By Rasigan Maharajh, PhD, MASSAf.
1 July 2026
Africa is the second-largest continent on our home planet and spans approximately 29.6 million square kilometres. As of 30 June 2026, Africa is home to an estimated 1.58 billion people thereby constituting the second-largest human collective on Earth (UN, 2026). With a median age of 19.5 years and a rapidly urbanising population (45.6% of which resides in urban areas), the continent is poised for profound demographic and spatial transformation (UN, 2026). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development projects that Africa’s urban population will double to 1.4 billion by 2050, cementing its status as the second most urbanised continent after Asia (OECD, 2026). Yet, this demographic dynamism stands in stark contradiction to its material conditions: 73% of the world’s Least Developed Countries are located in Africa (UNCTAD, 2026), and the continent remains exceptionally vulnerable to climate extremes, with 60% of its population lacking access to early warning systems (WMO, 2026).
This vulnerability is not merely a geographical misfortune but a structural outcome of Africa’s subordinate position within the capitalist world-system. In 2025, while global economic output reached nearly US$115 trillion at a growth rate of 3.2%, Sub-Saharan Africa contributed a mere US$2.5 trillion which measures approximately 1.9% of global nominal output, or 3% in purchasing power parity terms (IMF, 2026). Thus, despite housing 19% of the world’s population, the continent produces less than 2% of global output. This is not an incidental lag but a manifestation of a deeply entrenched international division of labour, wherein Africa is relegated to the periphery as a primary commodity exporter. As the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development notes, primary products account for more than 60% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s productive structure, rendering the region acutely susceptible to global price shocks and external demand fluctuations (UNCTAD, 2022).
Indeed, the failure to achieve structural transformation is the defining feature of contemporary African political economy. Chuma Maxwele and colleagues at Nelson Mandela University argue that, with the partial exceptions of South Africa and Mauritius, African economies have largely failed to pivot toward high-value manufacturing, remaining locked into raw material extraction while other developing
regions have successfully industrialised (Maxwele et al., 2026). This diagnosis is corroborated by the Africa Industrialization Index, which finds that intra-African trade stands at a meagre 14.4% of total trade, reflecting fragmented production networks and weak regional integration (AfDB, 2026). In a striking illustration of this stagnation—and the uneven development it produces, the AfDB finds that Morocco has overtaken South Africa as the continent’s most industrialised economy, driven by sustained industrial policy and export diversification, while South Africa’s competitiveness has steadily declined amid a persistent over-reliance on platinum and gold exports (AfDB, 2026).
The orthodox policy prescription for this predicament is typically framed in terms of “economic complexity.” A collaborative report by DHL and the University of Pretoria’s GIBS posits that increasing the diversity and sophistication of exports is intrinsically linked to wealth creation, reduced inequality, and diminished environmental impact (Fouche and McCloud, 2025). Accordingly, it proposes tailored industrial strategies for select African nations—from Angola’s pivot to renewable energy components to Ethiopia’s expansion into chemicals and Kenya’s diversification into packaged medicaments. However, from a critical Marxist perspective, this prescription is premised on a liberal fallacy: that integration into global value chains on improved terms is sufficient to catalyse endogenous development.
This assumption is empirically and theoretically contested by the very research it seeks to inform. In their econometric study of 27 Sub-Saharan African countries from 1995 to 2022, Maxwele and colleagues deliver a decisive counter-finding: economic complexity does not, in fact, improve economic performance in the region. Rather, they argue, complexity functions analogously to foreign direct investment—it is centralised, exclusionary, and fails to distribute benefits to the masses (Maxwele et al., 2026). They conclude that “producing huge amounts of goods does not necessarily make a country competitive”; instead, competitiveness derives from investment in research and development, which enhances a nation’s capacity for complex production. Crucially, they insist that regional policies must prioritise inclusivity to ensure that the transition toward sophisticated production benefits the poor through improved income distribution and employment (Maxwele et al., 2026). This finding exposes the contradiction at the heart of orthodox development policy: even when structural transformation occurs, it may replicate, rather than resolve, the inequalities inherent in capitalist accumulation.
This economic marginalisation is inseparable from, and indeed exacerbated by, the ecological crisis. The African continent is warming at a rate substantially higher than the global average, and the year 2025 ranked among the warmest on record (WMO, 2026). Mount Kilimanjaro’s glaciers have lost over 90% of their area since the end of the nineteenth century, and sea-level rise along African coasts—reaching 5.6 mm per year in the Red Sea—exceeds the global average (WMO, 2026). Ocean acidification and marine heatwaves continue to degrade ecosystems upon which millions depend. The human toll is staggering as in 2025, climate-related events affected at least 13 million people, claimed over 3,000 lives, and triggered cascading economic and social disruptions (WMO, 2026). These are not collateral damages but systemic outcomes of a world-system that externalises ecological costs onto the most vulnerable peripheries.
The conclusion is inescapable: to persist on the current trajectory is to court deeper ecological precarity and reinforced structural subordination. The prevailing policy framework, which promotes export-led growth and fragmented national strategies, serves only to perpetuate unequal exchange and deepen dependency. As the AfDB’s own reports acknowledge, Africa’s industrial integration remains critically low, and the continent’s insertion into global circuits of capital is characterised by extraction and asymmetry. A genuinely transformative alternative must therefore begin with a fundamental reorientation: linking energy and industrial production to real social needs and local ecological conditions, fostering regional and continental integration as a bulwark against external volatility, and instituting democratic planning and coordination to resist the policy fads of international financial institutions. Without such a rupture, the continent will remain ensnared in an unfolding tragedy of underinvestment, marginalisation, and accumulation by dispossession.
* Invited input to Green Extractivism, Climate Emergency, False Solutions and Crisis in Climate Politics Session of the Pan-African Gathering on Green Extractivism, Convened by WoMin African Alliance and partners, Johannesburg.
References
AfDB. 2026. Africa Industrialization Index, African Development Bank Group.
AfDB. 2026. Africa Industrial Investment Barometer, African Development Bank Group.
Chuma Maxwele, C.; Anakpo, G.; and Mishi, S. 2026. Economic Complexity and Economic Growth Rate in Sub-Saharan Africa, African Journal of Business and Economic Research 21(1).
Francois Fouche, F. and Macleod, I. 2024. Africa: Build, connect and thrive, DHL GIBS Big Data Series, GIBS Centre for African Management and Markets.
IMF. 2026. World Economic Outlook: Global Economy in the Shadow of War, April Edition, International Monetary Fund, Washington.
Maharajh, R. 2025. Ecological Challenges for Systems of Innovation Analysis in Africa, Chapter 6 in Scerri, M. [editor] Understanding Systems of Innovation in Africa – A Political Economy Approach, AOSIS Publishers, Cape Town.
Maharajh, R. and Tivana, S. 2024. Ecocide or Socialism: Ecological Challenges and the Contradictions of Neoliberal Capitalism, Chapter 12 in Balfour, R.J. [editor] Mzala Nxumalo, Leftist Thought and Contemporary South Africa, Jacana Press, Johannesburg.
Mazibuko-Makena, Z. & Maharajh, R. [Editors] 2026. South Africa in an Age of Disasters: Managing Risk and Building Competence, Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, Johannesburg.
OECD. 2025. Africa’s Urbanisation Dynamics: Planning for Urban Expansion, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris.
UN. 2025. World Population Database, New York.
WMO. 2026. State of the Climate in Africa, World Meteorological Organisation, Geneva.
WMO. 2026. State of World Climate, World Meteorological Organisation, Geneva.
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