Africa's richest man, Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote, urged Africans to invest more of their capital at home and turn the continent's resources into finished products, telling Unstoppable Africa 2026 in New York that Africa must stop strengthening foreign economies at its own expense.

Unstoppable Africa 2026 brings together heads of state, CEOs and investors in New York under the theme "Powering Business, Scaling Economies, Shaping the Future," with investment, industrialisation and retaining more value from Africa's resources among the key issues on the agenda.

"You know, I sat down and said, okay, fine. I want to really ask myself a question: why is it that we in Africa have not been able to develop? We've been talking about potential, potential, potential. One reason that we have not been able to develop like Asia, for example - you remember when they had the Asian Tigers - is because the Asians believed in their own economy. So they are the ones that made their own economy. Even here in the U.S., Americans will start investing, then later on they will be joined by other people. We are doing it in reverse, where we take our own money to their banks, strengthen their banks, and we don't really keep our money on our own continent. So I said, no, we must industrialise our continent. So the whole thing now has changed. We want to lead and champion the industrialisation of Africa."