Listening to presentations at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF) Conference on Transforming International Development Cooperation in Nairobi from 22-23 June 2026, led to various curious questions, comments, or debates from various speakers, panels and audience members.
The matter of how aid, or its associated development cooperation, tips over the structure of African markets was put forward in a somewhat clever but polite manner, which is very uncanny in these testy political times. While development cooperation is helpful, it still has shortfalls in not only offering efficient, credible, and measurable solutions, but also the agency needed in achieving outcomes that would lead to more enabling markets in Africa.
In examining the issue of markets, interests, and partnerships in a changing global order, it was interesting to hear how entrepreneurs thought the never-ending cycle of training initiatives has become an obsolete intervention when what they desperately need is access to credit.
Many commercial ventures are struggling to scale up to the point of market reliability. This is because development cooperation does not fully address the fundamental matters of rapid transformation needed to unlock the continent’s potential.
Small and medium enterprises mostly suffer punitive regulatory taxes; prohibitive licensing; high transaction fees; inaccessible credit; plus, chokingly high debt interest rates, even before they deal with exchange rate fluctuations and criminal or political shakedowns for which numerous trainings will never resolve.
Businesses then struggle to participate in global trade. This results in a state of perpetual social inequalities, structural stagnation, and regional marginalisation that is likely to repeat itself as another generational loss if African countries do not adjust in preparing for the next cycle of growth in the coming digital age.
What is clear is that Kenya, and other African economies, may be open but they are not free. This is because domestic demand and supply is disrupted to cater for low barriers of entry or exit by foreign direct investment at the expense of local initiatives.
Rather than strike a better balance, governments encourage local business to depend on exports or building external partnerships as opposed to responding to their own markets. Meanwhile, the same governments open up their countries to an influx of imports or unnecessary labour.
This is happening primarily because domestic business interests tend to advocate for their affairs in exclusivity. They rely on collective bargaining and public-private roundtables away from fellow citizens but within the bosom of politicos.
Yet they would do much better if they understood that favourable market conditions require that they see entrepreneurship as a citizenship demand for democratic governance supply.
Adopting an active civics approach to policy engagement will allow them to carry out business campaigns that will not only offer entrepreneurial literacy, but will establish legitimate forums, dispute resolution, feedback mechanisms and networking beyond rigid bureaucratic processes.
It will allow for informative interactions and administrative agency that will ensure that responsible entrepreneurs see themselves as having citizen rights and vice versa in the application of human rights-based approaches in business.
That way, businesses will not be left to hang alone in the face of high taxes, among other hiccups, because they will be able to go beyond corporate social responsibility and sector advocacy to establish resilient entrepreneurial ecosystems that ensure community development.
Private sector solutions will, therefore, be able to move from being primarily driven by profit to respond to societal crises, such as the existing unemployed demographic bubble on the continent, by offering a commensurate economic dividend.
This will allow the continent to not only rely on the legacy of historical pain and the pride of purpose alone, but also the infusion of innovation for productivity and good democratic governance for prosperity, to unleash the market forces of Africa.
-The writer is a development practitioner.
