Forget the Live Aid image, Africa is only a broken continent in the minds of the west | Moky Makura

Thirty years ago, shortly after South Africa emerged from apartheid, I left London for Johannesburg in search of a better life. Not long afterwards, a friend who was preparing to visit from the UK called with an intriguing question: do they have ATMs in South Africa?

After I picked myself off the floor, I explained that not only did South Africa have ATMs, but in many respects its banking system was far more advanced than the one I had left behind in Britain. She was surprised and – dare I say – delighted that she wouldn’t have to lug a wad of cash around South Africa after all.

That moment has stayed with me far longer than it should, because I’ve witnessed too many moments where the continent has persistently surprised and delighted the uninitiated. That’s because, for much of the world, the image of Africa still owes more to Live Aid’s legacy than to the reality.

A study we commissioned by social psychologist Dr Adam Hahn at the University of Bath helps explain why. When people in Britain and the US think about Africa, they disproportionately associate it with economic and political dysfunction, harsh environments and a lack of modernity and culture. Those associations affect whether they want to visit the continent, buy its products or engage with its culture. In their minds, Africa remains a place that is broken, dependent, lacking in agency and apparently in ATMs, too.

Britain may have more ATM’s and higher conventional bank-account ownership, but it was Africa that pioneered one of the biggest innovations in modern finance: mobile money. Kenya showed that millions of people could, in effect leapfrog traditional banking altogether, using their phones to store, send and receive money. Today, sub-Saharan Africa remains the centre of the global mobile-money revolution. And when it comes to new money, Nigeria now ranks third in the world for cryptocurrency adoption, while Britain ranks 17th.

Global investors have noticed the continent’s leadership when it comes to finance and are moving in. We have produced a surprisingly high number of fintech “unicorns” – privately owned startups valued at more than $1bn (£760). Nigeria alone has Flutterwave, OPay, Moniepoint and Interswitch. Investors are not putting billions into African financial technology out of charity; they are backing the entrepreneurs who are not waiting for help to create viable, profitable solutions.

One of those is Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, who has been all over the global media for the world-class refinery he built in Nigeria. The $20bn Dangote refinery is the largest single-train refinery in the world, built in a country that, despite being Africa’s biggest oil producer, spent decades exporting crude oil only to import much of its refined fuel.

Dangote is exceptional in his wealth, the scale of his ambition and visibility he has garnered. But he is not exceptional in spirit. There are thousands of smaller “Dangotes” on the continent: entrepreneurs who see a gap, build something to fill it and, in doing so, move their country forward.

Take Siny Samba, a Senegalese entrepreneur who launched an infant food brand after wondering why virtually all the baby food in her country was imported. She started in her kitchen with banana and millet and in 2018 launched Le Lionceau, creating new markets for local farmers and women’s cooperatives.

In Tanzania, Diana Orembe looked at fruit and vegetables being thrown away and saw fish food. Her company, NovFeed, turns that waste into affordable feed in the agriculture sector and has worked with at least 200 farmers.

In Maiduguri, northern Nigeria, Mustapha Abubakar Gajibo started by converting petrol-powered tricycles to electric. Today his company, African Motor Works, designs and builds electric vehicles, producing about 200 units a month.

Samba, Orembe, Gajibo and thousands like them who are contributing to their countries’ growth, will probably never make international headlines. And that may be one of Africa’s most overlooked challenges: not the absence of progress, but the lack of visibility.

Development experts talk endlessly about Africa’s many gaps – the infrastructure gap, financing gap, skills gap – but perhaps the most consequential gap is the visibility gap: the distance between the Africa today (the one that surprises and delights) and the Africa the world imagines.

Addressing the visibility gap is why the Opportunity Africa initiative was started earlier this year. Its mandate; to make the continent’s progress impossible to overlook by spotlighting the many people – such as Samba, Orembe and Gajibo – the places, the policies and the initiatives moving Africa forward.

Places such as Rwanda, which has rebuilt its reputation around innovation, tourism and digital government. Ethiopia has transformed its agricultural sector and sharply reduced its dependence on imported wheat. Kenya now generates up to 91% of its electricity from renewable sources.

Then there are the policies, the unglamorous government decisions that rarely make headlines: Benin keeping more of its cashews for local processing; Namibia requiring more of its lithium to be processed at home; and Zambia removing fees from state education.

And progress is happening continent-wide through ambitious initiatives. Fifty countries have ratified the African Continental Free Trade Area, making it easier for African businesses to trade with each other. A pan-African payments system now lets them settle transactions in local currencies. And 38 countries have joined the single African air transport market, helping create 108 new intra-African routes since 2022.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. If my friend was surprised by South Africa 30 years ago, imagine what else has changed and progressed. Through the recent Correct the Map campaign led by Togo, we challenged the world to see Africa differently – quite literally. Now we are asking the world to see us as we truly are.

The #NotWaiting campaign is where you will find the proof point: stories of a continent already building, solving, producing and moving forward.