This piece is the second in a series with Development Reimagined on “China through African eyes”. Too often focus on China is either on what it has achieved or on it as a competitor. The series explores the “how” of China, and how and when African countries can adapt this into our contexts. Part one of the series is available here.
The sentence landed like a thunderclap in China. Deng Xiaoping, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, said in 1978: “Let some people get rich first.” It was controversial, uncomfortable and politically risky. But it was also pragmatic. Deng Xiaoping was not celebrating inequality; he was sequencing development. Africa today faces a similar moment of strategic choice.
From shore to strategy
Although value addition and industrialisation have finally begun to dominate Africa’s policy agenda, little attention is paid to its geographical ordering. Much of Africa’s territorial layout stems from colonial-era border-making that paid little regard to industrialisation logic. The preservation of much of those colonial borders on independence left many nations either fully landlocked or with coastlines too modest for their territory.
Yet proximity to the coast remains a decisive factor for competitive industrialisation. Maritime transport dominates global trade for good reason: it delivers the lowest cost per ton, benefits from enormous economies of scale and offers efficient containerised logistics that spread fuel and operational costs over vast volumes. Countries cut off from efficient coastal access inevitably face higher structural trade costs – so investment hesitates and exports struggle.
Across the continent, governments – whether landlocked or constrained by short coastlines – are investing heavily in infrastructure projects to attract industrial investment and boost exports. Roads, port and industrial parks are all stretched across vast territories, diluting their impact.
Wouldn’t these efforts generate more value if sequenced coast first, inland later?
The case for coastal-first
China offers a useful, though not identical, reference point. When it launched its industrialisation push, it did not attempt to do so everywhere at once. It began on the coast. Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen – modest fishing towns at the time – became special economic zones. The results were extraordinary. Shenzhen’s economy grew at 58% between 1980 and 1984, dramatically outpacing the national average. Foreign direct investment (FDI) poured in; in 1981 alone, the four zones attracted nearly 60% of China’s total FDI. The logic was clear: start where trade is cheapest and capital is most mobile; and then expand inland. Once these coastal hubs had accumulated capital and technology, China established 35 “economic and technological development zones” in inland provinces in 1992, followed by the 1999 “Great Western Development” campaign, which channelled investment into the hinterlands for hydropower, coal and mineral resources in response to increasing demand from the east of the country. This was not accidental geography. It was strategy.
Political courage and economic sequencing
Deng’s famous phrase was not about favouritism. It was about acceleration; accepting temporary regional inequality so that national wealth could expand faster – and later be redistributed more effectively.
For Africa, this logic requires political courage. It asks governments to say: we will build strong coastal industrial hubs first, not because inland regions matter less, but because sequencing matters more.
Regional economic communities (RECs) are key to this. They already recognise that integration enlarges markets and strengthens value chains. The latest (7th) East African Community Development Strategy launched on 7 March is a key example. But its actualisation is hampered by fragmented planning in practice and competing national priorities – which dilute impact. A deliberate coastal-first approach, coordinated by the RECs, actively advanced at a political level by the African Union and financed by Africa’s multilateral financial institutions and partners could transform ports into shared gateways – not just national assets, but regional engines.
Africa’s vast scale is an under-used advantage. Structuring development around five sub-regions – northern, western, central, eastern and southern Africa – could encourage collaboration within each bloc while fostering competition between blocs. A “regional race to the top” would allow benchmarking in areas such as value addition, infrastructure delivery and human capital, while maintaining cooperation on shared assets like power pools, information and communication technology (ICT) backbones and transport corridors.
Corridors show that it can work
In fact, several African countries and institutions are already experimenting with this logic, but the RECs are not yet holding them to account for it.
Look at the Northern Corridor linking Mombasa to East Africa’s hinterland; the Lobito Corridor connecting Angola to the copper belts of Zambia and the DRC; the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor along West Africa’s dense coastline; and the Ethiopia–Djibouti link that anchors a landlocked economy to global markets. With investment from the African Development Bank, African Finance Corporation and extra-continental development partners, the sequence has always been to build the ports first. That builds a gateway to global markets so that investment can flow in. Only then are inland extensions built. The sequence is not ideological, it is financial.
The problem is that at present there are few meaningful voices within either the RECs or the African multilateral financial institutions (AMFIs) calling for effective regional consolidation. For example the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has 64 ports and container terminals distributed along the coasts of 16 countries. That is four per country. The 16 countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) host 47 ports and container terminals – three per country.
In contrast, the latest data for Shenzhen port – which is China’s third largest – show that in 2023 it handled almost the same amount of trade as all African ports put together.
This fragmentation is not sensible. RECs don’t just need to come up with strategy; they need to push its implementation and hold members accountable for being truly regional in their economic strategy – not just their military or political strategies.
When a government comes to an AMFI or other financial institution with a proposal for a new port, the question must be asked: should money go into this port, or should it go into extending another nearby – even if it is in a neighbouring country – with its transport links improved to enable scale? The opportunity cost needs to be considered.
Moreover, a coastal-first strategy must go beyond transport infrastructure. It requires clustering energy systems, water and sanitation, digital infrastructure, logistics and industrial services in coastal hubs – creating ecosystems rather than isolated projects.
Shenzhen’s early development emphasised turnkey factory shells, bonded warehouses and simplified customs procedures inside the zone, so that investors did not have to pay for or navigate fragmented off‑zone infrastructure and red tape; studies highlight that these public investments and regulatory exemptions “reduced transaction costs and risks for foreign investors”.
Over time, these hubs could generate what we might call “coastal wealth dividends” – fiscal surpluses and investment funds earmarked specifically for inland connectivity, vocational training and industrial parks.
But sequencing works only if governments and financiers make it happen and citizens trust it.
The RECs, financiers and the governments in the regional communities will need to communicate clearly: coastal growth is not an end in itself. It is a catalyst. Inland communities must see tangible links – jobs, training programmes, temporary work visas, supply-chain contracts – within a defined time horizon.
From constraint to advantage
Africa’s size is often framed as a logistical burden. It isn’t – it’s an investment burden. But scale can also be leverage. With coordinated sequencing, coastal gateways can anchor continental value chains – processing minerals before export, assembling manufactured goods, digitising services – while inland regions specialise and integrate as infrastructure deepens.
Africa does not need to replicate China. That is neither recommended nor possible, because the contexts are vastly different. China is a single country and Africa is multiple sovereign states. But the principle of sequencing – of turning coastal access into a launchpad rather than a lottery – is transferable and implementable, especially at the sub-regional level.