🔅 Why Africa Keeps Missing the Development Bus

Plus, Super Falcons, Super Finish

Aug 01, 2025

Good morning from… can you guess where? (Answer at the bottom!)

Super Falcons, Super Finish: How Nigeria snatched the African Cup of Nations

Last weekend, Nigeria’s Super Falcons did what they’ve done for decades: win Africa. In a breathless WAFCON final in Rabat, Morocco led 2–0 until the 64th minute… and then Nigeria flipped the script with three unanswered goals, the winner landing two minutes from time. Final score: heartbreak for the hosts, history for Nigeria…

This is title No. 10 out of 14 tournaments, but this run felt different. The semi against South Africa (rivals with capital R) had “final” energy, and Morocco’s investment in women’s football (paying players well and building a serious domestic league) made the Atlas Lionesses a legit threat. Across the bracket, you could see it too: Equatorial Guinea, South Africa, Morocco… all teams that are seriously catching up. Nigeria still rules, but the neighborhood got fiercer.

So what’s the Falcons’ cheat code? Part early mover advantage (women’s football took hold earlier in Nigeria than in many countries on the continent) and part mind-set. As one observer put it, Nigerians thrive in competition. Mix in a diaspora boost (Falcons gaining reps at clubs like Paris FC and Barcelona, among others) and you get a team that knows how to suffer, how to surge, and how to finish.

Off the pitch, the team’s vibe felt accessible, modern, a little chaotic… in the best, very Nigerian way.

Politics, naturally, tried to hitch a ride on the team bus. President Bola Tinubu rolled out national honors for the entire squad and staff, prompting some side-eye at home: beautiful medals, tough economy. For many Nigerians, this victory is for the players first, the politics never.

Ultimately, however, the Super Falcons raised the standard. Again. Congratulations!

Tanzania tells foreign hustlers to go big or go home

a couple of buses that are sitting in the street — Dar es Salaam — Photo by Nichika Sakurai

Tanzania just slammed the door on foreigners running small businesses (mobile-money kiosks, tour guiding, beauty salons, curio shops, on-farm crop buying, small-scale mining, even starting radio/TV stations). Trade minister Selemani Jafo says the goal is to protect local livelihoods and nudge outsiders toward large-scale investments instead of competing on the shop floor.

At home, the vibe is mostly “finally.” After last year’s trader strikes in Dar over tax pressure and alleged undercutting by Chinese vendors, local associations are cheering a policy that keeps the informal and micro end of the market Tanzanian. The stick is real: violators risk fines, six months in jail, and loss of visas/work permits.

Across its borders, however, nobody is clapping. Critics say the ban brushes up against the EAC’s free movement promises and could trigger tit-for-tat restrictions. The bloc’s entire pitch is “one market, many flags”; a carve-out this wide (spanning 15 sectors) raises awkward questions about whose “free movement” we’re talking about when micro-enterprise is off-limits.

Zooming out, this is the classic policy trade-off: shield small traders now, or risk chilling cross-border investment later. Tanzania’s message to foreigners is crystal: bring capital, scale, and jobs… not braids, beads, or mobile money kiosks.

Watch this space for EAC deliberations, legal challenges, and whether anyone reaches for the tariff toolbox. For East Africa’s everyday entrepreneurs, the next few weeks will decide if this is a reset, or the start of a regional headache.

Why Africa Keeps Missing the Development Bus

aerial view photography of architecture building — Photo by Jocke Wulcan

Asia’s economic rise followed a hard-nosed formula: an activist state, single-minded elites, and a willingness to shove factories ahead of feelings. South Korea’s generals bullied chaebols into exporting microchips; China’s party bosses rewired a peasant economy into the world’s workshop; even Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew drilled civil servants like a marine corps of accountants. The key was a development-first mindset.

By contrast, most post-independence African leaders inherited plantation pipelines designed for raw-material exports and simply widened them, according to this well-articulated Abdi Ismail Samatar’s op-ed. A few (Nkrumah, Nyerere) tried to break the mold, but coup plots, Cold-War meddling and empty treasuries strangled their experiments.

Elsewhere Big-Man rule flourished: political tribalism at home, donor begging trips abroad. When oil or copper windfalls arrived, they padded patronage networks instead of funding machine tools and math teachers. The 1990s’ democracy wave swapped fatigues for suits but left the economic software unchanged. Elections became ritual; structural-adjustment regimes shrank the state into a night watchman guarding foreign investors’ compounds. Twenty-plus years later, Ghana, Zambia, Kenya, Nigeria et al. still export cocoa beans and crude while importing toothpicks and tractor parts.

What’s missing is that developmental reflex: leaders who treat government as an architect rather than a cash box. Without it Africa will keep cycling through China-Africa, Russia-Africa, US-Africa, Turkey-Africa summits… collecting selfies instead of supply chains.

Four fixes are obvious even if they’re politically difficult: insulate technocrats from patronage; pick a few industrial niches and back them relentlessly; channel resource rents into skills and infrastructure, not luxury condos; and stop outsourcing vision to foreign “partners.”

The Tigers didn’t wait for permission; they drew a line from poverty to production and marched. Until African elites do the same, the continent’s economic miracle will stay in somebody else’s history book.

Food for Thought

“A good word removes anger.”

— Ghana Proverb

And the Answer is…

The photo is from Monrovia, Liberia. You can also send in your own photos, alongside the location, and we’ll do our best to feature them.