Nimah Alabi
West Africa has the market. It has the resources. It has the talent. What it does not have, Tony Elumelu and President Julius Bio warned on Wednesday, is time to waste.
The Chairman of Heirs Holdings and Sierra Leone’s President rallied the region’s private sector to mobilise capital, build industries and create jobs, speaking at a meeting of the Private Sector Advisory Board of the inaugural West Africa Integration and Investment Summit in Lagos.
Their message was blunt: potential is not prosperity. “Potential is not prosperity. Our task is to convert these advantages into productive enterprises, competitive industries, regional value chains, jobs and wealth,”
Bio told the advisory board, which includes some of Africa’s most powerful business figures.
The Sierra Leonean leader, immediate past Chair of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government, said the region must move beyond endless discussions about integration.
“We are partners in execution, let us transform ideas into partnerships, partnerships into investments, and investments into lasting prosperity for our continent,” he said.
Elumelu, never one to mince words, said private capital would be the engine of that transformation.
African businesses, he argued, must look beyond individual national markets and combine capital, expertise and capabilities to build companies that can operate at scale.
He reaffirmed his commitment to mobilising African and international investors, working with the Africa Finance Corporation, Afreximbank, United Bank for Africa and Ecobank to back projects capable of driving regional growth.
“This is consistent with our aspirations to create jobs for our young people,” Elumelu said.
“We have all it takes to be prosperous.” But he laid the responsibility for attracting long-term investment squarely at the feet of governments. “Governments must provide the policy certainty, regulatory efficiency and security required to give investors the confidence to commit capital for the long term,” he said.
Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo Olu reinforced the point, calling for stronger regional integration through industrialisation and the free movement of goods and services.
Political leaders, he said, must give businesses the certainty they need to invest, manufacture and trade across West African borders.
The meeting focused on four sectors seen as critical to the region’s economic transformation: energy and industrialisation, strategic minerals, agribusiness and digital transformation.
The initiative is targeting a regional market of more than 400 million people and aims to attract businesses and investors from within Africa and beyond.
The summit is scheduled for November 17 and 18, 2026, in Lungi, Sierra Leone. The WAIIS Private Sector Advisory Board reads like a who’s who of African business: Elumelu, Aliko Dangote, Folorunso Alakija, Samuel Dossou-Aworet, George Elombi, Abdul Samad Rabiu, Wale Tinubu, Samaila Zubairu, Alain Ebobissé, Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, Paulo Gomes, Benedict Okey Oramah and Habib Yérim Sow.
With that much firepower in the room, the question is no longer whether West Africa can build a prosperous future. It is whether governments will get out of the way and let it happen.
