Africa’s priorities are upside down

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The continent does not have to choose between climate action and farming, or between digitalisation and education. It needs to make capital and technology serve development, rather than allowing available capital to define what development means.

DAR ES SALAAM — Africa is awash with development plans and short of development. That contradiction was hard to miss in Tanzania in January 2025, when 30 African leaders gathered to back Mission 300, a World Bank and African Development Bank (AfDB) initiative to connect 300m people to electricity by 2030.

Partners pledged more than $50bn. Yet roughly 600m Africans still lack electricity. The juxtaposition neatly captures the continent’s problem: not a shortage of ambitions, but a failure to rank them.

Africa has Agenda 2063, climate commitments, agricultural strategies, industrial plans, digital programmes, infrastructure corridors and a continental free-trade agreement. It debates artificial intelligence while schools and factories lack reliable power; promises climate action while farmers depend on rainfall; and exports minerals needed for the green transition while importing much of the machinery made from them.

This does not mean climate policy or AI should wait until poverty disappears. Quite the opposite. Africa cannot afford to miss another technological revolution, nor can it ignore climate change. But it should distinguish ends from means.

Food security is an end; climate finance is a means. Learning is an end; technology is a means. Productivity, industrialisation and jobs are ends; power, logistics and capital help deliver them. Trouble starts when the tool becomes the target.

Follow the money

There is a reason priorities become muddled. African governments have vast investment needs and thin balance-sheets. The International Energy Agency estimates that the continent needs more than $200bn a year in energy investment through 2030. In 2024 it attracted roughly $110bn, of which about $40bn went to clean energy.

Scarcity matters. So does the price of money.

A finance minister unable to fund a railway, dam or irrigation system domestically must turn elsewhere. Multilateral banks need projects that fit their mandates; investors want returns; consultants learn which vocabulary unlocks funding; politicians prefer projects that deliver visible results.

No conspiracy is required to create dependence. Incentives will do.

That explains why an irrigation project may be easier to finance when presented as climate adaptation and why a digital platform can attract more enthusiasm than teacher training. The answer is not to reject such money. It is to make the money serve national priorities rather than letting the financier’s label define them.

Agriculture shows why. African governments promised in Maputo in 2003 to devote at least 10% of public spending to farming and rural development. Malabo renewed the ambition in 2014. In 2025 the Kampala agricultural strategy set new targets: mobilise $100bn, increase agri-food output by 45%, triple intra-African agricultural trade and halve post-harvest losses.

Twenty-two years of promises suggest persistence. They also suggest an execution problem.

Small and medium-sized agribusinesses supply roughly 65% of the food Africans consume but face an annual financing gap estimated by the AfDB at about $180bn. For a farmer in Angola, Ethiopia or Malawi, climate adaptation should therefore mean something tangible: irrigation, drought-resistant seeds, weather information, storage, insurance, electricity and roads.

Climate finance need not compete with agriculture. Done properly, it can finance agriculture.

The metric should change accordingly. Count not merely carbon avoided but hectares irrigated, yields increased, food processed locally and farmers lifted into commercial markets.

First switch on the lights

None of this works without electricity. Mission 300 is therefore more than an access programme. Properly designed, it could simultaneously become agricultural, industrial and digital policy.

Ajay Banga, the World Bank’s president, has described electricity access as a foundation for jobs and development. That is more useful than treating electrification solely as social policy. Power is a factor of production.

A household connection improves life. A connection to a workshop creates income. A transmission line serving farms, factories, mines and logistics hubs can change an economy.

The useful chain is straightforward:

power → productivity → processing → trade → jobs → taxes.

This is also why Africa’s minerals matter. The continent possesses substantial deposits of copper, cobalt, graphite, lithium and manganese, all increasingly valuable to the global energy transition. But geology is not industrial policy.

The Democratic Republic of Congo illustrates the problem. It dominates global cobalt mining, yet the largest profits lie farther along the chain—in refining, components, engineering and manufacturing. Africa need not build every battery or electric vehicle tomorrow. It should, however, move one rung up the ladder whenever economics permits.

If rich countries need African minerals to decarbonise their industries, African governments have leverage. They should use it to secure processing, local suppliers, skills and investment.

A tonne of ore is an export. A network of refiners, engineers, logistics firms and manufacturers is an economy.

The classroom before the algorithm

Digitalisation poses a similar test. Since 2019 the World Bank’s Digital Economy for Africa programme has backed 70 projects worth $9bn across 37 countries. Angola, Ethiopia, Senegal and others have undertaken telecoms reforms intended to improve competition and connectivity.

Yet UNESCO estimates that roughly 98m children are out of school in sub-Saharan Africa. Millions more teachers will be needed by 2030, while learning outcomes remain dismal.

A government can buy servers in a year. It cannot produce engineers in one.

It can import cloud services and AI. It cannot indefinitely import the people needed to operate, secure and improve them.

Digital policy should therefore be judged not only by internet coverage or the number of government services put online. Governments should ask how much of the technology they depend on can be maintained, secured, adapted and eventually produced locally.

That leads to the unfashionable question of ownership. Who owns the data centres? Who supplies the cloud? Where is critical public data stored? Who controls the platforms and intellectual property?

Digital sovereignty does not mean autarky. Africa neither can nor should build everything itself. It means bargaining power: enough technical knowledge, competition, infrastructure and domestic enterprise to prevent connectivity from becoming another form of dependence.

A factory needs customers

Producing things is not enough. Someone must buy them.

That is why the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) matters. World Bank estimates suggest that full implementation could raise African incomes by about 7% by 2035 and lift 30m people out of extreme poverty.

Those are forecasts, not promises. Tariff cuts do not build factories. Africa still needs power, roads, ports, railways, finance, sensible rules of origin and efficient customs.

But the principle is sound. A manufacturer in Angola, Ghana or Kenya will struggle to achieve scale if confined to a small domestic market. A continental market makes larger investments more plausible.

The development chain therefore becomes longer:

power → productivity → processing → logistics → continental market → scale → exports → jobs.

Without customers, industrialisation becomes a subsidy. With scale, it can become a business.

Whoever writes the cheque

The financing landscape is changing too. China, once synonymous with African railways, dams, roads and ports, has become more selective. Chinese development lending has fallen sharply from its earlier peaks, even as Chinese companies remain active in mining, energy, telecommunications and manufacturing.

Meanwhile the Gulf states are becoming more prominent. The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are investing in ports, logistics, agriculture, energy and minerals. Western development banks, pension funds and private capital are competing for opportunities as well.

More competition for African assets can be useful. But replacing Beijing with Washington, Brussels, Abu Dhabi or Doha does not amount to sovereignty.

The nationality of the financier matters less than the terms.

Who owns the asset? Who carries the risk? Who wins the contracts? How many local firms become suppliers? What knowledge is transferred? How many durable jobs result? And how much value remains after foreign investors have taken their return?

Those questions lead to Africa’s most pressing economic statistic.

Each year roughly 10m-12m young Africans enter the labour market, while only about 3m formal jobs are created, according to estimates used by the AfDB. That implies an annual gap of perhaps 7m-9m jobs.

Africa’s much-celebrated demographic dividend is therefore not a dividend yet. It is a claim on future prosperity.

Without jobs, it can become a burden on cities, budgets and political systems.

Every big investment should consequently face the same test. A solar plant that powers factories has a different economic effect from one that merely adds generation. A mine surrounded by refiners and engineering firms is worth more than one exporting concentrate. A commercial farm linked to food processors and logistics firms creates more value than one exporting raw produce.

The important figure is not simply how much capital entered, it is how much value stayed.

Put development back in charge

This suggests a simpler framework for African governments.

Big foreign-financed projects should disclose jobs, local suppliers, skills transferred and local content. Energy plans should measure productive demand as well as household connections. Climate finance should count improvements in agricultural productivity and resilience. Digital programmes should include training, maintenance and local enterprise. Governments and lenders should revisit projects several years after inauguration to see whether they still work.

Four questions would reveal much: Does the project raise productivity? Does it create durable jobs? Does it leave behind African skills, firms or technology? Does it reduce a structural dependence?

Mission 300, Kampala’s $100bn agricultural ambition, the AfCFTA and Africa’s digital programmes need not compete. Properly ordered, they are components of the same strategy.

Electricity can power irrigation and factories. Climate money can protect productive assets. Schools can produce workers for the digital economy. Minerals can seed industry. Digital networks can raise productivity. Free trade can give African companies scale. Foreign capital can accelerate all of this.

The crucial word is can.

Africa has spent decades accumulating declarations. Its next development model should concentrate less on how much money is pledged at summits and more on what remains once the ribbon has been cut.

Count the megawatts used, not merely installed; crops processed, not merely harvested; children learning, not merely enrolled; factories operating, not merely announced; and productive jobs created, not merely investment dollars promised.

Africa need not reject climate finance, AI, Chinese capital, Western development banks or Gulf investment. It needs to become better at making all of them serve the same purpose.

Development is not the amount of money that crosses a border, it is the productive capacity left behind.