There is a statement that initially sounds uncomfortable but contains an important economic truth: the sign that nobody is seeking to use what you possess may be that you possess too little exchangeable economic value. The word use must be understood economically rather than morally. I am not speaking about human exploitation, colonial domination, coercion, or the idea that the worth of a human being depends upon market usefulness. Human value exceeds economic exchange. I am speaking specifically about economic systems. Nations continuously use one another economically. They use one another’s capital, labour, technology, resources, markets, ports, knowledge, currencies, infrastructure, manufacturing systems, financial institutions, intellectual property, logistics networks, and geographic positions. International economics is built upon these exchanges. The central question for Africa is therefore not whether the world will economically use Africa. It already does. The deeper question is what does the world need from Africa, how sophisticated is that need, how replaceable is Africa within the relationship, and how much of the resulting value does Africa control?

This creates a distinction between economic value and exchangeable economic value. A resource can possess value while remaining economically dormant. Knowledge can possess value without being commercialized. Labour can possess potential without productive employment. Land can possess enormous productive possibility without infrastructure connecting it to markets. A mineral deposit underground is valuable, but its exchangeable economic value emerges when knowledge, capital, technology, institutions, transportation, processing, financing, and markets make economic use possible. A population of hundreds of millions is not automatically an economic market. It becomes a powerful market when productive participation generates incomes and purchasing power. Economic potential becomes exchangeable economic value when another participant has a reason to enter a relationship around it.

This is why I argue that economic relevance begins when others need what you produce. Need creates relationships. Relationships create transactions. Transactions create income. Repeated transactions create markets. Markets attract capital. Capital expands production. Production strengthens capability. Capability increases strategic relevance. The stronger and less replaceable the capability, the greater the economic bargaining power that can emerge from it.

China demonstrates this progression. Foreign capital did not enter China because China asked the world to help it become economically important. Foreign investors entered because China increasingly offered things global production systems could use: relatively low cost labour, industrial zones, infrastructure, manufacturing capacity, an enormous potential market, increasingly dense supplier networks, and policy arrangements designed to facilitate production. OECD research found that cheap land and labour, market potential, and fiscal incentives were among the early attractions for foreign investment, while later investment increasingly depended on stronger institutions, legal systems, governance, and financial structures. OECD World Bank research estimated that China’s special economic zones became major concentrations of FDI, exports, employment, technology learning, and industrial activity. World Bank Blogs China became economically relevant because global production could use China productively.

But China did not stop there. This is the distinction Africa must understand. Being useful is only the beginning of economic relevance. Controlling increasingly valuable conditions of usefulness is the beginning of economic power. A country that supplies inexpensive labour can be useful, but labour intensive production may relocate when another location becomes cheaper. A country supplying an unprocessed commodity can be useful, but alternative suppliers may weaken its bargaining power. A country possessing an integrated industrial ecosystem, advanced engineering capability, enormous domestic market, sophisticated infrastructure, dense suppliers, technology, capital, and internationally competitive firms becomes more difficult to replace. Economic power rises as productive usefulness becomes deeper, more sophisticated, and less substitutable.

Africa is already useful to the world, but too much of that usefulness remains concentrated near the beginning of the productive journey. African minerals feed international industries. African petroleum enters global energy markets. African cocoa enters global food manufacturing. African agricultural commodities enter processing systems elsewhere. African labour migrates into foreign economies. African consumers purchase global products. These relationships generate value, but the strategic question is where the greater productive transformation occurs after African value leaves Africa.

This is where my Economic Journey of Money framework becomes an Economic Journey of Value. If Africa exports a mineral and another economy refines it, engineers components from it, finances production around it, embeds it in advanced technology, owns the intellectual property, builds the brand, and sells the finished product globally, Africa participated in the value chain but did not control most of the productive journey. The world needed Africa’s resource, but Africa did not yet make the world depend upon enough African productive capability.

This is why Africa Economic Development and Africa Economic Globalization must operate together. AED asks what Africa must build internally. AEG asks how that capability becomes globally relevant. The progression is not simply resource, export, foreign exchange. It is resource, knowledge, processing, production, technology, company, brand, finance, trade, global market, capital accumulation, and reinvestment. The objective is to create more economic things the world can use that cannot easily be obtained without African productive participation.

This also changes how Africa should think about foreign investors. A foreign investor seeking profit from Africa is not automatically evidence that Africa is being exploited. Nor is foreign investment automatically beneficial. The economic result depends upon the structure of the exchange. OECD research has long emphasized that FDI can contribute capital, technology, skills, productivity, and international market access, but that benefits depend upon host country institutions and policies and do not accrue automatically. OECD The World Bank likewise describes FDI and global value chain participation as mutually reinforcing and stresses that developing economies need to understand multinational business strategies if they want foreign investment to contribute to economic transformation. World Bank

The relevant question is therefore not, “Are they using us?” The more useful question is, “What are they using, what are we receiving in exchange, what capability are we accumulating, and how does our bargaining position change after the transaction?”

If a foreign manufacturer uses African labour while workers acquire industrial skills, domestic suppliers emerge, technology is transferred, exports increase, local managers acquire international operating knowledge, tax revenues expand, and domestic firms eventually become competitors, the relationship can contribute to development. If the same investor uses an African resource while almost every sophisticated activity remains outside Africa and few domestic capabilities are created, the relationship may be commercially valuable while remaining developmentally shallow. Economic use is therefore neither inherently good nor inherently bad. Its developmental quality depends upon reciprocity, capability accumulation, and progression.

This principle applies to nations just as it applies to companies. A company that produces nothing customers need eventually disappears. A port that no trade route needs has limited economic relevance. A currency nobody wants to hold or transact in has limited international monetary relevance. A financial centre matters because capital finds it useful. A logistics hub matters because trade finds it useful. A technology platform matters because businesses and consumers depend upon its capability. A manufacturing cluster matters because global firms can obtain combinations of suppliers, labour, infrastructure, and expertise there that are costly to reproduce elsewhere.

Africa therefore needs to ask a more difficult question than “How can we stop outsiders from using our resources?” It must ask, “How can we become useful to the world in more sophisticated ways?” Can the world use African financial institutions to finance international transactions? Can global manufacturers use African intermediate goods? Can international companies use African technology? Can global consumers use African brands? Can energy systems use African manufactured components rather than only African minerals? Can global businesses use African logistics networks? Can international investors use deep African capital markets? Can researchers use African intellectual property? Can global AI systems use technologies and applications created by African companies under terms that preserve African ownership and value?

This is not submission to globalization. It is the construction of strategic relevance within globalization.

The danger is not being needed. The danger is being needed for too little.

If Africa remains useful primarily because others need what lies beneath African soil, then Africa’s economic relevance remains vulnerable to substitution, technological change, commodity cycles, and bargaining asymmetry. If Africa becomes useful because it possesses integrated industrial systems, sophisticated companies, technology, finance, brands, logistics, knowledge, infrastructure, and enormous productive markets, its relevance becomes structurally deeper.

This is also where the concept of exchangeable economic value meets labour. A young population is frequently presented as one of Africa’s greatest assets. But population is potential. The global economy does not pay simply because millions of young Africans exist. It pays for productive capability. Skills become exchangeable economic value when they solve problems another economic participant is willing to pay to have solved. My Africa Labour Economy therefore asks not simply how many Africans are working but what productive capability African labour possesses and what standard of life that capability can command. Development must transform population into productive labour, productive labour into income, income into savings, savings into capital, capital into productive assets, and productive assets into greater demand for increasingly sophisticated labour.

Capital itself follows the same principle. Money is valuable because of what it can command in exchange. But money becomes developmentally powerful when it can enter productive relationships. My Savings Centric Society argues that savings preserve part of present economic value so it can finance future production. Paul C Udeh A nation may possess savings, but if it lacks credible businesses, investable projects, financial institutions, industrial opportunities, and trustworthy markets, the preserved capital will search elsewhere for productive use. Exchangeable economic value therefore attracts capital because it gives capital somewhere productive to go.

This explains why the phrase “You cannot be more devil than the devil” belongs inside this argument. Sophisticated international investors spend their professional lives searching for exchangeable economic value. They compare markets, risks, prices, technologies, currencies, sectors, management teams, political environments, growth prospects, and exit possibilities. Africa cannot hide the absence of productive substance behind impressive narratives about population, resources, and opportunity. Investors can compare Africa with Asia, Latin America, Europe, North America, and the Middle East almost instantaneously. They can allocate capital elsewhere. If they repeatedly refuse to enter a supposedly extraordinary opportunity, Africa should be willing to investigate whether what it calls value is sufficiently exchangeable under the actual conditions investors face.

This is not an argument that foreign investors possess superior knowledge or that Africa should allow outsiders to define African worth. It is an argument about market discipline. Economic value becomes internationally consequential when another participant voluntarily gives something valuable to obtain it. The exchange itself becomes evidence. If nobody wants to buy the product, finance the company, license the technology, use the service, hire the skill, enter the market, or build around the infrastructure, then the claimed economic value deserves examination.

The principle also contains a warning against vanity valuation. We can tell ourselves that an African company is worth billions. We can tell ourselves African resources are priceless. We can tell ourselves a market of hundreds of millions must be attractive. But claimed value and exchangeable value are different categories. Exchangeable economic value requires another party to surrender capital, goods, technology, knowledge, labour, or opportunity in return.

Africa should therefore seek a progression from being used to being needed, from being needed to becoming difficult to replace, and from being difficult to replace to controlling increasingly valuable terms of exchange. That is the path from economic relevance toward economic power.

Globalization is already an enormous network of nations using one another. The United States uses foreign manufacturing, capital, talent, and resources. China uses global commodities, markets, technologies, and capital. Europe uses international energy, labour, markets, and supply chains. Financial centres use global savings. Manufacturing centres use global demand. Resource economies use foreign technology. Export economies use foreign consumers. There is no advanced economy standing outside reciprocal economic use.

Africa’s goal should therefore not be economic purity. It should be economic indispensability.

The strongest sign that Africa has developed will not be that nobody can economically use Africa. It will be that the world needs increasingly sophisticated things Africa produces, while Africa possesses the companies, institutions, knowledge, capital, technology, and bargaining power required to capture a progressively larger share of the resulting value.

Economic relevance emerges when others repeatedly need what you produce. Economic power emerges when you increasingly control the conditions under which they obtain it.

References informing this article include OECD Foreign Direct Investment for Development, World Bank Investment Perspective on Global Value Chains, OECD Investment Policy Review of China, and my Savings Centric Society and Economic Journey of Money frameworks.