Cape Town, South Africa
Founder and Executive Chairman of BUA Group, Abdul Samad Rabiu CFR CON, has known as for a decisive shift in Africa’s growth technique, urging governments, financiers, and the non-public sector to maneuver the continent from uncooked materials extraction to giant scale industrial processing and worth addition.
Rabiu made the remarks as Special Guest of Honour at an Africa Finance Corporation discussion board throughout Mining Indaba 2026, the place African leaders, policymakers, financiers, and trade executives gathered to debate the way forward for mining, industrialisation, and actual sector growth on the continent.
Commending AFC for its position in mobilising long run capital for Africa’s industrial sectors, Rabiu famous that the establishment’s management and up to date S&P Global ranking with a optimistic outlook underscored the significance of sturdy growth finance establishments in shaping Africa’s progress trajectory.
Drawing from BUA Group’s expertise, he recounted the corporate’s determination over sixteen years in the past to transition from cement importation to native manufacturing in Nigeria, regardless of the capital depth and lengthy gestation intervals related to mining and heavy trade.
“At the time, Nigeria was importing cement despite being richly endowed with limestone,” Rabiu stated. “We were spending more time chasing foreign exchange than selling cement. The real question was not whether the resources existed, but whether there was enough conviction to stop importing and start producing locally.”
Today, he famous, BUA mines and processes about forty thousand tonnes of limestone every day, producing roughly a million tonnes of cement each month. That shift has helped Nigeria transfer from being a cement importer to a web exporter, saving the nation billions of {dollars} in international change yearly.
Rabiu harassed that such transformation wouldn’t have been doable with out affected person, long run financing from DFIs, significantly the Africa Finance Corporation, which has supported BUA’s cement and industrial operations with over 4 hundred million {dollars} in financing.
He added that a good portion of these services has already been repaid, demonstrating that nicely structured African industrial tasks are usually not solely developmental but additionally commercially viable and recyclable.
Turning to the broader continental image, Rabiu highlighted what he described as a structural paradox: Africa stays one of many world’s most useful resource wealthy areas, but exports the majority of its minerals and agricultural produce in uncooked or minimally processed type.
He cited examples throughout gold, cobalt, copper, iron ore, diamonds, and cocoa, noting that whereas Africa provides a lot of the world’s uncooked inputs, it captures solely a fraction of the worth created downstream.
“Africa does not lack resources,” he stated. “What it lacks is processing capacity, industrial scale, and disciplined execution.”
He argued that the identical problem extends past mining into agriculture, the place Africa holds a majority of the world’s arable land but continues to import billions of {dollars}’ value of meals yearly.
Rabiu known as for coordinated motion amongst governments, DFIs, and the non-public sector, urging DFIs to scale long run financing focused at beneficiation and industrial worth chains, whereas governments undertake deliberate insurance policies that incentivise native processing and put money into energy, transport, and industrial infrastructure.
“Industrialisation does not happen by accident,” he stated. “Countries that industrialised did so by design, not by chance. Africa must do the same.”
He concluded by stressing that Africa’s alternative lies in aligning non-public enterprise, affected person capital, and supportive coverage to maneuver the continent from extraction to transformation, and from potential to shared prosperity.
