This initiative is designed to mobilize African diaspora capital across the world to transform remittances from short-term consumption into long-term development capital, using the capital market and our various Total Economic Development strategies. The model aligns with global values and particularly United States–Africa engagement priorities, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles, and global impact-investment frameworks. Strategic leadership is provided by Professor Magnus Kpakol, Founder and Chairman of the Economic Center, a globally recognized political economist and development strategist.
Africa receives some of the largest remittance inflows in the developing world, particularly from the United States, Europe and Canada. While these flows provide essential household support, they have limited impact on structural transformation when they are not channeled into productive investment. The Economic Center’s approach reframes diaspora engagement by positioning remittances as a source of capital formation, entrepreneurship, and long-term wealth creation.
This philosophy reflects the Center’s broader development doctrine: poverty is not primarily the absence of income, but the absence of access to capital—natural, human, physical, and financial.
The Legacy Wealth Program is the Economic Center’s flagship poverty-eradication instrument anchored in capital-market participation. It enables poor and low-income households to pool modest, regular contributions into professionally managed investment vehicles, thereby converting informal savings into formal asset ownership.
The program emphasizes financial literacy, disciplined savings and long-term investment horizons, linked to entrepreneurship and a strong work ethic. From an ESG and impact-investing perspective, Legacy Wealth directly advances social inclusion, inequality reduction, and institutional governance through formal financial participation.
Although mission-driven, Economic Center’s approach is grounded in commercial sustainability. Program participation, training, platform usage, and strategic partnerships generate recurring revenues that reinforce institutional capacity and long-term impact.
This shared-value model ensures that poverty eradication is scalable, measurable, and aligned with impact-investment principles.
Economic Growth and Development Center’s Total Economic Development, integrating economic development training, consultancy, the Legacy Wealth and One Shout programs represents a mature evolution in development practice—moving from charity and aid toward capital ownership, security, human capital development and self-sustaining growth and development. By mobilizing diaspora capital from Europe and North America and embedding ESG-aligned investment principles, Economic Center offers a replicable pathway for Africa’s long-term economic transformation.