Mohammed: Continent must start shaping global power dynamics
Oramah: Dangote refinery more than industrial project
Oyedele says Nigeria needs to make it easier to build the next Aliko
Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
African leaders have challenged the continent’s younger generation to take greater control of Africa’s economic and political future by building institutions, businesses and productive capacity capable of competing globally.
The call was made at the closing of the 2026 Aliko Dangote Foundation Africa Diaspora Leadership Programme Young Global Leaders Convening in Lagos, where the leaders argued that the continent must move beyond being defined by its challenges and natural resources and become a producer, financier and owner of globally competitive enterprises and technologies.
Those who spoke at the four-day programme themed: “Building Africa at Scale”, included the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, Amina Mohammed; former President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Afreximbank, Prof. Benedict Oramah and Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele.
Others were: Minister of Art, Culture, Tourism and the Creative Economy, Hannatu Musawa and Chief Executive Officer of the Rwanda Development Board, Jean Guy Afrika.
Mohammed, a statement said, told the young leaders that Africa’s struggle for influence was increasingly a contest over power, institutions and who gets to define the continent’s story.
She said Africans should no longer be satisfied with representation at global decision-making tables but should seek the power to shape the decisions taken at those tables.
“We can no longer be the people that are profited from. You have to own what it is that is your power,” Mohammed said.
Recalling discussions with young Africans about representation at the United Nations, she said their expectations had evolved from merely seeking representation to demanding the power to influence global decisions.
Mohammed noted that African countries collectively constituted the largest regional grouping within the United Nations and had significant influence over decisions of the global body.
However, she said the continent often approached international affairs as a recipient rather than a power broker, urging African leaders to strengthen institutions, improve strategic coordination and recognise the collective economic and political weight of the continent.
She also warned that artificial intelligence was emerging as another major arena of global power in which Africa could not 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.
For Oramah, the Dangote Petroleum Refinery represented more than an industrial project, arguing that its greatest impact could be psychological because it demonstrated that Africans could 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 was helping to consign to the “rear view mirror” the notion that Africa lacked the capacity to undertake world-scale industrial ventures. But Oramah warned that the continent could not rely on isolated success stories, stressing the need to systematically build productive capacity.
“Unless we manufacture, unless we produce,” he said, Africa would struggle to transform its position in the global economy.
He also called for greater control of Africa’s financial resources, urging commercial banks on the continent to embrace what he described as “developmental commercial banking” to support long-term productive investments.
Nigeria’s Finance Minister, Oyedele, in his comments, said governments had a responsibility to create an environment that would enable more entrepreneurs to build businesses on the scale achieved by Dangote.
Describing Dangote as “a fighter”, the minister said his interaction with the industrialist had changed his perception of the challenges 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. “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.
He said the government’s principal responsibility was to establish policies and regulations that would 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.
Oyedele also said economic reforms must ultimately produce improvements that citizens could feel, while warning that Africa continued to pay heavily for negative perceptions about the continent.
He described the cost in terms of a “stereotype tax”, “narrative cost” and “prejudice premium”, arguing that Africa needed to tell its own story more effectively and prevent narratives of conflict, corruption and hopelessness from distorting perceptions of opportunities on the continent.
On her part, Musawa said Africa’s narrative could not be changed without strengthening its creative economy, which she described as an important 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.
For Afrika, however, the challenge was not simply to produce more Dangotes but to build systems that would allow businesses and investors to succeed without requiring exceptional individuals to overcome institutional weaknesses.
“What Alhaji Dangote has done at the refinery is incredible. But truth be told, I think we get one in almost every lifetime,” the Rwanda Development Board chief executive 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 identified policy predictability, sanctity of contracts, institutional accountability and preparation of investable assets as critical requirements for attracting and sustaining investment at scale.
Also speaking, Aliko Dangote challenged the participants to turn the lessons from the Lagos programme into action, arguing that Africa’s principal challenge was 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 consider not only what Africa could become but also the role each of them would play in building what he called the “New Africa”.
Also, the Chief Executive Officer of Aliko Dangote Foundation, Zouera Youssoufou, said the Foundation had supported African members of the Forum of Young Global Leaders for 15 years as part of efforts 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 wanted participants to leave Nigeria convinced that transformative African enterprises were possible and that they could 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.