Frédéric Duranton, Group Chief Financial Officer and Executive Director of the Mantrac Group, has stressed that Africa’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can only unlock sustainable financing and investment opportunities when they are able to meet consistent global standards in governance, quality, and operational discipline.
Speaking during the Day 2 of the 2026 Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD) at the Accra International Conference Centre (AICC) on Thursday, 5th February 2026, Duranton noted that the future of Africa’s industrial transformation depends not merely on supporting SMEs through subsidies or isolated interventions, but on building their capabilities to compete within international supply chains.
“When SMEs reach these standards, three things happen. They integrate into multinational supply chains, they become bankable, and they become investable,” he stated.
Duranton explained that while local sourcing has become a popular development agenda across Africa, the real driver of industrial competitiveness lies in supplier development — a deliberate process of strengthening SMEs so they can deliver consistently at the level required by global firms.
“Buying locally is easy. Building local capabilities takes commitment,” he said, adding that supplier development involves supporting SMEs to achieve international benchmarks in areas such as quality assurance, environmental compliance, governance, and financial discipline.
According to him, once SMEs are able to operate at such standards, growth accelerates through credibility and structured market access rather than dependency on external support.
“This is not charity,” Duranton emphasized. “It is long-term industrial strategy.”
Duranton outlined what Mantrac describes as an “anchor-based model,” where large industrial firms act as stabilizing anchors within an ecosystem by providing scale, governance, financial discipline, and access to global value chains.
In this framework, SMEs form the base of the ecosystem by expanding local capacity, professionalizing operations, and growing into reliable suppliers, distributors, and service partners.
“Africa Prosperity will not be built by SMEs alone. It will not be built by large corporates alone. It will be built by structuring the relationship between both,” he further told delegates.
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