- ‘Pushes Value-Addition Drive To Unlock Africa’s Resource Wealth
- Says Tinubu Administration Targets $50bn-Plus Upstream Investment Pipeline
Africa must move beyond exporting raw commodities and begin capturing a much larger share of the value created from its natural resources, Olu Arowolo Verheijen, Special Adviser to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Energy, has said.
Verheijen made the call while delivering a memorial lecture titled “Africa’s Resources, Africa’s Prosperity: Capturing More of the Value We Create,” where she argued that Africa’s vast mineral, agricultural and energy resources would remain an incomplete inheritance unless they were converted into industries, jobs, skills and sustainable prosperity.
Reflecting on the legacy of the late Dr Olusegun Agagu, Verheijen said the former governor, minister, geologist and entrepreneur understood that the true measure of leadership was not the resources available to a country, but what those resources made possible for its people.
According to her, “resources are an inheritance. Prosperity is a responsibility.”
She said Africa had the land, resources and human capital required to build prosperous economies but continued to lose significant value by exporting raw materials and importing finished products at higher prices.
“Too often, our crops leave in sacks, our minerals leave unprocessed, and our young people leave in search of opportunity. The finished goods return—with someone else’s brand, at a premium we pay,” she said.
Using cocoa production in Ondo State as an example, Verheijen said Nigerian farmers undertake the arduous work of cultivating, harvesting and processing cocoa beans, while much of the wealth generated from transforming the commodity into finished chocolate is created elsewhere.
“The harvest is ours. Too much of the prosperity is not,” she declared.
From Raw Materials To Industrial Wealth
Verheijen said Africa’s development strategy must therefore stretch from the farm, mine and oil well to factories, skills development, technology and locally owned brands.
She cited Botswana’s diamond industry as an example of how resource wealth could be used to stimulate broader economic development.
“Diamond revenues helped build schools, hospitals and roads,” she said, adding that Botswana’s decision to bring De Beers’ international diamond sales operations from London to Gaborone in 2013 helped move expertise and commercial activity closer to the resource.
But she stressed that resource nationalism alone was not the objective.
“The opportunity is not only to process what we have. It is to build more of the businesses around it,” she said.
Turning to Nigeria’s oil industry, Verheijen said the Dangote Refinery represented an important shift from the country’s longstanding pattern of exporting crude oil and importing refined petroleum products.
According to her, the refinery, built through sustained private investment, now supplies African and international markets and was Europe’s largest external supplier of jet fuel in June and July this year.
She argued that the significance of such projects went beyond the products they produced.
“Think of what a refinery makes possible beyond the products it sells: the welder on the construction site, the engineer in the control room, the haulage company delivering supplies, the caterer feeding the workforce,” she said.
“With each competitive project, more Nigerians can earn a living from an industry that once did more of its work elsewhere.”
Verheijen, however, warned that projects of such scale could not be delivered through ambition alone, insisting that government and businesses must develop a stronger understanding of each other’s roles.
“Government and business have to understand each other,” she said, stressing that public policy must be integrated into business strategy while policymakers must understand how capital is raised, risk is priced and investments become commercially viable.
$50bn Investment Pipeline
She disclosed that the Tinubu administration had been bringing ministries, regulators and investors together to tackle obstacles including uncompetitive terms, bureaucratic delays, high costs and uncertainty.
“Contracting timelines have been cut by more than half. More than US$10 billion in final investment decisions have followed since 2023,” she said.
Verheijen added that a much larger upstream investment pipeline, exceeding $50 billion, was currently in view, while cautioning that the figure represented opportunities rather than committed capital.
“That pipeline is not yet committed capital. Our task is to turn opportunity into investment, and investment into work Nigerians can see and income they can earn,” she said.
She also highlighted the deep offshore framework, saying it was designed to encourage commercially and technically feasible projects capable of creating enduring industrial capacity in Nigeria.
“A fabrication yard should emerge from one project better equipped and qualified for the next. That is how an investment helps build an industry,” she said.
On gas, Verheijen said the commodity could unlock opportunities across multiple sectors of the economy, providing heat for food processors, feedstock for fertiliser production and power for factories.
She also stressed the need to combine gas development with renewable energy and stronger electricity grids to improve the competitiveness of African businesses.
According to her, “there will be no African industrialisation without reliable power.”
She noted that Nigeria’s Electricity Act 2023 had opened the way for states to regulate their own electricity markets but warned that legislative reform must be backed by financially sustainable electricity markets.
Verheijen disclosed that the government had signed the second tranche of bonds to clear legacy debts owed to power generation and gas companies under a programme authorised for up to ₦4 trillion.
“Settling old debts is necessary. Preventing new ones is just as important,” she said, calling for better metering, reduced electricity losses, payment discipline and properly funded protections for vulnerable consumers.
She further disclosed that the PMI Power Force programme was targeting the training of 5,000 young Nigerians in meter installation, arguing that skills development must translate into actual livelihoods.
Africa Must Trade More With Itself
Verheijen also called for stronger regional economic integration, arguing that Africa should not wait until it becomes wealthy before increasing trade among its own countries.
“We need not wait to become rich before we trade with one another. Trading with one another is part of how we become rich,” she said.
She called for the African Continental Free Trade Area to move beyond policy commitments into practical implementation through shared infrastructure, easier movement of goods and larger markets capable of supporting competitive African businesses.
“Keeping more value in Africa does not require keeping every stage within one national border,” she added.
She similarly urged African countries to approach critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt and manganese as the foundation of industrial strategies rather than merely as another export opportunity.
Referring to lithium-processing investment in Nasarawa State, she said the real measure of success would be sustained production, competitive businesses and local livelihoods—not merely commissioning ceremonies.
Verheijen maintained that Nigeria and other African countries must use resource wealth to develop capabilities that would survive commodity price cycles and eventual depletion of deposits.
‘Reform Must Reach The Household’
The presidential aide said the ultimate test of economic reforms was whether they translated into better living conditions for citizens.
“Nigeria’s economic foundations are strengthening, and the task before us now is to carry those gains all the way to the household,” she said.
She acknowledged that the economic transition remained difficult for families confronting food, transport, school fees and energy costs, saying government must continue reforms while deploying available measures to cushion vulnerable citizens.
“Our responsibility is to stay the course on reforms that secure the future while using every tool available to ease the transition, protect the vulnerable and accelerate the benefits,” she said.
Verheijen said the next phase of the administration’s economic programme should focus on converting macroeconomic stability into household prosperity, investment into jobs, stronger public finances into improved services and economic reforms into tangible improvements in Nigerians’ daily lives.
“That is how credibility is earned. Investors must see a country where the rules are clear and durable. Citizens must see a government whose reforms are opening possibilities for them,” she said.
She recalled that Agagu’s “Roadmap to Progress” established objectives and timelines against which citizens could assess government performance, arguing that the standard should be renewed.
Verheijen said the Tinubu administration had identified projects, skills programmes and services it intended to deliver and would publish milestones while accounting for results.
“Government and business are partners in this work. But the citizen is not an observer. The citizen is the reason for it,” she said.
“Our resources must do more than make our countries valuable to the world. They must make life better for the people who live in them.
“That is how Africa’s resources become Africa’s prosperity.”
