Energy has always been the quiet partner in rising incomes. More energy enables higher productivity, healthier lives, and larger opportunities for growth. Yet in much of Africa today, limited energy access remains a major bottleneck, deeply intertwined with persistently low levels of labor productivity. Addressing this energy gap is crucial not only for expanding access to electricity but also for boosting economic output across the continent (read on our blog).

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Executive Vice President for Global Trade Bank at AfreximBank argued that Africa’s ability to compete on the global stage hinges on its capacity to function as an integrated economic space. In his view, the continent must move beyond a development paradigm anchored in national borders and instead focus on building continent-wide trade and infrastructure corridors capable of supporting scale, efficiency, and value addition. Africa’s population of 1.3 billion people is frequently presented as a major competitive advantage. The Afreximbank representative challenges this assumption, warning that demographic scale alone is insufficient if the continent continues to operate through fragmented national silos. Africa, he noted, does not compete in isolation: it faces rivals of comparable demographic weight, such as China and India, whose populations are similarly large but whose economic systems operate within far more coherent frameworks. ...Yes, true, but with some caveats.

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