Africa’s development and international trade sustainability

Natural resources as capital stocks sustain the world economy because they represent the productive capacity of an economy. Natural resources are found in the environment and are divinely developed, not with human intervention. The capital stock therefore, refers to the total value of all physical assets (raw materials and energy that occur naturally) used for production of goods and services within the context of macroeconomics. Basically, they are generally grouped into “natural”, “human” and “capital” in productive terms (as “economic factors”). Whereas some natural resources are renewable, some others are not renewable. As inputs used to create things/products or help to provide services for economic development and propel social transformation, their management determines the direction and the extent of performance levels, as well as its sustainability profiling, economic-wise. For the African continent that spans around 54 economies (or there about), growth and development has remained a matter of great concern. Mismanagement of resources, obviously, has generally kept the continent down, to an extent that the abysmally low socioeconomic performance(s) of the continent predominantly maintains very unimpressive and unfortunate record of underdevelopment in the entire continent; when compared with the West or the rich economies of the world. This pathetic observation demands urgency for collective actions, from every known public hierarchy in national governance all over the African continent; such that all the leaders and administrators need to sit up and re-strategise mode of economic utilisation of all naturally endowed resources available, for sustainable, optimal gains at the international market towards Africa’s growth and development. Just recently, at CAADP Kampala Summit 2025, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda declared that, “Africa must leverage agriculture for growth”. The big question still remains whether leaders such as Museveni are going to apply “political will” (not rhetoric) to implement and actualise the necessary economic goals.

Prudent management of natural resources in the continent (when genuinely prosecuted) shall positively reposition the economic ratings, environmental condition and social status of the region tremendously. That could come in the form of recreating, transforming and adding value to the natural resources available within the economy. Such productive activities attract wealth creation, prosperity and drives away poverty. In a country like Nigeria, for instance, there is abundance of numerous natural resources, which includes oil, gas, minerals and others but, flagrant abuse and wastage of the heavily endowed hydrocarbon materials, has kept the economy on her knees for decades (pointedly declared as the “poverty capital of the world”). It virtually involved all forms of anti-state conducts over economic activities, which its accumulated retrospective vices crystallize into future economic woes, visible backwardness that has eventually manifested abject poverty in the economy. The oil industry in Nigeria, for instance, is particularly known to be the “goose that lays the golden eggs” for the economic wellbeing of the country, and the continent in general. Using this as a test case, presents every proof of a failed economy arising from gross mismanagement of her capital stock in the oil industry. This as a template, is the same fate the entire continent suffers in the hands of African leaders in virtually all the other economic sectors. 

However, the Dangote refinery has started to turn the expected economic table in the global oil industry. This is recently observed and recorded from the warnings the multilateral oil bloc, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is giving in its recently published monthly report, regarding the refined products (gasoline) export sales to the European market by the Dangote group. This singular feat achieved by the Dangote refinery that has a name plate production capacity of 650,000 barrels per day, is the kind of “economic heat” expected of African businesses in the international market arena, if the continent must work economically. It is commendable, and other African businesses are therefore urged to borrow a leaf from Dangote in all the economic sectors within the continent (no sentiments, no emotional attachment). It is high time Africa rose to the occasion to rightly implement the economic laws of comparative advantage, and that of competitive advantage, by adding value to her stupendously rich abundant natural resources before export of such products and services to the international market. 

This should also extend to the energy sector, in the ongoing energy transition from fossil fuel sources to renewable energy sources, due to the impact of the greenhouse gas (GHG) or carbon emissions that has resulted in global warming (Climate Change impact). The renewable energy sources are all natural resources as well (light for solar energy, water for hydro, air for wind farm; and etcetera). African nations have these resources too (in abundance, all year round), and should partake of it, in the international energy market, as well. The trade balance between the African continent and the rest of the developed/rich economies at the world market has consistently been unfavourable. The exploitative tendency by those international trade partners needs to stop; and it is only Africa that can do it by herself, as Dangote is now doing. The continent should no longer be tagged the “raw material hub” for the rich economies of the world because, “what is good for the gander is good for the goose”. Equal opportunity should be exercised at the global market for all economies of the world.                          

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