Africa Doesn’t Need Conquerors, It Needs Partners - My take on Bloomberg’s Investor’s Guide to Africa

Bloomberg’s Investor’s Guide to Africa paints a continent teeming with opportunity agriculture, critical minerals, renewables, and manufacturing all positioned as the “next frontier” for global capital.

It’s an attractive story for investors. But beneath that optimism lies a familiar framing one that treats Africa not as a complex, interconnected set of 54 economies, but as a single frontier to be “opened,” “entered,” and “exploited.”

As Akin Dawodu, Citigroup’s Head of Banking for Sub-Saharan Africa, said in the report: “Successful engagement in Africa necessitates a nuanced, long-term perspective.”
He’s right but nuance requires more than capital. It requires collaboration, accountability, and a shift from extraction to empowerment.

The Problem With the “New Frontier” Narrative

The frontier framing implies that Africa is there to be discovered. In essence, it exists as a blank slate waiting for global investors to draw the blueprint but Africa isn’t uncharted; it’s undervalued. There are centuries of systems, skills, and structures that continue to evolve even when they don’t fit Western investment models.

When conglomerates from Europe, China, and the U.S. pour billions into ports, railways, and mining sites, we should be asking: Who owns the contracts? Who benefits from the profits? And who’s building the capacity once the projects are complete?

Let's ask, because if investment doesn’t transfer skills, empower local firms, or create long-term self-sufficiency, it’s not partnership, it's dependency dressed as development.

Rethinking Investment: From Frontier to Framework

Africa doesn’t need more projects; it needs partnerships. True partnership means creating systems where value circulates locally, not just globally.

Here’s what that could look like:

1. Procurement That Prioritizes African Firms

Governments must move beyond outsourcing infrastructure and industrial projects to foreign contractors. Instead, public procurement should prioritize African suppliers and consortiums, awarding contracts to firms headquartered, staffed, and registered on the continent.

We have construction giants in Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt capable of managing billion-dollar projects; they just lack access to the same financing and insurance mechanisms afforded to foreign competitors. Leveling that playing field means reinvesting state capital in local capability rather than renting foreign capacity.

2. Governance That Favors Local Value Chains

Governments need to strengthen local manufacturing and service industries by tying foreign investment to local content requirements mandating that a percentage of inputs, labor, and subcontractors come from African firms. This isn’t protectionism, it's pragmatism.
Without such governance, the profits of Africa’s industrial boom will continue to flow outward, while our capacity remains underdeveloped.

3. Capital Designed for Creation, Not Consumption

Africa doesn’t need more loans to buy foreign products, it needs capital to build its own. We must design investment vehicles, development banks, and lending criteria that reward creation:

• Funding African entrepreneurs who build factories, digital platforms, and infrastructure.
  
  

• Providing working capital with longer horizons and localized risk models, rather than extractive repayment timelines.
  
  

• Developing sovereign-backed venture funds that co-invest with private players in critical sectors like energy, fintech, agritech, and manufacturing.
  
  

When capital fuels creation, it compounds opportunity; when it funds consumption, it drains it.

4. Strategic Partnerships Over Symbolic Ones

Instead of chasing multinational deals that look good on headlines but do little on the ground, African governments should form joint ventures with regional firms. A partnership between a Ghanaian construction firm, a Kenyan tech company, and a Senegalese logistics provider has far greater long-term value than a single foreign-led project promising “transfer of skills.”

Regional collaboration under the AfCFTA (African Continental Free Trade Area) could become the engine of this transformation. By integrating supply chains across borders, Africa can scale its own companies, not just host others’.

5. Transparency as a Competitive Advantage

Finally, African citizens have the right to know how money, contracts, and partnerships flow who’s benefiting and under what terms and this is not optional.

Governments must publish procurement data, track foreign investment outcomes, and disclose ownership of key projects. Because secrecy breeds exploitation, but transparency builds trust and trust attracts sustainable capital.

From Extraction to Empowerment

Africa is not the world’s last economic frontier but a collection of 54 diverse markets each with its own governance, culture, and potential. The question is how Africa invests in itself?

If the next decade of investment focuses on local procurement, transparent governance, and capital designed for creation, we’ll move from dependency to dominance, from being the destination of global ambition to being the architect of our own.

Because partnership, not paternalism, is what builds nations. And Africa doesn’t need to be conquered. It needs to be collaborated with on its own terms.