“A rich man’s heaven is a poor man’s hell,” sang Gregory Isaacs in 1979. For years, African policymakers have treated that line like scripture — recited with the conviction of a pastor and the caution of a treasurer. Supporting the small business feels moral. Backing the big business feels… suspicious, like trusting a hyena with the goats.
But economics, like marriage, eventually exposes sentiment.
In a household, fairness does not mean every child remains small forever. At some point, one must grow into responsibility — the one who pays school fees, fixes the leaking roof, and occasionally buys meat without announcing it. A family where everyone is “empowered” but no one matures will be very equal… and very broke.
Africa, and Kenya, risk becoming that family.
We subsidise small businesses, protect them, celebrate them — and then quietly punish growth. The moment a biashara dares to expand, hires staff, formalises operations, the taxman appears like a relative who has heard there is an inheritance. VAT, corporate tax, compliance — success is greeted not with a handshake, but a bill.
So firms learn a simple survival trick: stay small, stay invisible, stay safe. But let us be clear — this is not a failure of small businesses. It is a failure of the ecosystem around them.
Small firms are the lifeblood of any economy. They are the market women, the fundis, the traders — the daily rhythm of economic life. As the proverb goes, “Little drops of water make a mighty ocean.” True. But even an ocean needs currents. Without movement, it becomes a swamp.
They create supply chains. They demand inputs. They create a stable demand for thousands of smaller players —farmers, transporters, service providers. In a well-functioning economy, small businesses do not compete with big ones; they grow around them, like branches around a sturdy tree.
The tragedy in Africa is not that we have too many small firms. It is that we have too few big ones to lift them.
So we end up with millions of hustlers, each working hard — but mostly working alone. It is like a market full of vendors with no wholesaler. Everyone is busy, but no one is scaling.
Consider Nigeria and Aliko Dangote. For decades, the country exported crude oil and imported refined fuel — a bit like selling milk and buying yoghurt at triple the price. State refineries failed spectacularly, becoming economic museums of inefficiency.
When global tensions in the Middle East disrupted fuel markets, many countries found themselves exposed, like households that suddenly realise the shop is closed and the kitchen is empty. Nigeria, for once, had a cooker in the house.
The Dangote refinery did not remove all pain — but it reduced dependence. It cut fuel imports, conserved foreign exchange, and — critically — allowed Nigeria to supply others. Instead of scrambling for fuel, it began exporting diesel and jet fuel across Africa.
In a crisis, that difference is everything.
Without the Dangote Refinery, an Iran crisis would leave Nigeria dangerously exposed. The country would still be importing over 90 per cent of its fuel, so any spike in global crude from Strait of Hormuz tensions would hammer the economy. A $15 to $30 jump per barrel, plus war-risk freight and insurance of around $40 per ton, would push the Central Bank to burn an extra $10 to $15 billion a year on fuel imports alone. That kind of dollar demand would sink the naira fast.
The government would be stuck with two brutal choices. Subsidising fuel to protect citizens would cost $8 to $12 billion annually, money Nigeria does not have. Letting prices adjust to the market would send diesel toward 1,800 naira per liter and petrol to 1,400 naira, driving transport costs up 60% to 80% and inflation past 35 per cent.
With tankers avoiding the region, queues would reappear at filling stations, black markets would boom, factories would shut down for lack of diesel, and flights would be cancelled without jet fuel. Shortages alone could shave 1 to 2 per cent off GDP.
Nigeria would also forfeit the upside. Instead of earning $4 to $6 billion a year exporting diesel and jet fuel at crisis prices, that windfall would go to foreign refiners. The 40,000-plus jobs created by Dangote’s ecosystem would never exist. All told, facing an Iran crisis without the refinery would cost Nigeria roughly $22 to $35 billion every year.
Dangote changed that equation. Because the refinery buys local crude in naira, it cuts dollar demand for fuel imports by more than half even as global prices surge. By refining at home, it strips out war-risk shipping premiums on 60 million litres a day, saving about $1 billion a year in freight.
With crude stocks on site, it keeps supply steady when tankers delay, so there are no queues. And it flips Nigeria’s position entirely, exporting diesel and jet fuel abroad at elevated prices and pulling in scarce dollars when the country needs them most.
The refinery shows how big business can deliver resilience that the state failed to provide for decades. Dangote turned Nigeria from a hostage of the Strait of Hormuz into a country that actually benefits during a crisis.
No network of small firms could have built that refinery. It required scale — capital, coordination, and risk on a level only large enterprises can muster. Asking SMEs to do it would be like asking a chama to build a dam. Ambitious, yes. Realistic, no.
And yet, Africa’s policy instinct still leans toward keeping everyone small.
Contrast this with South Korea. In the 1960s, it was poorer than many African nations. Today, it is home to global giants — Samsung, Hyundai, LG. These firms did not emerge by accident. The state supported them deliberately, giving them the tools to compete globally.
But here is the crucial point often missed: those giants did not kill small businesses — they created them.
Around Samsung sits an ecosystem of thousands of smaller suppliers. Around Hyundai, entire industries. The big firms became anchors, and SMEs became the ships that docked around them.
That is how prosperity spreads — not by keeping everyone equally small, but by allowing some to grow big enough to pull others forward.
Africa’s absence from the world’s largest companies —whether the Fortune Global 500 or similar rankings —is therefore not just symbolic. It is structural. It means we lack firms that can export at scale, earn foreign exchange, stabilise currencies, and anchor industries.
