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OpenAI’s March funding round valued it at $852 billion, roughly 17 times the approximately $50 billion valuation sought for Nigeria’s Dangote refinery.

It’s a striking contrast between Silicon Valley’s AI ambitions and African industrial capacity.

A market sell-off won’t make a refinery’s machinery, storage tanks or pipelines disappear, although it can reduce their value.

That raises many questions! Are investors giving enough credit to the productive assets African businesses are building?

This week, I have been following two stories with avid interest.

The first caught my attention partly because, of all the African entrepreneurs who could have done it, a Saudi-based footballer was validating an opportunity we have made a case for over the years in past editions of our newsletter.

The other drew me in through sheer fascination and growing awe at what people can do when they pool their resources to support African ambition.

You might have seen tabloid reports about Sadio Mané bringing mango processing and jobs to his community.

When Sadio moved from Liverpool to Bayern Munich, many people applauded him. Both Bayern and Liverpool have a rich history of playing good football.

When he left Bayern for Saudi Arabia’s Al Nassr, many of those who had applauded him said it was now about the money and no longer about his love of football.

People casually make such disparaging remarks as if they don’t make decisions for the money every day.

So when I heard that Sadio was investing millions in a mango processing plant in his village, with plans to create hundreds of jobs and contribute enormously to the village’s development, I was beside myself with joy.

Here was a man who understood what I have long been advocating.

Many of Africa’s financial and transport corridors have colonial roots, designed to move resources out of Africa rather than build connections within it.

You can see that outward flow in raw materials, talent and money itself.

When we develop young talent, it leaves on an air route to Europe. When we mine ore, it follows a shipping route to the Americas or China. When a multinational company makes a profit, that money travels through a financial corridor back to its headquarters overseas.

Too little of that value finds its way back. Meanwhile, Africans in the diaspora keep sending money home, with remittances outpacing foreign direct investment.

In 2025 alone, remittances stood at $124.2 billion, while FDI was $70 billion.

Mané seems to understand something about reversing those flows. He is putting $20.4 million of his own money into agriculture through SM10 AGRO, a large-scale agro-industrial project in his hometown of Bambali.

The project will sort and export fresh mangoes while producing mango pulp, dried fruit and mango butter. It will include processing facilities, a 500-hectare mango plantation and an agricultural college, with plans to create about 1,000 jobs.

Around 78,000 mango trees will be planted, with the first harvest expected in three years. The facility is expected to process 8,500 tonnes of mangoes annually.

Senegal loses an estimated 30% to 45% of its harvested fruit each year, partly because of limited processing facilities.

It also exports tens of thousands of tonnes of fresh mangoes, mainly to Europe, but only about 2% of its mangoes are processed locally. SM10 AGRO plans to help change that by turning mangoes into products that can be stored for longer and sold in more markets.

This is a refreshing development. Firstly, it is being done by a footballer, when we have become all too used to hearing stories of footballers going broke after retirement.

Secondly, someone recognises that there is an investment case for Africa.

Thirdly, someone is actively reinvesting money earned overseas into Africa.

Will you be the next Sadio Mané? Because it is not just mangoes that need storage and processing.

While Mané is using his own money, a billionaire is raising money from the public to finance future growth in what has been called Africa’s biggest IPO.

Aliko Dangote is the richest Black man on earth, and with the recent IPO of his refinery, his net worth has surged past $50 billion, according to Forbes.

But how did we get here?

In 2013, Dangote unveiled plans for a refinery intended to curb Nigeria’s dependence on imported petroleum and, well, make truckloads of dollars in the process.

Construction began in 2016, with an initial estimated cost of $9 billion.

Rather than paying external contractors billions in supervisory fees, Dangote took on the management of major parts of the project. These included importing 150,000 tonnes of structural steel from China and having heavy equipment assembled into modules in India. Over roughly a decade of development, the project’s cost grew to about $20 billion.

The refinery was officially commissioned on May 22, 2023.

In February 2026, the company announced that it had reached its full designed capacity of 650,000 barrels per day.

And, buoyed by the Trumponomics of war, Dangote’s refinery has emerged as a key supplier of fuel to Europe following disruptions to Middle Eastern exports.

Europe imported about 80,000 barrels per day of jet fuel from Dangote during the second quarter, equivalent to roughly 13% of the resulting supply shortfall, according to Kpler data.

So what do a footballer and a billionaire have in common?

Beyond building industries, creating jobs and adding value to Africa’s raw materials, they are helping reverse those outward flows. They see overseas markets as places to sell their products and earn money that can be brought home.

Dangote has said the refinery was privately funded. Mané, too, is committing his own money to his project, although private funding does not necessarily mean a founder pays for everything personally.

But Dangote has now gone a step further. In his words, he is bringing “democracy into capital markets in Africa” by enabling more Africans to participate in the ownership of major businesses.

He said the refinery’s IPO was intended to fund its expansion and give more Africans an opportunity to own shares in the strategic asset.

And Africa’s richest man has ambitions just as big as his net worth: 10 million shareholders and annual general meetings large enough to fill stadiums.

Dangote said the company was offering 4.1 billion refinery shares to retail investors, representing about 3% of the business, to raise as much as $2.1 billion in what is set to become Africa’s largest initial public offering.

Institutional investors had already bought a 6% stake for $2.5 billion in a private placement in July.

So many people wanted to participate in the refinery’s IPO that investment platforms struggled with the traffic. Some crashed after the offer went live. Three days later, there were further outages.

Following the response to the refinery’s IPO, Dangote has announced plans to take the group’s fertiliser business public in 2028, projecting that it will become the biggest fertiliser company in the world.

Okay, so this is where we are.

Africa needs to develop. But we need a lot of capital to do that.

Dangote committed his capital and is now drawing on public investment to expand his business.

Mané is using his own money to bring development to his hometown.

Have you ever imagined how much more value we could capture for ourselves if we processed our goods locally?

On a normal day, I would not pair footballers and billionaires unless Ronaldo was part of the conversation. Neither would I juxtapose mangoes and petroleum. But I think you get the story, and I have made my case.

Let’s find ways to pool the money we have locally and invest it locally. Or, like Mané, channel more of what we earn overseas into investment at home.

“It is about creating value, expanding prosperity, and building generational wealth for our people

Zimbabwe has authorised medical drone deliveries, signalling a much larger business opportunity.

There is a market opportunity to build aerial logistics infrastructure that can move blood, vaccines, laboratory samples and medicines across a continent where only one-third of rural residents live within two kilometres of an all-season road.

Rwanda proved the model, but drone networks now extend to Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire; a single distribution hub can serve almost 20,000 square kilometres, transport more than two tonnes of temperature-controlled medicine a week and complete deliveries in about 30 minutes.

Zipline alone has completed nearly two million deliveries globally, demonstrating that this is no longer experimental technology.

For African entrepreneurs, the opportunity extends beyond manufacturing drones to operating delivery networks, constructing hubs, developing flight-management software, maintaining fleets, mapping routes, designing cold-chain packaging and supplying logistics services to governments, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies, mines and agricultural businesses.

The companies that turn Africa’s open skies into reliable delivery corridors could build the continent’s next essential layer of infrastructure.

We talk of the People’s IPO today, but Dangote almost failed to acquire land for the Refinery. Aliko Dangote noted that securing the initial site was extremely difficult. After being denied approval for a site in Ogun State by the state governor, in 2014 he purchased roughly 7,000 acres of land in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos, for $100 million, only to discover it was entirely marshy. The team had to pump 65 million tons of sand to reclaim and raise the terrain.

Organised by the World Bank Group's Digital and AI Vice Presidency, in collaboration with the Youth Summit, Development Economics Vice Presidency (DEC), Information and Technology Solutions (ITS), and managed by Hack-Nation, this hackathon invites young innovators to spend one weekend building a working small AI solution to a real development challenge through a two-day competition taking place on 3–4 October 2026.

To enter the competition, eligible applicants must first register for the Hackathon through the official Hack-Nation registration page. Registered participants will then develop and submit their competition entry during the Hackathon in accordance with the instructions, deadlines, and technical requirements provided on the Hack-Nation platform. Hack-Nation will evaluate the eligible entries and submit a shortlist to the World Bank Group, which will serve as the final judging authority and select the winners.

Three winners will be selected from the entries generated at the hackathon, one from each of the categories – Agriculture, Health, and Tourism. The winners will be invited to Seoul, South Korea, to present at the Global AI and Digital Summit 2026, co-hosted by the World Bank Group and the Government of Korea from 19 to 22 October 2026.

Visit the Official Webpage of the World Bank Group Small AI for Development Hackathon Challenge

This week, our shoutout goes to Sadio Mané. A Champions League and Premier League winner with Liverpool, twice African Footballer of the Year, and instrumental in Senegal’s first AFCON triumph, he has given Africa plenty to celebrate.

His career has taken him through Europe to Saudi Arabia’s Al Nassr, while Bambali, his hometown, continues to benefit from his success.

Mané has funded a hospital and school and supported families financially. Now, he has broken ground on SM10 Agro, a mango production and processing project in Bambali valued at 11.7 billion CFA francs, with plans to create more than 1,000 direct jobs in its first phase. Those jobs remain a target, but the investment speaks to his commitment to creating opportunities at home.

For young Africans building their own success, here is someone worth looking up to. Go as far as your talent takes you. Remember the people back home, and invest in what they can become.

When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.

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