At the 80th United Nations General Assembly and the UN Global Compact’s Unstoppable Africa forum, one message rang clear: the world has changed, and so has Africa’s place within it. No longer cast as a passive recipient of aid, the continent is increasingly seen as a hub of supply chains, a source of growth and critical minerals, and a partner with bargaining power. In a world of fractured trade, shifting alliances, and accelerating decarbonisation, Africa is moving from the margins of the system to the centre of a multipolar world.
The three levers at the heart of it all
The heart of Africa’s challenge and opportunity is clear: if three levers are pulled — capital, energy and youth — potential can be turned into enduring prosperity. International investors, multilateral institutions, and policymakers increasingly recognise Africa not as a bystander, but as a partner. Yet the continent too often underestimates its leverage, hesitating where boldness and discipline are needed. The gap lies not in resources but in resolve: each lever is transformative on its own, but together they form the engine of Africa’s future.
Capital
First, capital. No country has industrialised without affordable finance. Yet African sovereigns often pay three to five times the borrowing costs of advanced economies. The continent accounts for nearly a fifth of the world’s population but attracts barely 4% of global Foreign Direct Investment stock and under 2% of venture capital. Even in climate finance, where Africa contributes less than 4% of global energy emissions but holds some of the world’s best carbon sinks, flows amount to only 3.3%.
Financial systems were designed for colonial trade and fossil fuels, not for the youngest continent on the climate frontline. When credible channels are built, however, capital flows. At the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, we have listed 104 sustainability bonds worth R71-billion, with nominal growth of more than 50%. We have also launched one of Africa’s first exchange-traded voluntary carbon markets and a private placements platform that unlocks finance for the “missing middle”: mid-sized factories, grids, and logistics projects too large for microfinance but too small for Wall Street. Similar instruments in Nigeria and Kenya have shown the same pattern. Build the pipes, and the investment follows.
Energy
Energy is the second lever, the one on which every industry depends. Africa possesses 60% of the world’s best solar resources and the bulk of critical minerals such as cobalt and platinum, yet attracts only a sliver of renewable investment. Where power becomes reliable and clean, growth accelerates. The Ethiopia-Kenya electricity highway is already moving firm hydropower across borders, cutting Kenya’s costs and underpinning manufacturing. If energy is reliable, affordable and increasingly clean, then every other industry follows: agro-processing, light manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and digital services.
Demographics
The third lever is the most decisive. Africa’s youth are its greatest comparative advantage, but also its greatest risk if neglected. The median age is under 20. By 2035, more young Africans will enter the workforce each year than the rest of the world combined. By 2050, more than a quarter of humanity will live on the continent. Yet in sub-Saharan Africa, one in five young people is not in employment, education or training.
The consequences are severe: long spells of joblessness early in life scar entire careers, lowering skills, earnings and entrepreneurial drive. Investing in education and work is therefore not optional, but existential. Even if it requires borrowing more today, the return is extraordinary; decades of productivity from the largest emerging workforce on earth. No other investment offers such outsized returns.
The ultimate objective is clear: unlock the demographic dividend. If Africa succeeds, its youth will drive global growth in the mid-21st century. The measure of leadership will be whether Africa transforms their numbers into opportunity, their energy into innovation, their hope into progress.
These levers gain force when reinforced by platforms that magnify their effect. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is creating a $3.4-trillion single market, replacing fragmentation with scale and making it harder for divide-and-rule tactics to persist. Intra-African trade still accounts for only 17% of exports, compared with 58% in Asia and 67% in Europe, but AfCFTA sets the framework to lift those numbers over time.
Multipolarity broadens Africa’s options further: longstanding ties with Europe and America are now complemented by rising flows from China, India and the Gulf. The continued expansion of BRICS+ underlines that Africa’s partnerships are wider and more contested than ever. Deepening capital markets adds credibility, turning ambition into execution. The African Exchanges Linkage Project already connects 11 exchanges with $1.6-trillion in market capitalisation, while Africa’s voluntary carbon markets, anchored in regulation, show how natural assets can be monetised to finance industries, jobs and resilience at home.
When capital, energy and youth align with these platforms, the results are already striking. Kenya’s geothermal resources and engineering talent have drawn a $1-billion Microsoft and G42 investment in a data-centre campus, the first Azure region in East Africa, coupled with large-scale AI training.
A model of regional stability
Ethiopia-Kenya power trade is creating a model of regional reliability. Rwanda’s sustained investment in Stem (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education is anchoring an innovation hub that retains talent. Across Lagos, Nairobi and Johannesburg, successive issues of green and sustainability bonds are drawing global capital into productive use. These are bright spots, but also proof of what becomes possible when the levers are pulled together. The challenge now is to scale these successes across the continent.
Africa’s supply chains will be sovereign and its industrial base thriving when finance is patient, energy is reliable and young people are engaged. The measure of every partnership must be clear: Does it build industries, skills, and jobs for Africa’s next billion? If not, it is not a partnership worth signing.
To convert opportunity into outcomes, Africa must pursue a strategy of confidence built on the three levers of capital, energy and youth; and strengthened by unity through AfCFTA, options through multipolarity, and credibility through modern capital markets.
Africa must be confident enough to design and pursue these levers relentlessly, to be the economic base of the mid-21st century, for which it is increasingly positioned. DM