Africa is no longer summoned to the table of the global economy as a “marginal” entity to be observed; it has instead become targeted as a beating heart, an important source for new supply chains, a repository for energy transition minerals, and a promising market for infrastructure, digitalization, and food.
However, this shift in the world’s language towards the continent raises questions deeper than those of impressive numbers; when international powers scramble and investment promises multiply, who truly wins? Is it enough for flows to increase for outcomes to change?
The issue is not investment in principle; but rather how it is designed and managed. Investment, when integrated into a clear productive vision, can be an engine for industrialization, a bridge for knowledge transfer, and a lever for creating productive jobs and modernizing infrastructure.
But African experiences show that a surge in investment flows can be misleading if disconnected from the quality of the investment, its conditions, and its outcomes within the national economy. Value may be produced locally only to be transferred beyond borders, and financial gains may be recorded without a corresponding deepening of the productive cycle or localization of value chains.
According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), foreign direct investment flows into Africa reached about $53 billion in 2023, before jumping to approximately $97 billion in 2024, driven by financing deals for exceptional projects, not by a broad structural transformation of the productive base.
In this context, the geo-economic competition over Africa could slip from a development path to a race for influence and strategic positions, unless the continent transforms from an arena of attraction to a party capable of negotiation and imposing conditions.
Hence, the continent’s countries do not seem destined for absolute loss; but they are not automatic winners either; their gain remains conditional on transitioning from a logic of attracting investment to a logic of engineering it, by linking it to measurable productive goals and building local capacities that enable economies to capture value, not merely consume it.
Based on this, this article seeks to answer the question of the real winner from investment in Africa in a time of intensified geo-economic competition, and to reframe it within its proper context: the framework of economic sovereignty, productive transformation, and developmental justice, away from the language of propaganda and polarization.
To achieve this, the article will address three main axes: the limited significance of rising investment when not coupled with real productive transformation, the disparity in the distribution of its gains among international and local actors and national economies, and then the conditions for Africa to benefit from investment through project quality and deepening value chains.
The Limited Significance of Doubling Investments
Over the last decade, foreign direct investment (FDI) has become one of the most cited indicators when discussing Africa’s rise in the global economy. However, a precise reading of the numbers shows that rising flows alone are insufficient to judge developmental impact.
According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), foreign direct investment flows into Africa reached about $53 billion in 2023, before jumping to approximately $97 billion in 2024, driven by financing deals for exceptional projects, not by a broad structural transformation of the productive base.
But this leap, despite its media importance, was largely driven by financing deals for massive, geographically limited projects, and not by a broad structural transformation of Africa’s productive base. When these exceptional deals are excluded, the actual increase appears more modest and less capable of creating a clear impact.
The problem lies not in the volume of investment but in its sectoral composition. A considerable portion of the flows is concentrated in capital-intensive, low-employment sectors, such as mining, traditional energy, and some isolated infrastructure projects. These sectors, while important, do not automatically generate large-scale local supply chains or transfer sufficient technology.
Here the paradox becomes clear: an African country may record a record in attracting investment, while its impact on employment, local manufacturing, and the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises remains limited.
More dangerously, the inflation of flows may hide deeper imbalances related to economic sovereignty. When investments are designed in a way that links profits to external markets and leaves strategic decisions outside national borders, the state becomes a recipient of capital, not a partner in directing it.
At that point, investment transforms from a development tool into a number in annual reports, with no real weight in changing the
