Peter Obi Advocates Human Capital Investment to Tackle Trump’s Tariffs

He made this while speaking at the plenary session of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council (CWEIC) Trade and Investment Summit 2025 in London on Tuesday.

Mr Obi emphasised that Africa’s pathway to relevance and resilience in the evolving global economy lies in harnessing its youthful population and vast resources.

The former Governor of Anambra State noted that interventions by President Trump had already disrupted long-standing assumptions of global trade, with many nations adopting protective measures to safeguard their economies, lamenting that African countries have largely failed to respond proactively.

“Despite its vast opportunities, Africa’s share of global trade remains at a paltry 2-3 per cent, with its GDP share at about 3 per cent,” Mr Obi stated, adding that Africa’s GDP per capita stands at just $1,900, compared to about $9,000 in Asia per World Trade Organisation (WTO) data.

He warned that this persists even though Africa has the second-largest and most populous continent of about 1.5 billion people and the world’s largest concentration of working-age population

Mr Obi pointed out that the continent boasts abundant natural resources, including nearly a billion hectares of uncultivated arable land and over 30 per cent of the world’s mineral reserves but these remain underutilised.

“Africa holds over 60 per cent of the world’s arable land. Our food and agriculture market, currently valued at $280 billion annually, is projected to exceed $1 trillion by 2030,” he explained, adding that, “With agriculture at the core of our economic transformation, Africa can emerge as a global agricultural powerhouse and a net exporter of food.”

He lamented that leadership remains the lacking element and called for a transformative shift in governance across the continent, advocating one that embraces innovative education, healthcare investment, and poverty reduction.

“What is missing is leadership that can reorder priorities and scale up productivity so that African countries can move into higher levels of value creation,” he argued.

“We have seen promising signs in better-governed African countries. The challenge remains scaling up and sustaining this across the region,” he added.

Mr Obi urged African leaders to learn from Asia’s developmental state model, which prioritised human capital and productivity over mere institutional imports from Western economies, and called for bold, visionary leadership to steer Africa toward economic self-reliance and global competitiveness.

“Africa must rebuild its economies through leadership that focuses on rapid upgrades in productive capacities, especially in education and healthcare, to lift millions out of poverty and seize the opportunities of the new global economy,” he said.