Feature/OPED
African Challenges to African Development
By Ehiedu Iweriebor
The parlous story of African economic and social development since independence best expressed in the failure to achieve the autonomous capacity for self-actuated development and in particular to create conditions of national and continental modern mass production and prosperity is well known and need not be repeated.
It is enough to re-state that Africa’s development failure was because of the leaderships’ choice to retain, maintain and expand the inherited exocentric colonial system of development incapacitation, primary commodity export, import dependency and poverty generation.
The progressive efforts of some African states and leaders to change the system and create self-reliant economies were stymied by the leaderships’ ideological inadequacies and dependency, the balance of payment crises of the late 1970s and 1980s and the subsequent economic crises and decline.
This provided the avenue for Western multilateral imperialist agencies the World Bank and the IMF – to successfully infiltrate into Africa, re-colonize African states and convert them into neo-colonial out-posts of the so-called neo-liberal consensus.
This framework embodied in the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) with its destructives conditionalities: currency devaluation, trade liberalization, subsidy removal, deregulation and privatization, re-directed the African states to focus on expanded raw materials production and exports and to abandon industrialization and development capacitation.
The application of these anti-development SAP dogmas in the 1980s and 1990s ushered in two decades of deepening indebtedness, serious economic crises, de-industrialization, socio-economic decline, deepening impoverishment and political repression.
On the other hand, the period also saw the upsurge of popular democratisation struggles, civil rights campaigns, the restoration democracy, and the establishment of electoral democracy and the decline of military interventions in African politics.
In the economic sphere, there were innovative dependency-reducing responses. This was because among businesses there was an increased re-orientation toward local sourcing of well-known agricultural and mineral endowments to expand production.
This led to the emergence of new economic sectors and especially the expansion of cottage, small and medium scale consumer goods industries which were operationally autonomous due to the increased utilization of local resources for production and self-development.
In addition, there was relative political stability and policy and institutional the support for businesses through the creation of enabling environments for attracting investments.
It was partly because of these new domestic conditions and the economic self-activation, and the partly because of return of better commodity prices in the first decade of the 21st century that the Western media fabricated and propagated the new view of “Africa Rising”.
This became a very popular and re-assuring slogan among some African leaders, politicians and intelligentsia.
However, it was an insecure condition because a “Rising Africa” whose upsurge is generated by increased external demand for primary commodities is essentially insecure.
It does not represent genuine African development that is based on expansive domestic production and prosperity generation.
It merely reinforces African dependency on primary commodity export and its dependence on the importation of manufactured goods. It is evaporating with the speed with which it was proclaimed.
But there was a more consequential development story of this period that ushered in what this author describes as the Affirmative African Narrative phase of development. This is the progressive assumption by African businesses of the leadership role in promoting national and pan-African development.
This new trend of African self-development is captured by the new concept of “Africans Investing in Africa” This is the process by which African industrial, service, and commercial enterprises began to make large-scale investments in many different African countries.
The investments involve for example the expansion of Banks, telecommunication companies, trading companies and so on.
Examples of these include Nigerians Banks like UBA, Zenith, Access, First Bank; South African banks like Standard Bank and Moroccan Banks; Telecommunication companies such as MTN of South Africa, ECONET of Zimbabwe and GLOBACOM of Nigeria. Others are Shoprite, Coca cola and South African Breweries.
While Africans investing in Africa is becoming common and commendable, it is important to emphasize that NOT ALL African investments in Africa are of equal economic importance or strategic development value.
For example, African investments like Shoprite and similar companies which merely establish commercial or trading enterprises that do not add value to African economies are no different from traditional non-African FDI companies that are established to create captive markets for products from their home countries and thereby maximally exploit Africa.
On the other hand, African companies that make investments that are decisive and transformational are those that deliberately promote and advance African development capacitation, through local resource exploitation, mass industrialization, large scale industrial, agricultural and mineral production, and beneficiation for internal use.
In terms of investment for development capacitation through local resource utilization and valorization, the vanguard African company is the Dangote Group.
In order to ensure that Africa achieves self-sufficiency in the critically important infrastructure development requirement – CEMENT – Dangote embarked on a pan-African investment strategy to establish integrated plants, or grinding plants or cement terminals in African countries according to their resource endowments.
The Group’s ultimate objective is become the ascendant cement manufacturing company in Africa. There is no question that the Dangotean strategy of development capacitation through local resource exploitation, mass industrial production and domestic prosperity-generation is what Africa requires to become the self-actuated mover of its own development and to create a secure development upsurge and continental prosperity that does not depend on the vagaries of external demand for primary commodities.
This Dangotean transformational mission and project is now been threatened by what seems like the unwillingness of African countries to respect and maintain carefully crafted legal investment agreements as sacrosanct documents and binding commitments.
Within the past year, the Group has faced major challenges as a result of the failure of some African states to keep their sides of the bargain or agreements concluded with Dangote Group.
This happened late last year in Tanzania when the government seemed to renege on some elements within the agreements reached with the Dangote Group to give it concessions and incentives for the massive investments of over $500 million dollars that the Group made in the construction of the monumental cement plant in Mtwara, Tanzania.
This Dangote Cement plant with its 3 million metric tonnes per annum capacity is the largest cement plant in Eastern Africa. In addition to the cement plant, other associated Dangote development projects include the construction of a coal power plant and a jetty. While these are primarily beneficial to the Groups business, they also represent important investments and permanent additions to Tanzania’s power and sea transport sectors.
Together these projects have generated significant direct employment opportunities and as they mature and attain full production capacity the multiplier effects in various sub-sectors would be expansive and extensive, thereby creating prosperity and income in the community as well as revenues for the local, regional and national the governments.
But due to the problems Dangote had to temporarily shut down the plant; and after negotiations and assurances that restored the original terms, the plant resumed production.
This Dangotean Tanzanian experience of government infidelity to the sanctity of agreements can only create profound doubts among business people on the readiness of African states and leaders to move Africa forward.
But the Group’s challenges in Africa are not over. Just recently, in Ethiopia, the regional government of Oromo Regional State where Dangote’s new over $400 million dollar, 2.5 million metric tonnes per annum cement plant is located came up with new conditions that are bound to disrupt the operations of the Dangote plant.
In what it claimed is an attempt to provide employment for jobless Oromo youth it decided to withdraw all mining licences and agreements already concluded with Dangote and similar other companies with mining concessions.
In its place the regional government claimed that it would create youth owned companies that would now supply the minerals required by the cement and other plants.
This action of the Oromo regional government in illegally annulling legally approved mining agreements with the Dangote Group and other companies raise major questions on the genuine preparedness of African states, politicians, and bureaucrats to foster Africa’s self-development through Africans investing in Africa.
Without question the action of these governments represents major challenges to Africans assumption of responsibility for their development and the emergent Affirmative Africa Narrative.
In fact at its core, these anti-investment actions are a repudiation of the long-standing aspirations of Pan-Africanism and its advocates, and the practical commitment of the continental organizations like the former Organization of African Union (OAU) and the current African Union (AU) to promote African-led development through investments, intra-African trade and exchange, as instruments for creating secure African development and domestic prosperity-generation.
This is a good example of how some African leaderships’ represent serious obstacles to African development. Quite clearly any aspiration for Africa’s take off through self-actuated development as represented by the transformational efforts of Dangote and similar committed pan-African economic revolutionaries is weakened by such leadership unfaithfulness, irresponsibility and lack of serious commitments to African investors.
Despite these set-backs, it is important for African states and the continental and regional economic groups to reaffirm their commitment to African-led transformational industrial development as the basis for Africa’s capacitation for self-actuated development.
In this light, it is imperative for the AU and its various economic agencies to design Continental Investment Protection Agreements that would commit African states to respect and uphold already approved agreements and avoid arbitrary nullifications of legally binding instruments.
An additional guarantor is for each African state to negotiate investment protection treaties with each other. In fact this is especially indicated for countries such as Nigeria where investors are increasingly embarking on Pan-African development investments.
Finally, pan-African transformational investors like Dangote should remain committed and not be discouraged by these clearly disruptive actions of hapless, backward and anti-African development leaders.
The Dangotes’ of Africa as continental transformational vanguards should remain firmly committed to their chosen paths of legal profit making and simultaneous contribution to Africa’s transformation, economic development, prosperity-generation, psychological liberation, and the restoration of Africans dignity and equality with others in the world.
These are worthwhile and enduring ideals and challenges that transformational revolutionaries and societal game-changers are bound to encounter and overcome so as to create new worlds.
Ehiedu Iweriebor is a Professor and former Chair of the Department of Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies, Hunter College, City University of New York, USA.
Ever tried sending a large amount of money into or out of certain markets and felt your stomach twist a bit? That was the feeling many companies carried long before Ledig existed. Delays. Guesswork. Phone calls that sounded unsure. People waiting on people, and no reliable derivatives hedging protocol to shield them from currency swings. It was messy.
That frustration is what pushed us to open Ledig to the world a year ago. We wanted a system built for big transfers. Not a few hundred dollars. Serious amounts. A hundred thousand. A million. Even more. And we wanted it to move in seconds, not a strange timeline that no one could explain.
So, we built a setup that lets companies bring in stablecoins and get local currency out quickly. We also kept the opposite direction just as clean. Local currency in, stablecoins out. Both ways needed to feel the same because business doesn’t move in only one direction. Some clients even switch between the two during the same week.
In the early days, people sent smaller amounts to test us. Fair enough. But once they saw a large payment settle almost instantly, confidence spread. This is how we crossed our first $100M. Most of that came from global companies working across Africa and other emerging markets. These firms care about stability, not buzzwords. They just want their money to land where it should.
A lot of the magic sits behind the scenes. Wallets. Local settlement tools. A solid FX engine that adjusts as needed. None of this appears on the surface. All a user sees is a simple dashboard or a set of API calls that get the job done. They don’t even need to think about crypto. The tech exists under the hood, doing the heavy lifting quietly.
But fast movement alone wasn’t enough.
Ledig derivatives hedging protocol
There was another problem staring companies in the face. Currency swings. And they hurt. Imagine finishing a project today and waiting ninety days to get paid in a currency that drops often. By the time the company receives the money, the value has fallen so much that the profit is almost gone. This is a real issue, and many firms have lived through that shock.
This is where our derivatives hedging protocol stepped in. It lets companies lock in their value early so they don’t get caught off guard later. The product ran off-chain at first and still passed $55M in activity. Now we’re taking the derivatives hedging protocol fully on-chain. We picked Base for this next step because it fits the type of stablecoins our settlement system relies on. It also gives companies a clean, transparent environment to execute derivatives hedging protocol strategies built for actual commercial needs rather than trading games.
It took time to get here. Our team is small, which surprised a lot of people, but that worked in our favour. We avoided noise. We focused on building pieces that work. Think of it like a set of tools. One tool converts stable to fiat. Another handles fiat to stable. Another manages FX. Another supports treasury. Another delivers hedging to protect value. Each tool works alone, but when a company puts them together, they get a full workbench that covers money movement and risk in one place.
We rarely talk about revenue publicly, but the business is in a good place. The real sign of health is that companies keep trusting us with large transactions. Not one-off tests. Proper flows. The kind that supports payrolls, suppliers, expansion, and daily operations. In markets where delays can break everything, this matters.
Looking ahead, our focus for 2026 is simple. Bring the derivatives hedging protocol on-chain at scale. Grow our liquidity pipeline so larger payments stay just as smooth as they are today. Strengthen our licensing and regulatory setup, so bigger institutions can work with us without extra steps. And continue tightening the entire system so companies entering emerging markets can do it with far less stress.
Ledig is one year old. The mission is still the same. Move large amounts of money fast. Protect companies from painful currency swings using a battle-tested derivatives hedging protocol. Build tools they can rely on without worrying about how the background tech works.
This is just the beginning.
By Prince Charles Dickson PhD
There is a popular Nigerian lingo cum proverb that has graduated from street humour to philosophical thesis: “If dem explain Nigeria give you and you understand am, you fit craze.” It sounds funny. It is funny. But like most Nigerian jokes, it is also dangerously accurate.
Catherine’s story from Kubwa Road is the kind of thing that does not need embellishment. Nigeria already embellishes itself. Picture this: a pedestrian bridge built for pedestrians. A bridge whose sole job description in life is to allow human beings cross a deadly highway without dying. And yet, under this very bridge, pedestrians are crossing the road. Not illegally on their own this time, but with the active assistance of a uniformed Road Safety officer who stops traffic so that people can jaywalk under a bridge built to stop jaywalking.
At that point, sanity resigns.
You expect the officer to enforce the law: “Use the bridge.” Instead, he enforces survival: “Let nobody die today.” And therein lies the Nigerian paradox. The officer is not wicked. In fact, he is humane. He chooses immediate life over abstract order. But his humanity quietly murders the system. His kindness baptises lawlessness. His good intention tells the pedestrian: you are right; the bridge is optional.
Nigeria is full of such tragic kindness.
We build systems and then emotionally sabotage them. We complain about lack of infrastructure, but when infrastructure shows up, we treat it like an optional suggestion. Pedestrian bridges become decorative monuments. Traffic lights become Christmas decorations. Zebra crossings become modern art—beautiful, symbolic, and useless.
Ask the pedestrians why they won’t use the bridge and you’ll hear a sermon:
“It’s too stressful to climb.”
“It’s far from my bus stop.”
“My knee dey pain me.”
“I no get time.”
“Thieves dey up there.”
All valid explanations. None a justification. Because the same person that cannot climb a bridge will sprint across ten lanes of oncoming traffic with Olympic-level agility. Suddenly, arthritis respects urgency.
But Nigeria does not punish inconsistency; it rewards it.
So, the Road Safety officer becomes a moral hostage. Arrest the pedestrians and risk chaos, insults, possible mob action, and a viral video titled “FRSC wickedness.” Or stop cars, save lives, and quietly train people that rules are flexible when enough people ignore them.
Nigeria often chooses the short-term good that destroys the long-term future.
And that is why understanding Nigeria is a psychiatric risk.
This paradox does not stop at Kubwa Road. It is a national operating system.
We live in a country where a polite policeman shocks you. A truthful politician is treated like folklore—“what-God-cannot-do-does-exist.” A nurse or doctor going one year without strike becomes breaking news. Bandits negotiate peace deals with rifles slung over their shoulders, attend dialogue meetings fully armed, and sometimes do TikTok videos of ransoms like content creators.
Criminals have better PR than institutions.
In Nigeria, you bribe to get WAEC “special centre,” bribe to gain university admission, bribe to choose your state of origin for NYSC, and bribe to secure a job. Merit is shy. Connection is confident. Talent waits outside while mediocrity walks in through the back door shaking hands.
You even bribe to eat food at social events. Not metaphorically. Literally. You must “know somebody” to access rice and small chops at a wedding you were invited to. At burial grounds, you need connections to bury your dead with dignity. Even grief has gatekeepers.
We have normalised the absurd so thoroughly that questioning it feels rude.
And yet, the same Nigerians will shout political slogans with full lungs—“Tinubu! Tinubu!!”—without knowing the name of their councillor, councillor’s office, or councillor’s phone number. National politics is theatre; local governance is invisible. We debate presidency like Premier League fans but cannot locate the people controlling our drainage, primary schools, markets, and roads.
We scream about “bad leadership” in Abuja while ignoring the rot at the ward level where leadership is close enough to knock on your door.
Nigeria is a place where laws exist, but enforcement negotiates moods. Where rules are firm until they meet familiarity. Where morality is elastic and context-dependent. Where being honest is admirable but being foolish is unforgivable.
We admire sharpness more than integrity. We celebrate “sense” even when sense means cheating the system. If you obey the rules and suffer, you are naïve. If you break them and succeed, you are smart.
So, the Road Safety officer on Kubwa Road is not an anomaly. He is Nigeria distilled.
Nigeria teaches you to survive first and reform later—except later never comes.
We choose convenience over consistency. Emotion over institution. Today over tomorrow. Life over law, until life itself becomes cheap because law has been weakened.
This is how bridges become irrelevant. This is how systems decay. This is how exceptions swallow rules.
And then we wonder why nothing works.
The painful truth is this: Nigeria is not confusing because it lacks logic. It is confusing because it has too many competing logics. Survival logic. Moral logic. Emotional logic. Opportunistic logic. Religious logic. Tribal logic. Political logic. None fully dominant. All constantly clashing.
So, when someone says, “If dem explain Nigeria give you and you understand am, you fit craze,” what they really mean is this: Nigeria is not designed to be understood; it is designed to be endured.
To truly understand Nigeria is to accept contradictions without resolution. To watch bridges built and ignored. Laws written and suspended. Criminals empowered and victims lectured. To see good people make bad choices for good reasons that produce bad outcomes.
And maybe the real madness is not understanding Nigeria—but understanding it and still hoping it will magically fix itself without deliberate, painful, collective change.
Until then, pedestrians will continue crossing under bridges, officers will keep stopping traffic to save lives, systems will keep eroding gently, and we will keep laughing at our own tragedy—because sometimes, laughter is the only therapy left.
Nigeria no be joke.
But if you no laugh, you go cry—May Nigeria win.
By Abba Dukawa
“For the marketers, I hope they lose even more. I’m not printing money; I’m also losing money. They want imports to continue, but I don’t think that is right. So I must have a strategy to survive because $20 billion of investment is too big to fail. We are in a situation where we will continue to play cat and mouse, and eventually, someone will give up—either we give up, or they will.” —Aliko Dangote
This statement reflects that while Dangote is incurring losses, he remains committed to his investment, determined to outlast competitors reliant on imports. He believes that persistence and strategy will eventually force them to concede before he does.
Aliko Dangote has faced unprecedented resistance in the petroleum sector, unlike in any of his other business ventures. His first attempt came on May 17, 2007, when the Obasanjo administration sold 51% of Port Harcourt Refinery to Bluestar Oil—a consortium including Dangote Oil, Zenon Oil, and Transcorp—for $561 million. NNPC staff strongly opposed the sale. The refinery was later reclaimed under President Yar’adua, a setback that provided Dangote a tough but invaluable lesson. Undeterred, he went on to build Africa’s largest refinery.
As a private investor, Dangote has delivered much-needed infrastructure to Nigeria’s oil-and-gas sector. Yet, his refinery faces regulatory hurdles from agency’s meant to promote efficiency and growth. Despite this monumental private investment in the nation’s downstream sector, powerful domestic and foreign oil interests may have influenced Farouk Ahmad, former NMDPRA Managing Director, to hinder the refinery’s operations.
The dispute dates back to July 2024, when the NMDPRA claimed that locally refined petroleum products including those from Dangote’s refinery were inferior to imported fuel. Although the confrontation appeared to subside, the underlying rift persisted. Aliko Dangote is not one to speak often, but the pressure he is facing has compelled him to break his silence. He has begun to speak out about what he sees as a deliberate targeting of his investments, as his petroleum-refining venture continues to face repeated regulatory and institutional challenges.
The latest impasse began when Dangote accused the NMDPRA of issuing excessive import licenses for petroleum products, undermining local refining capacity and threatening national energy security. He alleged that the regulator allowed the importation of cheap fuel, including from Russia, which could cripple domestic refineries such as his 650,000‑barrel‑per‑day Lagos plant.
The conflict intensified after Dangote publicly accused Farouk Ahmad, former head of NMDPRA, of living large on a civil servant’s salary. Dangote claimed Ahmad’s lifestyle was way too lavish, pointing out that four of his kids were in pricey Swiss schools. He took his grievance to the ICPC, alleging misconduct and abuse of office.
It’s striking how Nigerian office holders at every level have mastered the art of impunity. Even though Ahmad dismissed the accusations but the standoff prompting Ahmad’s resignation. But the bitter irony these “public servants” tasked with protecting citizens’ interests often face zero consequences for violating policies meant to safeguard the Nation and public interest.
The clash of titans lays bare deeper flaws in Nigeria’s petroleum governance. It shows how institutional weaknesses turn regulatory disputes into personal power plays. In a system with robust norms, such conflicts would be settled via clear rules, independent oversight, and transparent processes not media wars and public accusations.
Even before completion, the refinery’s operating license was denied. Farouk Ahmad claimed Dangote’s petrol was subpar, ordering tests that appeared aimed at public embarrassment. Dangote countered with independent public testing of his diesel, challenging the regulator’s claims.
He also invited Ahmad to verify the tests on-site, but the offer was declined. Moreover, NNPC initially refused to supply crude oil, forcing Dangote to source it from the United States a practice that continues.
President Tinubu later directed the NNPC to resume crude supplies and accept payment in naira, reportedly displeasing the state oil company. In addition to presidential directives, Farouk claimed Dangote was producing petrol beyond the approved quantity and insisted that crude oil be purchased exclusively in U.S. dollars a condition Dangote accepted.
From the public’s point of view, the Refinery is a game-changer for Nigeria, with the potential to end fuel imports and boost the economy. With a capacity of 650,000 barrels per day, it produces around 104 million liters of petroleum products daily, meeting 90% of Nigeria’s domestic demand and allowing exports to other West African countries.
The Dangote Refinery is poised to earn foreign exchange, stabilize fuel prices, and strengthen Nigeria’s energy security. However, the ongoing dispute surrounding the refinery underscores the challenges of aligning national interests with regulatory and institutional frameworks.
The Dangote Refinery’s growing dominance has sparked concerns among stakeholders like NUPENG and PENGASSAN, who fear it could lead to a private monopoly, stifling competition and harming smaller players. This concern stems from the refinery’s rejection of the traditional ₦5 million-per-truck levy on petroleum shipments.
However, Dangote has taken steps to address these concerns, reducing the minimum purchase requirement from 2 million liters to 250,000 liters, opening the market to smaller operators and strengthening distribution networks. The refinery has also purchased 2,000 CNG trucks to maintain operations, emphasizing its commitment to making energy affordable and accessible
Many are watching closely to see if Dangote’s actions are driven by a desire for transparency and fairness in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector or private business interests. Did Dangote genuinely want to fight the corruption going on in the sector?, Will Dangote refinery operate for the common good or seek market dominance? Did Farouk Ahmad act in the public interest or obstruct the refinery for hidden oil interests? Will the Dangote Refinery Maintain Its Momentum in the Post-Farouk Era?The dispute between Dangote and Farouk Ahmad remains shrouded in mystery, with the ICPC investigation likely to uncover the truth
To many, the government faces a delicate balancing act: protecting local refiners while ensuring fair competition. While some argue that Dangote’s success shouldn’t come at the expense of smaller players, others see it episodes like this reveal persistent contradictions: powerful interests, fragile institutions, and blurred lines between regulation and politics.The Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) promised a new era of clarity, efficiency, and accountability, but its implementation has been slow. The PIA’s success hinges on addressing these challenges.
What benefits one party can indeed threaten another. Despite entering the sector with good intentions, Dangote has faced relentless pushback, all eyes are on whether the refinery can sustain its momentum. Analysts and commentators are sharing their perspectives based on available data from relevant institutions. If anyone spreads false information, the truth will eventually come out
Dukawa is a journalist, public‑affairs analyst, and political commentator. He can be reached at [email protected]
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