Africa does not lack opportunity, it lacks conversion capacity

Infrastructure can be built. Capacity to govern it is harder.

Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group

Africa’s advantage is scale. Its danger is the failure to convert scale into capability.

The continent is back on the world’s agenda because its markets are growing, its minerals are indispensable, and its geography sits at the heart of the routes everyone wants to shape. Yet attention is not power. Many states can sign agreements and announce plans. Fewer can produce productivity, order, and legitimacy that hold when shocks arrive.