Everyone says Africa is next.
We’ve been repeating it long enough that it now sounds like background noise. But lately, there’s movement that suggests this isn’t just rhetoric anymore. DFIs are circling. VCs are testing the waters. International programs, bilateral partnerships, even private equity are positioning themselves like something real is about to happen.
Capital is arriving with intent.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: capital arriving does not mean value will be created.
I’ve already written about Africa’s lack of readiness to fully benefit from this moment. This essay goes one layer deeper. The real problem isn’t capital. Capital is downstream. The real problem is vision.
We don’t know what we want.
And when you don’t know what you want, you give away what you shouldn’t, partner badly, accept weak terms, and mistake activity for progress.
The Familiar Setup We’ve Normalised
We extract raw materials.
We export them.
Others refine, design, package, and systemise them.
They sell them back to us at a premium.
This is not news. What’s strange is how intellectually resigned we’ve become about it.
The most common explanation is capital.
“We don’t have the money.”
So we wait for foreign investment. We optimise for attractiveness. We pitch ourselves as needy but promising. We negotiate from a position of quiet insecurity.
But capital is not the root constraint.
Vision is.
Because vision changes how you treat what you have.
Potential on its own is cheap. Everyone has potential. What creates value is a clear articulation of what that potential could become.
If you truly understood the future value of your land, your people, your culture, your data, your geography, you would negotiate differently. You would partner differently. You would refuse certain deals entirely.
Right now, only a few people genuinely believe in the long-term value of what Africa holds. Most are reacting, not designing.
Vision Is Not Vibes. It’s Leverage.
Vision is often treated like soft thinking. Inspirational. Optional.
That’s a mistake.
Vision is a strategic asset. It shapes belief. Belief shapes behaviour. Behaviour shapes systems.
The countries that dominate the world today didn’t just build factories and universities. They built imaginations.
America understood this early.
Long before electric cars were viable, they were imagined. Long before AI was practical, it was storied. Long before space travel was affordable, it was normalised in culture.
They gave themselves permission to imagine futures that ignored present limitations.
Movies. Books. Television. Games.
These weren’t distractions. They were rehearsal spaces.
A teenager watching sci‑fi in the 80s becomes an engineer in the 2000s. A child raised on space narratives grows up wanting to work at NASA. Vision creates momentum toward experimentation. Experimentation creates intimate knowledge of value.
That’s how industries are born.
Now ask the harder question.
What future are we inviting African young people to rehearse?
What problems are we daring them to obsess over?
What worlds are we asking them to build?
Vision Casting Is a Systemic Act
If we’re serious, vision can’t live only in speeches or slogans. It has to be cast deliberately, at multiple levels.
1. The State
If vision is leverage, then the state is the largest lever in the system.
The state doesn’t need to do everything. But what it must do is define the outer edge of what feels possible, legitimate, and worth pursuing. Right now, that edge is too vague.
At the state level, vision has to be designed, institutionalised, and repeatedly rehearsed. Not announced once. Not captured in a campaign video. Rehearsed.
Here are concrete ways this can happen.
1. National Imagination Infrastructure
We need formal, recurring platforms that force the country to imagine forward.
- A National Debate Championship, not focused on abstract motions, but on future-facing policy questions: urban density, AI governance, climate adaptation, industrialisation pathways. Finals broadcast nationally. Winners embedded into policy think tanks or ministries for a year.
- Annual National Essay Prizes for future visions of Ghana. Not history. Not politics. The future. Winning essays published, archived, and taught.
These aren’t extracurriculars. They are pipelines for belief formation.
2. Sector-Specific Future Competitions
Every major sector should have an explicit future imagination agenda.
- Architecture schools competing annually on future Ghanaian cities, judged by globally respected Ghanaian architects.
- Engineering faculties challenged to design scalable infrastructure for water, energy, and transport as Ghana will be, not as it is.
- Science and technology departments rewarded for speculative but rigorous proposals with clear 10–20 year horizons.
The point is not immediate execution. The point is rehearsal.
3. Policy With Narrative Depth
When the state announces initiatives like the Volta Economic Corridor or a 24-hour economy, those ideas need layers.
Not just what, but:
- What does this look like in 5 years?
- In 15?
- What kinds of companies should exist because of this?
- What skills should young people pursue if this future is real?
Vision without detail excites.
Vision with detail aligns.
4. National Identity as a Strategic Asset
This is uncomfortable, but unavoidable.
Strong nations deliberately shape identity.
What does being Ghanaian mean in the world? What obligations does the state publicly demonstrate toward its citizens? What behaviour is rewarded socially, not just legally?
This requires:
- State-backed storytelling that celebrates builders, not just celebrities.
- Visible, symbolic protection of citizens abroad.
- Clear signals about what Ghana stands for and will not tolerate.
Narrative precedes belief. Belief precedes action.
If identity is left to chance, insecurity fills the gap.
2. Communities (Regions)
If the state sets the ceiling, communities define the texture of the future.
In Ghana, regions are the most natural unit for community-level vision. They are large enough to matter and close enough to feel real.
But most regions operate reactively. Budgets are allocated. Projects are requested. There is very little deliberate imagining of what this region exists to become.
That has to change.
1. Regional Vision Charters
Every region should articulate a simple but ambitious answer to one question:
What is our region unusually well-positioned to become over the next 20 years?
Not everything. Something.
Agriculture innovation. Logistics. Creative production. Energy. Tourism. Manufacturing. Research.
This charter should:
- Be publicly debated
- Be revised every 5 years
- Guide investment requests and partnerships
Without this, regions compete randomly for attention and resources.
2. Regional Vision Assemblies
Once a year, regions should host open vision assemblies.
Not conferences. Assemblies.
Students, professionals, traditional authorities, entrepreneurs, academics.
The goal is not consensus. It is clarity.
What future are we collectively pointing toward?
What does this region want to be known for?
3. Local Proof Projects
Vision dies without visible proof.
Each region should commit to a small number of symbolic projects that signal direction.
Not because they solve everything, but because they make the future tangible.
A research hub. A cultural festival with global ambition. A logistics pilot. A data commons.
These projects act as anchors for belief.
4. Talent Signalling
When a region knows where it’s going, it can signal clearly to its people.
If this region is serious about agro-processing, then students should know. Training programs should align. Diaspora talent should see an invitation.
Clarity attracts commitment.
Vagueness repels it.
3. Organisations
The private sector holds the most agile power in the system.
States move slowly. Individuals move locally. Organisations can move decisively.
But most Ghanaian companies are stuck in market-taking mode.
They focus on getting their slice of the existing pie. Competing harder. Pricing tighter. Optimising margins inside a market someone else already defined.
That’s understandable.
It’s also limiting.
The real leverage sits with market makers. Organisations that don’t just participate in markets, but shape them. Organisations that grow the pie.
This is where vision stops being abstract and becomes economic power.
Market Taking vs Market Making
Market takers ask:
- How do we win customers in this category?
- How do we outcompete incumbents?
- How do we survive this quarter?
Market makers ask:
- What should this market become?
- What infrastructure is missing?
- What standards, talent, or systems need to exist for this market to scale?
History is clear on this.
The Rockefeller Foundation in the early 20th century didn’t just do charity. They did strategic capacity building. They funded public health systems, medical education, and disease eradication not purely out of goodwill, but because a sick population could not work, produce, or consume at scale. Eradicating hookworm in the American South wasn’t moral theatre. It was market preparation.
They built the conditions for a functioning economy, and their businesses benefited as a result.
That mindset is almost entirely missing locally.
We need Ghanaian organisations that see beyond immediate revenue and start asking: what must exist for this industry to actually work at scale in 10 or 20 years?
Mr Eazi pledging $2M toward an event centre is a strong signal of market-making instinct. He’s not just chasing bookings. He’s investing in infrastructure.
But market making requires coordination.
If the private sector builds the hardware, the state must build the software.
If an event centre is the bet, then the National Tourism Authority needs a matching vision: clear policy, ease of entry for international events, standards for venues, talent pipelines, and global marketing narratives.
Without that alignment, private ambition floats without gravity.
What Market Making Actually Looks Like in Practice
For organisations, this means shifting how they engage the system.
- Lobby not just for tax breaks, but for standards.
- Fund not just marketing, but research and shared infrastructure.
- Compete in products, but collaborate on platforms, protocols, and data structures.
Private organisations should be writing the white papers the state is too slow to author.
Open data standards. Interoperable systems. Industry-wide benchmarks.
This is unglamorous work. It doesn’t show immediate ROI.
But it creates markets that can sustain serious businesses for decades.
The question for Ghanaian companies is no longer just whether they can survive.
It’s whether they are willing to author the future they want to operate inside.
4. The Individual
This is where most people give up.
“The system is broken.”
True.
“And I’m powerless.”
Only at the macro level.
At the micro level, individuals are dangerous.
You can set a vision for yourself rooted in hope rather than resentment. Hope that action taken now compounds, even if the payoff is delayed.
Every essay written. Every framework shared. Every prototype built. Every paper published.
These are small wounds to a large, inefficient beast.
They accumulate.
I don’t know if this essay will change anything. But it might float. It might land with the right person. That’s how ideas move.
A few days ago, I challenged friends to start writing papers on how technology systems could be designed better. Open standards. Better data structures. Work others could build on.
I’m working on a Future Fund through Oxegene to create media that shapes national belief.
That’s vision.
It’s also hope.
Closing: The Negotiating Table
None of this matters if we do not believe change is possible.
We must give ourselves permission to dream. Doing so changes how we see what we already have. It creates leverage.
If we can show ourselves—and the generation coming after us—what could be possible, we negotiate differently. We partner differently. We build differently.
When the rest of the world comes flooding in, and they are coming, we cannot sit at the negotiation table as beggars. We must sit there as architects of a future they want access to.
That difference begins with belief.
And belief begins with vision