Sheida Mutuku, Chief Executive of Woodside Africa Group LLC, has called for a shift in how Africa approaches development, emphasizing that legacy financial systems are holding the continent back.
Speaking in an interview with Radio Generation on Tuesday, she said that businesses and institutions face strict limitations when trying to access large-scale funding, which affects the quality of social infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, and sports facilities.
“You’ve got to be at a certain scale and to have this track record. You’ve got to have hit this number of revenue. And so there are conditions, yeah, that are attached to it,” Mutuku said.
She explained that while securing modest funding might be feasible, large-scale investments are often denied.
“If I go to the bank and I say I want $10 million (Sh1.3 trillion) I’d probably get it. But if I start talking about $3.5 billion then they show me the door very quickly,” she added.
Mutuku highlighted that Africa’s social infrastructure has lagged for decades. She noted that schools, hospitals, and other public facilities remain substandard, limiting the quality of services for citizens.
“Just walk into any primary school or high school. Here in Nairobi, there’s very few, probably private schools which just give us the basics, and we see that that is good, but in terms of our social infrastructure, the quality is substandard,” she said.
The CEO attributed these challenges to restrictive legacy systems that cap how much institutions can borrow for development.
“Even if they want to do a great development, people are limited, alright, and that is why, if you look at the past 50 years, you will see that we have not gone very far Africa as a whole in terms of social infrastructure. We’re still very much behind,” Mutuku said.
Looking ahead, she urged the creation of new financial and development frameworks to ensure Africa can achieve substantial growth over the next 50 years.
“If the next five decades are going to look very different in terms of development for Africa, right? Then there is no way we can still use the legacy systems. We have to develop our own, alright? And that is what we will. We’ll start creating a prosperous Africa,” she concluded.
