At a global business gathering in New York, surrounded by presidents, chief executives, investors and some of Africa’s most influential business leaders, a question from Yobe State cut through the usual conversation about growth.
It was not about another road. It was not about another government contract. It was not even primarily about attracting investment. It was about what happens to the people left behind when conflict destroys everything they have.
At Unstoppable Africa 2026, the flagship gathering of the Global Africa Business Initiative, held alongside the 81st United Nations General Assembly, Yobe State’s Secretary to the Government, Dr Mohammed Goje, asked Aliko Dangote about opportunities for government to invest in shares as a way of creating sustainable financial security for widows and victims of conflict.
On the surface, it was a question about investment. At a deeper level, it was a question about the purpose of capital.
Unstoppable Africa was explicitly designed around a different conversation about Africa: not merely its potential, but its ability to own, scale and retain value. The 2026 edition brought together more than 2,000 African and global business leaders, with discussions focused on transactions, investment vehicles, infrastructure and African ownership.
Against that backdrop, the Yobe question was striking because it connected the language of capital markets to the reality of a conflict-affected population.
For communities that have experienced insurgency and displacement, rebuilding cannot end when a displaced family returns home. A house can be reconstructed. A school can be reopened. A livelihood programme can provide temporary income. But what happens when the grant ends, the project closes and the humanitarian actors leave?
That is the harder question.
Nigeria has spent years discussing reconstruction, rehabilitation and humanitarian assistance. These interventions remain important. But there is a powerful argument for adding another dimension: asset ownership.
Imagine a social investment vehicle professionally managed at arm’s length from political interference, with clearly defined beneficiaries, independent trustees, transparent reporting and strict fiduciary safeguards.
Instead of only asking how much the government can spend on vulnerable families today, policymakers could also ask how vulnerable families can acquire an asset that generates value tomorrow.
That is the idea hidden inside Goje’s question.
It is not necessarily about buying shares in a particular company. Nor should public money be placed in equities without rigorous risk assessment, legal authority, investment governance and public disclosure. The Nigerian capital market and public finance framework would need to be examined carefully before any such model could be implemented.
But the policy imagination behind the question deserves attention.
Africa’s development debate has spent enormous energy asking how to attract capital. We should equally ask who owns the assets created by that capital.
If Africa’s markets are expected to become one of the world’s major engines of growth, then the beneficiaries of that growth cannot be limited to governments and large investors. The people whose communities have carried the costs of instability must also have a pathway into the wealth being created around them.
This is particularly relevant for Yobe.
A conflict-affected state cannot afford to think about development only in terms of annual budgets. It must think about resilience across generations.
A widow whose husband was killed in conflict does not need sympathy alone. She needs an income, security, dignity and an economic future for her children.
That is where social protection meets investment policy, and that is why the question asked in New York deserves to travel far beyond New York.
It challenges governments to move from a culture of relief to resilience; from beneficiaries to asset owners; and from expenditure to long-term value creation.
This is also where the broader conversation around Africa’s economic future becomes meaningful.
The organisers of Unstoppable Africa argue that the continent must move from exporting raw potential to creating and retaining more value through African businesses, capital and supply chains.
But ownership should not be understood only at the level of corporations and sovereign wealth. It should eventually reach the ordinary citizen.
A widow in Gujba may never sit on the board of a multinational company. She may never attend an investment summit in New York. But she should not be permanently excluded from the wealth generated by an economy that is supposedly being transformed.
That is the uncomfortable but necessary question.
Can the government create mechanisms through which vulnerable citizens participate in long-term wealth creation without turning public funds into political instruments?
Can development partners move some interventions from short-term grants towards sustainable asset-building?
Can states establish transparent social investment funds with independent professional management?
Can corporate Africa explore models through which communities affected by conflict become beneficiaries of long-term economic value rather than merely beneficiaries of corporate social responsibility?
These are difficult questions. They require legislation, regulation, professional investment management and extraordinary transparency.
But difficult questions are precisely what policy leaders should be asking.
Perhaps that is what made the exchange between Goje and Dangote worth noticing. The significance was not that a government official asked a billionaire about shares.
It was that, in a room discussing Africa’s trillion-dollar economic opportunity, someone remembered the people who are rarely present when that opportunity is discussed: the widows, the displaced, the victims of conflict and the families rebuilding from almost nothing.
Africa’s economic future cannot be truly unstoppable if millions of its most vulnerable people remain spectators to its prosperity.
The next frontier of development may therefore not be simply attracting more investment. It may be finding ways to ensure that those who have suffered the most can own a piece of what comes next.
That is a conversation worth having.
And perhaps it began with a question from Yobe.
Zanna Samaila writes from Damaturu.
