By Ebenezer NJOKU The imperative for Africa to reclaim greater control over its economic destiny by shifting away from narrow GDP-led assessments of growth toward frameworks centred on sovereignty, domestic value retention and regional industrial integration dominated discussions at the 2026 Ishmael Yamson and Associates Business Roundtable in Accra.
Held under the theme ‘The next quarter century: infrastructure, integration and African sovereignty’, the forum convened policy-makers, corporate leaders and development strategists who argued that Africa’s long-standing dependence on extractive growth models — increasingly mirrored in the digital economy — has left the continent generating wealth without sufficiently retaining it, underscoring the need to rethink how growth, trade and investment are structured across the continent.
A major focus of the discussion was the distinction between gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national product (GNP).
While GDP measures the total value of goods and services produced within a country’s borders regardless of ownership, GNP measures the income ultimately earned by a country’s citizens and businesses, including income generated abroad, while excluding profits repatriated by foreign firms.
Speakers argued that the gap between the two is particularly significant for resource-dependent African economies, where strong GDP growth can coexist with limited domestic wealth creation and weak employment outcomes if profits largely leave the continent.
Setting the tone for the discussions, Ishmael Yamson Jr., Chief Executive Officer of Ishmael Yamson and Associates, criticised conventional growth metrics for obscuring the extent to which economic activity benefits local economies.
“GDP is merely a measure of extraction.
When a foreign conglomerate extracts a billion from our soil and repatriates the dividends, our GDP rises and we celebrate; but it creates zero employment in our economies,” he said.
He challenged CEOs in the room to pool balance sheets across borders and build Pan-African joint ventures capable of outcompeting legacy global firms, warning that “treaties do not build supply chains.” Finance Minister, Dr.
Cassiel Ato Forson, echoed the sentiments in his keynote address, telling delegates that the tragedy of Africa’s economic history is not the absence of resources; it has been the persistent export of value and the import dependency, and warned that the pattern was now repeating itself in digital form.
“Our raw materials still leave.
Increasingly, our data also leaves.
Who owns Africa’s digital waves? Who stores Africa’s data? Who finances Africa’s fibre backbone? And who controls Africa’s payment systems?” he quizzed.
He announced that Ghana was targeting 3,000 megawatts of additional installed generation capacity by 2030, with 30 percent from renewables, and framed energy access as a precondition for industrialisation.
“We cannot industrialise....
