Every time we talk about Africa’s future, the conversation seems to revolve around the same themes: investment, industrialisation, manufacturing and economic growth. Across the continent, governments are competing to attract investors, entrepreneurs are scaling businesses, and commentators are describing Africa as the world’s next growth story.

As someone who writes about health, I have found myself listening to these conversations differently. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that economic growth and public health are not separate conversations. They are deeply connected.
It started with cocoa.

Last week, Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon, four countries that together produce more than two-thirds of the world’s cocoa, announced plans to stop exporting raw cocoa beans and instead focus on processing more of their cocoa at home. The principle was simple. If Africa grows so much of the world’s cocoa, more of its value should be created on the continent.

What caught my attention, however, was not only the economics. It was the health potential sitting inside the same crop. Before cocoa becomes chocolate, it begins as cacao, an ingredient naturally rich in antioxidants that has long been associated with heart health and overall wellbeing. For decades, African countries have exported that raw ingredient while businesses elsewhere have transformed it into finished products, global brands and entire consumer industries.

Cocoa is not the only example. Zambia has baobab, a fruit naturally rich in fibre, vitamin C and antioxidants. Around the world, baobab is increasingly recognised as a wellness ingredient, yet here it is still mainly seen as part of our beautiful landscape than as the foundation of a modern manufacturing industry.

That’s when I realised we might be asking the wrong question.

We’ve spent years asking how Africa can industrialise. Perhaps we should also be asking what we choose to industrialise. Why should our focus remain on exporting raw products when we could create far more value by processing them into quality goods here on the continent? In doing so, we would not only create jobs and strengthen local industries, but also help make health and wellbeing part of Africa’s economic story rather than something we only discuss once people become ill.

That idea matters because aspiration has always shaped how ordinary families consume. There was a time when imported soft drinks, fast food and packaged convenience meals were reserved for special occasions because they were expensive and difficult to access. As incomes rose, those products became more common, and with them came a quiet belief that consuming what wealthier countries consumed meant we had finally arrived. Aspiration, after all, is often shaped by what we once lacked.

There is nothing wrong with wanting convenience, variety or the pleasures that come with rising incomes. The opportunity is to widen what aspiration can look like. What if locally manufactured wellness products carried the same sense of quality, innovation and success? What if healthier choices became part of what modern African prosperity looked like instead of something imported from somewhere else?

Manufacturing does more than create employment. It shapes culture. It influences what fills our supermarket shelves, what families keep in their cupboards and what children eventually consider normal. The products we choose to manufacture today quietly influence the habits of tomorrow.

The consequences are already visible. Non-communicable diseases accounted for 31 per cent of deaths in Zambia in 2021, according to the World Health Organization. Across Africa, 25 million adults are living with diabetes, and 18 million of them are undiagnosed. Those figures are not only about clinics, medicines and healthcare. They reflect the daily environments in which people eat, work, move and make choices.

This is why the opportunity cannot be reduced to telling individuals to live better. People make decisions within the systems available to them. If the healthier option is expensive, imported or difficult to find, while other choices are familiar and accessible, awareness alone will not change much. But if African businesses can manufacture appealing, affordable wellness products at scale from ingredients already growing on the continent, then prevention begins to move from advice into infrastructure.
Africa therefore has an advantage that earlier industrial economies did not. We can see the long-term cost of building growth first and trying to repair health later. We can choose a broader model, one that creates jobs, adds value to local agriculture and responds to the growing global demand for prevention, healthier ageing and everyday wellbeing.

This does not mean every factory must become a wellness factory, nor does it require us to romanticise every indigenous ingredient. It simply means recognising that some of what the world is searching for already grows here, and that our role should not end at supplying the raw material.

As Zambia and the wider continent enter a defining period of growth, perhaps the question is no longer how quickly we can industrialise. Perhaps it is what kind of industries do we want to be known for and what kind of value they will create. If we can industrialise our own health assets, we may build businesses that employ people, strengthen local supply chains and make healthier choices more visible in ordinary homes.

The factories we build today will shape more than our exports. They will influence what our children consume, what our families aspire to and whether Africa’s next chapter of prosperity also becomes a healthier one.

Kaajal Vaghela is a cultural wellness advisor with over three decades of lived experience managing Type 1 diabetes in Zambia and the diaspora. Having previously served as Chairperson of the Lusaka branch of the Diabetes Association of Zambia, she remains a passionate advocate for breaking down myths and building awareness about diabetes. For more personalised coaching or corporate wellness workshops, visit: www.kaajalvaghela.com and for any feedback: [email protected])