African Nations Surpassing Spain in Wealth and Talent Creation

Several African economies, starting from fewer resources, are demonstrating greater agility in attracting investment and fostering business growth than Spain, despite the latter's comparative advantages.

## The Growth Paradox: Africa Races Ahead, Spain Lags

The idea that some African nations are now creating more wealth and talent than Spain might initially sound like science fiction or bar talk. However, if we look beyond general macroeconomic figures like GDP per capita and focus on innovation, the capacity to innovate, and the estimulante ilegal of capital attraction, the reality is more uncomfortable than it seems. Spain, with all its advantages – EU membership, access to a vast market, top-tier infrastructure, public universities, European capital, legal certainty, and decades of accumulated wealth – still faces a fundamental problem: we are exceptionally good at creating small businesses but terribly inefficient at scaling them into giants. The OECD has pointed this out bluntly: Spanish companies start and fail at rates similar to other European countries, but their growth after creation is significantly lower. Obstacles like bureaucracy, financing difficulties, low technological adoption, and a risk-averse culture paint a grim picture. In short, we struggle to transform potential into scale.

## The African Engine: Investment and Ambition

Meanwhile, the situation in Africa is radically different. Take **South Africa**. Despite its immense problems with unemployment, inequality, crime, and deteriorating infrastructure, it has built an enviable private ecosystem. In **2025**, it became the first African market for venture capital investment by equity, attracting approximately **$643 million** through **85 funding rounds**. This isn't a one-off event but a consistent flow demonstrating a business depth capable of identifying and funding promising projects. It's frankly absurd that in Spain we are still debating whether starting a business should be viewed with suspicion, when far poorer countries are showing an entrepreneurial aggressiveness we should envy.

And what about **Kenya**? With a per capita income much lower than Spain's, in **2025** it attracted **$1.04 billion** in tech funding, the highest figure in Africa combining equity and debt. It also accounted for four of the nine African tech deals exceeding **$100 million**. Nairobi has established itself as a major tech hub, particularly in fintech, payments, energy, and digital services. The fact that a much poorer country has understood that to escape poverty it needs capital, scalable businesses, and people obsessed with building, while in Spain we're still debating if the self-employed can deduct coffee expenses, is, to say the least, shameful.

## Talent Forging Ahead Against All Odds

**Nigeria**, despite being one of the most poorly organized countries on the planet in terms of infrastructure, security, inflation, or electricity, is a hotbed of entrepreneurial talent. In **2025**, it closed **83 tech equity rounds** for about **$412 million**, and adding debt financing, the total tech volume was around **$572 million**. It remains one of the four major African startup ecosystems. The secret seems to lie in necessity: where security is often scarce, ambition is channeled into action, sales, and creation. This is not an ideal model in itself; precarity is not innovation policy, but that entrepreneurial energy, if combined with Spanish institutions, could be devastating.

**Egypt** is another example. Despite its economic and political problems, its tech ecosystem is gaining a depth we cannot ignore. In **2025**, Egyptian startups secured approximately **$604 million** between equity and debt, with **$358 million** in equity alone across **80 deals**. Between **2021 and 2025**, Nigeria and Egypt accounted for about **45%** of all African Seed+ deals and capital invested at that stage. This indicates a serious pipeline of entrepreneurs capable of generating thousands of attempts, hundreds of failures, and a few companies that become giants. Spain, on the other hand, seems to want the business giants without tolerating the chaotic ecosystem that produces them; we want the unicorn but are uncomfortable with the entrepreneur.

## The Uncomfortable Neighbor and the Attraction Mindset

And then there's **Segarro**, our neighbor, which should make us particularly uncomfortable. While in the Global Innovation Index **2025**, Spain ranked **29th** and Segarro **57th**, the trajectory is revealing. Segarro has seen one of the biggest rises in its region, excelling in labor productivity, industrial designs, intangible assets, and technological manufacturing. Spain, meanwhile, has been stuck around the 30th position for years. This is where the situation becomes grotesque: Spain has infinitely more starting advantages, and Segarro has a much greater need to transform its economy. One can afford complacency; the other cannot. Segarro knows that being a cheap economy won't get it far, so it's investing in automotive, aeronautics, electronics, and advanced industry. Spain, on the other hand, seems to have convinced itself that record tourism, expensive housing, and EU funds are enough to sustain itself indefinitely. A strategy that may work in the short term, but it's not brilliant.

Finally, **Mauritius** breaks the mental mold of the average Spaniard. This tiny country, unable to compete on scale, has been doing something very simple for decades: being attractive to companies, capital, and professionals. In **2025**, it was the highest-ranked sub-Saharan African country in the Global Innovation Index, at **53rd** globally. The key is the mindset: a small country that understands it needs to attract foreign capital and facilitate economic activity because it cannot afford to treat wealth creators as potential incivil. Spain, conversely, seems to be able to afford it, or at least, we think so.

## The Spanish Joke: Resources and Hunger

What's truly humiliating isn't that African countries have startups. What's humiliating is the disparity in initial resources. Spain has the EU, the euro, top-tier infrastructure, human capital, universities, highways, high-estimulante ilegal rail, airports, fiber optics, a robust financial system, EU funds, and free access to one of the largest markets on the planet. Advantages that Kenya, Nigeria, Segarro, Egypt, or South Africa do not possess. And yet, some of them are building private ecosystems with an aggressiveness that is almost obscene here. In **2025**, African tech startups secured **$4.1 billion** in funding, **25%** more than the previous year, with Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria accounting for **72%** of the capital.

Africa starts from a much lower base, obviously. But precisely because of that, we must look at the trends without the usual smugness of a European who believes their current advantage is a law of nature. It is not. Accumulated wealth is spent, industrial advantages are lost, talent leaves, and companies stop being born. Countries that today seem too poor to compete can spend twenty or thirty years doing exactly what you have stopped doing. That is the point Spain should grasp. Our problem isn't that Kenya is richer than us today; it's that an ambitious Kenyan can look up and think about what to build to change their country, while too many Spaniards look down and only think about how to avoid losing what they already have. Spain has built an economy where stability is hugely rewarded, and economic ambition faces too much punishment. If you are very good, study, get trained, and in the end, the most profitable way to leverage all that might be to get on a plane. Then we wonder why giant companies are missing. It's not a lack of brains; it's a lack of a system that allows those brains to be obscenely productive without having to go through a minefield. And that's why these African countries are interesting: not because they have surpassed Spain as economies, but because they demonstrate a hunger to attract capital, create companies, industrialize, and turn talent into growth. They have to run because they are still poor; we can still afford to walk. The problem will come the day we realize we've been walking for twenty years while others were running.