Africa’s constraint has never been the absence of assets. It has been the absence of agency. For decades, Africa’s minerals, markets, labour, land, and logistics corridors have appeared on everyone’s balance sheet except our own. We have treated sovereign assets as inputs for others’ growth rather than as levers of our own economic power. This is the hidden imbalance the continent must now correct.
The African Continental Free Trade Area is not merely a trade framework. It is a strategic instrument. But instruments only matter when they are played with intent. AfCFTA without industrial capacity, without capital orchestration, and without institutional discipline risks becoming a conduit for consumption rather than a platform for production.
Industrialisation, therefore, is not an ideological aspiration. It is an operating necessity. It is the mechanism through which Africa converts scale into value, labour into productivity, and trade into power. The question is no longer whether Africa should industrialise, but how deliberately and at what speed. This requires a shift in posture.
Africa must move from negotiating access to structuring markets. From exporting commodities to building systems. From fragmented projects to integrated platforms.
Sovereign assets, whether minerals, energy systems, ports, rail, or digital infrastructure, must be aggregated, valued, and deployed strategically. Not passively licensed. Not individually traded. But intentionally leveraged to crowd in long-term institutional capital and anchor regional value chains.
This is where leadership matters.
Transformation does not happen through policy statements alone. It happens when leaders align trade regimes, industrial policy, skills development, and capital markets into a single execution architecture. When confidence replaces caution. When coherence replaces fragmentation. Africa does not need permission to industrialise.
It needs coordination, conviction, and consequence management.
The future will not be determined by what Africa owns, but by how Africa chooses to organise, deploy, and defend its economic sovereignty. From potential to power is not a slogan.
It is a decision.
PHANICE MOGAKA
Phanice Mogaka is a public affairs advisor and pan‑African development advocate known for her work in diplomacy, strategic communications, and shaping narratives that advance Africa’s political and economic agency.
- business a.m. commits to publishing a diversity of views, opinions and comments. It, therefore, welcomes your reaction to this and any of our articles via email: comment@businessamlive.com
From assets to agency: Turning Africa’s balance sheet