Asher's Blog

Africa is too often discussed as a place waiting for rescue. A crisis appears, an international appeal is launched, a programme is funded and a collection of well-meaning people arrives with a temporary solution. Some of this assistance saves lives and should never be dismissed. The problem begins when aid substitutes for the difficult work of building systems that Africans can own, finance, improve and trust.

No continent is developed by permanent emergency response. A society becomes prosperous when credit reaches productive people, courts enforce agreements, infrastructure lowers the cost of work, schools build capability and public institutions continue functioning after a particular leader has left office. Africa does not need another hero standing above weak institutions. It needs institutions that make heroics less necessary.

The first system Nigeria should deepen is credit. President Bola Tinubu has argued in the Financial Times that Africa needs fairer, more credible systems for assessing risk, including an African credit-rating institution capable of supplementing global agencies with better local data. The same logic applies inside our countries. Households and businesses need credit histories that are portable, accurate and consequential.

A credit culture is not merely a culture in which lenders give out more money. It is one in which lenders can price risk intelligently, borrowers understand their obligations, good behaviour expands opportunity and default has predictable consequences. Those consequences should be firm but not permanently destructive; people must be able to dispute incorrect information, recover after failure and rebuild trust. The purpose is to make responsibility valuable, not to create a financial caste system.

The second system is justice. Capital becomes cautious when contracts cannot be enforced within a useful period, and citizens lose faith when powerful people can delay a case indefinitely. Nigeria should consider properly resourced specialist or fast-track courts for complex financial crime, corruption and serious security matters, but speed must not become an excuse to remove due process. Judges need technical support, digital case management, enforceable timelines and independence from the people whose conduct they may have to examine.

The third system is infrastructure organised around productive regions. China’s special economic zones worked best where policy, management, infrastructure, location and access to markets reinforced one another. Nigeria can open particular cities and corridors for agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, technology or tourism based on real advantages. The state does not have to operate every business, but it must provide dependable rules, land administration, power, transport and security.

Incentives should be transparent and conditional. A company receiving valuable public concessions should create jobs, develop local suppliers, transfer useful skills and meet environmental and community obligations. Beneficial ownership must be disclosed so that a public programme does not become a disguised allocation to politically connected people. Competition rules should prevent one individual or group from quietly controlling several strategic sectors.

There is also a reasonable argument for returning a defined share of locally generated value to the community that hosts it. Whether that share is twenty per cent, thirty per cent or another carefully modelled figure is a fiscal-policy question, not a slogan. The principle is that residents should be able to see better roads, schools, health services and public spaces as economic activity expands around them. Otherwise, development can produce impressive accounts while the host community experiences only congestion and displacement.

The fourth system is productive capacity. Nigeria cannot become prosperous while importing a large share of the basic inputs required to build and operate its economy. We need reliable energy, competitive steel and other industrial materials, textiles, machinery, processing capacity and logistics. This is not a call to produce everything inefficiently behind permanent protection. It is a call to identify strategic capabilities, help serious firms reach scale and connect Nigerian production to African and global markets.

All these systems depend on data and accountability. Credit fails when identity and repayment information are unreliable. Courts fail when files disappear. industrial policy fails when incentives are awarded without measuring results. Infrastructure fails when nobody knows the condition of an asset until it collapses. Technology can make these systems more visible and efficient, but political and institutional responsibility must come first.

Africa should welcome partners, investment and useful assistance. What we must reject is the idea that somebody else will build our future while we remain passive beneficiaries. External capital can help finance a rail line, but Africans must determine how it connects to industry and who is accountable for it. International expertise can support a health system, but local institutions must be able to run and improve it after a donor programme ends.

The work is slower than rescue language allows, but it is more dignifying. We need credit systems that reward trust, justice systems that deliver timely fairness, productive regions that attract investment, and industries capable of supplying the things our economies repeatedly consume. Those systems will not make Africa dependent on a few extraordinary leaders. They will allow ordinary people to plan, work and build with confidence.

Africa does not need to be saved from the outside. It needs Africans who are willing to build, defend and continuously improve the systems through which a continent saves itself.