A popular refrain holds that Africa survives on aid, concessional loans, and external benevolence. The truth is far less flattering to the global system. Africa is not being sustained by the world; it is quietly sustaining it. The continent exports raw minerals to power foreign industries, exports capital to stabilise foreign financial systems, and then pays a premium to buy everything back. We import finished goods made from our own resources and borrow our own money at higher interest rates.
Africa does not have a resource problem. It has a resource-management problem. At the centre of this paradox are two deeply interconnected forces, what may be called the “Terrible Twins”: the export of unprocessed natural resources and the persistent outflow of African capital.
For decades, these twins have defined Africa’s place in the global economy. But that era is beginning to crack. Across the continent, there are early signs of a shift from passive extraction to deliberate management. The question is whether Africa can rewire its economic engine fast enough to make that shift irreversible.
The first twin: waking up to value loss
On the first front, raw resource exports, Africa is no longer asleep. For years, more than 80 percent of Africa’s mineral exports left the continent unprocessed. Guinea’s bauxite travelled abroad to become aluminium. Cobalt and lithium are left as ores, returning as batteries and components priced far beyond their original value.
Governments are now recognising what this model costs them. By exporting raw commodities, countries forfeit as much as 60 percent of potential value, along with industrial jobs and technological learning.
Policy responses are beginning to reflect this realisation. Uganda’s ban on tin concentrate exports catalysed the development of the country’s first tin refinery, now producing London Metal Exchange-grade ingots. In Nigeria, consistent policy signalling on local value addition has supported projects such as the Asba & Wisdom lithium processing plant in Abuja. These initiatives are not symbolic victories; they are proof that industrial processing in Africa is viable when incentives and policy direction align.
The second twin: The silent financial drain
Yet while attention focuses on minerals leaving Africa, far less scrutiny is applied to what follows the money. This is the second twin: capital flight.
Each year, billions of dollars generated by African states, corporations, and individuals are invested outside the continent. Sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and high-net-worth individuals routinely park capital in “safe” foreign markets, earning modest returns of between two and six per cent.
The irony is painful. The same markets that earn a return on African capital then lend it back to Africa at steep risk premiums. African firms seeking long-term financing often face interest rates above 25 percent. These are not commercial rates; they are structural barriers. No capital-intensive mining or manufacturing project can sustainably operate under such conditions.
Why success stories don’t scale
The Terrible Twins reinforce each other. Even where mineral processing succeeds, replication is constrained by a hostile financial environment. If local refining is feasible, why isn’t it happening everywhere? Because prevailing capital structures make long-term industrial investment nearly impossible for most domestic firms.
This is not a failure of entrepreneurship or ambition. It is a failure of financial architecture.
Rethinking the “brain drain.”
For years, Africa has described its human capital exodus as a tragedy: the loss of engineers, doctors, financiers, and technologists to richer economies. But there is a more strategic way to read this history.
Africa’s diaspora is not lost capital; it is deferred capital. Like China and Taiwan’s early investments in Silicon Valley, Africa’s talent abroad has matured into a global economic force. Formal remittances alone exceed $100 billion annually. More importantly, the diaspora holds two assets Africa urgently needs: patient capital and technical expertise.
The task is not a mass physical return but a structured financial and operational engagement.
Rewiring the flow
Breaking the grip of the Terrible Twins requires redirecting African capital, domestic and diaspora, into productive assets on the continent. This means co-investment vehicles, blended finance models, and institutions designed by people who understand both global markets and African risk realities.
Early experiments show this is possible. When African capital finances African projects, investments previously labelled “unbankable” become viable. The constraint is not feasibility but coordination and trust.
The real test
Africa’s future will not be determined by what it extracts but by what it retains, processes, and reinvests. Resource nationalism without capital reform will fail. Diaspora sentiment without institutional vehicles will dissipate. And policy ambition without financial restructuring will remain rhetorical.
Africa is not poor. It is simply inefficient at keeping and managing its wealth. That inefficiency is not inevitable but ending it will require discipline, coordination, and a deliberate break from inherited economic habits.
The era of extraction is ending. The era of management must begin.
About the author:
Suleiman Zakari is the co-founder of the Africans for Africa Initiative (AFA), a platform established to transition the continent from passive participation to active ownership of its natural resources. He is a natural resources and investment consultant who has worked extensively with both governments and the private sector across Africa on project development, strategy, and deal structuring in mining and energy.
