China presents Africa with a difficult intellectual challenge because China’s economic rise cannot be understood if every economic decision is judged only by the amount of money immediately captured. China did not become a manufacturing and trading power merely by demanding the highest price for everything Chinese, maximizing every wage, extracting the highest possible return from every foreign investor, or treating every unit of foreign profit as a Chinese loss. It built a system in which competitive production, infrastructure, foreign investment, domestic capital formation, technology absorption, industrial clustering, exports, and enormous scale reinforced one another. My proposition is therefore not that Africa should imitate China mechanically, nor that China’s policies are universally transferable. It is that China demonstrates an economic principle Africa urgently needs to understand: our gain is not always in the number we capture today. Sometimes the greater gain is the productive position we acquire tomorrow.

China’s transformation makes this visible historically. IMF data show that Chinese exports rose from approximately $10 billion in 1978 to $278 billion by 2000, while FDI inflows reached about $47 billion in 2000. IMF China did not simply sell goods abroad. It inserted itself progressively into the productive architecture of globalization. Foreign manufacturers entered. Industrial clusters formed. Workers accumulated manufacturing experience. Infrastructure expanded. Domestic suppliers learned. Export processing deepened. Technology entered and was progressively absorbed. Chinese companies eventually moved from low cost manufacturing into increasingly sophisticated sectors.

The special economic zones illustrate the strategic mindset. World Bank research describes China’s early zones as environments where foreign investors received lower tax rates, simplified administrative and customs procedures, duty free access to imported inputs, flexible labour arrangements, and other mechanisms designed to make productive participation attractive. World Bank Another World Bank assessment estimated that by 2007 China’s different forms of economic zones and industrial parks accounted for about 22 percent of national GDP, 46 percent of FDI, 60 percent of exports, and more than 30 million jobs. World Bank Blogs The precise historical numbers matter, but the strategic logic matters more. China did not ask only, “How much can we extract from the investor before the investor enters?” It also asked, in effect, “What productive ecosystem can we build if the investor has sufficient reason to enter?”

That is where Africa must reconsider the meaning of gain. Suppose a country can charge a foreign manufacturer $100 for access to something today, but charging $70 attracts a factory that subsequently creates thousands of jobs, trains engineers, develops local suppliers, exports billions of dollars of products, pays taxes for decades, transfers knowledge, and causes additional investors to cluster around it. Which number represents the greater gain? The immediate accountant sees the $30 apparently surrendered. The development strategist sees the productive system acquired. Our gain is not necessarily the highest number at the first transaction. Our gain may be the length and value of the economic journey created after the transaction.

China’s exchange rate provides another illustration, but one that requires precision. It would be inaccurate to claim simply that China continuously devalues its currency deliberately to make exports cheap. In its 2025 Article IV assessment, the IMF reported that relatively low Chinese inflation compared with trading partners produced real exchange rate depreciation and that this contributed to export competitiveness and China’s strong external performance. Chinese authorities disputed the implication that this represented an intentional competitive depreciation strategy, stating that China had no intention of obtaining trade advantage through currency depreciation and that the real effective depreciation largely reflected lower relative inflation. IMF The evidence therefore supports the narrower point: relative price competitiveness matters enormously, and China has benefited from economic conditions that made its exports more competitive internationally.

That distinction actually strengthens the Beyond Numerical Value argument. A currency possessing a larger nominal number is not necessarily a stronger economic asset. A higher wage is not automatically a stronger wage if productivity and purchasing power do not support it. A higher price is not automatically a stronger product if customers can obtain better value elsewhere. The global economy does not reward a nation because its domestic participants believe their assets deserve high numerical recognition. It rewards productive combinations of price, quality, reliability, technology, scale, and strategic usefulness.

Consider BYD. In 2008, MidAmerican Energy Holdings, associated with Berkshire Hathaway, agreed to purchase 225 million BYD shares representing roughly 10 percent of the company for HK$1.8 billion, approximately $230 million at the time. SEC That historical transaction matters because it illustrates the attraction of future value. The foreign investor was not being invited to purchase a mature company after every possibility had already been priced away. The investment represented a claim on uncertain future productive capability. BYD subsequently had to build that capability. The gain to China was not merely the numerical amount of foreign capital entering in 2008. The deeper gain lay in the continued development of a Chinese technological and manufacturing company capable of competing internationally.

This is where Africa’s mentality toward valuation deserves examination. The current public offering of Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals is historically significant. Reuters reports an implied valuation of approximately $47.6 billion, with 4.1 billion shares offered at ₦525 each to raise approximately $1.6 billion. Reuters I do not claim that the refinery is worth $5 billion rather than $47.6 billion, because such a claim would require a serious valuation analysis of earnings, assets, liabilities, cash flows, margins, expansion, comparable companies, risk, and future prospects. Nor can we state that a Chinese owner would necessarily have priced the same refinery at $5 billion. That would be speculation.

But the thought experiment behind that comparison remains powerful. What if the objective of a strategic African listing were not merely to establish the highest defensible valuation, but to create the deepest possible pipeline of global capital into African industrial ownership? What if the calculation included not only what existing owners receive today, but also how many institutional investors enter, how much international analyst coverage develops, how much secondary market liquidity emerges, how many future capital raises become possible, how many African pension funds participate, how many foreign investors begin studying Nigerian industrial assets, and how much additional capital follows the first successful investment?

This is the difference between numerical gain and strategic gain. The refinery’s official site describes an industrial system that now includes refining, petrochemicals, power, storage, marine infrastructure, logistics, and exports, with current refining capacity of 700,000 barrels per day and an expansion pathway toward 1.4 million. Dangote Refinery The strategic value of such an asset is therefore larger than a single market capitalization number. It sits inside Nigeria’s industrialization, energy security, trade balance, foreign exchange generation, capital markets, employment, supplier development, and international investment story. The valuation matters. But participation matters too.

This is why Africa must become careful about overpricing itself economically. I do not mean African resources should be sold cheaply, African workers should be deliberately impoverished, African companies should surrender ownership, or African governments should compete through destructive tax concessions. That would replace one mistake with another. I mean that Africa cannot demand premium prices while offering subpremium economic environments. If electricity is expensive, logistics unreliable, capital costly, contracts difficult, currency access uncertain, and regulation unpredictable, then adding an excessive asset price on top of those structural costs can eliminate the investor’s remaining economic reason to participate.

The IMF’s 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for sub Saharan Africa describes domestic financial markets across the region as shallow, fragmented, illiquid, and burdened by high transaction costs and lending spreads. It notes that these structural weaknesses increase financing costs for both governments and businesses. IMF eLibrary Africa therefore confronts a contradiction if it simultaneously complains that capital is too expensive while designing economic relationships that leave capital insufficient opportunity to earn attractive risk adjusted returns. Industrialization requires patient capital. Patient capital requires a reason to be patient.

South Korea’s development experience provides another useful comparison. OECD research describes Korea’s progression from light industry into heavy industry, chemicals, automobiles, electronics, and information technology. More than 30 percent of GDP was saved and invested annually during important phases of this transformation, while foreign investment supplemented domestic capital and brought technology. OECD Singapore used foreign investment even more aggressively. World Bank research describes large inflows of foreign direct investment into export oriented manufacturing as a central element of Singapore’s industrialization, bringing capital, technology, managerial expertise, and access to international markets. World Bank These countries did not develop because foreign investors loved them. Foreign capital entered because economic relationships existed from which investors expected to benefit, while national institutions worked to convert those relationships into domestic capability.

That is the mentality Africa needs. Foreign investors are not charities. They are not coming principally because Africa possesses a compelling historical story, youthful population, abundant resources, or developmental need. They enter when expected return justifies risk. The question is therefore not whether Africa can be smarter than the investor. It is the question I have framed elsewhere as “You cannot be more devil than the devil.” My argument there is that sophisticated investors already understand risk, profit, competition, and capital preservation. Africa’s task is not to outsmart capital but to construct an environment in which rational capital sees sufficient reason to participate. Paul C Udeh

If we attempt to capture every gain before the investor arrives, there may be no gain left that gives the investor reason to arrive. If every security is priced as though its future success is already guaranteed, every business is sold as though all growth has already occurred, every loan carries an interest rate that productive activity cannot earn above, every transaction carries excessive fees, and every asset owner assumes scarcity alone justifies a premium, Africa can become rich in asking prices and poor in transactions.

Our gain is not in numbers. Our gain is in what the numbers cause to happen.

A lower number that activates production can be economically superior to a higher number that prevents production. A competitive price that opens a global market can be strategically superior to a premium price that leaves goods unsold. A reasonable return offered to foreign capital can be superior to extracting every possible immediate payment if that capital builds an industry. A carefully priced IPO that creates liquidity, investor participation, and repeated access to capital can generate more strategic value than an impressive headline valuation with little participation.

The ultimate Chinese lesson is therefore not cheapness. It is strategic economic positioning. China built itself into a productive system the world could use. Companies entered because China offered combinations of labour, infrastructure, scale, suppliers, logistics, policy, markets, and manufacturing capability. China then learned, accumulated, reinvested, upgraded, and increasingly produced its own globally competitive firms. The investor made money. China gained capability. The foreign corporation obtained production. Chinese workers obtained industrial experience. Global consumers obtained products. Chinese suppliers obtained demand. The country accumulated economic power.

Africa should seek the same principle without pretending that another nation’s historical model can simply be copied. Our gain should be measured by the productive capability accumulated through the exchange. If we receive capital, technology, knowledge, employment, industrial capacity, global market access, supplier development, and export capability, allowing another economic participant to profit does not automatically make us losers.

In the global economic contest, the strongest economy is not necessarily the economy that charges everybody else the most. It is the economy that makes itself sufficiently useful, competitive, investable, and productive that enormous volumes of capital, technology, goods, knowledge, and commercial relationships continually move through it.

When the objective is merely the number, value can fade away. When the objective is productive power, the numbers eventually become ours.

References informing this article include IMF 2025 Article IV Consultation with China, World Bank research on Chinese special economic zones, OECD analysis of Korea’s trade and investment transformation, World Bank analysis of Singapore’s foreign investment model, and my earlier article Nigeria’s Economic Milestone: You Cannot Be More Devil Than the Devil.