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Africa’s 2026 Resolutions: A Brave New Africa for A Brave New World

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere, The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. WB Yeats

2025 was a fascinating year; MAGA returned with no restraint ending long established norms in diplomacy, economic policy, international aid, and upending the global world order.

In Africa, Sudan is falling apart, and the continent and the world seem indifferent. African economies continue to stagger. Overburdened by debt. Unable to create jobs. Corruption choking opportunity. Once again outside powers circle, hungry for Africa’s resources.

In Morocco, Kenya, Tanzania, Togo, Angola and most spectacularly Madagascar the youth exploded, fed up with an increasingly bleak future demanding better from their governments.

AI is changing everything, but we do not know how, the climate is evolving and we all seem to have given up on doing anything about it. The world is changing around Africa and to be frank the continent seemed caught in the headlights unable to adjust.

It is a brave new world, and a brave new Africa must emerge to confront and take advantage of it. To do so the continent must ruthlessly focus on creating jobs and opportunities not through aid and advice but by supporting and unleashing its private sector. Secondly, the continent must take advantage of the global hunger for minerals and third, we must develop our own internal market, most of all we must have the courage to do this.

2026 New Year’s Resolution 1: Unleash the Private Sector for Growth & Jobs

Africa needs jobs and growth. We have no choice, there are hundreds of millions of unemployed young people in need of jobs and opportunities, without which Madagascar will be the first of many Gen Z revolutions. These jobs will not come through aid, or fancy plans cooked up by MBA wielding consultants or by the World Bank and IMF, it will come through supporting and unleashing Africa’s private sector. By redesigning tax policy to be simple and easy and not an extractive punishment. By removing excessive regulation to enable business to innovate and move with speed and support by having coherent interlinked policy.

2026 should be the year that African businesses is set free to create jobs. Simplify taxes. Cut red tape. Let businesses breathe and create jobs.

New Year’s Resolution 2: Rare Earths for Africa

The AI revolution, energy transition, and digital transformation are all built on a foundation of critical minerals. America needs them, China needs them, Europe needs them, and Africa has them. This presents two unique opportunities for the continent.

  1. To raise revenue and build industry on the back of this demand by remaking mineral taxes on the Norwegian model and requiring extractives investors to invest in value addition or joint ventures or face significantly higher rates of taxation
  2. In a transactional world these minerals are Africa’s currency. How can the continent use its minerals to negotiate debt reduction, trade concessions, technology transfers etc.

In 2026 let us use Africa’s minerals for Africa benefit. Leverage our minerals. Demand fair deals. Build industries, not just mines.

New Year’s Resolution 3: The African market

African leaders are fond of the example of the Asian tigers, nations that pulled themselves out of poverty within a generation to become powerful modern economies. In fact, Kenya’s President Ruto, has made it his core promise to make Kenya the next Singapore. One of the lessons Africa always seems to miss from the Asian tigers is that they developed their own markets as a key pillar of their export led growth. South Korea Japan and Chinese companies learned how to do business, compete, and innovate at home and took those skills and competencies to the rest of the world.

Africa must do the same, back African businesses in African markets, promote competition among African firms. In a world where globalisation is evolving and protectionism is back in vogue, let us make 2026 the year African markets open to African businesses, so they can compete. Innovate. Win at home, then conquer the world.

2026 the year to be brave.

In crisis there is opportunity, at times of great change what was once impossible becomes imperative. The world is changing; the nature and pace of that change can seem bewildering and the crises overwhelming. In all this change and crisis, I see an opportunity for Africa. An opportunity to reshape the continents reality and trajectory from poverty and stagnation, to dignity, opportunity, and wealth. That will require a backbone. Taking advantage of this opportunity will require courage from leaders and policy makers, to think differently, try new ideas and most importantly to unleash Africa’s potential. If there is one new years resolution and prayer that Africans should be making, it that our leaders will finally grow a backbone and be brave.

Service delivery will save African governments

“The issue of service delivery comrades, we have to do it… its service delivery improvement or death for us,” President Ramaphosa of South Africa speaking to a gathering ANC councillors

The continent is in a worrying state. COVID, and burdensome debt and lethargic economic growth have led to stagnating economies that are not creating jobs or opportunity and there is a young population that is angry about it. Add to this a politics that is old and unresponsive to the pressing needs of the day – the average age of African presidents is 65.

Across the continent there is a potent cocktail of frustrated masses of young people who when they turn angry are ready to explode, and in some countries it already has. In Kenya this has actualised in the Gen Z protests, the Arab Spring had roots in the same dynamics of frustration and anger. Mozambique, Angola and Togo have recently been rocked by youth led protests and as we have seen in Burkina Faso, Sudan, Tunisia, and Egypt protests can topple governments.

I’ve written previously about the need for a single minded focus on jobs and growth but that is not something that will turn around African citizens lives overnight. Something that will quickly make a difference and help to change attitudes and reduce frustrations is service delivery. The boring everyday business of governing.

Why service delivery.

We interact with government every day in a myriad of ways from the fundamental like education and healthcare, to the mundane like collecting rubbish and filling potholes, to the vital like issuing critical documents like IDs birth certificates and passports.

In the grand scheme of things this may seem small in comparison to infrastructure, trade deals, and war and peace. However, the mundane has an enormous impact on people’s lives. People who cannot start businesses, get jobs, or go to university because they do not have documents. Being forced to live in terrible conditions due to uncollected garbage, dilapidated roads, and leaking water pipes. The despondency bad health care and education cause among those who have no other choice but to use public services is tragic.

Giving citizens crap services has three crucial impacts; first it degrades the quality of people’s lives and in doing so undermines their dignity. Second it creates frustration and anger that feeds into the broad dissatisfaction that if left to fester can topple governments. Third it creates friction (extra costs and lengthens timelines) in the economy and the opportunity for extractive corruption that undermines jobs and businesses (especially small and micro-enterprises). Even the World Bank in its institutional assessment of African countries notes that “there is an urgent need for governments in Africa to improve the delivery of essential services to promote inclusive, sustainable growth.”

Smart governments should recognise this and recognise that service delivery is cheaper and more practical to implement than all the grand projects and visions. In this era of constrained fiscal space focusing on the possible things that will improve people’s lives and improve their everyday experience with government would actually give African governments the credibility they need for people to support grand policy implementation.

Delivery is dignity.

People’s everyday experiences matter. To be forced to spend money for a private solution to a public service, or pay a bribe to get a basic service, or be forced to endure the humiliation of a degraded service is infuriating and it undermines the dignity of everyone forced to interact with those dysfunctional systems.

Service delivery matters to peoples livelihoods. Bad service delivery sucks energy and capital out of businesses and economies that desperately need them to drive growth and create jobs.

In providing bad services governments are hobbling themselves and their economies. Fixing them requires no more than doing what is budgeted for properly. Focus on getting the “simple” things right that improve people’s everyday experiences. Then maybe we can build grand visions of the future.

Breaking and remaking African Government

“I want to thank Mr. Trump, actually. I think he’s slapped us not on one cheek but on both cheeks – we should have been hammered a long time ago.” – Hakainde Hichilema, Zambian president

 

In recent weeks the inadequacies of African governments have been laid bare. Trump turned off the taps, the worlds largest aid agency USAID was closed. Across Africa thousands of aid programs simply stopped overnight.

Though painful, I think it’s about time.

African governments have, for too long, outsourced critical elements of service delivery in healthcare, social services, education, etc. to NGOs and development organisations. We can no longer hide our incompetence behind the West’s affluent saviour industrial complex.

What is clear, is that African government is not working for its people, and now the aid that used to hide that is gone.

In response to shuttering of USAID the continents political and policy leaders have not been confronting the issue of filling the gaps in healthcare, agriculture and education left behind. Rather its business as usual. Kenya’s political leaders are busy politicking and dividing up the government among themselves. South Africa’s leaders are locked in a budget dispute. Rwanda and Uganda are busy gobbling up the eastern DRC. Meanwhile millions will fall back into poverty and the progress made in the battle on HIV/AIDS will be lost.

If African government is not working, we must break it and remake it to be fit for purpose. Responsive to Africans needs, engaged with her citizens concerns, and delivering for all. I’m not talking about a DOGE inspired Elon Musk indiscriminate hacking away at the state. But rather a deliberate, single-minded process of redesigning African government to work for Africans. Not reform, but radical surgery.

Only by breaking our sclerotic corrupt states and remaking them into functional entities that can deliver services, foster growth, secure its people and their dignity, will this continent develop as we hope.

1.   What is government for?

You can’t fix something if we don’t know what it is supposed to do. Thus, as African’s we must decide what ii is we want our government to do. Without that basic consensus then we will continue to have governments without any clarity of purpose, and unable to get much done. This starts by focusing on the core of what government is supposed to do, which all happen to be things African governments are generally terrible at:

  1. Ensuring the safety and security of citizens and property
  2. Basic service delivery – water, electricity, healthcare, education, basic documents.
  3. Providing a policy and regulatory environment in which businesses can grow
  4. Maintaining friendly diplomatic and trade relations with other nations.
  5. Providing a viable dispute resolution system (courts)

If these are the basics of what governments should be doing, it leads to the second logical question.

2.   Why doesn’t it work?

You can’t fix something if you don’t know what’s going wrong. Why is African government unable to do what its supposed to do. Is it the people? You need to understand the culture, and incentive structures within government. Is it the laws and regulations, you need to understand their context, structure and impact. Is it corruption, what drives it? In Africa it is a combination of factors, but we must go through the painful process of thoroughly identifying and documenting these shortcomings.

Understanding what you want from government and why it isn’t working in the first place is critical if we are to do what Africa desperately requires.

3.   Break it and remake it.

With that understanding in place it is possible to break government where it needs to be broken. If Africa is to get the government it needs, this needs to be ruthless.  Getting rid of the elements of government that are not working, getting rid of the people in government that are not working, stopping money going where it isn’t doing any good.

However, it does not stop there. As Colin Powell once said, ‘you break it, you own it’.  We not only have a responsibility to break African government. We must remake it, radically. To be responsive, to be transparent, to deliver.

This means rethinking how we hire and structure the civil service. Reworking the relationship between government and the private sector to focus on sustainable jobs and growth, to rethink our tax systems and our voting systems. Nothing should be off the table.

Afri-DOGE

Africa needs its governments to work and currently they are not. They are slow, frustrating, corrupt, infuriating bureaucracies that have made Africans experts at avoiding them or gaming the system.

I am no fan of Elon Musk, and a critical mistake that Musk and DOGE are making is that they are targeting the parts of government they don’t like in the name of efficiency. Rather than understanding what efficiencies they need to unlock and what is blocking them. They are literally taking a chainsaw to government and America will be the poorer for it.

Unlike the US, we are not involved in a centuries long philosophical dispute on the size and role of government, we need it to work. That requires understanding its current failings, ripping them down and building stronger ones in their place. Not an easy task but a necessary one.

Many years ago Chinua Achebe wrote “We have lost the twentieth century; are we bent on seeing that our children also lose the 21st? God forbid”. With our governments structured and operating the way they currently are, built on colonial systems to suppress the population and extract wealth, we will lose the 21st century, unless we do something radical. If we do not break them and radically remake them to fit Africa’s needs our children will be asking if theirs will loose the 22nd century as well.

Rethinking PPPs in Africa

In 2024, Kenya’s attempt to upgrade its main international airport through a Public Private Partnership (PPP) with India’s Adani group failed due to protests, investigative journalism, and strikes. The deal was ultimately cancelled when corruption charges against Adani in the US made it untenable.

The cancelled Adani deal in Kenya highlights the issues with PPPs in Africa, where privatized profit and public risk are prevalent. The model often shifts the risk to the public, who end up bearing the costs.

This model is wrong and is the reason there is a backlash when projects get proposed or pushed through. It needs private capital to invest in key infrastructure, agriculture, scientific research etc. We should let them do so. In fact, we should make it easier for them to do so, incentivize them to do so, but we should take the public risk out of the equation.

Thus, the solution is to throw out the model and think beyond infrastructure. Partnership between African governments and the African private sector must extend into research and Development, industrial strategy, trade policy and climate change mitigation.

What is a PPP, and why is it a problem.

The name, public-private partnership, is vague and could mean any number of things. The world bank defines it as “A long-term contract between a private party and a government entity, for providing a public asset or service, in which the private party bears significant risk and management responsibility and remuneration is linked to performance.”. However during the last couple of decades this definition has come to almost exclusively focus on building infrastructure or the private sector taking over certain government functions to provide them more efficiently.

This has not only narrowed the scope of what partnership between the private and public sectors could achieve but also exposed the continent to significant risk. Principally the misalignment of interests, where the private sector is after profits and public sector actors get compromised in pursuit of those profits. Resulting in projects with highly complex structures that end up putting more risk on taxpayers than was promised. Privatized profit – public risk. Furthermore the secretive nature of the contracts and lack of engagement and consultation with the public leads to open hostility against many of these projects. Examples of this abound across the continent.

  • In Nigeria the federal government abandoned a PPP for the Lagos-Ibadan expressway and Niger Bridge in which the private sector was asking for a funding guarantee (shifting the risk from the private to the public sector) and funded them itself, with the minister at the time stating “If you are guaranteeing something, you might as well do it yourself.”
  • In Kenya a medical equipment leasing project has ballooned in cost from USD 246 million to USD 485 million, far exceeding the cost of simply purchasing the equipment and avoiding issues where equipment wasn’t delivered, or is simply left unused.

Reshaping the model and redefining PPPs

How do we get away from the current corner that PPPs in Africa seem to have boxed themselves into, where they are about infrastructure or service provision projects, that end up being secretive, complex, too expensive and leaving the African taxpayer holding the bill. To a place where we can crowd in private capital into financing critical projects and develop meaning full partnerships between the public and private sectors that drive growth. To do that we must reform the PPP model and redefine the meaning of partnership.

1.     Reforming the model

During the industrial revolution, private enterprise and capital were instrumental in building infrastructure in the US and UK. Governments provided incentives like land concessions and time-based monopolies, enabling these projects to be profitable. Africa can adopt a similar model.

Africa can and should move to the same model.

  • Identify key projects where it is viable for a profit to be made and develop concession models such as
      1. Free land for the project,
      2. a sole license or monopoly for a certain period of time.
  • Pre-existing or fast tracked building and environmental approvals and licenses making it easier and cheaper to build.
  • Offer the concessioned project in an open bidding process that allows the public to see and understand what is going and what is intended to be built.
  • Have an oversight mechanism (most countries have PPP units and Auditor Generals offices) that ensures the winning bidder sticks to the agreement, with a clear enforcement mechanism, e.g. a fine of a significant portion of the project or the confiscation of the project entirely that ensures the winning the bidder is not just able to make a profit but incentivised not cheat in doing so.

There will be failures and bankruptcies, but that is fine, for markets to work risk must exist and consequence be real. In addition it will narrow the scope of what is offered for PPPs disincentivising governments from trying to privatize critical public goods like health, education or the provision of water by using the excuse of “efficiency”. Finally this model is simpler, more transparent and critically does not leave the public holding the bag if it fails.

2.     Redefining partnership for growth

Partnership between the public and private sectors is not just about projects. One of the most important and oft missed aspects of the rise of Asian tigers in the latter half of the 20th century is how closely governments worked with the private sector in a number of areas including:

  • The development of industrial, financial and business sector policies. This a fostered the development of mutual goals and understanding between the public and private sectors. Creating a stable predictable environment that fostered investment and growth. In short, the private sector understood what the government wanted to achieve and the public sector understood what the private sector needed to get there.
  • Education, the public and private sectors worked together to ensure that the education system produced graduates with the skill sets and knowledge needed. Ensuring that graduates could find jobs and that they kept creating jobs relevant to driving their growth.
  • Trade, governments worked hand in hand with the private identify key markets in which to sell products, and materials which needed to be sourced from oversees and worked to gain access to those markets and drive workable trade negotiations and agreements.

As I have written about previously, the continent desperately needs private-sector growth. To create the jobs, growth and investment that Africa needs. After half a century of trying its clear that Foreign Investment and development aid will never meet our needs. It must come from within, and for that the private sector needs to grow. Fostering that growth requires the public and private sectors to work together, to partner with each other. Thus the focus of private public partnerships should not be on projects or filling the infrastructure gap, but rather on filling the growth gap.

Public Private Partnership for Africa

Africa needs PPPs. The continent needs to get more private (hopefully indigenous) capital to invest in key projects that will connect and power the continents development. Just as importantly if not more so, Africa needs the public and private sectors to work together to co-create the policies, laws and conditions needed to drive investment, growth and creation of jobs on the continent.

The way we currently do PPPs is wrong. It’s why they are so hard to do, are so controversial, and are so expensive. If we do not rework our model of how to originate and fund PPP projects this will remain the case. And if we do not redefine and revitalise how the public private sectors partner together on an agenda for growth Africa will never achieve the game changing growth it needs and wants.

Make Africa Great – working with a MAGA West to Africa’s benefit.

The West seems to be at an illiberal moment. Driven by nostalgia for past prosperity, frustration at a neoliberal economics that stubbornly refuses to create broad prosperity, and anger at immigration which they feel is undermining their cultures and societies. The response of the voter is reactionary, to vote for right wing candidates who promise to restore and revive nations and protect societies. For Africa this poses two questions one of policy and strategy the other more philosophical.

At a policy and strategic level, how does Africa deal with a West, weakened and more inward looking. Though still a major trading partner, in control of the majority of the global financial sector, a major investor on the continent and largest donor. What does Africa want and how do we use their concerns to benefit the continent?

At a philosophical level, how do we put Africa first. Craft policy that ensures, that unlike the West we don’t wake up in 50 years and regret where we have ended up.

A strategic policy approach

Like it or not the West still has an enormous influence on Africa, as a key investor, trading partner, aid donor, and security partner. This implies three realities for Africa.

First how do we create policy that enables Africa to benefit from what the West needs. For that we need to understand the West’s needs, such as non-Chinese low-cost, low-carbon manufacturing, inputs for the creation semi-conductors and renewable energy technology. Can Africa restructure trade agreements to make it an attractive destination for manufacturers, rework mineral rights agreements and tax laws to ensure maximum value from material exports. Where there are needs and demands there is leverage. We must identify those needs and where the continent has leverage.

Second, how can we shift to deal with a West that is more transactional and less open. Guided by cost benefit analyses rather than principles or broad strategic goals. This means appeals to humanitarian or democratic principles will fall on increasingly deaf ears. Leaders will be much more interested in deals that can sort out immediate problems or be presented as political wins back home.

Third, how do we untangle Africa, politically and economically from the control of the West and its political and economic institutions, such as the IMF (you can read more on that here). Not so we can isolate ourselves  so Africa can build policy space and autonomy.

Fundamentally this will require African policy makers to be more agile, more creative, less wedded to the way things are traditionally done as the people they are dealing with in Washington and other capitals, do not care about it either.

Africa First

One thing that some are starting to realise in the West, is that individualistic short termism has led to their current predicament. The Reaganite and Thatcherite neo-liberal revolution of the 1980’s emphasised the autonomy of the individual over society, and primacy of private over the public. In the private sector Friedmanite focus in shareholder value bred a short-term obsession with returns, with everything and everyone judged by the quarterly return and the value of long-term investment, research, labour, and communities discarded. Africa must learn this lesson, prioritising the short term, the next quarter, the stock price at the end of trading, the next election over the long term will endanger long-term societal prosperity.

Thus, as Africa confronts a changing West, it must not only think about how to take advantage over the course of the next few years but also how it can build long-term prosperity and working societies over the next few decades. In short, fundamentally African politicians and policy makers must put Africa First and doing so requires you to think not of yourself or, your tribe or even your country, but the continent as a whole.

Make Africa Strategic

Since independence it is, in my view, fair to say that the only thing African leaders have been strategic about is their own political survival. Rarely have they been good about thinking abut their country and continents place in the world and how to advance that or take advantage of it to improve the lives of African’s. Africa missed the boat on export led growth in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Africa failed to adjust to the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Washington consensus. Africa failed to properly utilise the rise of China.

We cannot keep failing, and to avoid this Africa needs to be strategic. How do we stay out of great power conflict? How do we take advantage of the need for critical minerals? How do we utilise the fact that Africa will be the youngest and most populous continent by 2050?

All these questions (and more require strategic thinking), scenario planning, exploring ideas, consulting experts. Not to produce yet another policy document but a guide, an approach to key issues and opportunities that doesn’t prescribe thinking (you must do this) but shapes it (we are trying to get here).

Make Africa Great

Think what you may of President Trump, his message is simple, succinct, and engaging. It tells voters that it will take them back to a time when America was great.

Africa has a different challenge, first we must decide, what does great mean for Africa? In my view a good place to start is how do we avoid the fate of the West, how do we make sure that in 50+ years time we do not end up bitter, depressed, and angry, but a model for the world striving to be even better.

 

 

 

 

Managing Africa’s ticking youth time bomb – the case from Kenya

In June 2024 Kenya’s youth, thousands of Gen-Z, did something extraordinary, they had enough. They came out onto the streets demanding the government drop a punitive tax bill, the finance bill, and tackle corruption and waste in government spending instead. In events, that shocked Kenya and the world the police response to the protests was heavy handed and tragic resulting in multiple fatalities, and protestors stormed parliament. Despite calling the out the army, President Ruto had to concede and withdrew the finance bill and later fired his cabinet, but the young protestors have not stopped demanding fundamental changes in the way their government is run.

The events in Kenya are not unique, Africa has seen youth revolts in North Africa (the Arab spring), Nigeria (End SARS) and in South Africa (Fees Must Fall). More importantly, the underlying conditions that led to the protests exist across the continent. A young and growing population, frustrated by economies that offer no jobs, no prospects, run by unresponsive and corrupt governments, with old men in charge. Many of these governments, are heavily indebted, having borrowed irresponsibly when money was cheap, and are now reliant on the IMF and others for support. The conditions of that support require more tax revenue, resulting in punitive taxes that over burden already struggling people.

The Finance Bill in Kenya was the trigger that set off the time bomb of disaffected youth without realistic prospects, who are angry at a government that will not listen and is wastefully corrupt and opulent while they struggle. Where to next, how do we avoid this happening again, in a way those young people don’t loose faith in democracy and turn to more radical and destructive.

Ironically the answer to the ticking time-bomb, lies in the grievances that drove it. African governments need to focus on developing and driving a radical agenda for growth that creates jobs and opportunities. As well as evolving systems of government to be more democratic, more engaging and more accountable.

Radical growth

Africa needs growth and jobs. If we are to ensure that African citizens can have dignified lives, we need to create jobs, livelihoods and incomes. As I wrote in a previous post, with jobs individuals and households have incomes, the ability to pay for housing, healthcare, recreation and invest in the future. In short with jobs come agency and dignity both for people and the nation, and dignity is at the core of any viable definition of development.

African governments must be laser focused on creating the growth and jobs needed if any significant headway is to be made. This means

These are not new ideas, or revolutionary ones. However, doing them well requires African governments to shake off their normal way of doing things which has not worked for the 70 years and focus. Not on what will enrich them as individuals or what will please donors, but what will create jobs and growth.

Engagement – responsive democracy

Our systems of governance are not fit for purpose. Most of them are jerry rigged versions of whatever colonial system had been left to us. Most post-independence leaders were focused on maintaining control of fragile post-colonial states, and thus centralised power. The democratic resurgence of the post-cold war era, focused largely on holding elections, rather than creating democratic systems that engaged with citizens and were responsive to their needs.

It is now critical that Africa create governance systems that engage and involve everyone, especially, young people who feel disenfranchised. At the core of this is three critical things.

  1. African governments must communicate. Not just when they have made decision, but their decision-making process. Tell people what the issue or choice is, the trade offs, and the options. When they intend to do some thing and when it has its impacts. Too much policy and government action on the continent is a surprise. With the rationale a complete mystery and its impacts unexplained. Kenya’s Finance Bill was never properly explained to its populace, the thinking behind it was locked in the heads of the National Treasury’s senior directors. Thus, it is no surprise that Kenyans rejected a bill that was going to make them worse off without it being explained to them why.
  1. African governments must engage with their citizens as a matter of course, in the conception, development and implementation of policy. Thus its time for governments to consider ideas such as participatory budgeting, where people are intimately involved in budget conception and development ensuring that money is spent on citizens priorities.
  1. Strengthening democracy and accountability. It is clear that voting is not enough. That our current systems of democracy, does not properly hold our leaders to account and moreover the incentives inherent in the system are skewed towards people getting into to politics and leadership for the wrong reasons.

A wake-up call

The Gen-z protests in Kenya are both a wake-up call and a reason for hope. A wake up call in that its clear that young African’s do not have unlimited tolerance for hopeless circumstances. African governments must be more engaged and responsive, and most importantly focus on the growth and jobs that our young people desperately want and need.

The protests are also a reason for hope. The young Kenyans who have come out to march and braved police brutality, are not looking to burn the system down. Rather they were looking to make it work, to make it accountable, to reset our governance processes to so that they work to ensure dignity for all rather than wealth for a few.

African governments must be proactive, and respond to their young people, or they may lose patience, and rather than make the system work, choose to tear it all down.

Africa needs private sector growth and jobs.

If there is one thing that African economies are not good at, it is fostering the growth of the private sector and creating jobs. This problem, more than debt, more than global geopolitics, more than infrastructure deficits is holding the continent back.

As the last two centuries have shown in Europe, America and Asia, the greatest poverty reduction strategy is jobs. People getting regular incomes spend creating demand in the economy and driving growth. They save creating a pool of savings (something else Africa struggles to do) and that is invested in funding the growth fuelled by the growing demand. Africa needs jobs, and to get those we need a growing private sector. On top of this, private sector fuelled growth is indigenous, it is not reliant on cheap western credit, or Chinese largesse.

However, Africa does not benefit from this self-perpetuating driver of prosperity and poverty reduction. Wage employment in sub-Saharan Africa has barely risen 2% since 1991.

Figure 1: Wage and salaried workers, total (% of total employment) (modelled ILO estimate) – Sub-Saharan Africa | Data (worldbank.org)

In fact, we have become so bad at it we have fetishised entrepreneurship, micro-enterprise, and self-employment. Encouraging young people to become entrepreneurs, to hustle, celebrating those that make it while not acknowledging the high failure rates that they experience (estimates suggest that 70-80% of African startups fail within their first five years). More so, the policy makers, multilaterals and foundations that lead the entrepreneur and MSME cheerleading fail to acknowledge that the high cost of credit and capital that fundamentally undermines those same entrepreneurs and businesses is driven by the fact that we have low savings and thus low levels of native capital available for investment. More than that, everyone trying to be entrepreneur, whether they want to or not, does the wider economy little good.

To rekindle our private sector and create jobs. We must create the conditions in which businesses can thrive and hire more people. Today African businesses are strangled by an ever-growing web of regulations, a policy environment that is unpredictable and disconnected from their everyday realities. Africa needs to create its own prosperity, drive its own growth and for that we need jobs, and our policies need to be geared towards that outcome.

Regulation that works not hinders

Regulation is necessary and it is not evil. Standards agencies and food authorities ensure that the food sold to us is safe to eat, medical boards and bar associations ensure that our doctors are not quacks and lawyers are not hacks.

A well-regulated economy is a positive for the private sector, it ensures stability, enables competition by levelling the playing and most importantly protects citizens. Africa, in general does not have good regulatory systems, and as a result the private sector is hampered by old regulations, poorly written regulations, contradictory regulations and sometimes no regulations. What Africa needs is regulation that works and getting there will require regulatory reform that does three critical things, expand capacity, updates and Africanises regulations.

  1. Capacity – many African regulatory agencies are understaffed, under resourced and underfunded and struggle to enforce their mandates. Frustrating businesses that need licenses, permits, approvals, certificates, standards etc. and endangering the public. Regulations are a necessary public service and the agencies in charge of delivering that service should have the capacity to deliver that.
  2. Updates – a lot of regulation and legislation on the continent is old, dating back to decades some to the colonial era. To operate modern businesses and attract investment you need modern regulations that cater for modern world. Without that you get either chaos or stagnation. For instance, Kenya’s building code dates to colonial Kenya of the 1950’s it does not account for modern construction methods, or modern ways of covering up shoddy work. This has led to a chaotic construction sector dependent on the morals on the developer in question. Leading to a country of modern buildings side by side with collapsing buildings that kill people. African governments need to take a step back, assess their critical regulations and bring them up to date.
  3. Africanisation – we have a bad habit of adopting regulatory regimes from another part of the world, because it is ‘global best practice’ but never updating and adapting them for the African context. Thus, we end up with regulations that we don’t really understand, that are not fit for the African purpose. It is not enough to adopt global best practice, but African governments must ensure that they adapted to and fit their context.

Coherent predictable policy

I have written about this previously and will keep writing about it. The way most African governments make and implement policy lacks coherence and ends up creating a disjointed and unpredictable policy landscape. Sectors (and their ministerial departments) do not exist in isolation, policy in one sector must be connected to another. A packet of biscuits, that you find on the shelf of a shop utilises products from different sectors, wheat from agriculture, milled flour, and sugar in the manufacturing sector, it is transported in trucks on roads from the transport sector and sold in a shop from the trade sector. It is very likely that the farmer, manufacturer, or shop owner has utilised credit from a bank or insurance from the financial sector. If policy is made in any of those sectors it can affect the others and the costs of doing business, and when done so in isolation, the unfortunate biscuit manufacturer may find their business adversely affected by a choice made without the consequences on their sector in mind.

Coherent, predictable policy is the bedrock of a growth environment for the private sector. We must keep demanding this from African governments until it becomes a reality.

Public Private Engagement, Accountability and Action.

One of the key lessons I take from the rise of the Asian tigers is the constant dialogue and collaboration between the public and private sector. Taiwan’s semi conductor industry, now the most important in the world would never have become a reality unless the industry and government were constantly talking and acting in pursuit of shared goals.

In Africa much the government and private sector have either an adversarial reaction where they are fighting each other or an ambivalent one where they talk but don’t listen. Significant sustained private sector and job growth requires genuine engagement and understanding between the public and private sectors.

Government and private sector must not only talk to each other but listen to each other. This requires both sides to recognise and understand that the motivations and goals of the other are legitimate and beneficial. Once that understanding is in place then shared goals can be developed. The growth of the private sector is an inherent goal of business, but it must also be one of government, tied to that the government goals of job growth and key issues like worker conditions, training and education, environmental sustainably must also be private sector goals.

When an honest dialogue and shared goals are established then, plans with key actions and milestones can be developed and the public and private sectors can hold each other accountable to those plans, and thus take real action.

Right now, Africa has an overwhelming number of vision 2030/35/40/60s etc. strategic plans, manifesto’s and blueprints. All of them developed largely by public sector and highly paid consultants with token input from the private sector. The core of their ineffectiveness stems from the fact that these documents are disconnected from and largely meaningless citizens and private sector they are being enacted on. Honest dialogue to establish shared goals and a shared plan will lead to real action and accountability because both the public and private sectors have something to gain from effective implementation.

So long as we continue the ambivalent and adversarial relationship between the public and private sectors, their engagement shall continue to be ineffective.

Jobs and growth

Without private sector growth and jobs, much of our development discourse is meaningless. With jobs come incomes, savings, investment, demand, and tax revenue. With jobs individuals and households have incomes, the ability to pay for housing, healthcare, recreation and invest in the future. In short with jobs come agency and dignity both for people and the nation, and dignity is at the core of my definition of development.

Without private sector growth and jobs, we will be stuck in our perennial cycle of economic growth that is meaningless to the vast majority of African’s, followed by debt crises as African governments attempts to invest and spark growth with debt (on the advice of consultants or multilaterals) falls flat yet again.

If we want indigenous self reinforcing growth, that enables people to live dignified lives out of poverty, then the lesson of the industrial revolution and rise of Asia is that you need a growing private sector and jobs. Our governments need to get serious about providing an environment that can foster that and collaborating with the private sector to create a shared vision for the future with jobs at its heart that both the public and private sector have a stake in achieving.

 

Bad policy is bad business: Reforming the African Business Environment

African economic policy does not have much wiggle room at the moment. The two policy levers that are most commonly used, tax policy (new taxes or tax breaks) and fiscal policy (spending money on things) cannot be used. We have no money so we can’t give tax breaks and we have reached our credit limits so we cannot borrow or spend more. There is no commodities boom to fill our coffers and there is no China riding to the rescue with loans and aid.

So, what can we do? How do we drive the investment and job creation our continent desperately needs without using tax policy or spending?

I think African policy makers have been lazy, or at the very unimaginative and inattentive. Economic policy encompasses a large universe of policies, laws and regulations that govern how the economy functions, how different entities interact with each other, what they are allowed to and what they aren’t, and even how they fail. How all of this is applied, how responsive regulatory structures are to a changing world and how often it changes, all contribute not just to economic policy but to the business environment. Creating a conducive business environment for MSMEs and large businesses is critical to having businesses that invest and create the jobs that we need.

I define a conducive business environment as one that gives businesses, investors and entrepreneurs a stable and secure operating environment, which puts the onus on them to grow rather than government to subsidize the economy. An environment that doesn’t let failure be a death sentence but an opportunity to bounce back. Creating this environment on the continent would help take our private sector from being resilient to being dynamic.

Predictability and stability

Businesses and investors think about today, tomorrow, next year, three years from now and a decade from now. In other words, businesses have plans. They plan to grow, and that growth needs investment, expansion and people (jobs) to make it happen.

The thing that businesses and investors crave is predictability and stability of the business environment. If a business or investor can understand what their operating environment will look like, they can make and implement their growth plans, invest in expansion and employment. Whether you are a motorcycle rider who wants to grow your income or big business making billions, the ability to plan for the future is critical.

African governments are notoriously bad at providing predictability and stability. Policy and regulatory changes seemingly come out nowhere, policies are suddenly reversed without warning, or changes are promised and soon forgotten about. A great example of this tax policy in East Africa. A recent IMF report showed that countries in the East African Community (EAC) have, since 1988 made an average of 13 changes to tax policy and law every year, that’s 1,845 changes since 1988. When on top of this you add unforeseen charges to other policies, laws and regulations it makes the African operating environment an ever-changing mess.

What governments need to do is simple, make multiyear (e.g. 3 year+) plans and communicate those plans as I have written about it before, good communication is good policy. Clearly articulating the intent of policy, what it is going to do, how it is going to work and when it will happen, may seem like policy 101 but it’s astounding how many times this has not happened. If you as a business or investor know what’s coming you can plan for it, integrate into your plans so that when it happens it’s not disruptive but wholly expected.

Connect the dots.

Policy, legislation and regulation do not exist in isolation. What happens in one sector, ministry or agency can have significant impacts on another. For example, if governments want to domesticate value chains and export more their trade policy, industrial policy, employment policy, financial sector policy must speak to each other in order to be truly effective.

Unfortunately, the situation we get most of the time is that policy in one area is made in isolation from another despite them being mutually reinforcing. Thus, businesses and investors are confronted by, at best disjointed, at worst contradictory policy that isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. For business and investors this creates confusion and uncertainty.

What is required is the for the policy development process to be inclusive of others in the public sector and those in the private sector who could have influence over it. For instance, if a government wants people to consume locally produced bread it must talk to the wheat farmers to understand how to increase production, to millers to understand how to increase wheat flour production, to bakeries to understand how to increase production of bread that people actually want. Then it must align the policy of the agriculture ministry, the ministry of industry, and the ministry of finance to make sure the interventions needed at the various stages of the value chain are aligned and mutually reinforcing. If not, the government will buy fertilizer for wheat farmers that isn’t suitable for them, the millers may have access to loans for expansion but no wheat to actually produce with and the bakeries will use the tax breaks on domestically produced bread to sell unfinished imported bread that just needs a few minutes in the oven.

While the example may seem preposterous, it’s an all too familiar tale on the continent. If governments don’t connect the dots, the impact of policy is like swimming upstream, lots of effort expended for very limited outcome.

Better bankruptcies

Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Heinz, Marvel, American Airlines, and General Motors. These entrepreneurs and companies have two things in common, they are immensely successful, and, at some point they had all declared bankruptcy.

One of America’s greatest innovations is bankruptcy protection. Instead treating bankruptcy as a shameful thing that killed the business and stained the reputation of its owners. In America bankruptcy is a chance for a reset or to start again. Companies that go bankrupt get protection, space and time to sort out their issues and emerge leaner and meaner. People who declare bankruptcy have the chance to have their debts discharged and to start again.

In Africa, we still treat bankruptcy like Europe did a century ago, as a disaster. People who go bankrupt are saddled with odious debts, companies that go bankrupt are broken up, sold off by creditors. It’s time to change this thinking, as America shows giving people and companies a second chance fosters innovation, it encourages entrepreneurs to take bold leaps and it enables people and businesses to bounce back from adversity quickly and effectively. African businesses experience a lot of headwinds, many of them stemming from forces (and regions) outside their control, changing insolvency and bankruptcy laws to be more American, may be the catalyst that enables African businesses to grow in the good times and innovate in the bad.

Bad policy is bad business.

It is incredibly frustrating watching African governments repeatedly miss the opportunity to drive growth without having to spend money or give tax breaks. There is so much that could be done to give the private sector the predictability and stability it craves to enable planning, investment and growth. To link relevant policy areas and reinforce the growth prospects of key sectors of the economy through mutually supporting government action. Or to simply help businesses understand what you are trying to do, and work with that in mind.

Instead, we have fostered uncertainty, and an adversarial relationship between governments and the private sector, which, in turn leaves the private sector surviving rather than thriving, and when businesses cannot survive, they are picked apart like a   with a carcass as part of the bankruptcy process.

Today the reality is, that while Africa would like to and needs to spend money and use tax policy to drive key development goals, we don’t have the fiscal room. The only way to create that room is for the private sector to grow and pay more taxes, and though it may seem like it, this is not a chicken and egg situation. How policy is crafted, communicated, and implemented has a real and significant influence on how companies grow and where investors decide to put their money.

We must do better at creating the environments in which businesses thrive and investors want to come to. Otherwise, an underperforming private sector will continue to stagnate, and our policy makers will be wasting air, money and perfectly good paper on strategies and plans that will fail.

2024 Policy in Africa – perspectives & predictions

2023 was tough. Inflation and currency depreciation causing a cost-of-living crisis across the continent. Debt crises, defaults and IMF programs that squeezed African governments who in turn squeezed citizens with taxes. Droughts and floods. Coups in the Sahel. Civil conflict in the horn of Africa. Despite these challenges African societies, and economies showed extraordinary resilience.

However, resilience while important is only part of what we want to see in Africa’s socio-economic story. We want dynamism, and growth as well, and tough times can be the perfect incubator of that. 2024 will be tough, looking at the year ahead the pressures we have already been experiencing will remain and new ones will emerge. To build greater resilience, drive growth and incubate dynamism we need good foresight from our policy makers and good policy, a lot to ask, but we live in hope.

1.    Debt, the IMF, and Delivering Growth

Debt distress was a key concern of 2023 with Zambia, Ghana and Ethiopia all defaulting on bond repayments. A number of other African countries continue to experience debt distress having taken on too much debt, which was not used for productive purposes, coupled with a strong dollar that has made those debts more expensive. Many countries have turned to the IMF for help which has come with structural adjustment conditionalities, increasing tax revenues, selling public assets, and slimming down public services. As our experiences in the 1990’s showed the neoliberal policies imposed by the IMF rarely have the effect they are intended to. Which means economic policy must focus on two things.

First (as I have written about in more detail here), Africa must get out of the IMF straitjacket, doing that will require prudence in spending by cutting spending on unnecessary and wasteful things. And prudent tax reform that looks to gain more from natural resources, target corporate tax avoidance and grow the tax base. The current IMF approach of simply squeezing existing narrow African tax bases harder is choking African economies to fund the debt repayment while services and public investment suffer.

Second, using the policy levers that are under IMF conditionalities. Tax and spending policy get most of the attention when it comes to economic policy but there is much more that impacts the costs and ease of doing business for small and large business. Makes it easier for African businesses to trade and do business across borders, unlocks native capital for investment. Creating linked economic policy where labour policy, agricultural policy, industrial policy, tech policy, and financial services policy are interlinked and mutually supportive, which in turn will stimulate and support the growth of the private sector.

2.    Painful medicine and hard recoveries

Of particular interest to me in 2024 will be the African countries that chose in 2023 to administer painful medicine on their economies to stop the malaise of recent years and set a new path to prosperity. In Kenya and Nigeria, new presidents facing dire economies chose to do this. Both President Tinubu of Nigeria and President Ruto of Kenya have done away with subsidies on fuel and food, looked reinvest and kickstart their productive sectors (agriculture in Kenya and Petroleum in Nigeria), allowed significant currency depreciations that fuelled inflation. Kenya (advised by the IMF) has gone a step further and imposed painful tax increases (with more planned in 2024), with the intent of keeping Kenya out of debt default and self-funding development. Though interestingly both countries have found themselves unable to make spending cuts.

2024 will be make or break for both countries. In 2024 the populations of both countries will need to see, at least, the beginning of a recovery. Otherwise, discontent may deepen, and the politics may get nasty as it did during Kenya’s opposition protests last year. 2024 will show if the tough medicine is working and give other African states confidence in following Kenya and Nigeria’s tough approach or if unsuccessful reason to explore alternatives.

3.    The Dollar and the Donald

After World War 2 there was a saying in economics. If the US sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold. In 2023 the US Federal reserve raised interest rates steeply to combat high inflation. These rate increases had a number of negative consequences for the continent. It made the Dollar stronger against African currencies fuelling an inflation crisis as imports from fuel to food got more expensive and made foreign currency denominated debt repayments more expensive and painful. In addition, it caused investors to pull funds from Africa as it made more sense to invest in US bonds with high returns. In 2024 the US Federal Reserve has indicated that it will start making interest rate cuts as inflation is under control. This should ease pressure on African currencies and help bring inflation in Africa under control. However, if the US doesn’t cut rates as fast or as far as expected the impact won’t be as great as hoped for, or even paused or reversed if US inflation returns. African policy makers, especially central bankers and finance ministers should be developing scenarios for 2024, looking at what happens to their economies under different US interest rate and Dollar scenarios and the policy responses they can put in place to take advantage or mitigate risks.

In 2024 more than 2 billion voters in 50 countries (including 18 in Africa) will be undergoing elections. The one overshadowing them all is the US election. Joe Biden has been a traditional US President when it comes to Africa, committing to AGOA, various aid and investment programs, and committing US resources to anti-terror/insurgency operations. If he wins re-election, we can expect more of the same. If Donald Trump returns, we can expect the return of his hands off (or disinterested) Africa policy which will see even greater interaction and influence from other non-traditional (US, EU, UK) powers on the continent. With trump in the white house expect China, India, Russia, Turkey the Middle Eastern Countries and Japan and Brazil to have more active Africa strategies. In addition, Trump will upend wider US economic and foreign policy as he did in 2016 creating not only uproar in the US but economic and geopolitical implications for the rest of the world. Again, having seen one Trump presidency, African policy makers must plan for that scenario, what do we need to protect against, and how can we take advantage of global context where US attention is either at home or ‘non-African’ parts of the world.

4.    The Black Swan

A black swan event is an unexpected and unforeseen event that has an enormous impact on the world. In 2020-21 we had the coronavirus pandemic. In 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine and in 2023 we got a global inflation crisis and new war in the Middle East. All of these have had significant socio-economic and political impacts on Africa and the world.

We are all praying for a (comparatively) quiet 2024, but if the last few years are any indication there will be something in 2024, we do not know what it will be but there will be something. Maintaining some flexibility and adaptability in policy approaches and plans are key if African countries are to continue to navigate these storms.

5.    Climate more hot air or action?

Over the last couple of years Africa has made a lot of noise on the global stage about climate change and had some victories such as the inclusion of a loss and damage fund at CoP-27 in Egypt, the development of South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Plan (JETP) and the 2023 Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, the first of its kind that saw the first proper articulation of African Climate ambitions in the Nairobi Declaration.

In 2024 we must see progress and some action. Can South Africa’s JETP get off the ground and help abate the energy crisis or will it just be another talking point. Will the loss and damage fund get some honest to God funding, will some of the ambitions in the Nairobi declaration be on the table at CoP-29? If all we see is hot air at diplomatic discussions, the hot air of climate change will continue to disproportionally impact Africa, the continent least responsible for the problem.

6.    More continental trade (hopefully)

Trading under the Africa Continental Free Trade Area Agreement began on 1 January 2021. As of February 2022, eight countries representing the five regions of the continent – Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Tunisia – participated in the AfCFTA’s Guided Trade Initiative, which sought to facilitate trade among interested states that met the minimum requirements for trade, under the Agreement. The products earmarked for trade were limited and intended to lay the groundwork for future expansion. In 2024 our fingers are crossed that that expansion will come to fruition. The goal of policy makers and the ACFTA secretariat must be the operationalisation of key protocols and one of the aspects I’m most excited about the Pan African Payments and Settlement System PAPSS enabling countries to trade and pay for services across borders in local currencies rather than expensive currencies. Hopefully, African leaders truly get behind this agenda.

2024 tough but not disastrous

2024 will be a tough year for Africa, but it should not be disastrous (black swan events aside). If policy makers can identify and plan for various scenarios, we can better control the impact of global events and policy shifts on the continent. If policy makers can think outside the IMF box on how to increase revenues without hurting citizens and businesses as well as back the big bold policy initiatives on climate and trade, we could see the foundations laid for greater prosperity in the future.

2024 will be tough but manageable if our leaders and policy makers can focus……

Kickstarting intra-African trade & industrialisation through regional value chains

I am a pan-Africanist, firmly of the belief that Africa is stronger together. That when acting in concert we can accelerate socio-economic development, and make our voice heard and matter on the international stage in an increasingly fragmented world.

However, first we must get better at working together, particularly when it comes to economic and trade policy. The selfishness with which we guard parochial economic interests, is at odds with the regional and pan African institutions we have established to foster the continents stated ambitions on trade and development.

Thus, as we try to reach the extraordinary ambition of the ACFTA that envisions a pan-African trade bloc, it is worth taking a leaf from beginnings of the European Union. Starting small and building towards a massive ambition. The EU did not start with a  big bang, it started as a steel and coal trading community, between Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Creating a win-win situation that convinced the politicians, bureaucrats, and people to go all in.

The ACFTA can play this role, fostering strategic cooperation using specifically identified regional value chains. Identifying goods that currently do or have the potential to use inputs from across a region and investing in that potential to create positive incomes and linkages for the various countries involved. In doing so, it can lay the foundation and support for pan-African trade and collaborative policy making.

Fostering Strategic Cooperation

I am Kenyan, a member state of the East African Community (EAC), regularly referred to as Africa’s most integrated Regional Economic Community. With a common trade area, coupled with unprecedented cooperation in a multitude of policy areas, with a stated ambition of becoming a political federation. Unfortunately, the reality is far from the ambition. The common trade area is subject to the self-interest of the nation sates, and their own political economic lobbies. Thus in recent years we have been treated to Tanzania burning Kenyan chicks at the border, Kenya banning Ugandan milk, Uganda and Rwanda closing their mutual borders. Undermining the laws and institutions of the EAC.

If the ambitions of the EAC cannot be achieved in East Africa where there is decades of history of cross border collaboration, what makes us think that it can happen across the continent. Far from being a pessimist, I think the ambition is still valid. That we can foster cooperation needed, by investing in and building value chains.

Why value chains

The value chain of a product is everything that goes into making it and getting it to market. For example, if you look at the value chain of a bottle of beer it starts with the inputs, in this case the farmers who grow the barley, hops, and sugar, the chemists who grow the yeast, the glass maker who makes the bottle, the company that makes the bottle caps. It all comes together in manufacturing process at the brewery where the beer is made, put in a bottle and capped. Its then sold to a distributor, put on a truck, and delivered, the distributor then sells it to an establishment who sells it to a customer. A beer is a comparatively simple product when compared to a car, or solar panels or a smartphone, but whatever the product, the inputs come from a variety of places to be put together in a complex manufacturing process and distributed along a complex logistics chain.

Products with the right value chains require a range of inputs, which can be sourced from different countries and industries within a region. In that value chain, can be built a coalition of the willing among the businesses that supply inputs, those that manufacture the goods and those that distribute and sell those products. That coalition of the willing, the participants in the value chain can create the political-economic support within the individual countries necessary to sustain broader political support for open trade.

As value chains gain success there will be proof and willingness to expand the concept, for people to stop seeing buy Kenya build Kenya, or made in SA, but rather buy Africa, build Africa and proudly African. One value chain at a time, from beer, to motorbikes, to fertiliser to solar panels, we can build economic, logistical, and political relationships that can provide a foundation for Africa to think and dream strategically. To realise the dream of using the raw materials that all to often leave the continent should stay in Africa and make the critical technologies of today and tomorrow in Africa.

Building complexity

Beyond the politics, value chains will allow Africa to build the large complex corporations that are at the centre of economic development. Since independence African economies have largely been dependent on small enterprises and smallholder farming. They have proven to be extraordinarily resilient, adaptable, and creative, thriving in booms, surviving in recessions and making do in everything in between.

However, while small may be resilient it is not transformative. As David Pilling points out in a recent article “Large complex companies, drive productivity by organising workers, building on their specialisation, and pulling in vast resources to create economies of scale.” The successes we see in China, South-East Asia and Latin America have all built large complex industrial networks, as the foundation for industrialisation and sustained economic growth.

Deliberately focusing policy efforts on building regional value chains will encourage the set-up and growth of the large complex businesses needed to coordinate, fund, and use these value chains. Which in turn will need attendant goods and services like finance, marketing, ICT among others, creating economic ecosystems. Eventually with time, like we have seen in Asia these African businesses can provide a foundation for growth and become players on the global stage.

Conclusion

Intra-African or pan-African trade and industrialisation is a big dream that could spur the industrialisation of the continent. Which is critical to create the millions of jobs we need and sophisticated companies and services that will keep wealth on the continent.

But it won’t happen overnight, nor will it happen automatically. African governments, industries and multilateral institutions must be deliberate. Using carefully identified products to build value chains of goods, money, trust, political and commercial interests, will give us the basis for pan African industrial networks. If Africa is ever to realise the dreams of the ACFTA, or Vision 2063, if we are to realise the dreams of African built phones, cars, power plants creating these value chains is critical.