Experts and development leaders have called on African governments to bridge the gap between policies and their implementation, particularly to ensure that interventions in health, education, and economic inclusion translate into tangible improvements in people’s lives.
They made the call in Abuja on Tuesday at the 2026 Gender and Inclusion Summit (GS-26), where speakers stressed the need to bridge the gap between policy commitments and people’s everyday experiences.
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Delivering the keynote address, Patrick Achi, former prime minister of Côte d’Ivoire and President of the country’s National Assembly, said access to infrastructure and social services could not be regarded as the end of development if they did not improve people’s ability to learn, work, earn and access essential services.
Mr Achi said development should ultimately be measured by what people could do with the opportunities created for them.
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“A school place must become learning. Training must become employability. A rural road must contribute to higher incomes. A health-insurance card must translate into effective care,” he said.
He said inclusion should therefore not be treated as a social add-on to economic development but as a means of connecting people to opportunity and making growth more productive.
Why the last mile matters
Mr Achi said his experience as an engineer, government minister and prime minister had shown him that infrastructure only achieved its purpose when it reached the people it was designed to serve.
He said a road was valuable because it connected farmers to markets, children to schools and workers to jobs, while electricity infrastructure had little economic value if it did not reach households, farms and businesses.
He added that the same principle applied to healthcare, education, and social protection.
The former prime minister said Côte d’Ivoire had made substantial progress in expanding access to basic services, but that the next phase of its development would have to focus on converting access into capability and capability into productivity.
He said access to electricity in the country increased from 74 per cent in 2011 to 99 per cent in 2025, while poverty fell from 55 per cent in 2011 to 37 per cent in 2021.
He added that more than 20 million people, representing about 60 per cent of the country’s population, had been enrolled in its Universal Health Coverage system by 2025.
But he cautioned that expanding coverage alone was insufficient if people could not obtain effective services.
‘Africa needs jobs, not just social protection’
Mr Achi said Africa’s growing population made productive employment and income essential to achieving sustainable inclusion, with hundreds of millions of young people expected to enter the labour market in the coming decades.
He said aid, philanthropy and social transfers alone could not meet the continent’s development needs, urging governments to invest in sectors capable of creating wealth and jobs while ensuring women, young people and rural communities participate in the productive economy.
Africa accounts for about 18 per cent of the world’s population and possesses significant agricultural and mineral resources, yet contributes only about three per cent of global GDP, three per cent of global trade and roughly two per cent of global manufacturing value added, Mr Achi noted.
He warned that the continent’s human capital deficit could further limit its economic prospects as artificial intelligence and other technologies reshape economies.
About 89 per cent of children in Sub-Saharan Africa are estimated to be in learning poverty, while the region has only about 88 researchers per million inhabitants, he said.
“This is not simply an education gap. It is a future productivity gap,” Mr Achi said.
He said women and young people should be treated not merely as beneficiaries of development programmes but as contributors to economic growth.
He cited a Mastercard Foundation-commissioned study that estimated that greater participation by young African women could add as much as $287 billion to Africa’s GDP by 2030.
“That is not a welfare dividend. That is a growth dividend,” he said.
Health and education
The speakers’ concerns are particularly relevant to health and other essential services, where the existence of a policy or programme does not necessarily guarantee access or quality outcomes for vulnerable populations.
Udeme Ufot, Chairman of the Policy Innovation Centre (PIC), said the “last mile” should not be understood merely as geographical distance.
He described it as the gap between policy and lived experience, innovation and access, and commitment and meaningful change.
Mr Ufot said an intervention only becomes meaningful when it reaches people at the point of need, citing health workers serving communities without functional clinics, as well as other local actors helping people access services and opportunities.
“A programme, however well-designed, changes nothing until it reaches the woman at the very end of the road,” he said.
He said women, girls, young people, persons with disabilities and people in underserved communities often remained furthest from opportunities and essential services despite the existence of policies intended to support them.
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Also speaking, Olaniyi Yusuf, Chairman of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), said the central question before policymakers should be whether commitments were reaching the people who needed them most.
Mr Yusuf said Nigeria and other African countries had spent years developing policies, generating evidence, and testing innovative approaches. Still, the challenge now was to translate those efforts into practical results.
“An innovation only counts when it arrives,” he said.
He urged stakeholders to move from deliberation to implementation, saying government, development partners, the private sector, civil society and communities must share responsibility for turning ideas into results.
About the summit
The Gender and Inclusion Summit is a pan-African platform convened by the PIC to advance conversations, partnerships, and practical solutions on gender equality, inclusion, innovation, and systems change.
The 2026 edition, the fifth since its inception, is being held from 7 to 9 September in Abuja under the theme, “From Agenda to Action: Making Innovations Count for the Last Mile.”
The summit brings together policymakers, development partners, private-sector leaders, innovators, academics, civil society organisations, youth leaders, community actors, and representatives of underserved groups.
The 2026 summit began with an academic conference on 7 September and focuses on moving from policy commitments and innovative ideas to implementation, scale, and measurable results.
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