African entrepreneurs defy skeptics with expansion plans across continent

Hungry Lion operates more than 500 stores across nine countries, employs 10,000 people, and is on track to open 250 more locations before the year is out. That trajectory, from ambition to execution at scale, is the story African business leaders gathered in Cape Town this week to tell.

At the Standard Bank Africa Unlocked 2026 conference, more than 140 entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers and business leaders spent two days examining how African enterprises are charting their own course through a turbulent global economy. The setting matters: Cape Town, a city that has long served as a gateway between African commerce and international capital, hosted a conversation that was, for once, less about the outside world and more about what Africans are building for each other.

Bill Blackie, chief executive for business and commercial banking at Standard Bank Group, set the frame early. Africa is expected to grow at approximately 4% this year, he told the assembled delegates. The real momentum, he argued, lies not in external partnerships but in intra-African trade, which surged by more than 12% in 2025 to reach roughly $220 billion, according to figures he cited from the African Trade Report. His banking clients, he noted, now trade more with fellow African businesses than with China, the United States or the European Union.

That is a structural shift, not a cyclical one.

Forty-seven countries have joined the African Continental Free Trade Area, creating what Blackie described as the largest free trade area by number of participants anywhere in the world. Pension assets across the continent have topped $1 trillion. Infrastructure pipelines have expanded, and energy transition projects are becoming commercially viable at a pace that would have seemed optimistic just a few years ago.

Hungry Lion was Blackie’s sharpest illustration of what execution looks like in practice. Two years ago, at the same Cape Town conference, the fast-food chain’s leadership spoke of opening 100 stores annually across Africa. That target has since become reality. The company was built for African consumers and has delivered on that strategy at pace, reaching 750 stores by year-end if current momentum holds.

Meanwhile, at a different scale entirely, the Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lagos functions less as a single facility and more as an ecosystem. Described at the conference as a world-class operation, it draws in hundreds of suppliers, contractors and logistics operators. Standard Bank’s team in Nigeria has supported 300 businesses within the Dangote value chain, providing the financial infrastructure those companies need to sustain operations at that level.

Lungisa Fuzile, Standard Bank’s CEO for Africa Regions Offshore, framed the gathering in terms of what it is actually for: helping African entrepreneurs build momentum, scale with confidence and convert complexity into possibility. The themes he identified as critical, job creation, energy, infrastructure and governance, are not new. What is new, he argued, is tangible progress on all of them. Infrastructure projects are being completed and commissioned. Governance frameworks are strengthening. Africans are taking charge of their own economic destiny.

The entrepreneurs in the room were themselves a form of evidence. They have built successful businesses against the odds, driven by belief in their ideas, discipline in execution and resilience through difficulty. Fuzile was direct about what he sees as Africa’s greatest resource: not natural reserves, but talented people. That talent, he said, persists despite noise and uncertainty, drawing strength from the victories and sacrifices of those who came before.

Blackie closed his remarks with a point about the direction of travel in international trade. African businesses are renegotiating their relationships with China, India and the Gulf states, moving away from raw material export arrangements toward value-added partnerships. The question of currency access matters less, he suggested, than what that access makes possible for entrepreneurs seeking to scale across borders and tap global pools of capital.

Standard Bank, for its part, describes its role not as a spectator but as a builder and connector. Fuzile put it plainly: the bank’s job is to pick up the signal of entrepreneurial talent and make it strong, providing skills, connections and capital that translate into real economy impact. As Africa’s largest bank by assets, it operates inside the financial systems of the countries it serves, facilitating cross-border flows, connecting trade partners and supporting infrastructure at scale.

Whether the continent can sustain 4% growth while global trade systems remain under pressure is the question that will define the next few years, and the answer will be written not in conference rooms but in the stores, refineries and supply chains that African entrepreneurs are building right now.