After a successful inaugural event in Lagos this year, focus now shifts toward the 2027 edition of the Blue Africa Conference & Exhibition (BACE), where Africa’s blue economy business community will meet to turn ocean potential into investment, enterprise and African-owned growth.
By Blue Africa News
The Blue Africa Conference & Exhibition (BACE) will return to Lagos from 12–14 August 2027, under the theme “Sea to Scale,” bringing together the businesses, investors, governments, innovators and institutions shaping Africa’s blue economy.
BACE 2027 will focus on a simple but urgent proposition: Africa’s blue economy must move beyond potential, policy and conversation—and into investment, ownership, implementation and scale.
The announcement follows the inaugural Blue Africa Conference & Exhibition, held in Lagos in August 2026. The first edition convened a curated group of 100 VIP delegates and senior decision-makers from 18 countries, including government representatives, maritime administrations, port authorities, financiers, technology providers and development partners.
In strategic partnership with the Maritime Organization of West and Central Africa (MOWCA), BACE 2026 established a serious regional platform for the business of the ocean—one designed not merely to discuss Africa’s maritime future, but to identify the corridors, projects, technologies, partnerships and capital required to build it.
From potential to prosperity
BACE 2026 demonstrated a fundamental truth: Africa’s blue economy is not a distant promise. It is already a market in formation.
Across maritime transport, ports and logistics, fisheries and aquaculture, coastal and marine tourism, offshore energy, shipbuilding and repair, technology, finance, data, skills and ocean-related services, businesses are emerging and opportunities are expanding.
What Africa now needs is scale
The inaugural conference began to identify practical pathways toward that objective. Participants examined a potential three-vessel door-to-door cargo service for West and Central Africa, explored the prospect of ferry connectivity between Lagos and Monrovia, and highlighted investment opportunities in Sierra Leone across ports, logistics, digitalisation, fisheries, skills and sustainable ocean industries.
These conversations pointed to something larger: the demand for an African platform capable of connecting opportunities across national borders, subregions and markets.
BACE 2027 is designed to answer that demand.
“Sea to scale”
“Sea to Scale” captures the journey from an idea, enterprise, project or policy intervention to the scale necessary to create jobs, move goods, attract capital, build infrastructure, strengthen food security and retain greater value within Africa.
It is a call to bring Africa’s best blue-economy ideas into the room—and connect them with the people who can finance, build, regulate, deploy, commercialise and scale them.
As the Honourable Minister of Transport and Aviation of the Republic of Sierra Leone Ambassador Alhaji Fanday Turay observed: “Africa does not lack blue potential. What we need are investment-ready projects capable of converting that potential into prosperity.” That principle will be at the heart of BACE 2027. The business of Africa’s ocean
BACE 2027 will open its platform to the wider African business community and to international partners seeking meaningful participation in Africa’s blue economy. Investors, banks and development finance institutions will find projects, enterprises and investment opportunities.
Ports, shipping lines and logistics companies will engage around connectivity, trade corridors and new maritime markets. Technology companies and innovators will demonstrate solutions capable of transforming maritime operations, logistics, fisheries, ocean data, safety, security and environmental management.
Entrepreneurs and emerging businesses will meet customers, investors, strategic partners and markets. Governments and development institutions will showcase opportunities while helping to create the policy, regulatory and investment conditions necessary for sustainable growth.
The ambition is clear: to turn meetings into mandates, ideas into investments, projects into businesses and businesses into African-scale enterprises.
Why Lagos? Why now?
The choice of Lagos is deliberate. As one of Africa’s largest commercial centres and a major maritime gateway, Lagos sits at the intersection of capital, enterprise, trade, technology, culture and maritime ambition.
It provides a natural meeting point for an African blue economy increasingly defined not by isolated national markets, but by connected corridors, integrated value chains and continental opportunities.
The Gulf of Guinea is central to this proposition. Its ports, coastal cities, production centres and hinterlands have the potential to become far more than separate points on a map. Properly connected, they can form an integrated Atlantic trade corridor linking African producers to African consumers, strengthening intra-African trade, connecting West and Central Africa to global markets and enhancing the continent’s maritime resilience.
Recent disruptions affecting major global maritime chokepoints have provided another reminder of the vulnerability of concentrated trade routes—and of the strategic value of diversification.
Africa should seize this moment not simply to respond to disruptions elsewhere, but to build stronger Atlantic connections of its own: resilient maritime corridors that serve African trade, deepen regional integration and create new pathways for shared prosperity.
Blue is business
Africa possesses an extraordinary ocean and coastal asset base. But natural potential does not automatically become economic value. That transformation requires capital, infrastructure, technology, skills, sound governance, regional cooperation and African enterprise.
The objective is not simply to extract more from the ocean. It is to build a blue economy that is productive, investable, inclusive and responsibly managed—one that creates employment, strengthens food and energy security, drives innovation, expands trade and enables Africa to retain a greater share of the value generated from its own resources and markets.
The question is therefore no longer: Does the opportunity exist? It does. The questions are: Who will build it? Who will finance it? Who will own it? Who will connect it? And how quickly can it scale? BACE 2027 is being convened to help answer those questions.
Africa’s next blue chapter
From 12–14 August 2027, Lagos will become a meeting point for Africa’s blue economy ambitions—where capital meets opportunity, policy meets enterprise, technology meets markets and regional ambition meets practical implementation.
Exhibition, delegate, partnership and investment engagements will open ahead of the conference, with early participation encouraged for organisations seeking a strategic position within the programme, exhibition and investment ecosystem.
The story has begun. In 2027, Africa comes together to scale it.
ABOUT THE BLUE AFRICA CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION
The Blue Africa Conference & Exhibition (BACE) is a business and leadership platform dedicated to advancing Africa’s blue economy through investment, enterprise, technology, infrastructure, skills, trade, regional connectivity and responsible ocean stewardship.
Organised by Bahari Network, in collaboration with Afro Chamber and Emerge Media, the platform brings together the businesses, governments, investors, development institutions, innovators and maritime leaders required to move Africa’s blue opportunity from potential to implementation—and from sea to scale.
For participation, exhibition, partnership and media enquiries, reach out to:
Kachinga Phiri, Project Manager,
Blue Africa Conference & Exhibition.
kachinga@blueeconomy.africa
+260 750 586 138 | +27 78 300 1755
www.blueeconomy.africa
