For decades, commentators have predicted the death of nationalism. Globalisation, the internet, and supranational institutions were supposed to dissolve borders and make “brand nation” irrelevant. The opposite is happening, and it is happening fastest at the bottom of the global income ladder.
Poor countries are discovering something that rich countries have always known but can now afford to forget: when you have little money, your reputation is one of your few remaining assets. In a world of mobile capital, mobile talent, and mobile public opinion, a country’s ability to attract investment, skilled workers, remittances, tourists, foreign aid, and even diplomatic support increasingly depends on how it is perceived. And perception is shaped, more than ever, by national narrative and national pride.
1. Human capital follows flags (and feelings)
A software engineer from Nigeria or a nurse from the Philippines does not choose between “$3,000 a month in Lagos/Manila” and “$8,000 a month in Toronto”. They choose between “a country that feels like it is going somewhere” and “a country that feels like it is falling apart”. Diaspora remittances already dwarf foreign direct investment in many low-income nations; those flows slow dramatically when the home country is seen as corrupt, violent, or hopeless.
Look at the data. Between 2017 and 2023, Rwanda’s diaspora remittances rose from $185 million to over $500 million while its global reputation shifted from “genocide recovery” to “Africa’s Singapore”. Ghana’s “Year of Return” campaign in 2019 explicitly targeted reputation; the result was not just tourism dollars but thousands of African-Americans and Caribbeans relocating or starting businesses. National pride became a recruitment tool for talent.
2. Investment now reads Twitter before it reads the balance sheetIn 2015, an American fund manager deciding whether to put $100 million into Ethiopian textile factories looked mainly at labour costs and the latest World Bank report. In 2025, that same manager also scrolls through TikTok videos about the Tigray war, reads Western newspaper headlines calling Ethiopia’s government “authoritarian”, and quietly moves the money to Vietnam instead.
Poor countries have small domestic markets and weak institutions, so they are disproportionately reliant on foreign sentiment. When Tanzania was praised as a COVID success story in 2020, FDI pledges jumped. When President Magufuli’s denialism became global news in 2021, investors evaporated overnight. The economic cost of a damaged national reputation is immediate and brutal when your GDP per capita is $1,200.3. Aid and soft power are the oxygen of the poorest states
The very poorest countries—those under $2,000 GDP per capita—still receive official development assistance equivalent to 10–30% of their government budgets. That aid is not allocated by spreadsheets alone. Donors give more to countries whose stories resonate: Cape Verde gets praised for democratic stability, Timor-Leste for its resistance heroism, Bhutan for Gross National Happiness. Countries that cannot tell a compelling national story—or worse, acquire a toxic one—watch the oxygen get cut.
Even China’s Belt and Road lending, often portrayed as cold realpolitik, is influenced by narrative. Beijing prefers partners who at least pretend to admire the “Chinese model” and who do not embarrass their patron on the world stage.
4. The rich can afford to be post-national; the poor cannot
Denmark can experiment with relaxed nationalism because its passport is already the world’s most desired, its companies are global leaders, and its welfare state is funded by North Sea oil and Lego. A Danish citizen who feels vaguely “European” or “global” still benefits from a national brand built over centuries.Malawi cannot. If young Malawians stop believing in “Malawi”, they do not become proud citizens of the world—they become economic migrants who send back fewer remittances and invest nothing at home. A poor country that loses its nationalist glue risks losing its most talented citizens entirely.
5. The coming reputational arms raceWe are entering an era in which middle-income countries (Vietnam, Georgia, Botswana) will spend real money on nation-branding the way companies spend on advertising. Expect more “Rwanda open for business” campaigns, more carefully curated presidential Twitter accounts, more strategic hosting of international events. The poorest countries that refuse to play this game—or play it clumsily—will fall further behind.
Nationalism, far from being a luxury that only rich countries can afford to abandon, is becoming a survival tool for the poor. When you own almost nothing else, you fiercely protect the idea that your flag still means something.In the 21st century, the most valuable natural resource of many developing nations will not be oil, lithium, or cobalt. It will be the story they can persuade the world—and their own people—to believe about themselves.
