Everyone has a plan for Africa, but does Africa have the conviction to drive its own? (2), By Dipo Baruwa

Africa Does Not Need Isolation; It Needs Agency

Looking inward for capability does not mean turning inward from the world. I am not advocating isolationism; far from it.

Although the era of hyper-globalisation and an international economic order organised predominantly around expanding rule-based trade appears to be giving way to a more geostrategic environment, one in which national security, industrial policy, technological competition and strategic interests increasingly influence economic relationships, this shift should not be mistaken for the disappearance of globalisation itself. Decades of global integration have created networks, technologies and interdependencies that cannot simply be dismantled. Information technology, global finance, international supply chains, knowledge flows and cross-border investment have become deeply embedded in the contemporary sociopolitical economy.

For Africa, therefore, the emergence of a more geostrategic world should not become an excuse for isolation. If anything, it makes strategic engagement more important.

Africa will continue to need partnerships in trade and investment, technology acquisition and innovation, international finance, infrastructure development and access to global markets. However, the challenge is no longer simply whether to engage, but how Africa engages, from what position, and in pursuit of whose strategic objectives.

It is, therefore, imperative to understand the difference between engaging the world and outsourcing responsibility for thinking about our own development. External partnerships should complement African priorities, support capability development and bridge critical gaps; not substitute for African agency, subordinate African interests or perpetuate dependency.

The central question in every major external engagement should therefore be straightforward: What does Africa want to build through this relationship?

The answer should not be reduced to how much investment is being promised, how many memoranda are being signed or how many summits are being held. These are useful indicators of activity, but they are not transformative outcomes in themselves.

Africa should instead assess external engagements by asking: What productive capabilities are being developed? What knowledge is being transferred? What infrastructure is being strengthened? Which African firms are being enabled to participate? What regional value chains are being created? And, critically, what remains in Africa when the investment project or development programme ends?

These questions redefine the nature of engagement. They become even more important as the landscape of foreign aid evolves and development assistance increasingly intersects with investment, commercial diplomacy and strategic economic interests. The era in which external engagements primarily generate reports, satisfy project requirements and tick boxes, while leaving little sustainable domestic capability, must give way to a different model.

External partners should not merely collect information about Africa, design interventions for Africa and then depart when project cycles end. Genuine partnership should help build African institutions, firms, skills, systems and knowledge that remain useful long after a particular intervention has ended.

Africa must move from being the object of someone else’s strategy to becoming the architect and builder of its own future.

The Machinery Already Exists

This is perhaps why I find the original statement — “everyone has a plan for Africa except Africa” — both powerful and incomplete. Africa does not need to start from nothing. Much of the machinery already exists.

The African Union provides a continental political architecture. The African Continental Free Trade Area offers the possibility of transforming fragmented national markets into a continental economic space. The African Development Bank provides an institution capable of mobilising development finance. Regional Economic Communities provide mechanisms for progressively deeper integration among neighbouring countries.

These institutions are imperfect. But institutions become effective by being used, tested, challenged and improved; not by abandoning them every time they fail to produce immediate results.

What Africa may need most, therefore, is not another grand plan. The continent needs greater self-belief and the conviction to make its existing plans consequential.

Agenda 2063 is already well into its implementation horizon. That should invite some difficult questions. What milestones have been achieved? What remains outstanding? How committed are member states to implementation? Are national governments and Regional Economic Communities aligning their development plans with the continental framework? Who is monitoring progress, measuring developmental outcomes and holding institutions accountable?

These should not be treated as merely administrative questions. They are fundamental questions that go to the heart of whether Agenda 2063 is being treated as a genuine development framework or is at risk of becoming another ambitious continental declaration.

Making the framework consequential requires leadership willing to subordinate some short-term national political calculations to longer-term continental interests. It requires institutions capable of coordinating beyond conferences and communiqués. It requires governments willing to implement commitments after the summits have ended. And it requires citizens, businesses and civil society to hold those institutions accountable for the aspirations they repeatedly proclaim.

From Collective Aspiration to Collective Conviction

As earlier stated, perhaps Africa’s ultimate deficit is belief; not in some romantic notion of African exceptionalism or Pan-Africanism, but in the confidence that African institutions can learn, improve and progressively solve African problems.

This confidence must be accompanied by institutional discipline. It must also recognise that development is not achieved by merely reproducing successful outcomes observed elsewhere. It involves experimentation, learning, adaptation and the gradual accumulation of productive capability.

This is particularly important in a world becoming increasingly geostrategic. China is pursuing Chinese interests; the United States is pursuing American interests; and Britain is pursuing British interests. Similarly, Europe, India, Türkiye, the Gulf states and others are approaching Africa through their own strategic calculations.

Africa should expect nothing different. Indeed, the problem is not that others are developing strategies of engagement with Africa. The real problem arises if Africa enters these relationships without an equally deliberate understanding of what it wants from them.

That is why the continent requires neither passive global integration nor isolationism. It requires strategic openness backed by African agency. External trade should strengthen domestic productive capability. Foreign investment should contribute to knowledge, employment, infrastructure, supplier development and technological learning. Development partnerships should leave institutions stronger than they found them. Regional integration should make African markets more functional rather than merely enlarge them on paper.

Pan-Africanism should increasingly be measured not only by political declarations, but by whether Africans can trade with one another more easily, finance their development, move efficiently across borders, build regional value chains and collectively negotiate their place in the global political economy.

That is where continental aspiration becomes collective capability. An African saying goes that when you wake up is your morning. Perhaps this is our morning. The increasing number of African states removing entry-visa barriers for fellow African citizens is a good starting point. But this progress must be supported by the infrastructure, systems and institutional cooperation required to make it meaningful. Easier movement should contribute to broader continental security while strengthening internal trade, investment, tourism, labour mobility and people-to-people connections.

Visa liberalisation alone will not create continental integration. It must be accompanied by better transport links, interoperable payment systems, coordinated border management, reliable communications infrastructure and policies that enable African businesses and citizens to benefit from greater mobility.

Africa does not need to prevent others from developing plans for the continent. They will – and they should – because they are pursuing their geostrategic interests, and Africa is the next frontier! What Africa must do, however, is become equally deliberate about pursuing its own.

The question is, therefore, no longer whether Africa has a plan. The question is whether Africa has the collective conviction, institutional discipline and developmental confidence to drive it. That is the crux of the matter!

Dipo Baruwa is a business climate development analyst.