Meetings Africa 2026 Reflections
There’s a phrase that stuck with me walking the floor of Meetings Africa 2026 this week in Johannesburg: “Infrastructure alone doesn’t build economies, people do.”
And standing in a room full of 325+ exhibitors, 350+ hosted buyers, and delegates from 53 countries across the world, that truth was impossible to ignore.
This year marked the 20th anniversary of Meetings Africa, the continent’s annual Meetings & Events conference, and the theme Connecting Africa to the World carried more weight than a tagline. Connection looked like a buyer from Europe sitting across from a venue owner from Kigali. A creative from a Joburg township whose photography had been featured in the main hall. Women from an AIDS center in Durban whose handmade, beaded lanyards were worn around the necks of delegates. That is what an economy built by people looks like.
For every person who lands in South Africa, one direct job and three indirect jobs are created. Multiply that across an event that arranged 6,000 meetings in two days, and you start to understand what connection actually returns. Business events contributed 690 million Rand to South Africa’s GDP last year, nearly double what it was three years ago. The global business events sector is projected to reach $2.5 trillion by 2035. Africa is positioning itself to capture a meaningful share of that. As the Honorable Patricia de Lille, Minister of South Africa Tourism put it: “The world owes us nothing. We must go out aggressively and sell ourselves.”
That conviction ran through every conversation at Meetings Africa 2026. The conversation has matured beyond “Africa is rising”. Now, it’s about who gets to be part of the rise and how. The next phase will be built by SMMEs, entrepreneurs, and creatives who are already doing the work in townships, in studios, in small offices producing world-class output.
In 2025, townships grew as hubs for decor, creative services, and event production — strengthening local economies and global competitiveness at the same time. But they remain one of the most underleveraged opportunities on the continent. The population is there. The talent is there. A local makeup artist had over 400 clients in a single year from community wedding events alone. Yet, the infrastructure isn’t there.
South Africa Tourism is moving to build its talent and infrastructure and I wanted to understand what that actually looks like on the ground. So I asked Minister de Lille directly: what is the government doing to identify, train, and connect youth to opportunities in this industry?
Her answer was more honest than I expected. “The government is partnering with 19 universities on hackathons focused on tech readiness and future-ready skills, and working with the private sector to place youth and young creatives into jobs and internships across the industry,” she told me. But then she said something that stuck: “We have plans in place, but we need help with the execution.”
That was an open call. And it was directed at exactly the people in that room: planners, entrepreneurs, creatives, private sector leaders who have networks, budgets, and the ability to move faster than any policy ever will. If you are reading this and you work in events, in hospitality, in tourism, that invitation was for you.
And the barriers don’t stop at the township border. If you’ve ever tried to bring a speaker from Lagos to Johannesburg, or a buyer from Nairobi to Cape Town, you know the friction firsthand. Until visas and free movement across the continent are addressed, intra-Africa travel will remain one of the great missed opportunities of this era. People who cannot move cannot connect. People who cannot connect cannot build. This is the structural problem sitting underneath every inspiring conversation at Meetings Africa. It needs to be named, not just nodded at.
That is the work ahead. But it doesn’t only belong to governments and policy makers. It belongs to every planner flying into Johannesburg, Lagos, or Kigali with an international event and a budget. The township creative, the local supplier, the small catering company run out of someone’s home — they are ready. The question is whether you will look for them.
Build your next event with them, not just in their country.