Ecobank CEO Says Fragmented Markets Limit African Firms

Jeremy Awori, Ecobank's CEO, says fragmented markets hold African companies back. He puts the power to shape economic infrastructure and national borders at the center of Africa’s growth challenge. His prescription is larger financial networks, deeper banks and fewer economic borders. But the push for scale raises a question his argument leaves open: who controls the bigger systems being built, and whose priorities will they serve?

Awori has little patience for economic nationalism in small countries. Governments, he argues, seek to build their own data centres, refineries and financial infrastructure even when sharing those systems would make economic sense. In his account, separate national projects block scale. He favors alternatives that cross borders and bring financial capacity together.

The case against economic borders

As Awori describes it, the problem isn't simply that individual companies need to grow. Fragmented markets limit what African companies can achieve, while economic borders divide the space where businesses and financial networks operate. His answer is to reduce those divisions and build networks and banks with greater reach.

That prescription challenges governments seeking to build infrastructure within their own borders. Awori names specific examples: data centres, refineries and financial infrastructure. He argues that sharing such systems can make economic sense instead of building separate national versions. The conflict is between national control over infrastructure and cross-border arrangements designed to achieve scale.

The account gives no figures for the cost of separate projects, no list of countries pursuing them and no examples of an existing shared system. It presents Awori's argument, not a comparison of specific projects. Those limits matter. The case for fewer borders is clear, but the details of who would own or govern larger networks aren't provided.

Bigger systems, unanswered questions

Deeper banks and bigger financial networks sit at the center of Awori's vision. Yet the account doesn't explain how those institutions would be governed, who would make their decisions or how their benefits would reach African companies. Scale is the goal. Control over that scale remains unspecified.

The account includes no workers, residents or community organizations, and describes no grassroots response, mutual aid effort or direct action. It also mentions no election, legislative proposal, NGO or nonprofit. The debate here is between Awori's call for integration and governments' efforts to build national infrastructure—not a reported account of people organizing around those decisions.

Awori's argument puts economic nationalism in small countries on the defensive: building a national data centre, refinery or financial system may make less sense than sharing infrastructure, he says. But replacing fragmented systems with larger ones doesn't, by itself, answer who gets a say. Ecobank's CEO calls for scale. The account leaves the terms of power inside that scale unstated.