Until 2024, Latvia had no dedicated diplomatic or business platform for engaging with African countries. No Africa desk at the MFA that ran regular programming. No annual conference. No structured business matchmaking. The relationship existed in trade data and individual company efforts, but not in institutional form.
That changed in June 2024.
The First Forum: June 2024
Latvia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted its first international forum on partnership with African countries in Riga. Over 100 participants attended from 18 African countries.
The forum was not a ceremonial event. It included sector-specific sessions on ICT, agriculture, and trade facilitation, with participation from Latvian companies actively doing business in Africa.
For context: Latvia had never hosted anything like this before. The country's Africa engagement had been limited to individual company exports (MikroTik, LATRAPS, Latvijas Finieris) and occasional diplomatic contacts. The forum represented a deliberate institutional pivot.
The Second Forum: May 2025
The second forum took place in May 2025, focused on digitalization and healthcare cooperation.
The program included an ICT panel, a healthcare panel featuring Africa CDC participation, and structured B2B matchmaking sessions. The Latvian IT Cluster organized dedicated meetings between six Latvian tech companies — AdvanGrid, TapBox, Squalio, flex.bi, Codnity, and Riga Business School — and the Speaker of the Parliament of Zimbabwe.
That last detail is worth noting. A meeting between Latvian SMEs and a senior Zimbabwean official, facilitated by the Latvian MFA, would have been unimaginable five years ago. It happened because institutional infrastructure now exists for it.
The Numbers Behind the Pivot
Foreign Minister Baiba Braze stated that Latvia-Africa trade grew 52% in five years. That figure, reported by the Baltic Times, provides the commercial justification for the institutional investment.
Latvia exports roughly €737M annually to Africa, representing 3.9% of total Latvian exports. Most of that flows to Southern Africa and North Africa, with South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria as the largest markets. The trade corridor is real, and the forums are catching up to the economic reality.
Institutional Context
Several other developments frame the forum's significance:
LIAA Africa representative. The Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA) has Igors Boiko coordinating Africa export promotion. Having a dedicated Africa contact within the national trade promotion agency is new.
OECD DAC membership. Latvia joined the OECD Development Assistance Committee in March 2025. This opens systematic development cooperation funding channels and positions Latvia as a donor country, not just a trade partner, in its Africa relationships.
Catching up to Lithuania. Latvia's Baltic neighbor Lithuania has maintained embassies in South Africa and Nigeria for years and has a more established Africa trade support infrastructure. Latvia is closing that gap. The forums are the most visible evidence.
What This Means for Companies
The forums create something that did not previously exist: a recurring, government-facilitated platform for Latvian companies to meet African counterparts.
For small Latvian companies without the resources to attend Afri-tech conferences in Nairobi or trade shows in Johannesburg, the Riga-based forum lowers the barrier. African delegations come to Latvia. The MFA handles logistics and introductions. B2B matchmaking happens in a structured setting.
The limitation is scale. 100 participants from 18 countries is a start, but it's modest compared to what Lithuania, the Czech Republic, or Poland organize with African partners. The test will be whether the Latvian forums grow in subsequent years and whether the B2B connections translate into actual contracts.
Early signs are encouraging. The fact that the forum repeated in 2025 with a more focused agenda (digitalization, healthcare) suggests the MFA views this as a permanent program rather than a one-off diplomatic gesture. The Zimbabwe parliamentary meeting signals that African partners are taking it seriously too.
Latvia-Africa institutional engagement went from zero to something real in under two years. The commercial case was always there. Now the diplomatic infrastructure is catching up.