The closing of the 2026 Aliko Dangote Foundation Africa Diaspora Leadership Programme Young Global Leaders Convening in Lagos put a blunt question on the table: who gets to control Africa’s economic and political future. African leaders used the four-day programme, themed “Building Africa at Scale,” to tell younger Africans to build institutions, businesses and productive capacity that can compete globally instead of remaining trapped as raw material suppliers and spectators.
Who Gets to Define Africa
Amina Mohammed, the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, said Africa’s fight for influence has become a struggle over power, institutions and who gets to define the continent’s story. She told the gathering that Africans should no longer settle for representation at global decision-making tables. They should seek the power to shape the decisions made there.
“We can no longer be the people that are profited from. You have to own what it is that is your power,” Mohammed said. She said young Africans she had spoken with at the United Nations had moved from asking for representation to demanding influence over global decisions. Mohammed also noted that African countries collectively make up the largest regional grouping within the United Nations and hold significant influence over decisions of the global body. Even so, she said the continent often approaches international affairs as a recipient rather than a power broker.
Her answer was the usual language of institutional strengthening, strategic coordination and collective weight. She also warned that artificial intelligence is becoming another major arena of global power, and said Africa can’t afford to lag behind. “Don’t follow the status quo,” she said. “Have the courage of your conviction and just bloody well do it,” she added.
What the Bosses Call Development
Prof. Benedict Oramah, former President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Afreximbank, said the Dangote Petroleum Refinery is more than an industrial project. He argued that its biggest effect may be psychological, because it shows Africans can conceive and execute complex projects at global scale.
“The greatest thing that the Dangote Refinery has done and will do for us is our ability to take back our minds,” Oramah said. He said the project helps push the idea that Africa lacks the capacity for world-scale industrial ventures into the “rear view mirror.” But he also warned that one giant project won’t fix a system built on dependency. “Unless we manufacture, unless we produce,” he said, Africa will struggle to change its position in the global economy.
Oramah called for greater control of Africa’s financial resources and urged commercial banks on the continent to embrace what he described as “developmental commercial banking” to support long-term productive investments. That’s the language of building capacity, but it also points straight at the choke points: finance, ownership and who gets to decide where capital goes.
Taiwo Oyedele, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, said governments have a responsibility to create an environment that allows more entrepreneurs to build businesses on the scale achieved by Dangote. He described Dangote as “a fighter” and said his own interaction with the industrialist changed his view of the strain involved in executing major investments in Nigeria. “Until I got close to him, I saw that he was more stressed than the rest of us. But he would never give up,” Oyedele said.
He then asked the quiet part out loud. “What if we create the right conditions so that he will be less stressed, so that other people will be encouraged to do the same thing?” he added. Oyedele said the government’s principal responsibility is to establish policies and regulations that allow private capital to drive investment and create jobs. “The job of the government is to create the right policy environment so that the private sector can drive innovation, can create jobs and provide viable infrastructure,” he said.
The Reform Trap, in Plain Sight
That’s the familiar bargain: the state sets the rules, private capital takes the winnings, and ordinary people are told to wait for the benefits to trickle down through policy and regulation. Oyedele said economic reforms must ultimately produce improvements citizens can feel, while warning that Africa pays heavily for negative perceptions about the continent. He described that cost as a “stereotype tax,” “narrative cost” and “prejudice premium,” and said Africa needs to tell its own story more effectively so narratives of conflict, corruption and hopelessness don’t distort perceptions of opportunity.
Hannatu Musawa, Minister of Art, Culture, Tourism and the Creative Economy, said Africa’s narrative can’t change without strengthening its creative economy, which she described as a source of jobs, economic value and global influence. “We need to take a hold of our narrative,” she said, urging Africans to think beyond themselves and build with future generations in mind.
Jean Guy Afrika, Chief Executive Officer of the Rwanda Development Board, said the challenge is not simply to produce more Dangotes. It’s to build systems that let businesses and investors succeed without requiring exceptional individuals to overcome institutional weakness. “What Alhaji Dangote has done at the refinery is incredible. But truth be told, I think we get one in almost every lifetime,” he said. “The bigger question is how do we make it so that the next investor doesn’t have to have exceptional access, exceptional patience” for an investment to succeed.
Afrika said policy predictability, sanctity of contracts, institutional accountability and preparation of investable assets are critical for attracting and sustaining investment at scale. That’s the architecture of order from above. The people at the bottom are still expected to live with the consequences.
Dangote told participants to turn the lessons from the Lagos programme into action, saying Africa’s main challenge is not a shortage of ideas or ambition. “What you have seen in Lagos is that Africa’s challenge is not a shortage of ideas or ambition. It is turning ambition into institutions, productive capacity and lasting value,” Dangote said. He urged the Young Global Leaders to think about what Africa could become and the role each of them would play in building what he called the “New Africa.”
Zouera Youssoufou, Chief Executive Officer of Aliko Dangote Foundation, said the Foundation has supported African members of the Forum of Young Global Leaders for 15 years to strengthen Africa’s representation and influence within global leadership networks. She said the Foundation funded African Young Global Leaders to participate fully in the programme and its learning journeys, giving them access to global knowledge, networks and experiences. “This year, we decided to host the Young Global Leaders here in Lagos. The learning journey focuses on the rise of African excellence and what it takes to build Africa at scale,” Youssoufou said.
She said the Foundation wants participants to leave Nigeria convinced that transformative African enterprises are possible and that they can aspire to build at a comparable scale. “We want the participants to leave Lagos with the conviction that they, too, can aspire to accomplish what Alhaji Aliko Dangote has achieved over the years,” she said. The message was clear enough. Build bigger. Own more. Trust the institutions. And somehow, the same structures that keep deciding for everyone else are supposed to deliver liberation.