As the 81st United Nations General Assembly brings the world together again, Africa is once more making its case.
For greater representation in global institutions. For more development finance, climate finance, investment. For fairer trade and for greater value from the continent’s natural resources.
These are important conversations. But I find myself wondering about a bigger question: What does African agency actually mean?
We use the phrase often. We talk about African agency in international relations, diplomacy and development. But what does it mean in practice?
Perhaps it starts with a simple shift in how we see Africa’s place in the global economy.
For a long time, much of Africa’s international economic story has been told through what the continent needs.
We need investment. We need infrastructure, financing, technology. We need access to markets.
These needs are real. But Africa also possesses things the rest of the world needs. Critical minerals, energy resources, agricultural potential, land, biodiversity, strategic trade routes, a young and growing population, and a market of more than a billion people.
The question is not just whether Africa can attract the rest of the world, it is whether Africa can increasingly shape the terms of engagement. That is what agency should mean.
CRITICAL MINERALS
There is perhaps no better example than critical minerals. The global energy transition is increasing demand for minerals needed for batteries, renewable energy technologies and other advanced industries.
Africa holds a significant share of these resources.
Namibia is part of this conversation. At the UN this month, president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah has been engaging on investment, mixed energy and critical minerals while emphasising Namibia’s interest in moving beyond raw-material exports towards processing, value addition and industrial development.
This matters because it is a very different economic proposition to say “we have a mineral you need” than to say “we have a mineral you need, and we want to build an industry around it”.
The former makes Africa a supplier. The latter starts to make Africa a participant in the value chain. That distinction is at the heart of industrialisation.
Africa cannot industrialise on other people’s terms
This does not mean Africa should reject foreign investment. Quite the opposite.
Africa needs capital, technology, expertise, infrastructure and access to global markets.
International partnerships will remain essential. But partnership should not mean that the terms of industrialisation are determined entirely elsewhere.
If a mineral is extracted in Africa, processed elsewhere, manufactured into a finished product somewhere else and then sold back into African markets, we should at least ask what part of the value chain Africa is actually capturing.
The African Union has made this argument for years through its industrialisation and commodities strategies, on moving from raw material supply towards value addition, local content, diversification and stronger African participation in global value chains. The question is whether we can move from recognising the problem to changing the structure.
IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONS
There is sometimes a tendency to frame African agency as though it means doing everything ourselves. I don’t think it does.
Agency is not isolation. It is not refusing external capital or rejecting partnerships because the partner is foreign.
It is the ability to enter those partnerships with a clear understanding of what we want to build and what we are prepared to contribute. That distinction is important.
Namibia, for example, is actively seeking international investment in sectors ranging from energy and critical minerals to infrastructure and manufacturing.
At the same time, its leadership is arguing that investment should support industrialisation, value addition and employment creation.
That is not a rejection of globalisation. It is an attempt to engage with it on more deliberate terms.
But there is an uncomfortable part to this conversation. We cannot demand greater agency internationally while lacking the capabilities to exercise it domestically.
Agency requires institutions. It requires data, technical expertise, functioning infrastructure.
It requires people who understand finance, trade, technology, law and international markets. It requires governments that can coordinate their positions. And it requires businesses capable of participating in the opportunities being created.
If we want local companies to benefit from new industries, they need the capacity to enter those value chains.
If we want skills to remain in Africa, we need to invest in those skills.
If we want to negotiate better partnerships, we need people who understand what is being negotiated. In other words, agency is a capability question.
BREAKING IT DOWN
So, what does African agency look like? Perhaps it looks less dramatic than we sometimes imagine.
It looks like knowing the value of what we have. It looks like knowing what we need.
It looks like being able to distinguish between investment and transformation. It looks like entering a negotiation with options.
It looks like building African companies that can participate in global value chains rather than simply supplying them.
It looks like governments that can turn resources into industrial policy, and industrial policy into productive economies.
And it looks like African countries recognising that partnership and agency are not opposites.
We can welcome the world without simply positioning ourselves at the end of someone else’s value chain.
We can attract investment while asking what that investment builds beyond the project itself.
We can participate in the global energy transition while asking what role Africa will play in producing technologies, not only supplying the minerals.
Perhaps that is the real test of African agency. Not whether Africa is present in the room. We are. It’s not whether Africa is being heard. Increasingly, we are.
It’s about whether when the negotiations end and the cameras move on, the decisions being made create an Africa that has greater productive capacity, greater bargaining power and greater ownership of its economic future.
That, to me, is the difference between being part of the global economy and having a meaningful hand in shaping it.
– Pennina Shilongo is an international development professional, an economic diplomacy expert and a development finance researcher. She writes in her personal capacity; natjie.shilongo@gmail.com
