Why the Next Generation of African Growth Depends on Accessing Global African Talent Across Africa, organisations are investing heavily in infrastructure, technology, industrialisation and regional expansion. Yet one challenge continues to emerge in boardrooms across sectors: Growth ambitions are outpacing leadership pipelines. Whether speaking to CEOs in banking, manufacturing, telecommunications, energy or development finance, the conversation is increasingly the same. Orga

The traditional narrative around African talent has long been shaped by concern over brain drain — the movement of highly skilled professionals away from the continent in pursuit of opportunities elsewhere. For many years, this movement was viewed primarily as a challenge: a loss of expertise, leadership and capability. Yet conversations taking place across boardrooms and talent forums increasingly suggest that the story is evolving. During this year’s Talent Agenda Series pa

For too long, Africa’s talent narrative has been shaped externally - by global benchmarks, imported frameworks, and assumptions that do not fully reflect the continent’s realities. The result is a persistent disconnect: between how African employers present themselves, and how African talent actually experiences work, opportunity, and growth. That gap is no longer sustainable. If African organisations are to compete for the continent’s most valuable asset, its people, they mu

Talent as the Execution Layer of Policy Across Africa, the narrative of economic transformation is often framed around capital: access to funding, foreign investment, infrastructure financing, and liquidity. Yet, increasingly, the constraint is not capital availability, but the ability to deploy it effectively. Capital enables intent. Talent enables execution. Governments and institutions are setting ambitious agendas, from industrialisation to digital transformation. But pol