Move Beyond Remittances Into Investment- Goldbod CEO Urges African Diaspora

Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Gold Board, Sammy Gyamfi, has called on the African diaspora to transition from being an “emergency support system” for the continent to becoming “strategic co-architects” of Africa’s transformation.

This could be done through investment, skills transfer and institution building.

Delivering the keynote address at the EMY Africa — Africa Rising Symposium in London on July 30, 2026, on the theme “The growing relationship between Africa and its Global Diaspora, and why this moment matters”, Mr Gyamfi said Africa’s rise must become a lived reality, not just a slogan.

“The question before us is not whether Africa will matter in this century. For Africa will surely matter. The question is whether Africa will matter on terms shaped by Africans,” he told a gathering of industry leaders and diaspora professionals.

Mr Gyamfi noted that while remittances have for decades sustained families, paid school fees and built homes, “this moment demands more than remittances. It demands investment.”

He said, “Remittances help households survive, but investment helps economies transform. Remittances can pay school fees, but diaspora-driven enterprise can create the companies that employ those graduates after school.”

He described the Global African Diaspora as “one of Africa’s most powerful and strategic assets: a reservoir of expertise, skills, technology, capital, networks, credibility, influence, and lived experience.”

Citing the Mastercard Foundation’s Africa Youth Employment Outlook 2026, he said Africa is home to about 532 million young people aged 15 to 35, a population set to rise through the 2070s.

He warned that without access to skills, financing, credit and mentorship, the demographic advantage could become a crisis of unemployment and migration.

Mr Gyamfi made a call for the diaspora to finance African enterprises that produce, process, export, employ, and scale up; engage on the basis of mutual respect, bankable ideas, shared risk, and shared reward; invest in productive sectors and build mentorship platforms and diaspora investment vehicles; and help Africa keep more value from what it produces through value addition and value retention.

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