A family in Accra decides to take their dream vacation to see the Pyramids of Giza.

On a map, the trip looks simple. Ghana and Egypt are both on the same continent. A direct flight should only take a few hours.

Instead, they discover a frustrating reality. There is only one direct option, which costs significantly more, while cheaper options require multiple layovers that double or triple travel time. There is even an absurd possibility of having to leave Africa entirely, routing through Europe or the Middle East just to reach another destination on their own continent.

We often talk about roads, ports, electricity, and internet access as critical infrastructure.

Air travel is rarely discussed, and for a continent of 1.5 billion people, this is an overlooked constraint.

Africa only accounts for about 2% of global air travelers, mainly because it is one of the most expensive regions in the world for domestic and regional flights. While passenger numbers are expected to grow over the next two decades, a combination of heavy government taxation, market fragmentation, and severe infrastructure constraints may threaten that growth.

Treating Connectivity as a Luxury

Many African governments still view air travel as a service for the privileged few rather than as an essential infrastructure. This mindset ignores the reality that the aviation industry created over 8 million jobs and contributed about $75 billion to African GDP in 2023. Every new route creates opportunities for tourism, trade, investment, and labor mobility. But governments often treat the industry primarily as a source of tax revenue, resulting in passengers facing some of the highest taxes and fees in the world.

West Africa is a particularly expensive region for air travel. On average, West African governments charge passengers about $110 per international departure and $68 per regional route. These charges are as much as three times higher than those charged to travelers in Europe and the Middle East.

Beyond taxation, many airlines operating in Africa face blocked funds, a situation where airlines can’t access their own money out of the countries where they sell tickets due to government restrictions. Africa accounts for the overwhelming majority of blocked airline funds globally. When airlines cannot access their own cash, they reduce flight frequencies, cancel routes entirely, or raise ticket prices to avoid further losses.

Even if governments support aviation growth in principle, the African airline market comes with some complexities that slow growth.

The Cost of Fragmentation

For years, African leaders have endorsed open-skies agreements designed to allow any regional airline to operate more freely across borders, which could increase competition and lower costs. However, the implementation of these agreements has been slow. Instead of one large continental market, airlines often operate within smaller regional markets. This limits scale and reduces competition, making it harder for carriers to spread costs across larger passenger volumes.

Africa’s perceived instability also creates a financial risk premium. This translates into airlines having to borrow capital at much higher interest rates than global competitors just to remain operational. Supply chain inefficiencies on the continent also drive up fuel prices, which costs 17% to 20% above the global average. These high fuel costs are then compounded by aging fleets that are less efficient and require frequent, expensive maintenance.

Adding to these costs is the financial hurdle of extreme currency volatility. Because passengers pay in local currency while essential expenses like fuel and leases are priced in U.S. dollars, a sudden currency devaluation can instantly erase profits. These combined structural burdens result in a profit of only $1.30 per passenger, making Africa the least profitable region for airlines globally.

Infrastructure Gaps Compound the Problem

Outside of government interference and market dynamics, there are still significant infrastructure gaps. Many African airports don’t have the certifications and long-term development plans required to support a unified air travel market. This gap is most visible at small regional airports, which often lack the night-landing lights and automated baggage systems essential for the quick turnarounds that low-cost airline models require.

Most African airports still depend on manual customs and immigration processing, which creates systemic bottlenecks that lead to frequent flight delays. These infrastructure shortcomings, coupled with predatory market dynamics and government interference, drastically reduce potential revenue. This leads to significant price hikes as airlines attempt to mitigate the high risks of operating within such a constrained environment.

Signs of Progress

Several countries have started scaling back aviation-specific taxes and fees. In West Africa, a coalition of countries recently reduced or eliminated several aviation-specific taxes. This policy shift alone has the potential to lower ticket prices by 40% in a region where airfares previously exceeded 80% of the global average.

Other countries are adopting more efficient airspace management systems that allow airlines to fly more direct routes, lowering fuel consumption and operating costs.

The historical barrier of the visa process for intra-African travel is also slowly reversing. Within the last three years, countries like Benin and Seychelles have completely removed visa requirements for all African nationals. This makes cross-border movement seamless for tourism and trade.

There were seven of us waiting inside the Verizon store, each carrying our own tech emergency.

My phone had suddenly stopped working a few hours earlier, transforming from a lifeline into a useless brick. Another customer had just moved into the neighborhood and needed their home wifi installed. Someone else was trying to recover years of photos from a damaged device. Whatever our issues, the mood at the store was tense and impatient.

To make matters worse, there was only one employee working. Fortunately for us, he handled the room like a master class in customer service. He acknowledged every person, validated frustrations before solving problems, and calmly diagnosed issues one by one without letting the anxiety escalate.

Walking out of the store with a replacement phone in my pocket, I started thinking about how mobile technology had quietly evolved from a consumer luxury into something that feels infrastructural. We rely on our phones for communication, banking, navigation, work, and transportation.

Is this the eventual path of all transformative technologies? Do they begin as conveniences before becoming necessities? And if so, is this where artificial intelligence is headed?

The Anxiety of New Technology

Looking back over the last two hundred years, we have seen several technological waves, from electrification to the Internet, that fundamentally transformed and improved human life. Almost every wave triggered a cycle of public skepticism and anxiety before eventual adoption.

When electricity began its mainstream rollout in the late 1800s, the occupational hazards were so severe that the mortality rate for early wiremen and linemen approached one in three. Commercial insurance companies refused to issue life insurance policies to electrical workers, while newspapers warned about the invisible, lethal risks of urban power grids. At the same time, companies like General Electric and Westinghouse Electric aggressively deployed lobbying campaigns and public relations efforts to convince regulators and an anxious public that a powered world would ultimately be safer and more prosperous. Public anxiety intensified in 1889 after a lineman was electrocuted in full view of onlookers in New York City. The backlash forced regulators to mandate stronger electrical safety measures.

Eventually, these safety standards matured, circuit breakers were introduced, and electrical infrastructure scaled. The net benefits of electricity proved transformative. The technology unlocked industrial productivity, enabled efficient mass production, and reshaped the physical constraints of cities through innovations like the electric elevator, which made the vertical expansion of dense urban environments like New York City economically viable.

More importantly, electricity represented an upgrade in human livelihood rather than a simple improvement in lifestyle. There is a significant difference between a technology that improves how people live and one that improves their odds of survival. Refrigeration radically reduced food spoilage and foodborne diseases. Electric water pumps improved sanitation. Reliable lighting extended productive hours and improved public safety. These were not consumer luxuries. They were infrastructure-level improvements that materially improved human welfare.

The Public Distrust of AI

AI, on the other hand, is still largely perceived as a lifestyle upgrade, not a livelihood necessity. AI currently seems less like refrigeration and more like a temperature-controlled wine cooler. It’s impressive, expensive, and ultimately optional.

Most people are not hearing about AI in the context of disease prevention, food security, or other livelihood improvements. They are hearing about productivity. But in corporate terms, productivity often means generating more output with fewer workers. Over the last eighteen months alone, there have been more than 170,000 AI-related layoffs. At the same time, the promises of AI have driven trillions of dollars into the financial markets, disproportionately enriching the households that already own the overwhelming majority of stocks.

For many workers, AI increasingly looks less like a shared societal upgrade and more like a tool that boosts corporate efficiency while concentrating economic upside elsewhere. A 2025 Pew Research Center survey reflects this tension. The survey found that 50% of Americans were more concerned than excited about the increasing use of AI in daily life, while only 10% were more excited than concerned.

For the average person, the proposed AI trade sounds deeply one-sided. Surrender your data, your privacy, and potentially your job security in exchange for conveniences like faster data analysis or better email responses. There are also growing concerns about the enormous amounts of electricity, water, and data center capacity required to support large-scale AI systems. At a time when many households are already struggling with energy costs and a rising cost of living, it is not immediately obvious why AI would be an appealing social bargain.

Decades of sociological research show that convenience can spark early interest, but lasting societal adoption only happens when a technology materially improves stability, security, and resilience. The real question is not whether AI can make corporations more productive. It is whether AI can meaningfully reduce hunger, disease, and economic fragility.

Ironically, this is already beginning to happen.

AI Beyond Productivity

The United Nations World Food Programme developed HungerMap LIVE, an AI-powered platform that forecasts droughts, climate shocks, and food insecurity across more than 95 countries. By predicting where food crises are likely to emerge, governments and aid organizations can intervene earlier and reduce the lag between early warning and food delivery. AI-native agricultural companies are also using satellite imagery, weather data, and computer vision to assist in farming. These companies help farmers optimize planting schedules, detect crop disease earlier, forecast yields, and intervene before harvest losses become catastrophic. If electricity reduced food spoilage through refrigeration, AI may ultimately reduce food insecurity through prediction.

AI in healthcare may prove even more consequential. A nationally representative survey found that 25% of American adults have used an AI chatbot as a supplementary tool for their care. But the real value of AI in healthcare is as a scientific infrastructure layer. Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold system has predicted more than 200 million protein structures, dramatically accelerating biomedical research and shortening timelines for understanding diseases ranging from malaria to cancer. Predictive health companies are also using AI to identify patients at elevated risk of chronic illnesses before symptoms escalate, shifting medicine from reactive treatment toward preventative intervention.

The Tradeoffs of Essential Technology

None of these critical advancements eliminate the legitimate concerns surrounding AI. Labor displacement, surveillance, misinformation, energy usage, and concentrated corporate power are real risks. But history suggests that societies ultimately tolerate disruptive technologies when the net improvement to human livelihood becomes undeniable.

Mobile technology has become an essential infrastructure for modern life, but not without tradeoffs. Smartphones increased distraction, weakened privacy, accelerated misinformation, and intensified social comparison. Social media platforms built on top of the mobile revolution have fundamentally reshaped politics, mental health, and public discourse in ways society is still struggling to manage. Yet despite those concerns, mobile technology has been transformational in parts of the world where millions of people leapfrogged traditional infrastructure entirely. Mobile phones became bank branches for the unbanked, storefronts for informal merchants, logistics networks for drivers, and educational tools for students.

The same pattern may eventually emerge with AI. Electricity stopped feeling dangerous once life without it became unimaginable. Mobile phones stopped being luxuries once modern life began organizing itself around constant connectivity. AI is largely marketed as a productivity tool for corporations and a convenience tool for consumers, but those applications are unlikely to inspire broad public trust. The real turning point for AI may come when the technology is seen as instrumental to how populations stay fed, healthy, and economically resilient.

Before leaving for our most recent trip to East Africa, my wife insisted that we carry enough cash to last us the two-week trip. She knew that where we were headed still operated largely on a cash basis. When we landed and went through passport control, we were asked to provide the address where we would be staying. Instead of a street name or house number, we offered a neighborhood name and described nearby landmarks, and the immigration officer immediately understood exactly what we meant.

These moments capture what it actually takes to get things done in many parts of Africa, whether you are traveling, running an established company, or trying to build one. The reality is that across much of the continent:

• most people work outside the formal economy,

• cash plays a central role in daily transactions,

• systems like residential addresses and formal identification are still developing,

• and trust and brand awareness are largely built through in-person interactions.

These may not be ideal conditions, but they are the conditions people and businesses must operate within today. Successful companies are often the ones that understand these realities clearly and find ways to build and scale within them.

The Informal Economy Is the Economy

In many African cities, the typical worker is not a formally salaried employee with a predictable paycheck. They are micro-entrepreneurs running a kiosk, selling food, repairing phones, driving a motorcycle taxi, or trading goods across informal supply chains. Income is often daily, variable, and sourced from multiple activities. Informal employment accounts for almost 85% of employment across the continent.

Safaricom, the largest telecommunications provider in Kenya, understood this early. Rather than designing its mobile-based money transfer service, M-PESA, around bank accounts and payroll deposits. The company built a system optimized for person-to-person transfers, micro payments, and simple business payment tools that let merchants receive money directly on their phones. Products like M-PESA treated informal merchants not as edge cases to be upgraded, but as the core of the system. Safaricom understood that when income is unpredictable and informal, people rely on tools that are just as flexible.

Cash Is Infrastructure, Not a Constraint

Despite Africa’s leadership in mobile money, cash still dominates everyday transactions. Roughly 90 percent of retail payments in the region are conducted in cash, reflecting the realities of informal commerce. Micro merchants operate on razor-thin margins and often cannot absorb the transaction fees or settlement delays associated with digital merchant payments. From a merchant’s perspective, cash offers two advantages that digital payments struggle to match. It has no direct cost, and it is immediately available. Suppliers also tend to prefer cash or simple peer-to-peer transfers, so accepting cash reduces friction across the entire value chain.

Jumia, the marketplace, logistics, and payments company, learned this through experience. Early on, the company attempted to operate like a Western e-commerce platform, assuming customers would pay digitally before delivery. That model struggled in markets where trust was still being built, liquidity was managed in cash, and delivery was not always predictable. The introduction of cash on delivery and hybrid payment flows shifted risk away from customers and dramatically improved conversion. Cash was not a step backward. It was the bridge that made scale possible.

Landmarks Are the Address

The challenges around cash are not unique. The same gaps appear in how identity is verified and how location is defined, shaping which business models can work in practice.

More than 500 million Africans lack formal identification, and large portions of the population live without access to a standardized address system. Directions are often given using landmarks or local knowledge rather than street names. This reality can break business models built around automated onboarding, credit checks, and address verification. Successful companies design around these gaps instead of waiting for them to disappear.

Sendwave, a digital remittance platform, avoided many of the challenges that have slowed financial services adoption in Africa by designing for how money actually moves on the ground. Instead of requiring recipients to have bank accounts or formal addresses, Sendwave delivered funds directly into mobile money wallets. Local agents then handled cash out and last-mile access. Identity was tied to phone numbers rather than formal banking credentials, allowing recipients to receive and use funds immediately. By building on existing mobile money and agent networks, Sendwave turned informality into a distribution advantage rather than a constraint.

Trust Is Built Face-to-Face

When systems are inconsistent, people rely more on other people. About 65 percent of people in West, Central, East, and Southern Africa remain offline or operate under low connectivity conditions, even where mobile broadband coverage exists. Data costs, device access, and digital literacy continue to limit who can be reached purely online. This reality forces even digital-first businesses to grow through hyperlocal, offline channels.

Wave, one of West Africa’s fastest-growing mobile money platforms, is a clear example. Its adoption did not come from digital marketing or app store discovery. It came from building dense networks of more than 150,000 local agents. These agents onboarded users in person, handled cash in and cash out, and became trusted points of contact within their communities. The app enabled the transaction, but the offline relationships developed by the agents enabled scale.

What Building Successfully in Africa Requires

There are clear gaps in infrastructure, financial systems, state capacity, and digital access across the continent. The companies best positioned to succeed are often the ones that accept these realities and build products and business models around them. Rather than building for future ideal conditions, they turn these constraints into features within their go-to-market strategy. This allows companies to meet people where they are today, while the broader conditions continue to evolve.

Investing in AI is becoming a social expectation more than a strategic choice for companies.

So where should a company even invest? Should it be in infrastructure through data centers and energy, compute via specialized chips, or the application layer building end-user products? With so many ways to gain exposure to AI, the real challenge is identifying where to invest for a long-term advantage.

For companies like Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet – often known as ‘hyperscalers’ because they operate the massive data centers needed to train, host, and run AI models – the answer of where to invest in AI is effectively everywhere. These hyperscalers plan to spend an estimated $700 billion on AI in 2026 on data centers, specialized chips, power, and supporting software. For comparison, that is more than five times what the United States spent over a 30-year period to build roughly 47,000 miles of roads for the Interstate Highway System.

For these hyperscalers, this level of spending seems rational. They have tens of billions of dollars in cash, and AI is widely viewed as a general-purpose technology with broad, but still uncertain, applications. For them, investing across the entire value chain is a way to ensure participation no matter where value ultimately accrues.

But most companies don’t have that luxury. Their challenge is not just whether to invest in AI, but how to navigate uncertainty while the landscape is still evolving. Fortunately, history offers useful lessons, whether that means staying close without overcommitting, transitioning gradually while learning or building around an existing strength.

Staying Close Without Overcommitting

One clear example of navigating technological uncertainty is Microsoft. In the early days of the internet, the company initially underestimated the open web, focusing instead on MSN, a proprietary dial-up service. But in 1995, Bill Gates recognized the shift in his “Internet Tidal Wave” memo, calling the internet “the most important single development” since the PC.

Microsoft accelerated its internet efforts by integrating capabilities directly into its existing products like bundling Internet Explorer into Windows, embedding web functionality into its developer tools, and leveraging its distribution advantage across the PC ecosystem. This approach allowed Microsoft to stay tightly coupled to the internet shift without needing to rebuild its business from scratch.

Transitioning Gradually While Learning

While Microsoft showed how to stay close without overcommitting, Adobe provides a great example on how to gradually test the waters of a new shift before going all in.

In the early 2010s, Adobe faced a business model dilemma when cloud computing began to emerge. The company’s traditional model was selling physical boxed software like Photoshop and Illustrator, which was highly profitable. But the rise of cloud computing and subscription meant new competitors could offer more flexible and accessible alternatives to customers. Adobe knew it had to make a move, but instead of immediately transitioning the entire business to a cloud-based business, the company took an incremental approach.

In 2011, it launched early cloud-based services while continuing to support its existing boxed software business. This allowed the company to test pricing models, understand customer behavior and build internal capabilities before fully committing. Although Wall Street initially punished the stock with a double-digit decline during the transition, the discipline paid off. By 2015, Adobe had fully transitioned to a cloud-only model, eventually seeing a dramatic increase in market value over the decade.

Building Around Existing Strengths

Microsoft and Adobe navigated uncertainty by either pivoting their product or business model. Another way to position your company to find success in spite of uncertainty is by doubling down on your strengths.

For years, Walmart was seen as lagging behind Amazon in e-commerce. Amazon set the pace for online retail by investing heavily in logistics, fulfillment centers, and digital infrastructure. Rather than match Amazon’s investments head-on, Walmart focused on investments that leveraged its massive physical footprint.

As consumer behavior shifted toward omnichannel retail, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, Walmart was ready to scale. Investments like buy online, pick up in-store or last-mile delivery leveraging local stores allowed the company to turn its stores into fulfillment nodes, effectively bridging physical and digital retail. Instead of competing on Amazon’s terms, Walmart adapted the model to its own strengths.

The Real Decision

AI is real, and so is the pressure to act. For non-hyperscalers, the challenge is not simply whether to invest, but where to play, how much to commit, and when to scale.

The companies that navigate this well will not be the ones that move the fastest, but the ones that stay close enough to learn, move deliberately as the landscape evolves, and anchor their strategy in areas where they have real advantages.

In previous technology waves, advantage often came from capturing distribution early. But in the era of AI, advantages may come from the discipline to wait, the flexibility to adapt, and the conviction to scale only when the path becomes clear.

For far too long, Africa has been a paradox. The continent is extraordinarily rich in natural resources but has remained relatively poor in overall development. History explains much of this through a legacy of colonization and exploitation. But today the continent has an opportunity to enter a new era of growth driven by its population, specifically young people. Around 60% of Africa’s population is under the age of 25. This is not a group to be exploited. It is a generation that must be empowered to capture its own value. While populations in other parts of the world are shrinking, Africa is growing. By 2050, 1 in 4 people on earth will be African.

This immense human potential means nothing if it is not properly activated. Moving the continent from a state of potential to a state of realized value requires a change management approach at scale. During my strategy consulting days, I used the People, Process, and Technology framework to evaluate whether an organization was positioned to win by asking three fundamental questions.

Who are the people needed to achieve the goals?

What processes will allow the people to achieve the goals?

How can technology be a force multiplier in achieving the goals?

Viewing Africa through this same framework reveals a harsh reality. The people, process, and technology are all under-optimized for a future where its nations can thrive.

The People

When it comes to people, Africa has the numbers, but the population is not yet ready to drive growth. This deficit is driven by structural issues like healthcare and a perpetual lack of opportunity. Today, nearly one-third of children under the age of five in the region face physical and cognitive challenges due to malnutrition. When a child’s brain development is compromised early on, the damage is lasting. It creates a shaky foundation that is difficult to overcome.

This is not just a health crisis. It is an economic one. A workforce cannot thrive if it is hampered by poor health or instability. Recognizing this, several countries, including South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya, mandated the fortification of staple foods like flour and cooking oil with essential vitamins. In Kenya, this policy, paired with broader nutrition efforts, helped reduce child stunting from 26% in 2014 to around 18% in recent years.

Even if structural health issues are solved, there still remains the reality of the most talented young Africans frequently seeking opportunities abroad. A 2025 survey of graduating students across 9 representative countries found that only 44% of students plan to stay in Africa after graduation. A majority of students want to leave for higher education and job opportunities in North America or Europe. This comes as no surprise, especially in the healthcare space. An estimated 9,000 medical students graduate each year from Egyptian universities, but only 35% of these students stay in Egypt to practice medicine. The same pattern is seen in countries like Nigeria and Ghana. And if it continues, it could put the continent at a shortfall of 5.3 million healthcare workers by 2030. Healthcare is just one sector. Whether it is software engineers in Nigeria or financial analysts in South Africa, this migration of talent is happening across the board.

Ghana has launched a specific initiative to mitigate this brain drain. In 2019, the “Year of Return” brought the diaspora in to experience the country, but the government has since moved beyond tourism to create a permanent bridge for talent. In early 2026, Ghana launched a digital database to match the global skills of returnees with local needs in tech and healthcare. This ensures that when talent returns, it is immediately productive. A key caution here is ensuring these opportunities do not bypass the local workforce who stayed.

The Process

Investing in people is only the first step. Even the most talented individuals are limited by the systems they have to work within. This is where leveling up the process and technology components becomes essential. The current gaps in these components are rooted in deficiencies across foundational education, digital literacy, and advanced technical skills. These limitations drive a mismatch between human potential and the skills demanded by the modern economy.

Foundational education is key to preparing African youth for higher-value and future-ready jobs, but there is a profound learning crisis. Almost 90% of children cannot read and understand a simple text by the age of 10. Basic reading and math are the essential building blocks for skills demanded in today’s fast-moving global economy. The quality of education varies across the continent due to barriers to access, quality of instruction, and the cost of attendance. Some startups have emerged to make learning easier and more affordable by using tools like mobile phones, SMS, digital content, and engaging media. These companies help students today while preparing them to drive economic growth and strengthen their communities in the future.

There is no magic wand for education. Improving foundational levels requires a long-term, uninterrupted investment. Like any asset that grows over time, education needs a long runway for compounding to work its magic. Senegal is a clear example of this logic. By committing to years of literacy initiatives and teacher training, the country saw youth literacy rates climb to 78% in 2022 from 57% in 2013. This was the result of sticking to a proven process over several years. Too often, critical programs are halted or abandoned due to political turnover, shuttering predecessors’ initiatives before they can reach maturity.

The Technology

Alongside strengthening foundational education, a significant leap in digital literacy and infrastructure is also required. Many countries in the region continue to lag behind global averages on digital skills indices. Despite this gap, the continent shows promising signs of digital adoption. This is seen in the rapid rise of internet users and the widespread embrace of mobile payments. Building on this momentum by enhancing digital literacy enables Africans to fully capitalize on the economic opportunities of the digital age. In Rwanda, the government launched a Digital Ambassador program that trained thousands of young people to provide digital skills training in their own communities. The program has helped millions of citizens access online services and join the formal digital economy. Launching and scaling initiatives like this is a structural necessity. By 2030, an estimated 230 million jobs in the region will require digital expertise. This represents a big shift in how people work. It could either drive a new era of productivity or leave an entire generation behind.

Beyond basic digital literacy, there is an opportunity to develop advanced technical skills so the workforce can participate in higher-value segments of the global economy. This shift moves people from basic service roles into high-growth science and technology fields like artificial intelligence, data science, and chemical engineering. Investing in tech-aspirational youth is now a requirement for growth.

This investment shifts Africa from consuming technology to creating it, moving the continent from the sidelines to the center of global innovation. Nigeria’s 3 Million Technical Talent program is a prime example. By training thousands in specialized fields like AI and cybersecurity, the initiative aims to export services rather than people. This allows high-level talent to remain home while contributing to the global digital economy.

Not every young African needs to be a technologist, but if enough are equipped to solve complex local problems, the result is a massive productivity spike. Take the example of a farmer who sells their crop in 10 minutes via an app instead of spending all day traveling to a market. That efficiency creates a powerful ripple effect across the entire population.

The Choice

Addressing foundational education, making digital literacy table stakes, and providing a pathway to advanced technical skills is pivotal to the continent’s trajectory. Any society prospers when people feel useful and are engaged, which usually comes through employment. With 10 million young people entering the labor market each year, the ability to upgrade job opportunities and increase productivity will determine if the population boom pays dividends. Currently, more than a quarter of Africa’s youth are not in school, working, or training. Failing to integrate this population into future-ready roles could stall development and lead to instability.

We are already seeing the early signs of this friction. In the last few years, youth-led movements in Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana have moved from digital activism to the streets to demand economic inclusion. These protests show that Africa’s youth boom will either be a massive economic asset if invested in, or an urgent threat if ignored.

Ensuring Africa’s population surge pays dividends is a major challenge, but the status quo is no longer an option. The alignment of People, Process, and Technology need to happen immediately to ensure that at this demographic crossroads, Africa’s youth become the engine of sustained growth and not another example of unrealized potential.

In the 1930s, Saudi Arabia hit the jackpot when it discovered large reserves of oil within its borders. This led to the creation of one of the world’s most valuable companies, Saudi Aramco. Over the past six decades, the country’s economy has grown rapidly, with GDP surpassing $1.2 trillion in 2024. Oil revenues financed infrastructure, expanded state capacity, and turned Saudi Arabia into a global energy superpower.

Today, a different natural resource has taken on similar importance. Rare earth elements. Oil fueled the industrial age, and rare earths are enabling the age of artificial intelligence.

The Shift to Rare Earths

Rare earths are a group of 17 chemical elements with unique magnetic and heat-resistant properties. They are essential for everything from smartphones and medical imaging to the high-performance hardware required for AI.

AI is often described as a software breakthrough. In reality, it is fundamentally dependent on physical systems: data centers, cooling mechanisms, precision motors, and advanced semiconductors. Rare earth elements help these systems run efficiently and reliably.

As AI expands, demand for these elements is expected to rise.

The Processing Monopoly

Rare earths are actually not rare, but they are difficult to process. For decades, China invested heavily in refining capacity and now mines roughly 70% of the global supply while processing close to 90%. This dominance was built through long-term industrial planning, aggressive pricing strategies, and a willingness to absorb environmental costs that most countries avoided. Mining regions in China now have soil incapable of supporting crops, contaminated water supplies, and workers suffering from higher rates of respiratory, bone, and other diseases.

In recent years, China’s rare earth dominance has shifted significantly as the country moves away from its historic mine-and-process-at-all-costs approach towards a model prioritizing environmental protection and domestic sustainability. This strategic pivot, combined with China’s use of oversupply and price suppression to maintain dominance, has made major economies like the European Union, Japan and South Korea more receptive to new entrants in the rare earth supply chain.

Africa’s “Aramco” Moment

At least over half of the countries in Africa are considered rare-earth-rich by the World Bank. Several of these countries, including Tanzania, South Africa and Nigeria, hold verified rare earth reserves that could transform their economies. These reserves are currently a small fraction of China’s massive holdings but their strategic value is increasing as the demand for the elements is projected to triple by 2035 and the world looks to diversify the supply chain.

Over the past few decades, China has held a dominant position in Africa by building the infrastructure needed to ship raw ore back to Chinese refineries. This dynamic is changing as African countries assert control over their own resources. Countries like Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi have begun banning the export of unprocessed critical minerals to force global powers to build refineries and create jobs directly on the continent. Governments are also now demanding equity stakes in mining projects to ensure that mineral wealth is converted into generational wealth. The balance of power is shifting just as the continent is forecasted to account for roughly 9% of global output by 2029.

To secure a long-term win, African countries must avoid the environmental disasters of the past by adopting modern and greener mining strategies. These greener methods do not completely eliminate the danger, but they can significantly mitigate the risk of economic growth coming at the expense of citizens’ health. Every ton of rare earth mined generates up to 2,000 tons of toxic waste, including radioactive byproducts. By shifting to responsible extraction practices, Africa is betting that it can manage these risks better than the unregulated operations of the past.

This is where the technology comes in. Modern refineries now use closed-loop systems to recycle the majority of acids and water, which significantly limits toxic discharge. There are current examples of this shift across the continent. Projects like the Songwe Hill venture in Malawi are prioritizing sustainable processing, while South Africa is developing new critical mineral hubs focused on low-emission refining. By leveraging the continent’s vast solar and wind potential, facilities can produce rare earths with a low carbon footprint. These greener minerals can command a premium from global tech giants like Apple and Google, who are under intense pressure to decarbonize their entire supply chains.

Additionally, chemical byproducts can be managed strategically. Radioactive elements like thorium, traditionally treated as hazardous waste, can be captured and stored as potential fuel for next-generation nuclear reactors. If African countries set and enforce high environmental standards, they can turn a regulatory burden into a sharp competitive advantage in the global market.

What Stands In The Way

Even with sound environmental planning, two structural barriers remain: capital and knowledge.

A modern rare earth refinery requires massive capital, years of development, and complex operational expertise. These facilities cost upwards of several hundred million dollars and can take nearly a decade to reach operational stability. This capital requirement remains largely unsolved because global lenders frequently demand sovereign risk premiums that make African projects economically uncompetitive compared to their Western counterparts. Additionally, many of these countries lack the stable 24/7 energy required for industrial processing, meaning solar and wind facilities would need to be supplemented with massive battery storage to prevent costly production halts that could bankrupt a project before it begins.

Beyond these financial and infrastructure hurdles, a significant knowledge gap exists.

Rare earth refining requires specialized chemical engineering knowledge that is currently limited across much of the continent. While China has hundreds of universities dedicated to this niche science, Africa has only a handful of equivalent programs. This is where the continent’s rapidly growing youth population could be part of a solution. This tech-aspirational demographic currently faces significant underemployment. They represent a massive and untapped talent pool that could be upskilled to manage the high-tech refineries of the future. This will require countries to undertake massive coordination by scaling chemical engineering programs, forming partnerships with established refiners, and incentivizing diaspora expertise to return.

Even if the capital and knowledge gaps are closed, China can still use its monopoly power to oversupply the market and drive prices down, which would make new African refineries economically unviable. Any African rare earth strategy must also include long-term purchase agreements, diversified buyers, and geopolitical backing strong enough to withstand pricing pressure.

A Strategic Inflection Point

Taking on a bigger role in the rare earth supply chain will not be free. Environmental impacts and health risks in mining regions are significant and difficult to fully offset. African countries have to decide if the long-term gain of industrial power is worth the human and environmental cost.

This is a rare opportunity to break the historical cycle of extracting and exporting raw materials that has kept the continent’s wealth in foreign hands. Oil fundamentally reshaped the countries that treated its reserves as a base for growth rather than a windfall. But can rare earths do the same for African countries?