JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, February 13, 2026/APO Group/ —By Ray Langa, Group Chief Executive of Leagas Delaney South Africa (www.LeagasDelaney.co.za) and Dark Arts Studio.

Africa doesn’t have a capital problem: it has a collaboration problem. For decades, we’ve convinced ourselves that more investment is the answer, but Ray Langa, Group Chief Executive of Leagas Delaney South Africa (www.LeagasDelaney.co.za), argues we’ve been asking the wrong question. The continent’s real constraint isn’t money but the leadership discipline we’ve yet to master: building together across borders. In this opinion piece, Langa challenges business leaders to confront why continental scale remains elusive despite abundant capital, talent and ambition.

For many years, Africa’s growth conversation has centred on capital, how much of it we lack, how little of it flows into the continent, and how dependent our future is on attracting more of it.

Capital matters. We all know that.

But perhaps we’ve also leaned on capital as an easier explanation than the one that asks more of us.

Because when we look honestly at where growth stalls across the continent, it increasingly feels as though Africa’s most binding constraint is not money, but how we lead together.

Across our markets, we see talent, ambition, creativity and resilience in abundance. Africa today holds significant domestic capital across pension funds, insurance pools and sovereign institutions. Yet true scale, regional, durable and repeatable remains rare.

That tension is worth sitting with. Not to assign blame, but to ask a harder question: what are we not doing collectively that no amount of capital can solve on its own?

When capital fragments, leadership is usually the reason

Capital tends to follow confidence, coordination and clarity. When those conditions exist, money accelerates progress. When they don’t, capital fragments, funding isolated successes instead of shared systems. Many of us have seen this first-hand.

Despite growing investment and ambition, intra-African trade still represents a small portion of our total trade compared to other regions. A continent with extraordinary proximity in challenges and opportunity continues to trade outward more than inward.

It’s tempting to blame infrastructure, regulation or history and undoubtedly all of these matter. But over time, it becomes harder to ignore the role leadership plays in maintaining fragmentation long after the reasons for it should have expired.

Not because Africa cannot collaborate but because collaboration has rarely been treated as a core leadership discipline.

Leadership that stops at borders limits scale

If we’re honest, many of us were taught to lead within boundaries: company lines, sector lines, national borders. Growth was framed outward to Europe, the UK or the US rather than across the continent.

And yet, paradoxically Africa’s most compelling opportunity is continental.

Shared demographics. Adjacent markets. Familiar consumer pressures. Complementary strengths. These conditions should make collaboration almost inevitable. Instead, they are often complicated by ego, fear, and a sense of scarcity that quietly shapes decision-making.

Strong leadership in Africa today may be less about control, and more about coordination. The ability to align interests, share risk and build ecosystems rather than empires.

Without that, scale remains fragile, no matter how much capital enters the system.

What listening at scale has taught me

I work in advertising, an industry often mistaken for being about messaging, when in reality it is about listening.

I’ve had the privilege of working with brands that speak to millions of people across African markets, cultures and income groups. That role creates a kind of proximity to everyday realities that is difficult to gain elsewhere. How people make choices, where trust breaks down, what they aspire to, and what they worry about.

Over time, patterns begin to emerge.

When brands succeed across markets, it’s rarely because of creativity alone. It’s because teams align around shared insight, collaborate across borders and execute with consistency and discipline. When brands fail, it’s almost always fragmentation, disconnected thinking, siloed leadership and competing priorities.

Working at that scale has challenged many of my own assumptions about leadership. It has made one thing clear, people across Africa are often more connected in their realities than the leaders and systems built to serve them.

That gap between lived experience and leadership behaviour is where collaboration quietly breaks down.

Collaboration isn’t soft, it’s something we’re still learning

We often talk about collaboration in Africa as a value, something cultural, aspirational even intuitive. But lived experience suggests it may be one of the hardest leadership disciplines we’ve yet to master.

Many partnerships struggle not because collaboration is impossible, but because accountability feels uncomfortable. Roles blur. Standards drift. Underperformance is tolerated in the name of harmony. Trust erodes quietly.

When collaboration works, it’s usually because leadership is clear, expectations are shared, and responsibility is taken seriously. Conditions we don’t always sustain consistently.

This tension is visible even in our most ambitious continental initiatives. Agreements are signed. Intent is declared. But execution often lags behind aspiration, not for lack of capability, but for lack of sustained, collective leadership attention.

Why collaboration often matters more than competition, for now

Competition has its place. In mature, integrated markets, it sharpens performance and drives innovation.

But in fragmented environments like many of ours, uncoordinated competition can dilute impact, splitting scarce talent, duplicating effort and slowing category development.

Collaboration, when done well, does something different. It pools capability, accelerates entry into new markets, builds resilience and strengthens credibility.

This isn’t an argument against competition. It’s an argument for sequence.

Collaboration helps build the market.

Competition then helps sharpen it.

At this stage of Africa’s development, collaboration may not be idealism at all, it may simply be pragmatic leadership.

Belief comes before scale

Underlying many of these challenges is belief. Not belief in individuals, but belief in collective African capability.

Too often, we look outward for validation before fully backing one another inwardly. Cross-border partnerships within Africa are treated as harder than partnerships across oceans. That mindset subtly reinforces dependency and delays confidence.

Belief changes behaviour. It shapes how willing we are to share, to trust, to take risks together.

Without it, collaboration remains rhetorical.

Choosing a different leadership posture

Africa doesn’t need more declarations about unity. Many of us already agree on the destination.

What may be required now is a shift in posture, a willingness to lead in ways that prioritise coordination over control, shared outcomes over individual wins, and long-term ecosystem building over short-term advantage.

The next phase of African growth is likely to be led by those willing to:

• Think continent before country
• Build coalitions rather than empires
• Hold one another accountable within collaboration
• See scale as something created together, not claimed alone

Capital will follow that kind of leadership. It always does.

Africa’s future won’t be determined by how much money arrives, but by how deliberately we choose to work together with what we already have.

Africa’s growth problem isn’t capital.

It’s leadership without collaboration and that’s something we can choose to change, together.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, February 13, 2026/APO Group/ –Nearly 600 million people across Africa still lack access to electricity, with electrification progress barely keeping pace with population growth and leaving the continent far from universal access targets. Achieving full access will require electricity-access investment to scale toward around $15 billion annually, according to the IEA, yet tracked financing commitments remain below $2.5 billion per year, underscoring a profound capital shortfall.

This mismatch – vast, guaranteed demand paired with chronic under-investment – is precisely what creates durable commercial opportunity. Energy demand across Africa is projected to rise sharply through 2030, driven by urbanization, industrialization, electrification and emerging high-consumption sectors such as data centers. Sub-Saharan Africa contains the majority of the global population without electricity, while the continent hosts 20% of the world’s population but receives only about 2% of global clean-energy investment.

In investment terms, this reflects demand certainty combined with supply scarcity – a dynamic that historically underpins strong long-term project economics. Reliable power fuels industrial growth, digital infrastructure and sustained revenue expansion, linking electrification directly to bankable demand. Closing the supply gap is therefore not just a social imperative, but a continent-wide revenue opportunity for investors.

This commercial logic is already reshaping global portfolio strategy. Major oil companies facing reserve pressure and slowing discoveries are increasingly turning toward frontier regions capable of delivering material new volumes, with Africa at the center of this shift. Industry analysis in 2026 suggests some producers could face production declines of hundreds of thousands of barrels per day within the next decade without major discoveries or acquisitions – intensifying the search for scalable new basins.

Developments progressing through 2025–2026 demonstrate how structural demand is translating into commercially viable assets. Mozambique’s $20 billion LNG project, advancing toward production later this decade, is anchored by tens of trillions of cubic feet of recoverable gas and supported by one of the largest financing packages ever assembled for an African energy development – demonstrating how global gas demand, domestic industrialization and long-term state revenue can align within a single project.

Meanwhile, analysis indicates that developing the continent’s gas resources could play a decisive role in closing the electricity access gap for hundreds of millions of people, while contributing only marginally to global emissions – strengthening the investment rationale even within a transition-constrained financing environment.

“Energy poverty is not just a challenge – it is Africa’s greatest investment opportunity. What we are witnessing today is a historic convergence of demand, resources and political will. The companies and investors that choose to partner with Africa now will not only generate long-term returns, but help power industries, create jobs and define the next era of global energy,” says NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber.

This commercial reality will take center stage at African Energy Week 2026 in Cape Town, where policymakers, operators and financiers will focus on translating structural demand into bankable upstream, LNG, gas-to-power and renewable energy projects. Making energy poverty history will require unprecedented capital deployment – but the investment case is already clear. Vast resources, accelerating demand and a growing pipeline of projects position Africa’s energy gap as one of the defining commercial opportunities of the energy transition era.

PARIS, France, February 13, 2026/APO Group/ –The Republic of Congo marked a major milestone earlier this week with first exports from Phase 2 of its Congo LNG project – amplifying investor interest just ahead of Hydrocarbons Minister Bruno Jean‑Richard Itoua’s engagement at the Invest in African Energy (IAE) Forum in Paris, scheduled for April 22–23, 2026. Operated by Eni, the second phase began exporting from the new Nguya FLNG facility, lifting the country’s liquefaction capacity to 3 million tons per annum and delivering its first cargo in early 2026 following commissioning ahead of schedule.

Phase 2’s start‑up, achieved roughly 35 months after construction began, adds capacity alongside the earlier Tango FLNG unit, reinforcing Congo’s emerging role as a competitive LNG exporter in Africa. The expanded infrastructure draws on gas from the offshore Nené and Litchendjili fields under the Marine XII license, giving the country a stronger foothold in global gas markets at a time when buyers – particularly in Europe – seek diversified supply sources amid a shifting energy landscape.

The timing of Phase 2’s export start-up dovetails with growing international interest in Congo’s broader energy agenda: TotalEnergies recently secured the Nzombo exploration permit with a one-well drilling program, while Perenco is redeveloping its mature Kombi‑Likalala‑Libondo II offshore field with a new platform to extend production and gas recovery.

Minister Itoua, who has been instrumental in advancing upstream, midstream and gas monetization policy in the country, is expected to outline investment opportunities across gas, LNG, marginal fields and exploration at the upcoming forum – providing investors with direct access to Congo’s evolving energy landscape.

Beyond LNG, the Ministry of Hydrocarbons has advanced regulatory reform – including a new gas code nearing adoption that streamlines fiscal terms and clarifies rules for investors – alongside international cooperation to stimulate investment. Past IAE Forum engagements have produced key agreements, such as the 2023 pact with Technip Energies to enhance onshore and offshore capacity and collaborate on decarbonization and energy transition, highlighting Congo’s proactive approach to industry partnerships.

At IAE 2026, investors and policymakers will have the opportunity to engage directly with Minister Itoua and other senior officials on these developments, gaining first‑hand insight into how Congo is balancing gas monetization with broader energy sector growth and unlocking investment opportunities.

Congo’s trajectory – from a mature oil producer to a rapidly evolving LNG exporter – reflects a broader shift in African energy markets toward integrated, export‑oriented gas strategies. By linking robust policy engagement with ambitious infrastructure execution, Congo exemplifies how resource-rich African states can compete for global investment while contributing meaningfully to energy security and economic growth. As Minister Itoua prepares to take the stage in Paris, the Phase 2 LNG milestone serves as concrete evidence of both progress and opportunity for investors prepared to engage with the continent’s expanding energy frontier.