September 20, 2026 by
Deepening framework for business <a href="https://usglobalxpress.com/sahara-pushes-for-sustainable-investment-climate-finance-for-africa-at/” title=”Sahara Pushes for Sustainable Investment, Climate Finance for Africa at”>investment in African countries
Across the globe the drive to pull in investment into many sectors of the economy of different countries has left policy wonks exploring all latitudes of strategy
Reason: to attract investors with private/public capital fix critical sectors of the economy requiring the desired intervention
This singular strategy often dictate why countries push for bilateral/diplomatic ties with the objective of furthering economic/business development of their domains
Experts, have often argued that financial capital does not discriminate: it makes inroads into territories where there are significant exponential returns
But, many African countries are yet to tap into this burgeoning value chain, which is increasingly becoming the game changer across the globe
Development expert and Chief Executive Officer of InvestPlace, Mr Tom Utuk, said capital often moves in the direction , where returns beckon, emphasizing that many foreign founded companies are beginning to see Nigeria and other countries on the continent as frontier market
But, to leverage this opportunity, countries must put on place the right , attractive policies that will make investors feel welcome
The development expert said countries that require such financial capital must look beyond the passport of the individuals pushing for such paradigm shift and embrace what we turn their economy around in critical sectors
Echoing his sentiment, an investment analyst, Daniel Young, who is Chief Executive Officer of Wills Katty Consortium said this push have driven many Nigerians ,playing in the construction, manufacturing, financial services and allied sectors to extend their business footprints into other countries on the continent.
He said: “When Dangote Cement opened its grinding plant in Côte d’Ivoire last year, bringing its operational footprint to eleven African countries, nobody in Abidjan spent much time debating whether the company was Ivorian
“The questions that mattered were practical. How many jobs? What local capacity is being built? What does this do to the price of cement in this market?
“Those are the questions that determine whether an investment means something to the people living alongside it.Yet in Nigeria, where the flow runs in the other direction, and foreign-founded companies operate at significant scale, a different instinct takes hold
“The conversation drifts toward passports and headquarters, toward flags and founding stories, as if the most important thing about a company is the city where its parent holds board meetings. It is a conversation that generates heat on social media but produces remarkably little insight into what actually matters: what a company builds, who it employs, which sectors of the economy it opens up, and how much value stays in the country
“The irony is that Nigeria is simultaneously one of Africa’s most aggressive exporters of corporate ambition.”
Referencing the daunting ambition of Nigeria’s entrepreneurs, a business intelligence strategist, Mr Larry Bamgbose said the game has stepped higher in footprints demonstration
He said: “UBA operates in 20 African countries and is expanding into Saudi Arabia. Access Holdings, the country’s largest banking group by assets, now earns more from its international operations than from Nigeria, with its home market contributing just 37 per cent of pre-tax profit in the first nine months of 2025, down from 61 per cent two years earlier
“African subsidiaries nearly doubled their contribution to 35 per cent over the same period. Zenith Bank completed its acquisition of Kenya’s Paramount Bank in April 2026, marking its entry into East Africa for the first time. Four Nigerian banks ranked among Africa’s top ten for capital growth in 2025, according to analysis of continental banking data.”
In fintech, Bamgbose said Flutterwave now processes payments across 35 African countries and holds 34 United States money transmitter licences, having built from a co-working space in Lekki into a company valued at $3 billion
Its payment rails , he said carries transaction’s for Uber, Booking.com and hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the continent
The company, he said acquired Mono, a Nigerian open-banking startup, in early 2026 and secured a micro-banking licence that allows it to hold customer deposits in Nigeria
He said: “In each of these cases, a Nigerian company entered another market, hired local people, paid local taxes, obtained local licences, and built infrastructure that serves the local economy
“Nobody in Nairobi considers UBA a Kenyan bank. Nobody in Lusaka considers Dangote Cement a Zambian company. But the cement is Zambian cement
“The bank accounts hold Zambian kwacha. The construction workers pouring Dangote concrete are building roads in Zambia. The value is local, even when the capital and the brand are imported
“This is the reality of cross-border investment in a continent that urgently needs more of it, and the framework applies in both directions.Consider what the telecoms sector looks like through this lens
“Before the GSM licences were issued in 2001, mobile communication in Nigeria was a curiosity for the wealthy. The country had fewer than half a million telephone lines for a population of 120 million
“Today, telecommunications and information services contribute 9.72 per cent of Nigeria’s real GDP, according to the most recent National Bureau of Statistics data for the second quarter of 2026. In nominal terms, the broader Information and Communication sector generated ₦14.64 trillion in Q2 alone, representing 12.27 per cent of aggregate nominal GDP. The sector grew at 10.38 per cent year on year, more than twice the pace of the overall economy
“The industry that produced those numbers was built substantially on foreign capital
The telecoms sector’s cumulative investment in Nigeria over the past two decades exceeds $75 billion, according to the NCC and industry estimates
“That capital funded the masts, fibre lines, data centres, switching equipment and spectrum that carry the phone calls, data sessions, mobile money transfers and streaming content that now underpin daily economic life.”
The Nigerian Communications Commission’s latest figures show 195.1 million telecom subscribers as of July 2026.MTN Nigeria, the sector’s largest operator, invested more than ₦1.6 trillion in the last 18 months alone, with capital expenditure in 2025 more than doubling to approximately ₦1 trillion
In the first half of 2026, the company spent ₦620.5 billion on network expansion and contributed ₦622.6 billion in taxes and levies. Its 96 million subscribers represent roughly one in every two Nigerians with a mobile phone
“Its network carries the data that powers ride-hailing, e-commerce, fintech, remote work, telemedicine, and the same digital payments infrastructure that companies like Flutterwave are built on.”
Speaking on the development, aptain Samuel Lukman said building the framework to drive foreign investment has become very compelling
He said: “The point here is straightforward, and it applies equally to a Nigerian cement company building a plant in Ethiopia and a South African telecoms company investing in fibre broadband in Lagos
“The value of any company to an economy is measured in what it builds, who it employs, what it pays in taxes, which sectors it opens up, and what other economic activity it enables. Those are measurable, verifiable things
They appear in NBS data, NCC fibre statistics, NRS collections, and NGX filings.Before the GSM revolution, fintech as a sector could not exist in Nigeria
“There was no digital infrastructure for it to run on. Mobile money, online banking, payment processing, digital lending, and the entire ecosystem of startups that have made Lagos one of Africa’s most important technology hubs all rest on telecommunications infrastructure that had to be built first, at enormous cost, over more than two decades
“The companies that built it came from South Africa, the Middle East, India and elsewhere, bringing capital, technology and operational expertise that Nigeria lacked at the time.What they left behind, and continue to build, is a digital economy that now generates nearly ₦10 of every ₦100 of economic output
“That economy employs software developers, content creators, delivery riders, mobile money agents, customer service teams, network engineers, tower technicians, and the countless small businesses that would simply operate differently, or in some cases would not exist at all, without reliable connectivity
“The Nigerian Communications Commission’s 110th Board Meeting, held on September 9, confirmed that mobile network operators have deployed 8,526 of 12,179 committed coverage and capacity sites this year, a 70 per cent completion rate, up from approximately 5,000 at the previous board meeting in May
The infrastructure keeps growing as operators continue to invest
“None of this settles the emotional dimensions of the nationality question, and it would be foolish to pretend it does. National pride, historical grievance, and the politics of cross-border economic relationships are real forces
“When xenophobic violence erupts in Johannesburg, the fact that a South African company employs tens of thousands of Nigerians and contributes significantly to government revenue offers limited comfort in the moment. These are legitimate tensions, and dismissing them serves nobody
“But at the level of economic policy, where decisions about regulation, taxation, infrastructure protection and investment incentives are made, the framework matters enormously
“Nigeria cannot simultaneously ask the world for foreign direct investment, which it needs desperately across multiple sectors, and treat the companies that have already invested as permanent outsiders
“The same logic that makes Dangote welcome in Lusaka should make a company that has spent two decades building Nigerian infrastructure, paying Nigerian taxes and serving Nigerian customers a legitimate part of the Nigerian economic landscape
“Africa’s infrastructure deficit, the gap between what the continent has and what it needs in telecoms, power, transport, housing and water, is estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars
“Domestic capital alone cannot close it. The companies willing to deploy foreign capital at scale in African markets, stay through economic downturns, and reinvest their earnings locally are doing something that the continent’s development frameworks have been requesting for decades
“Dangote is doing it in Zambia. Nigerian banks are doing it in Kenya. Flutterwave is doing it across 35 countries. And telecoms operators have been doing it in Nigeria since 2001
“The question for any economy is whether it can move beyond the passport and focus on the footprint: the jobs, the taxes, the infrastructure, the sectors that did not exist before, and those that would contract without continued investment
“By that measure, the companies that matter most to Nigeria’s economy are the ones putting capital into the ground, regardless of where their parent company held its last annual general meeting.”
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African countries