Nairobi Programme
28 – 30 September 2026 All session times are in EAT
Monday, 28 September
Session in partnership with and hosted by the Strathmore University, Nairobi
Karen Ole Sangale Rd, off Langata Road, in Madaraka Estate, Nairobi, Kenia
9:00 AM – 13:00 PM
OPENING SESSION
The Nairobi programme opens with a discussion on the governance, investment and sustainable development dimensions of artificial intelligence in Africa, placing the continent’s priorities within a rapidly changing global context.
10:00 AM – 10:30 AM
Keynote Address:
Prof. Shaukat ABDULRAZAK, Principal Secretary, State Department for Science, Research and Innovation (SRI), Office of the Prime Cabinet Secretary & Ministry of Foreign & Diaspora Affairs, Kenya
10:30 AM – 11:00 AM
Tea Break
11:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Capital Markets – Science Financing, Investment and Innovation Ecosystems
The final substantive session of the day explores the role of capital markets in financing science, supporting investment and strengthening innovation ecosystems.
11:30 AM – 13:00 PM
Artificial Intelligence in Africa: Governance, Investment and Sustainable Development in a New Global Era
The Nairobi programme opens with a discussion on the governance, investment and sustainable development dimensions of artificial intelligence in Africa, placing the continent’s priorities within a rapidly changing global context.
13:00 PM – 14:00 PM
Lunch break
14:00 PM – 16:00 PM
Cyber Security, Digital Resilience and Strategic Investment
As Africa’s digital economy expands, strengthening cyber resilience has become increasingly important. This session examines policies, technologies and investments that support secure digital infrastructure and trusted digital ecosystems.
Key topics
- Cyber security
- Digital resilience
- Critical infrastructure
- Digital public services
Tuesday, 29 September
Session in partnership with and hosted by Landscape Alliance and SEI
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM
HIGH LEVEL SESSION
The second day opens with an introduction to the parallel sessions, followed by speeches, and a keynote address.
Speakers
- Philip OSANO, Chief Operating Officer (COO), Landscape Alliance (CIFOR and ICRAF)
- Declan Kirrane, Director, Science4All; ISC intelligence and Chair, Science Summit
- Eeva PRIMMER, Executive Director, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)
- Dr. Ignacio SÁNCHEZ, Officer-in-Charge of the Evidence and Synthesis Section, Office of Science at UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
- E. Ondrej SIMEK, Deputy Head of Delegation & Deputy Ambassador of the European Union to Kenya
Keynote Address:
H.E. Ambassador Dr. Ida ODINGA, Permanent Representative of Kenya to the United Nations Office at Nairobi (UNON) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
10:00 AM – 16:00 PM
10:00 PM – 17:00 PM
10:00 AM – 14:45 PM
Wednesday, 30 September
Session in partnership with and hosted by Landscape Alliance and SEI
9:00 AM – 13:30 AM
Location: ICRAF Campus Boardroom
This session aims to translate advancing HIV cure science into an equitable, PLHIV-led framework, ensuring that as a cure becomes scientifically possible, the Global South’s communities, research institutions, and policymakers are positioned to shape it, own it, and be its first equitable beneficiaries.
9:00 AM – 18:00 AM
Location: ICRAF Campus (Main Conference room)
This session aims to translate advancing HIV cure science into an equitable, PLHIV-led framework, ensuring that as a cure becomes scientifically possible, the Global South’s communities, research institutions, and policymakers are positioned to shape it, own it, and be its first equitable beneficiaries.
14:00 AM – 15:00 AM
Location: ICRAF Campus (Boardroom)
Africa holds one of the world’s largest livestock populations, yet its pastoralist communities remain among the continent’s poorest, with the sector’s wealth largely hidden from formal markets, finance, and national accounts. Following the African Union’s finding that a coordinated, private-sector-led approach could unlock up to five times more value from the sector, this session explores how blended finance, combining private capital with public and development finance instruments, could spur investment in feed, breeding, and market infrastructure across pastoral areas. It brings together government, private investors, researchers, and pastoralist producer organisations to work through what such a model could look like in practice, and which policy processes it could feed into.
Featured sessions
11:30 PM – 13:30 PM
Location: Main Conference Room
This session is part of Parallel 2
This interactive two-hour panel brings together African scholars, policymakers, practitioners, and international partners to collectively reflect on a central question: “How can African development policy better recognize, govern, and learn from interactions between development goals?”
Rather than promoting one solution, the panel creates space for open exchange between different perspectives, experiences, methodologies, and governance approaches emerging across the continent. Specific evidence will be presented regarding 1. the contribution of women’s empowerment on food and nutrition security at household level, and 2. the contribution of insurance schemes to preventing conflict among herders in the context of climate change.
Key participants
Dutch Research Council, Utrecht University, University of Groningen, ILRI
15:00 PM – 15:45 PM
Designing the Next Architecture of Global Health: Global South Innovation Leadership
Location: Boardroom
This session examines how Africa and the Global South are contributing to the governance, evidence, digital, and community architectures shaping the future of mental health. The global mental health crisis is a structural mismatch: the conditions shaping youth identity, belonging, and distress have been transformed by AI-mediated environments and rapid cultural change, while the systems designed to support them have not. The central question is who designs what comes next, and from what knowledge base.
Africa and the Global South are experiencing this transformation most acutely. An estimated 37 million adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa live with mental health conditions; up to 90% receive no formal care. The innovations emerging from these contexts combine cultural knowledge, digital tools, youth participation, and implementation science at scale.
Convened by: Inceptr