Malaysia and Africa’s arc of opportunities

IN his classic novel, Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll gives us the oft cited axiom –– that those who “stay put” are, in effect, “moving backwards,” giving rise eventually to the “Red Queen hypothesis,” often used as a metaphor to underscore the need for continuous adaptation, innovation, and learning in a rapidly changing world.

Africa is in no danger of falling into the rabbit hole of Alice’s “slow sort of country”. On the contrary, Africa is running fast – adjusting, assimilating, and transforming. The continent’s major countries command growing influence in international politics, its cities hum with commercial energy and its young and vibrant population raring to take charge of the future.

For a trading nation like Malaysia, these are developments that we ignore only to our own loss. That is why Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, even in the middle of campaigning for the Sabah state election, undertook a three-nation visit to Ethiopia, South Africa and Kenya. The underlying calculation is straightforward: Africa’s economic trajectory now intersects with Malaysia’s strategic interests in ways that can no longer be treated as peripheral.

The journey opened in Ethiopia. Its capital, Addis Ababa, is a city in visible transition, where rising towers and construction cranes now punctuate the skyline. From the outset, the visit took on a personal tone. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed received Anwar Ibrahim at the airport and later drove him through the city himself, an unusual gesture in the normally stodgy world of diplomacy. Their first stop, the Ethiopian Science Museum, was a statement in and of itself. Ethiopia may be called the Land of Origins, the very cradle of humankind, but make no mistake: this nation is just as intent on projecting a future-facing identity.

Discussions with Prime Minister Abiy were candid but substantive, ranging across industrial parks, agro-processing, aviation links, digital finance and the challenge of equipping young populations with modern skills. Albeit considered a least developed country by the United Nations, Ethiopia’s swift development underscores the scale of its national task, fortified by the country’s unmistakable ambition.

The African Union, headquartered in the Ethiopian capital, added its own layer of engagement. The Chair of the AU Commission proposed convening an AU Malaysia Dialogue next year and encouraged Malaysia to play a more active role in strengthening ASEAN-AU cooperation. Access of this kind, both to Ethiopia as a gateway to the Horn of Africa and to the AU’s institutional centre, informed Malaysia’s decision to reopen its embassy there in September after an absence of 42 years.

If Addis Ababa supplied institutional depth, South Africa added global diplomatic and economic reach. Johannesburg, the region’s most industrialised city, hosted the first G20 Leaders’ Summit ever held on African soil, drawing influential delegations to a metropolis that has long served as one of the continent’s principal centres of gravity. The much-talked about US boycott of the summit did little to detract from the prominence, verve, and practical impact of its deliberations. In fact, by all accounts, it scored a rare victory for multilateralism after riding rough shod over US objections to issue a declaration.

Meanwhile, in their meeting, Anwar and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa discussed manufacturing, technology cooperation and the long-term task of lifting both economies further up the value chain. Both sides saw scope for complementarities in industrial and services sectors. It is no secret that South Africa has some deep-seated challenges: its high crime rate and uneven state capacity are well known. Yet its scale and industrial depth give it far greater promise than its problems sometimes suggest.

At the Summit, Prime Minister Anwar used Malaysia’s position as ASEAN Chair to raise issues that many developing economies grapple with. He warned that artificial intelligence “will reshape labour markets at a pace our institutions will struggle to match” and argued that “resilience comes from common preparedness, not isolation.”

He also stressed that global resilience cannot be built on fiscal exhaustion. Many developing countries, he noted, now spend more on servicing debt than on education or investment, leaving them without the capacity to invest ahead of disruption. Multilateral development banks, he argued, must respond more quickly and work with countries to support the investments that actually build resilience.

Johannesburg also offered room for engagement with southern Africa’s dynamic private sector. At a large business forum attended by South African industry leaders and Malaysian firms, discussions centred on sectors with real commercial depth, including automotive and EV supply chains, mining and minerals processing, renewable energy, digital services and logistics. These are industries where South African firms operate across the region and where Malaysian companies already see room to grow.

The final stop, Kenya, brought a distinctly entrepreneurial colour. Nairobi is often described as East Africa’s fintech capital, a place where mobile money and digital platforms are used with effortless fluency. Its economic promise sits alongside the familiar strains of a city growing faster than its infrastructure can bear, yet that very tension lends the Kenyan capital much of its drive and improvisational energy.

Talks with President William Ruto focused on digital cooperation, housing, education and trade. Kenya expressed interest in Malaysia’s experience with affordable housing and technical education. Malaysian firms, meanwhile, see opportunities in Nairobi’s digital and agri-tech sectors, which many regard as a gateway to East and Central Africa. Agreeing to raise relations to strategic partnership, there was ambition on both sides, tempered by the recognition that real progress depends on steady follow-through.

The visits were not confined to statecraft and commerce. They were also about engaging Africa’s rising generation. In Addis Ababa, Anwar addressed a joint forum of the Malaysia and Ethiopia Youth Councils, urging young Africans to see themselves not as spectators but as “movers of change.” This was not flattery but fact, for theirs is a continent where more than 60 per cent of the population is under 25.

And in Nairobi, at a gathering on higher education, Anwar turned to the human foundations of progress, remarking that “governments may build institutions, but it is communities of knowledge that move nations forward.” With Africa projected to add more entrants to the global workforce by 2035 than the rest of the world combined, cultivating Malaysia’s links with its youth is a strategic investment that will create opportunities for many years to come.

In a poignant call for a values-laden education paradigm, Anwar likened education that is incapable of touching our soul to “pure mechanical learning” and warned that knowledge acquisition devoid of values “will strip us of our humanity”. Admittedly, coming from Anwar, this is no bolt from the blue considering his consistent position in advocating that education in its truest form must build character and intellect, a philosophy clearly manifested in his major works from The Asian Renaissance right up to his latest tome, Rethinking Ourselves: Justice, Reform and Ignorance in Postnormal Times.

Nevertheless, the message sounded at the Nairobi higher education fair couldn’t be timelier. While at the G20 Summit, Anwar warned of the toll caused by the disruption of artificial intelligence on jobs, here the concern centres on AI’s advent at such breakneck speed and all-encompassing fashion that unchecked, could well pose an existential threat to our humanity. For example, the likelihood of human values being warped if society surrenders to AI the agency to determine what counts as truth, or control what information we see, not to mention the eventual “algorithmic suzerainty” that AI systems would ultimately hold over humanity.

Africa, as in Asia, is a land of immense diversity in culture, language, and ethnicity. Add that AI guardrails exhortation to the critique that traditional educational frameworks are sorely in need of a new paradigm, it stands to reason why ignoring the call for a systemic overhaul and holistic reassessment will be foolhardy.

Ultimately, the logic of these three cities lies in the strategic and economic reach they each offer. Addis Ababa connects Malaysia to Africa’s institutional centre and to the fast-growing markets of the Horn. Johannesburg provides access to southern Africa’s most influential country and its most industrialised economy, along with the regional firms that operate from it. Nairobi offers an entry point into East Africa’s innovation and services corridor, where digital businesses are expanding swiftly across the region. Taken together, they form an arc of opportunity that Malaysia can now approach with greater intent and focus.

On the regional front, the African Union can offer ASEAN a collective voice on the global stage, via a platform based on South-South cooperation, while conversely, ASEAN could open up vast opportunities for African states to expand their economic reach. Such a partnership presents immense synergistic and symbiotic dividends yet unseen but that is up for discourse in another forum.

For now, we can say that while foreign policy may not transform national fortunes overnight, it can deepen a country’s network of partnerships and create space to absorb some of the shocks that arise when conditions tighten elsewhere. In other words, foreign policy works best when it creates the conditions for greater room to move. This visit did just that.

Datuk Prof Dr Mohd Faiz Abdullah is Chairman of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia.

** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.