Africa must build, finance, own its future — Leaders

…Charge young leaders to take control of continent’s narrative…Oramah: Dangote Refinery helping Africa ‘take back its mind’…Amina Mohammed: Stop acting as recipients, start shaping global power By Udeme Akpan LAGOS — Prominent African leaders, including Aliko Dangote, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Amina Mohammed, and former President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Afreximbank, Prof. Benedict Oramah, have challenged a new generation of leaders to take control of the continent’s narrative, mobilise its resources and build institutions and enterprises capable of transforming Africa’s position in the global economy. The leaders spoke at the closing of the 2026 Aliko Dangote Foundation Africa Diaspora Leadership Programme Young Global Leaders Convening in Lagos.

Others who spoke at the event included the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele; Minister of Art, Culture, Tourism and the Creative Economy, Hannatu Musawa; and Chief Executive Officer of the Rwanda Development Board, Jean Guy Afrika. Speaking to Young Global Leaders from Africa and the diaspora, the speakers said the continent must move beyond being defined by its challenges and natural resources and become a producer, financier and owner of globally competitive businesses, technologies, cultural assets and institutions. Their message underscored the objective of the four-day Lagos learning journey, organised around the theme, “Building Africa at Scale,” which exposed participants to Nigeria’s industrial, financial, technological and creative ecosystems.

Amina Mohammed: Africa must shape global power Amina Mohammed told the young leaders that Africa’s struggle for influence was increasingly a contest over power, institutions and who gets to define the continent’s story. She said Africans could no longer be satisfied with securing representation at global decision-making tables but must seek the power to shape decisions themselves. “We can no longer be the people that are profited from.

You have to own what it is that is your power,” Mohammed said. Recalling conversations with young Africans about representation at the United Nations, she said they increasingly wanted more than “a seat at the table”. “What we really want is the pen,” she quoted them as saying, explaining that the pen symbolised the power to write the narrative.