We used to dream about African billionaires. Not just wealthy individuals, but globally respected ones. Builders. Operators. People whose success was visible, legitimate, and globally competitive.
And in many ways, that dream has come true. According to Oxfam, the wealth of Africa’s billionaires grew by $32.7 billion between November 2024 and November 2025, a 36.5 percent increase, growing four times faster than the previous five years combined.
But something didn’t follow.
Because Africa is doing something no region at this scale has ever done before. It is trying to grow without industrialising.
Most of today’s economic powers followed a familiar path: Agriculture. Then manufacturing. Then, advanced services.
Germany built factories before financial systems. South Korea built shipyards before conglomerates. China lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty through factory floors before platform economies.
Africa is attempting a different sequence- Leapfrogging means skipping a traditional step in development to jump straight to the newest technology. In this economic context, it is like a person who never owned a landline telephone, but went straight to owning a smartphone. Instead of building messy, expensive factories first, a developing nation tries to jump directly from a farming economy into a modern, digital service economy.
There are no factory floors in between, well, not many. To be clear, the gains are real. Mobile money has transformed financial access in Kenya. Telecom giants such as MTN fund public budgets across multiple countries. Africa now leads the world in financial inclusion innovation.
But services, by their nature, do not absorb labour at the scale Africa requires.
Consider Singapore and Hong Kong, which built prosperity through services, but they serve populations of 6 to 7 million people. Nigeria has over 220 million. Ethiopia has over 130 million. A model that works for millions does not automatically scale to hundreds of millions.
The employment mathematics are different.
Nigeria’s fintech sector has produced major unicorns, Flutterwave, OPay, Interswitch, and Moniepoint, yet the wider economy remains dominated by informality, underemployment, and limited formal wage work. Kenya’s Silicon Savannah captures digital value while the devices powering that ecosystem are manufactured elsewhere. South Africa, once Africa’s most industrialised economy, has seen manufacturing decline steadily since the 1990s. Youth unemployment now sits at approximately 46 percent, alongside a shrinking middle class.
The case is different for South Africa, which did not skip industrialisation. It lost it.
Morocco has taken advantage and now offers a different trajectory. Ranked by the African Development Bank as the continent’s industrial leader, Morocco has built one of Africa’s strongest automotive platforms, producing over 500,000 vehicles in 2025 and moving toward a million-unit production capacity. Automotive exports reached approximately $4.57 billion by the end of March 2026. Global manufacturers from Renault to Stellantis have established production bases. Aerospace components are now part of its export mix.
This shining example is not without the usual suspects of problems. Inequality persists. Female labour participation remains low. But Morocco is doing one thing differently: building a formal industrial workforce. For the continent, that distinction matters.
Tiger’s Roar
According to Oxfam’s Resisting the Rule of the Rich report, debt servicing across the continent is now 150 percent greater than combined spending on education, healthcare, and social protection. Africa’s four richest billionaires hold $57.4 billion in wealth, more than the combined wealth of 750 million people. Intra-African trade remains abysmally low, accounting for just 14.4 per cent of total trade, meaning much of the value generated domestically is spent importing manufactured goods from outside the continent.
Money flows in. But much of it flows back out.
Which brings us back to the central question: can a continent of 1.4 billion people build broad prosperity without building industries that employ them at scale?
We do not know. Because it has never been done.
What we do know is this: growth is happening. Wealth is being created. But prosperity is not spreading at the same speed.
And that gap between growth and prosperity may define Africa’s economic future, so who is paying attention?
“Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.” — African proverb
The next chapter is not about whether Africa can grow. It is about how.
Next: The Missing Floor — Why Africa Cannot Industrialise Without Respecting The Trades.
Tiger Rifkin decodes Africa’s tradition-transformation nexus through fearless analysis. Founder, The Witty Observer.