Fair compensation for African (francophone) experts: an economic and societal challenge.

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In a world where virtually every aspect of material and intellectual production has become globalized, the question of how African expertise is valued and compensated has become a critical issue. I would like to focus in particular on African Francophone experts (myself included) who, on average, are paid significantly less than their international counterparts, both in local markets and abroad.

Yes 😕, I took the time to review my earnings as a business development and strategy expert over the past five years. I conducted a personal audit and benchmarked my fees against comparable international profiles. The outcome was nothing short of alarming: I earned more than ten times less than the so-called “international standard” for equivalent expertise.

Such a gap cannot be explained solely by differences in cost of living or organizational budget constraints. It points instead to a much deeper imbalance in the way the global expertise market is structured.

A global hierarchy of knowledge value?

The expertise market operates according to a hierarchy largely inherited from economic and geopolitical history. The centres that define “international standards” (universities, consulting firms, financial institutions, multilateral organisations) remain predominantly located in North America and Europe. This creates a powerful and deeply entrenched structural bias, whereby expertise produced in these regions is perceived as more legitimate and therefore commands higher financial value. Marketing: 1 – Field expertise: 0.

By contrast, expertise originating from Africa is often perceived as anecdotal, localized, operational or even activist, particularly when it challenges any of the five unwritten rules of the so-called Colonial Pact. Rarely is it viewed as “strategic” in the global sense of the term. This implicit positioning directly affects the fee scales applied to African experts, and especially to Francophone African women experts.

For comparable assignments, a consultant based in London, Paris or New York may invoice USD 5,000, while an expert based in Cotonou, Dakar or Abidjan, despite an equivalent level of expertise, may be offered USD 500.

Within the Francophone sphere, this imbalance is further exacerbated by limited international visibility when compared to the Anglophone ecosystem, which concentrates the majority of global forums, investment platforms and high-impact private-sector financing circuits.

An under-structured local market, or a socio-economic-political choice?

On the African continent itself, under-compensation is also partly explained by the weak structuring of the local expertise market. Many public and private organisations lack clear reference frameworks for pricing high-level intellectual services. Budgets are often negotiated on a case-by-case basis, driven by constraints rather than by value. Is this a lack of vision?

This results in paradoxical situations where events funded by major international donors offer local experts fees well below international standards, while simultaneously engaging foreign speakers at significantly higher rates. How does this make sense?

This frankly unfair imbalance (let’s call it what it is), mechanically pushes top local talent to prioritize international markets, to the detriment of local ecosystem development.

The cumulative gender effect… sigh!

To the systemic and “geographical” imbalance (to put it mildly) is added an equally troubling gender gap. International studies (ILO, OECD, Jobbers) consistently show that women are structurally underpaid compared to men in consulting, training, research and public speaking.

When the expert is African, she is often expected to adopt a posture of transmission, mentorship, inspiration, or even unpaid contribution, particularly when addressing topics such as leadership, entrepreneurship or development. The boundary between symbolic contribution and professional service becomes blurred, weakening financial negotiations.

Could this be linked to the way these themes are framed in Africa’s public discourse? Indeed, they have largely become the preserve of NGOs and development-aid organisations, treated primarily as social issues rather than as economic, private-sector-driven or industrial challenges. Food for thought!

Unequal visibility and limited access to premium circuits

Contrary to popular belief, operating internationally does not automatically guarantee better pay for Francophone African experts. While headline fees may be higher, access to premium circuits (major conferences, economic summits, multilateral organisations), remains highly selective, if not outright exclusionary. Which, frankly, is not entirely surprising.

Three major barriers persist:

• Language, with English remaining the primary gateway;

• Networks, often closed and self-reproducing;

• Risk perception, with organisations favoring profiles already embedded within their own geographic or institutional circles.

It is this third point that deserves particular scrutiny. Without any embarrassment whatsoever, one can regularly see Western “experts” speaking authoritatively about regions entirely outside their lived geography (Africa, for example), being celebrated on international stages addressing African issues, without a single African voice invited to contribute. Once again: how is this possible? And why is it acceptable?

Even when African experts are invited (and more evidence would be useful to firmly establish this), they are often placed in lower fee categories than their Western counterparts, despite having equal or even superior expertise, particularly on African-related matters.

What about the responsibility of African institutions?

African institutions themselves have a strategic role to play in re-valuing local expertise. Everything starts with recognising the endogenous development needs of local populations. Nothing will change for local experts:

• As long as development strategies are designed according to exogenous paradigms and imported expertise;

• As long as the skills required to implement these strategies are, by default, imported;

• As long as remuneration standards for local experts remain disconnected from international benchmarks;

• As long as development is not conceived from local resources, needs, expectations and expertise.

Properly valuing African expertise on both global and local issues, also helps reduce brain drain, strengthen local capacity and build skills ecosystems capable of sustainably supporting public policy, development strategies and investment agendas.

The individual responsibility of African experts

There is also an issue of individual positioning. Many African experts, out of caution, loyalty or fear of missing opportunities, accept financial conditions below the true value of their services. Poorly structured offerings, the absence of transparent pricing frameworks and weak contractualisation further exacerbate this situation. In short: we must take ourselves seriously.

In today’s globalized market, expertise is an economic asset. A professional’s ability to defend their value, negotiate, formalise contracts and present a clear value proposition is now an integral part of the profession itself.

So what exactly is an economic asset in this context? It is “a resource, tangible or intangible, controlled by an individual, organisation or state, capable of generating measurable economic benefit over time (income, cost savings, bargaining power, asset valuation or strategic influence).” Expertise, reputation, public voice and influence are therefore major economic assets.

A sovereignty issue for African countries

Beyond individual career paths, the remuneration of African experts raises a fundamental question of economic competitiveness for the continent. An economy that undervalues its intellectual capital deprives itself of a critical lever for sustainable development. Yes, I put that sentence in bold 😁, for those willing to hear.

The more African markets identify, recognize and fairly compensate their local professionals within structured, transparent and competitive expertise markets, the more these talent pools will act as powerful engines for R&D, value-added production, endogenous and inclusive innovation, investment, and the creation of lasting economic and social value.

Fair compensation for Francophone African experts, in particular, is not merely a symbolic struggle. It is a strategic, economic and structural issue for African countries. It determines the continent’s ability to design its own solutions, produce its own standards and assert its own voice in international debates whenever relevant.

Re-valuing African expertise means investing in local intellectual and technical capital, safeguarding the transmission of both ancestral and modern knowledge, and laying the foundations for genuine, long-term economic sovereignty.

Hotep!