender equality and safe workplaces
• Youth, entrepreneurs, universities, and SMEs

Together, these pillars form the institutional architecture through which Shared Value Africa aims to influence business leadership, governance systems, and economic participation across African markets. Africa is no longer a future conversation. It is increasingly central to the global future.

The continent holds one of the world’s youngest populations, vast natural resources, growing digital adoption, significant entrepreneurial energy, and expanding regional integration through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Yet these strengths alone will not automatically translate into prosperity.

Africa requires business leadership willing to think differently – leadership that understands that long-term profitability is inseparable from societal resilience, workforce inclusion, entrepreneurship, market participation, and governance credibility. At Shared Value Africa, we believe leadership carries two inseparable companions: responsibility and accountability.

A critical part of this next chapter is the expansion and strengthening of our Country Chapter model. Country Chapters are not symbolic representatives. They are market activation platforms designed to localise Shared Value adoption, convene leadership, activate partnerships, and embed value creation into national business ecosystems.

Over the past few years, Shared Value Africa has established meaningful traction across East, West, and Southern Africa. That expansion journey continues. As part of our next growth phase, Shared Value Africa is actively advancing expansion efforts into Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Ethiopia, while Botswana is expected to officially launch later this year.

This expansion is not driven by a desire to plant flags. It is driven by a conviction that Shared Value must become operationally embedded within African markets if we are serious about long-term systems change.

Another important evolution within Shared Value Africa’s strategy is the deliberate move away from passive membership structures toward intentional institutional partnerships.Real systems change does not happen through broad passive networks. It happens through aligned partnerships, shared accountability, and organisations willing to commit to long-term leadership.

As Shared Value Africa enters this next institutional phase, we are actively seeking an anchor funder willing to build with us over the long term – not as a transactional sponsor, but as a strategic partner that recognises the scale of the opportunity Africa presents and the importance of shaping credible systems, leadership ecosystems, and implementation capability across the continent.

The transition from alliance to institution is not the end of our journey. It is the beginning of a far more disciplined, focused, and impactful phase. Shared Value Africa (SVA) is a Pan-African institution shaping how business leadership, value creation, and long-term competitiveness are understood and implemented across Africa.