Ghanaian business leader Sir Sam Jonah has challenged African institutional investors to invest more of their capital on the continent, warning that Africa risks worsening its development challenges by exporting its savings while borrowing expensive funds from abroad.
He said the trend was contributing to Africa’s infrastructure financing gap while making it harder for promising local businesses to access the long-term capital they need to grow and compete globally.
Sir Sam Jonah made the call while delivering the keynote address at the Global Business Forum, Ghana Edition, on Friday, August 28.
He described Africa’s dependence on foreign capital despite the availability of significant domestic savings as the continent’s “great paradox.”
“Here is our great paradox: Africa exports its savings and imports expensive capital. Our pension funds and institutional pools sit in short-term instruments while our infrastructure gap widens and our best entrepreneurs go begging, and we then borrow our own money back from abroad at punishing rates,” he said.
“No continent in history has industrialised on rented capital alone,” he added.
Sir Sam Jonah acknowledged the important role foreign investors have played in Africa’s economic development and said international capital remains necessary.
He noted that much of his own career had involved raising foreign investment, working with international investors and deploying their capital across African businesses.
However, he argued that African countries and investors must demonstrate greater confidence in their own economies by committing more domestic capital to businesses and projects with long-term potential.
“Capital follows conviction; it does not substitute for it,” he said.
He used an analogy to explain why greater participation by African investors could help attract additional international capital.
“Investors, like dinner guests, come far more readily to a table where the host is already seated and eating,” he said.
According to Sir Sam Jonah, stronger domestic investment would send a powerful signal to international investors that Africans themselves have confidence in the continent’s economic prospects.
The veteran business leader also called for the creation of more African companies capable of competing on the global stage, generating employment and expanding over several decades.
He pointed to his experience with Ashanti Goldfields, which became the first operating African company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, as an example of what African businesses can achieve when they are properly built, managed and led.
“The lesson was not that we needed New York’s validation. The lesson was that an African enterprise, properly built and boldly led, could stand anywhere on earth and look anyone in the eye,” he said.
Sir Sam Jonah argued that Africa needs hundreds, and eventually thousands, of companies capable of reaching a similar scale across critical sectors of the economy.
“We need a hundred more such firms. A thousand. In agribusiness, in finance, in energy, in technology, in manufacturing,” he said.
Sir Sam Jonah said the responsibility for developing globally competitive African enterprises should not rest solely with governments.
He urged business leaders, institutional investors and private-sector actors to take a more active role in building companies that can create jobs, expand production and retain more economic value within Africa.
“Building them is not the government’s job. It is ours — the people in this room,” he said.
Sir Sam Jonah also urged African investors to adopt a patient-capital approach, arguing that investors should be prepared to back promising businesses before every risk has been eliminated.
He said investors who are capable of properly assessing and pricing early-stage risks could position themselves to benefit from Africa’s long-term economic growth.
