Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, please permit me to stand on the already established protocol in the interest of time and given the truly distinguished gathering before us. We meet at a time when the global economic order is being reshaped in real time. Geopolitical tensions, shifting alliances, and reconfigured supply chains are redefining how the world produces and trades. And in this reshaping, Africa is no longer marginal. The question is no longer whether Africa matters. The question is whether Africa is ready to act at scale.
Africa's next phase of transformation hinges on capital, policy, infrastructure, value addition, and integration. Capital to finance ambition. Policy to enable execution. Infrastructure, the foundation of growth. Value addition to unlock the full value of our resources. And integration to unlock scale.
Let me start with capital. Across the continent, institutional capital is expanding: pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance pools, and increasingly sophisticated private investment vehicles. Yet, infrastructure financing remains far below potential. The reality is clear. Africa is not short of capital. It is short of coordinated, mobile capital deployed at scale. We must unlock cross-border capital flows, harmonize investment frameworks, strengthen project preparation, and expand risk-sharing mechanisms that attract both domestic and global investment. Deepening capital markets is equally critical. Cross-border listings, interoperable settlement systems, and expanded local currency trade are not merely technical reforms. They are strategic infrastructure. Financial independence begins with financial integration. But capital alone does not build economies. Policy determines whether capital becomes truly productive. Across many regions, segmented legal frameworks, overlapping approvals, and inconsistent enforcement continue to raise the cost of investment in Africa. These are structural constraints on growth. What is required is clear and transparent rules, predictable enforcement, and coordinated industrial strategy across borders. Alignment does not compromise independence. Rather, it strengthens economic performance. The 21st century will not reward detached brilliance but coordinated execution.
Third, infrastructure, because no economy can industrialize without the systems that power growth. Reliable energy, efficient ports, modern rail networks, quality roads, and digital connectivity are critical to reducing costs, improving productivity, and connecting African markets.
Value addition, my favorite. Africa is rich in resources, yet too often sends them abroad unprocessed, along with the jobs, skills, and value that belong here at home in Africa. This must change. Why export iron ore when we can export steel? Africa sits on over 20% of the world's iron ore reserves, and the quality, as you all know, is between 64 and 67 FE iron content, which is the highest anywhere in the world. Why export crude oil when one can power industrial ecosystems? Industrialization is no longer aspirational. It is a necessity.
Nigeria's transition from cement importer to net exporter proves what disciplined policy, sustained investment, and local capability can achieve. 15, 20 years ago, Nigeria was importing over 90% of the cement that it was consuming, and then there was a deliberate policy. And today, Nigeria is producing over 50 million tons of cement with an installed capacity of 65 million tons. And I'm happy to say that was part of that change, with an installed capacity of 17 million tons per annum, getting to 20 million tons by next year, 2027.
Again, global disruptions in energy and supply chains have reinforced a simple truth: economies with domestic processing capacity are more resilient in times of shock. The current situation in the Middle East underscores the importance of local value addition and self-sufficiency. Nigeria offers a strong African example. With the new refining capacity, Nigeria is strengthening its energy security while also supporting supply stability across parts of Africa. This is the path forward: building resilience through domestic capacity and value addition across our continent. This is not only about growth; it is about resilience.
Take cocoa, for example. We all know that a handful of African countries produce the majority global supply of cocoa. Yet the continent captures only a fraction of a market that is worth over $200 billion annually. These countries in West Africa, they produce 75% of the entire global supply, but Africa gets only maybe about 15% of that because most of the value is created elsewhere in processing, manufacturing, branding, and distribution. Africa has over 30% of the world's minerals but adds little value. So when raw materials leave without transformation, value leaves with them. So if Africa is to grow at scale, it must shift from commodity exports to integrated industrial value chains. Value addition is the pathway to jobs, technology transfer, and long-term resilience.
Ultimately, integration is what turns potential to scale. And at the center of this effort is the African Continental Free Trade Area, a market of over 1.4 billion people across 54 countries, one of the most ambitious integration efforts in the world. Its promise is clear: intra-African trade, regional value chains, and industrial scale that no single economy can achieve alone. But potential does not deliver outcomes. Execution does. At BUA Group, as we expanded our regional investments, we actively sought to supply several African markets under the AfCFTA framework. While some countries embraced the spirit of the agreement, others were less supportive in practice, with administrative barriers, legacy import structures limiting our ability to participate fully in regional trade. So really, AfCFTA is not working as it should because I had a personal experience in one of the countries that we tried to penetrate. We were actually frustrated. So this highlights a central reality: that while the framework exists, implementation remains uneven.
Same about free trade movement of people in Africa. Last year, February 2025, I was traveling to Cape Town for the mining endeavor in South Africa. And as we landed, and it was a red-eye, so I left at night from Lagos to Cape Town. We arrived at 6:00 in the morning, and as we arrived, went to the immigration, attended to my passport. The immigration officer looked at it and he was like, 'Where is your visa?' And I said, 'My visa is there.' Unknown to me, my visa had expired the day before. Unfortunately, our crew did not check the visas to ensure that the visas were valid. We were there for four hours, but at the end of the day, I had to turn back to Lagos. But the issue is, while we were waiting, there were like three international flights from Europe. All the three flights were mostly Europeans. I was standing there by the immigration desk, and each and every passenger on those three flights went into Cape Town without any visa at all. I do not have a problem with the fact that I was there without a visa and I was returned. I took full responsibility for that. But I had an issue being an African in Africa being turned away because I do not have a visa, and foreigners from other continents were allowed to enter without a visa. This must change.
So frameworks like the African Continental Free Trade Agreement provide the foundation, but impact will come from what you build on top of them: industrial corridors linking production hubs, digital customs systems reducing border friction, efficient ports and logistics networks, and cross-border energy infrastructure. Integration must come from declaration to real economic reality.
Your Excellencies, Africa does not lack ambition. What it has lacked is coordinated execution at scale. Because history will not judge us by the speeches we deliver. It will judge us by the systems we build and whether they enabled Africa to rise at scale. The moment is here. The choice is ours. And the time is now. Africa at scale is not an aspiration. It is a decision. Thank you.
