Why Africa’s push to process its own resources is becoming a question not only of development, but of power
By Ola Aina
For a decade, Dr Akinwumi Adesina stood at the centre of one of Africa’s most consequential economic debates: who truly benefits from the continent’s natural wealth?
As President of the African Development Bank from 2015 to 2025, Adesina advanced a proposition that was economic in language but geopolitical in consequence.
Africa, he argued, must stop exporting raw materials cheaply and build the industries, infrastructure and value chains needed to capture more of the wealth generated from its own resources.
Cocoa offers a powerful illustration.
In a 2017 speech, Adesina said Africa produced 75 per cent of the world’s cocoa but captured only 2 per cent of the US$100 billion annual chocolate market.
The figures were his illustration of a broader structural problem: African countries frequently supply commodities, while processing, manufacturing, branding and distribution, where much of the value is captured, take place elsewhere.
The same logic extends well beyond cocoa.
Crude oil can leave Africa and return as refined petroleum products at greater value. Minerals can be extracted on the continent while sophisticated products made from those minerals are manufactured abroad. Agricultural commodities can be exported with limited processing while African consumers import finished food products.
The pattern is also visible in strategic minerals such as cobalt and lithium, which have become increasingly important to global energy and technology supply chains.
The question for Africa is not simply whether it possesses these resources, but whether it can build the industrial capacity to process them and participate in the higher-value stages of the industries they support.
The central problem, therefore, is not simply resource ownership. It is Africa’s position at the lower end of global value chains.
Under Adesina, the AfDB placed industrialisation within its High 5 priorities: Light Up and Power Africa, Feed Africa, Industrialise Africa, Integrate Africa, and Improve the Quality of Life for the People of Africa. The approach connected energy, agriculture, infrastructure, industrial processing and regional integration.
The objective was not merely to build factories. It was to create the conditions in which African businesses could process resources, manufacture products and trade at continental scale.
That is where economics becomes geopolitics.
A continent that processes more of its cocoa, refines more of its minerals and develops pharmaceutical, petrochemical, textile and manufacturing capacity can retain more value domestically and reduce its dependence on imported finished products.
It can also acquire greater bargaining power.
Countries that control more stages of production have more options in negotiations over trade, investment, technology and access to resources. Economic capacity therefore becomes a source of political leverage.
That does not make the agenda anti-Western. It does, however, have consequences for the relationship between Africa and the industrial powers that have historically occupied higher-value positions in global production.
The power of the balance sheet
The financial side of Adesina’s tenure is equally significant.
AfDB figures show that the Bank’s capital increased from US$93 billion in 2015 to US$318 billion by 2025. The Bank says it provided more than US$102 billion in support to Africa during his decade in office and financed more than US$55 billion in infrastructure.
It also says its programmes affected the lives of 565 million people. That figure is an institutional measure of reported development impact and should therefore be understood in that context, rather than as an independently verified headcount.
The Bank also maintained its AAA credit rating, the highest rating assigned by the major international credit rating agencies.
In 2025, Moody’s, S&P and Fitch continued to rate the AfDB Aaa, AAA and AAA respectively. The ratings reflect the Bank’s strong financial position and its high capacity to repay its debts.
This matters because the AfDB raises money on international financial markets to finance development projects across Africa. A strong credit rating allows the Bank to borrow on relatively favourable terms and use those funds to support infrastructure, energy, agriculture and other development priorities.
It does not eliminate Africa’s dependence on international finance. But it gives the continent a major regional financial institution capable of mobilising capital on a significant scale.
Challenging the architecture of global finance
Adesina was also outspoken about the structure of international finance.
He repeatedly highlighted the fact that Africa received only US$33 billion, or about 4.5 per cent, of the IMF’s US$650 billion Special Drawing Rights allocation in 2021.
His argument was therefore about more than the amount of money available. It was also about whether the international financial system adequately reflects Africa’s financing needs and political voice.
This matters because financing shapes economic sovereignty.
Countries that lack affordable access to capital have fewer options when they seek to build infrastructure, expand manufacturing, develop energy systems or respond to economic shocks. The structure of global finance can therefore influence not only development outcomes, but the range of policy choices available to governments.
For Africa, the challenge is particularly acute. The continent needs enormous investment to close infrastructure, energy and industrialisation gaps, yet many African countries face high borrowing costs and limited fiscal space.
That tension lies at the heart of the debate over reforming the global financial system.
The 2020 confrontation
The most politically sensitive episode of Adesina’s presidency came in 2020, when allegations concerning his conduct led to an investigation.
The AfDB’s internal process cleared him, while the United States called for an independent review. But the controversy exposed a deeper institutional question: how much autonomy can an African-led multilateral institution exercise when major non-African shareholders also possess significant influence?
An independent review ultimately cleared Adesina, and he was unanimously re-elected for a second term.
The episode was significant not necessarily because it demonstrated a clash over industrialisation, but because it revealed the complicated power relationships embedded within institutions designed to finance Africa’s development.
The AfDB is African-led, but it is also a multilateral institution whose shareholders include countries outside Africa. Its development agenda therefore operates within a wider international financial system in which economic interests and political influence often intersect.
Industrialisation has a hard reality
Adesina’s vision also has clear limits.
Industrialisation requires reliable electricity, affordable capital, skilled workers, technology, efficient transport, predictable policies and access to sufficiently large markets.
Africa cannot create globally competitive industries simply by declaring that it wants to add value.
This is why continental integration matters.
The African Continental Free Trade Area offers the possibility of a much larger market in which African countries can develop interconnected production chains rather than each attempting to manufacture everything independently.
A Nigerian manufacturer, for example, does not necessarily need to serve only Nigeria. A properly functioning continental market could allow businesses to source inputs from one African country, manufacture in another and sell across several others.
That is the economic logic behind integration. It is also the geopolitical logic.
A larger, more integrated African market has greater potential to negotiate with external powers from a position of collective strength.
The China question
China has become an important part of this changing economic landscape.
Its role in African infrastructure, trade, manufacturing and resource development has grown substantially over the past two decades. Chinese companies have participated in major projects across the continent, while China has become a significant trading partner for many African economies.
For Africa, however, the strategic question should not be whether to choose China over the West, or the West over China.
It should be how to engage both, and other major powers, without becoming excessively dependent on any one of them.
Africa’s natural resources will remain important to global powers because of their role in energy, manufacturing, technology and food security. That gives the continent potential leverage, but only if African countries develop the capacity to negotiate from strength.
Avoiding a new dependency
There is, therefore, another geopolitical trap.
Reducing dependence on Western institutions should not mean simply replacing Western dependence with Chinese, Indian or Gulf dependence.
The objective should be strategic autonomy.
Africa should be able to trade with all major powers while developing enough productive, financial and technological capacity to negotiate from a position of choice.
That distinction is important. Economic independence does not mean economic isolation.
In a deeply interconnected global economy, no serious African strategy can mean turning away from the rest of the world. The objective is to ensure that engagement with the world is based increasingly on choice rather than necessity.
The question is whether Africa participates in globalisation mainly as a supplier of raw materials and consumer of finished goods, or increasingly as a producer, processor, manufacturer, investor and owner of intellectual property.
The larger legacy
Adesina’s larger legacy is therefore ideological as much as institutional.
He did not argue that Africa should turn its back on the world. He argued that Africa should engage the world from a position of greater strength.
That distinction may ultimately prove more important than any single programme or financing figure associated with his decade at the AfDB.
The deeper question raised by his economic vision is not simply whether Africa can industrialise.
It is whether the continent can build enough economic, financial and technological power to capture a greater share of the wealth created from its own resources.
Because the real issue is not whether Africa has resources. It clearly does.
The issue is who captures the value, who controls the technology, who finances the production, who owns the companies and, ultimately, who has the power to set the terms of the relationship.
That is the quiet geopolitics behind Akinwumi Adesina’s economic vision.
Ola Aina is a Black British journalist based in London, specialising in African affairs. She reports on politics, social change, and culture across the continent, bringing depth and context to underreported stories. Through insightful, human-centred journalism, her work connects UK audiences with Africa’s complexities, challenges, and opportunities.
