Accra has been selected as the host city for the 2026 Africa Real Estate Festival (AREF), a major pan-African initiative aimed at transforming conversations around cities, investment, and sustainable development.
Scheduled for April 18th-19th, 2026, the festival aims to position real estate as a central pillar for economic growth, cultural identity, and climate-resilient communities.
The announcement was made at a press launch in Accra, where AREF Founder and CEO, Desmond Oteng, framed the event as a critical response to Africa’s unprecedented urbanisation.
“By 2050, over 1.4 billion Africans will live in cities,” Oteng stated. “AREF is a movement to shift our focus from just buildings and prices to people, quality of life, and sustainability. We are championing intentional city-building for connected communities, not unplanned sprawl.”
The festival, themed “Innovation Meets Identity: Designing Africa’s Next Living Experience,” is expected to draw over 1,500 delegates from more than 30 countries.
Attendees will include policymakers, developers, investors, architects, PropTech innovators, and diaspora stakeholders.
The launch gained significant diplomatic weight with an address by Her Excellency Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland, High Commissioner of Barbados to Ghana, who confirmed Barbados’s official participation.
“AREF is a practical bridge between diplomacy, investment, and sustainable development,” she said, highlighting real estate’s role in “long-term value creation.”
She pointed to Barbados’s model, where real estate contributes 18% to GDP, as a relevant case study for coastal African nations.
Ghana’s government underscored its commitment to engaging the global African diaspora through structured real estate investment.
Deputy Director of the Diaspora Affairs Office at the Presidency, Nana Kyere Agyemang, outlined a strategic shift “from remittances for consumption toward remittances for asset building.”
Key priorities include promoting real estate investment trusts (REITs), enhancing digital land governance, and creating incentives for trade-linked commercial developments under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
AREF is structured as a holistic platform bridging real estate with technology, finance, tourism, and culture.
The 2026 program will feature a strategic investment and policy conference with over 50 speakers, as well as a transactional real estate exhibition & diaspora investment pavilion with more than 100 exhibitors.
Again, the program will feature an aspirational luxury experience and lifestyle showcase, and a forward-looking cultural festival and innovation matchmaking segment.
The festival targets the generation of over $200 million in investment leads and will publish The AREF Report 2026, a data-driven analysis of continental real estate trends.
While the inaugural edition is hosted in Ghana, AREF is conceived as a continent-wide circuit, with plans to expand to other African nations in subsequent years.
“This is more than an event; it’s the launch of a sustained platform for collaboration,” added Oteng.
“Our goal is to ensure African real estate drives economic transformation, youth empowerment, and cultural expression.”
AREF is a pan-African platform dedicated to empowering the real estate ecosystem through events, research, innovation programs, and partnerships.
It connects stakeholders across the value chain to drive sustainable, culturally grounded development in Africa’s built environment.
