Africa stands at a critical crossroads in its economic history. While the continent holds nearly a fifth of the world’s population, its share of global manufacturing output remains painfully marginal -- just around two percent.

 

The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (Unido) World Manufacturing Production report for the first quarter of 2025 underscores this reality. Africa’s manufacturing barely registered any growth, with overall growth rate at 0.1 percent.

A few countries like Rwanda, Togo, and Senegal managed some gains, but not nearly enough to balance out the declines in larger economies like South Africa and Côte d’Ivoire. It is a telling reminder of how thin and uneven Africa’s industrial base still is. The pattern reflects a deeper structural failure to industrialise at scale.

Yet Africa is not poor in potential. The continent is rich in resources, young in demographics, and increasingly urban in demand. It is well positioned to become a major hub for global manufacturing if it chooses to be. But potential by itself is not strategy. For much of the postcolonial era, Africa’s economic model has remained stuck in a cycle of raw extraction.

It drains value, deepens dependence, and strips away economic control. It leaves African economies at the mercy of global prices, with little protection from market shocks and little leverage in the global value chain.

Escaping this cycle is not about tweaking around the edges. It calls for a deeper rethinking of manufacturing, not as a routine sector of the economy but as a foundation of power, stability, and long-term sovereignty.

Manufacturing is what builds real economies. It creates jobs across skill levels, trains workforces, drives technological learning, and stabilises supply chains. It gives nations the ability to meet domestic demand with local production. Most importantly, it changes Africa’s place in the world from a supplier of raw materials to a producer of finished value.

This shift begins by ending Africa’s over-reliance on imported goods and taking control of the production process. It starts with building the capacity to process and produce within the continent, not just extract and export.

This work begins with something basic but long overdue: the ability to refine and produce what we already have. It means investing in the capacity to manufacture products here rather than sending raw materials abroad and buying back finished products at a premium.

It means putting serious effort into building the ability to make things at home instead of exporting raw materials and paying more to import what others make from them.

It also means focusing on what actually matters, sectors like food, healthcare, energy, and technology that meet every day needs and offer real work to its people. And like every country that has built an industrial base, it means protecting local firms as they grow, using public contracts to back them, and staying focused on building the kind of capacity that lasts. The examples are many.

South Korea, India, and Brazil each used protection, planning, and public investment not as ideology but as tools of nation-building. Africa must have the same resolve.

Manufacturing has changed. Manufacturing today is a different game. It is no longer just factories filled with machines. The nature of manufacturing is changing.

Clean energy, smarter tools, and constant innovation are setting the pace. Industries like electric transport, medical technology, solar power, and digital systems are moving quickly.

If Africa does not move with them, it will miss its place in the global economy that is coming. Unido’s data shows that medium and high-tech industries are now leading global growth.

To keep up, Africa must invest in research, skilled workers, strong technical education, and institutions that can turn ideas into scaled production. Infrastructure alone means little without the people and knowledge to drive it.

A central and often ignored component of this strategy is the development of a domestic military and defence industry. This is not merely about security.

A working defence industry does more than supply the military. It connects to real parts of the economy, textiles, metalwork, machinery, electronics, transport. It means more people working, small factories staying open, and supply chains that actually hold together inside the country.

Countries like Egypt and South Africa have shown that defence production can open the door to wider industrial development. When structured wisely and governed transparently, it can generate tens of thousands of jobs, reduce Africa’s strategic vulnerability on foreign arms imports, and retain investment within African economies.

More fundamentally, a sovereign nation must be able to defend itself without begging for parts or permission. No state is truly independent if it cannot meet its own basic security needs. The global arms trade is not neutral. Export licenses can be revoked, supplies cut off, and equipment politicised. Africa has seen this before.

To guarantee the ability to protect its people, its borders, and its institutions, the continent must build the capacity to design and produce its own security tools. This is not a call for arms races or unchecked militarisation. It is a call for dignity, preparedness, and strategic independence.

If African states want to protect their people and respond to threats on their own terms, they need to build the capacity to do so. This is not about growing armies. It is about having the tools to act without waiting for permission. It is about self-reliance, not escalation.

Infrastructure is equally critical. Manufacturing cannot grow without reliable power, good roads, and strong digital networks. In Africa, energy shortages and broken transport links are not just technical problems. They are deep structural barriers holding back everything else. They are barriers to economic strategy.

Connecting ports to factories, powering industrial zones with reliable clean energy, and building smart logistics to move goods efficiently are not side projects. They are the backbone of any serious industrial strategy and must be planned as such, not treated as scattered pieces of infrastructure.

But building capacity at the national level is not enough. No African country can industrialise at scale alone. The African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) is a chance to turn fragmented markets into a single production zone. That requires shared standards, regional supply chains, joint investment, and cross-border infrastructure.

What Africa needs most is to regain control over its economic life. In a world where trade can stall, prices can be used as leverage, and supply chains can snap overnight, the ability to produce essential goods such as food, medicine, transport, and tools is not a bonus. It is the starting point of stability, dignity, and real independence.

The pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the chaos in global markets have all made the same point clear. If you cannot produce, you are exposed. Real resilience starts at home.

Africa’s future will not be secured by raw exports, donor conferences, or external goodwill. It will be built in factories, powered by skilled workers, and sustained by institutions that prioritise long-term capacity over short-term consumption.

Manufacturing is more than producing things. This is leadership at its core: meeting basic needs and building the capacity to do it at home. If it really matters to African leaders, then they should dedicate some time, resources, and energy to changing the current situation. The continent needs to produce its own food, medicine, or tools and claim to be independent.

The future belongs to those who manufacture what they need through disciplined strategy and purposeful regional cooperation.

Abdisaid M. Ali is the chairperson of Lomé Peace and Security Forum, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and Former National Security Advisor, Somalia.

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