This track focuses on the cost of inaction in Africa: Small fixes, big damage is a two-part discussion on what happens when development policy settles for incremental “patches” while structural constraints, especially infrastructure and bargaining power, remain unaddressed. In a polycrisis world, small fixes may temporarily relieve symptoms, but they also risk locking in low productivity, high fragility, and chronic service failure.

The first session asks why infrastructure neglect is not just an engineering gap but a development bottleneck that shapes jobs, productivity, energy transitions, and resilience. The second session examines how external exploitation, through unequal resource deals and growing AI-era data/value capture, can continue even when limited reforms are announced, widening dependency and reducing Africa’s share of the value created. Together, the two sessions challenge participants to define what “big and tangible” decisions look like: what must be built, what must be negotiated, and what must be governed differently, so the continent can move from delay and extraction toward fair development outcomes.