The 2025 World Governments Summit in the United Arab Emirates, UAE came off with the most insightful topics about current situations around the world.
Akinwumi Adesina and Tony Elumelu made appearances during a segment about Africa. Adesina who is attending for the time said it was a delight to be there and that he was amazed about participating.
The president of the Africa Development Bank, AfDB, proceeded to tackle the topic presented to him and it was graceful.
The items raised during the conversation include the fact that Africa has 12 of the top 20 fastest-growing economies in the world. More so, 30% of the world’s minerals in addition to 65% of arable lands in the world are on the continent.
For these reasons mentioned to him, Adesina said “I am not worried about Africa.”
He proceeds with his argument by taking a look at the demographics – 75% of the population in Africa is less than the age of 35 and about 600 million people are between the ages of 15 and 35.
“Africa is going to be the workforce of the world where you have skills talents, and entrepreneurship that will unleash a lot of innovation around the world,” he said.
His next argument at the summit was on Agriculture. He said, that to feed the world – 9.5 billion and 10 billion by 2050, it is going to come from Africa.
As a one-time minister of Minister of Agriculture, Nigeria, Adesina Akinwumi found a way to end fertiliser corruption in the farming sector. He had an idea about how Africa could achieve the vision of feeding the world.
He explains that what Africa does with the minerals it has will shape the world. Take a look at the continent of the AfCFTA, the population of 1.4-1.5 billion people, and a market size of 3.4 trillion dollars. What Africa needs to do is to trade amongst itself, build infrastructure, integrate its financial market, and stock exchanges and of course have the right policies, macro, economic and fiscal policies that attract investments.
To the investors, Adesina asked, “If you are not investing in Africa, I am going to ask you, where are you investing in?”
To champion his argument, Adesina said “Africa is going to be critical for the world.”
“Our job in Africa is to market Africa’s opportunities. I am sure that everybody around the world recognises this dynamic.” According to Adesina, “Africa is too critical not to be looked at.”
