Intra-African Trade and Investment: The Path to Africa true independence

Intra-African Trade and Investment: The Path to Africa’s Development and Self-Determination

My conviction about this began in 2012 when I founded my consultancy firm. By 2017, I had solidified my belief through academic research, and today, the facts confirm it: fostering intra-African trade and investment is the only viable path for Africa to achieve true development and self-determination.

Trading and investing among ourselves will pave the way for a United Africa by:  

1. Strengthening regional integration through organizations like ECOWAS, SADC, and others.  
2. Harmonizing regulatory frameworks and settlement systems to resolve structural inefficiencies.  
3. Establishing a unified payment system, such as Bitcoin or a single digital currency (Afreximbank’s Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) is a prime example). A single currency may not be immediately necessary, given Africa’s export-driven economies.  
4. Maximizing revenue from exports by backing our natural resources' transactions with digital currencies—especially critical as global demand for Africa’s minerals (cobalt, lithium, gold. Agricultural products etc.) surges.  
5. Ensuring the free movement of goods within regional blocs, unlike ECOWAS, which currently prioritizes the movement of people. This must follow the most critical step:  
6. Developing the primary sector, the backbone of African economies. SMEs are the key to sustainable growth, just as they were for China. Large corporations can access funding, but SMEs struggle. African governments must simplify capital access for local businesses, reducing bureaucratic hurdles and fostering innovation (a topic I’ll explore further in another post).  
7. Demonstrating political will and public support. Our leaders must act boldly, and the people must stand behind them in this transformative mission.  

The Cost of Inaction

Without these steps, Africa will remain on the margins of global progress—despite technological advancements and increased internet penetration.  

Consider this: while Africa holdsover 60% of the world’s arable land, large cobalt and lithium reserves, it is starving and not producing a single smartphone or solar panel. Multinationals create jobs, but unemployment remains staggeringly high. Visionary policies must support both foreign investors and homegrown entrepreneurs. Nigeria has one Dangote, South Africa one Ruppert, Zimbabwe one Masiyiwa, ...—but as the Ivorian proverb says, "A lot of meat doesn’t make the sauce worse."

The Way Forward  

The solution starts at the top:  
- Establish specialized government ministries to tackle future challenges (e.g., AI, ancestral knowledge, own economy policies), as South Korea did with its Ministry of Economic Knowledge.  
- Embrace innovation—but first, innovate our mindsets. Africa’s greatest transformation must begin with how we think.  

The time for action is now.  👇

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