Africa is entering a new development era, whether it is ready or not.
The old system, in which aid flows underwrote large parts of the continent’s health, food security and development architecture, is being rewritten at speed. Bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa fell by 26.3% last year, according to OECD figures. This is not a temporary tightening of belts. It is a structural shift in the politics of development finance.
I first understood how quickly the terms of development can change in the 1990s, early in my career as a government lawyer. At the time, governments were beginning to divest from many commercial assets, while development partners were eager to provide resources to government. Today, we sit on the cusp of a similar dynamic in the opposite direction: as development assistance declines, governments must grow a new muscle for attracting foreign capital.
African leaders and development experts have responded to this shift with the right approach: if aid is shrinking, trade and investment must take its place. Indeed, the world needs to see Africa not primarily as a recipient of aid, but as one of the most compelling investment destinations on the planet.
The continent holds vast reserves of critical minerals, enormous renewable energy potential, young and rapidly urbanising markets, and the raw materials needed for the next phase of global industrialisation. Africa is home to the world’s youngest population, with a demographic dividend that could become one of its greatest economic strengths. If the world wants resilient supply chains and new engines of growth, Africa is central to that agenda.
There are signs that global partners recognise this. At the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi, President Emmanuel Macron announced a €23 billion package of investment commitments for Africa, including funding from French companies and African investors across sectors such as energy, agriculture and artificial intelligence. The scale of the announcement matters. It shows that the appetite for a new investment-led relationship exists.
But Africa has heard big promises before. Too often, the money does not move at the pace promised. If this moment is to be different, African governments and their partners must focus not only on attracting capital, but on building the systems that allow capital to land, scale and deliver public value.
In short, Africa must become investment ready.
Investment readiness means ensuring governments can identify national priorities clearly, coordinate across ministries effectively, design credible investment propositions, honour commitments, manage risk transparently and ensure that deals advance long-term development goals.
Becoming investment ready is a different discipline than managing aid. Under the old aid model, donor programmes delivered important outcomes, but they operated in siloes, and I saw this with my own eyes. USAID’s PEPFAR and Feed the Future programmes, for example, were vital initiatives across the continent. But I met with staff working on these respective programmes, operating in the same country, with overlapping goals, who had never met. This avoidable fragmentation was inefficient under an aid model. Under an investment model, it becomes a major barrier.
The green industrialisation agenda – a key topic at the Africa Forward Summit – illustrates the challenge and opportunity. Building a robust green industrialisation strategy requires buy-in from several areas of government including ministries for energy, industry and trade, environment and more. This is where many investment opportunities stall. Not because the underlying proposition is weak, but because the public-sector machinery around it is too fragmented. As such, this is an area that African governments should consider as they look to pivot from receiving aid to attracting trade.
The good news is that there is a precedent for this – a blueprint for African governments to follow. Take Mission 300, an initiative led by the World Bank and African Development Bank with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, Sustainable Energy for All and the Global Energy Alliance to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030. Under the initiative, 36 countries have created National Energy Compacts to drive their commitments. To deliver on these, a number of participating countries have created Compact Delivery and Monitoring Units (CDMUs), which have successfully nurtured collaboration across different government departments ensuring alignment on national priorities. These delivery platforms have strengthened government capacity through technical assistance, improved coordination, and created accountability mechanisms that translate ambition into action, with over 50 million connections achieved to date through Mission 300.
Individual countries are demonstrating what investment readiness looks like. Rwanda’s Development Board (RDB) acts as a single front door for investors, coordinating across government, packaging investment opportunities and helping remove barriers to investment. Crucially, its chief executive holds Cabinet rank, enabling direct engagement with the President and other ministries to resolve issues quickly. That approach has helped Rwanda attract record investment commitments of USD 3.2 billion in 2024, and is expected to create more than 51,000 jobs.
Kenya is taking a similar approach. Through the Kenya Investment Authority, the government is developing coordinated investment opportunities in sectors ranging from clean cooking to pharmaceuticals, helping translate national priorities into investable projects. Earlier this year, the Kenya International Investment Conference announced USD 2.9 billion in investment deals expected to create around 63,000 jobs.
This isn’t surprising: Africa has a record of responding to crises in a way that enhances its industries. For instance, the Covid-19 pandemic exposed a gap in the continent’s ability to produce and manage vaccines. Now, the African Union has a goal of producing 60% of Africa’s vaccines locally by 2040. This effort has successfully built investor confidence and secured millions in commitments from international investors.
As we shift into a post-aid world, the opportunities for Africa to enhance trade and generate prosperity are undeniable. Now, governments from all regions in Africa must continue building the foundations that will ensure this investment potential is realised, encouraging cross-ministerial collaboration and clearly defining national priorities to build investor confidence. This coordination is the only way to make Africa truly investment ready.