Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio and Chairman of Heirs Holdings Tony Elumelu are leading efforts to mobilise private-sector investment for a West African project pipeline expected to reach $15 billion, targeting infrastructure gaps and economic integration across the region.
Elumelu and the West Africa Integration and Investment Summit, WAIIS, have reviewed 170 project proposals, selecting 26 projects worth over $10 billion from more than ten countries.
Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu attended the meeting in support of the initiative. President Bio who is the immediate past Chairman of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government co-chairs the Advisory Board with Elumelu.
The Board brings together leaders of the region’s largest industrial conglomerates, energy and mining companies and financial institutions including BUA Group Chairman Abdul Samad Rabiu, Afreximbank, Africa Finance Corporation, United Bank for Africa and Ecobank.
Discussions centred on four sectors, Energy, trade and industrialisation, Strategic minerals, Agribusiness and Digital transformation, identified as critical to transforming West Africa’s economic future.
Addressing business leaders, President Bio said the summit is designed to consolidate a regional market of more than four hundred million people and mobilise businesses and investors within and outside West Africa to deepen trade and economic cooperation.
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He stressed that potential is not prosperity and the task is to convert advantages into productive enterprises, competitive industries, regional value chains, jobs and wealth.
President Bio noted that for fifty years the region has not done much to integrate and build a consolidated market and said his goal is to mobilise the private sector across West Africa and globally to take the free market seriously.
He urged members to transform ideas into partnerships, partnerships into investments and investments into lasting prosperity.
Elumelu reaffirmed his commitment to mobilising African and international capital to support priority projects and praised President Bio for placing private capital at the centre of regional development and for moving his special envoy to Lagos to coordinate private sector planning.
Governor Sanwo-Olu said Africa needs to build what Africans will use and consume and called for intentionality around industrialisation, creating a single market and ensuring free movement of goods and services.
The meeting followed a visit by President Bio to the Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lekki and is part of preparations for the inaugural WAIIS summit scheduled to hold in Freetown, Sierra Leone from November 17 to 18, 2026 where private sector leaders are expected to move from advocacy to capital mobilisation.
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