Africa's Policy Makers Face Triple Test on Trade, Capital and Tech

Africa’s economic trajectory in 2026 turns on three policy imperatives that governments, regulators and investors are being pressed to address simultaneously. The African Growth and Opportunity Act faces expiration. The United States tariff environment remains unsettled. International capital has grown more selective. Against that backdrop, advances in cloud computing, artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure are redrawing the terms of economic competitiveness, and African governments are confronting a central accountability question: who decides how the continent positions itself within a shifting global order, and through what institutional mechanisms?

Trade policy reorientation forms the first pillar of this realignment. African governments are actively cultivating commercial partnerships with the Gulf, China and India while redirecting attention toward regional demand and intra-African commerce. The African Continental Free Trade Area provides the structural framework, but realizing its mandate requires governments to deliver on specific institutional commitments: efficient customs operations, harmonized regulatory standards, improved transport infrastructure and payment systems capable of facilitating seamless cross-border movement of goods, services and capital. These are not aspirational targets. They are prerequisites, and the degree to which governments meet them will determine whether the framework functions as policy or remains paper.

The case for domestic manufacturing and value-addition follows directly from that trade reorientation. Côte d’Ivoire’s emphasis on agro-industrialization, energy development and private sector investment demonstrates one model of how governments can anchor industrial policy to concrete sectoral priorities. The involvement of industrial-scale operators like Aliko Dangote signals that private capital is prepared to work within such frameworks, provided the regulatory conditions hold.

Capital mobilization is the second pillar, and here the accountability questions are sharpest. Contracting aid flows and heightened selectivity among global financiers are pressing African governments to unlock domestic resources that have long sat underdeployed. Pension funds, insurance reserves, sovereign wealth funds and local capital markets carry substantial financing capacity for infrastructure, renewable energy, manufacturing and business growth. Channeling that capital toward productive investment requires governments and regulators to put in place appropriate institutional structures: credit guarantees, blended finance mechanisms and coordinated frameworks that bring together public institutions, commercial lenders and development finance institutions.

Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, and Ethiopia’s Minister of Finance, Ahmed Shide, are among the decision-makers positioned to address the future of public finance at the FT Africa Summit 2026. Leslie Maasdorp, Chief Executive Officer of British International Investment, will examine how development finance institutions can catalyze the continent’s next growth phase. Their participation reflects the summit’s focus on the officials and institutions that hold the levers of capital allocation.

Digital infrastructure constitutes the third pillar, and it is increasingly a matter of regulatory and policy capacity as much as technology. Africa’s digital economy is entering a phase where connectivity, computing capacity, data infrastructure and energy reliability will determine growth quality. The 2Africa submarine cable and expanding low-earth-orbit satellite deployment are enlarging available bandwidth. The immediate challenge for governments lies in building the terrestrial fibre networks, data centres, cloud services and power infrastructure needed to convert raw connectivity into economic value. Locally operated data centres strengthen both resilience and data sovereignty, a consideration with direct implications for how governments regulate data flows and assert jurisdiction over digital assets. Datasets tailored to African contexts will prove indispensable for artificial intelligence applications suited to regional markets, raising further questions about who controls those assets and under what rules.

Sierra Leone’s Minister of Communication, Technology and Innovation, Salima Monorma Bah, and Babacar Seck, Founder and Managing Partner of Askya Investment Partners, will contribute perspectives on connectivity, technology infrastructure and the development of competitive African technology hubs.

What makes these three pillars consequential is that they are interdependent. Regional trade expansion depends on transport networks, digital payment systems and reliable communications infrastructure. Manufacturing growth requires patient capital, energy security and access to expanded markets. Technology enterprises need cloud infrastructure, skilled workforces and investment vehicles that support scaling. Progress across all three dimensions requires these systems to develop in concert, with public policy and private capital aligned toward shared economic objectives. That alignment does not happen automatically. It requires deliberate institutional coordination and, crucially, officials willing to be held accountable for whether it materializes.

The FT Africa Summit 2026, operating under the theme “Mobilising Growth in a New Global Order,” convenes policymakers, investors and business leaders across two days in London to examine precisely these questions. The fundamental challenge the summit returns to is whether the continent’s governments and institutions can convert a shifting global order into progress that originates from, is financed by and remains owned within Africa itself, and whether the accountability structures exist to make that outcome stick.