The annual Africa CEO Forum gets under way in Geneva, Switzerland from March 20 through 21 with the theme; ‘Re-thinking Africa’s business model.
Since the maiden edition of the event in 2012, African political leaders with captains of business and industry have developed timelines and programs of action to bring about economic recovery on the continent: “I firmly believe that the private sector has an even more central role to play in the sustainable transformation of the African economic model”, says Amir Ben Yahmed. “By holding the 2017 edition under the theme, we have chosen to focus on the changes that must be made in order to succeed in Africa’s new economic cycle” Amir Ben Yahmed has been an important figure in Africa since he founded the forum in 2012.
A scion of French media aristocracy. Amir graduated from Institut des hautes etudes économiques et commerciales (INSEEC) Paris. In 1993, he joined the New York based investment banking and brokerage firm Gruntal & Co before heading back to Paris to get involved in family media business (Groupe Jeune Afrique, publishers of The Africa Report and Jeune Afrique).
In 1995, he was made Executive Publisher of Paris based Jeune Afrique, the French language weekly news magazine co-founded by his father Bechir Ben Yahmed and a group of Tunisian like-minds in 1960. Thereafter, Amir Ben Yahmed took the position of Group Development Director, initiating business oriented publications such as Jeune Afrique’s business section, and two special annuals Top 500 African Companies and Top 200 African Banks.
(Vanguard)