Our Story

Africa is redefining how value is created, captured, and shared across its industries. For years, countries have worked to strengthen local participation in extractives, energy, services, and manufacturing. But across the continent, one challenge kept resurfacing: each nation was advancing alone, with limited coordination, fragmented knowledge, and no common platform to drive shared learning, analytics, and policy alignment.

The African Local Content Organization was born from that gap.

Where the idea came from

Between 2022 and 2025, the concept took shape through the work of Mr. Ibrahima Talla, a Local Content and Industrial Development Expert who supported regulators, suppliers, and operators across the continent.

Through those engagements, a clear insight emerged: Africa needed a dedicated institution capable of connecting national efforts, harmonizing learning, and elevating local content from a set of country strategies to a continental development agenda.

This early groundwork, research, conversations, field missions, and workshops, helped crystallize a vision that resonated widely. As momentum grew, the idea attracted experts, practitioners, industry associations, and policymakers who recognized the need for a neutral, pan-African platform.

From vision to collective movement

In 2025, this growing community formally came together to create the African Local Content Organization. What began as a concept held by one person evolved into a shared mission supported by 12 founding member countries and a network of partners across Africa and the diaspora.

ALCO was built on a simple belief: Africa’s resources, talent, and industrial potential should benefit its people.

And to achieve that, local content must be more than compliance. It must become a catalyst for jobs, enterprise development, technology transfer, and continental competitiveness.

Why we exist

ALCO stands today as a convening force and a technical partner to governments, industry, SMEs, and training institutions.

Our work bridges policy and implementation, data and action, national systems and continental ambition. We promote evidence-based decision-making, shared frameworks, and collaborative problem-solving.

Our mission is not only to strengthen local content execution within each country, but also to help Africa build integrated value chains, skilled local industries, and sustainable economic inclusion across sectors.

A story still being written

The African Local Content Organization continues to grow as more countries, companies, and institutions join the movement. What started as an idea has become a continental community with a shared purpose:

to ensure African participation is at the center of Africa’s industrial rise.

And this story is only at its beginning.

Join the Movement

Whether you are a policymaker, a private operator, a local enterprise, or a development partner, ALCO offers a platform to collaborate, share knowledge, and shape the future of African industrial development.

Together, we can build stronger industries, stronger economies, and stronger African capabilities.