African Futures - Translating Africa's potential into prosperity
Publication year
Resource type
UNCCD Library
External document
Material Type
Web resource
Africa's Current Path, 14 thematic futures and a Combined Agenda 2063 scenario
This website provides integrated forecasts of Africa’s development prospects and potential. Prospects cover 14 sectors for each African country, region, regional economic community and country income groups within the timeline of the African Union’s Agenda 2063. Insights are grounded in academic literature, using benchmarks to deliver ambitious but realistic forecasts that are regularly updated.
The Current Path forecast for each of 54 countries and an ambitious positive scenario on stability, demographics, agriculture, health/WaSH, education, manufacturing/transfers, free trade, leapfrogging, financial flows, major infrastructure, governance and a Combined Agenda 2063 scenario.
The African Union's Agenda 2063 ambition is a comprehensive 50-year blueprint that aims to transform Africa into an integrated, prosperous and peaceful continent, ‘driven by its citizens, representing a dynamic force in the international arena.’ It consists of 20 goals encapsulated in seven aspirations and 15 flagship projects. It is being operationalised in successive 10-year plans. The first 10-year implementation plan concludes in 2023. The associated AU progress report is available here. The three main objectives of the second plan, 2024 to 2033, are: to ensure greater physical connectivity of the Continent through the construction of roads and other communication infrastructures, to establish the conditions for sufficient domestic agricultural production to reduce imports of foodstuffs and build the technical capacities to make the energy transition a success.
The website consists of a Current Path forecast and separate scenarios coinciding with the second 10-year implementation plan of Agenda 2063, starting in 2024 and concluding in 2033. We measure the impact by 2043 and sometimes by 2063. The analysis presented in this platform extends that first provided in the book Africa First! Igniting a Growth Revolution (Jonathan Ball, 2020) and the subsequent textbook The Future of Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). A revised and updated book, Africa Tomorrow, was published in August 2022 and is available as an open-access book on this website. Go to Resources on the main menu.
From October 2020 to February 2021, we hosted 15 high-level global dialogues to refine the scenarios and to validate the forecasts. These sessions brought together some of the best minds globally and systematically reviewed our forecasts of Africa’s likely development prospects. Then, from March 2021 to September 2021, AFI staff presented and discussed the forecasts across various platforms and events to further benchmark and improve the scenarios, eventually published as part of the website when it went live in June 2022.
The original version of this website modelled 11 separate scenarios for each geography. Each was supported with a separate theme and compared the Current Path forecast. At the end of 2022 the team decided to revise the scenario structure. These are now consolidated into eight scenarios, namely governance, demographics and health/WaSH, agriculture, education, industrialisation, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, technological leapfrogging and large infrastructure, financial flows and large infrastructure. In addition, we review the future of work/jobs, the impact of carbon emissions of each scenario and how global developments could impact on Africa's development (Africa in the World). During 2023 the team will add a theme on gender.
A combined Agenda 2063 scenario emulates the combined impact of all scenarios, includes the impact of a carbon tax and briefly comments on progress towards the African Union's Agenda 2063 ambitions. The Combined Agenda 2063 presents an optimistic upper ceiling for Africa's development prospects. Actual progress is likely to be more modest, particularly the constraining impact of an increasingly fraught international context which is explorted in the Africa in the World set of global scenarios. The relationship of the scenarios to one another are presented below.
This website provides integrated forecasts of Africa’s development prospects and potential. Prospects cover 14 sectors for each African country, region, regional economic community and country income groups within the timeline of the African Union’s Agenda 2063. Insights are grounded in academic literature, using benchmarks to deliver ambitious but realistic forecasts that are regularly updated.
The Current Path forecast for each of 54 countries and an ambitious positive scenario on stability, demographics, agriculture, health/WaSH, education, manufacturing/transfers, free trade, leapfrogging, financial flows, major infrastructure, governance and a Combined Agenda 2063 scenario.
The African Union's Agenda 2063 ambition is a comprehensive 50-year blueprint that aims to transform Africa into an integrated, prosperous and peaceful continent, ‘driven by its citizens, representing a dynamic force in the international arena.’ It consists of 20 goals encapsulated in seven aspirations and 15 flagship projects. It is being operationalised in successive 10-year plans. The first 10-year implementation plan concludes in 2023. The associated AU progress report is available here. The three main objectives of the second plan, 2024 to 2033, are: to ensure greater physical connectivity of the Continent through the construction of roads and other communication infrastructures, to establish the conditions for sufficient domestic agricultural production to reduce imports of foodstuffs and build the technical capacities to make the energy transition a success.
The website consists of a Current Path forecast and separate scenarios coinciding with the second 10-year implementation plan of Agenda 2063, starting in 2024 and concluding in 2033. We measure the impact by 2043 and sometimes by 2063. The analysis presented in this platform extends that first provided in the book Africa First! Igniting a Growth Revolution (Jonathan Ball, 2020) and the subsequent textbook The Future of Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). A revised and updated book, Africa Tomorrow, was published in August 2022 and is available as an open-access book on this website. Go to Resources on the main menu.
From October 2020 to February 2021, we hosted 15 high-level global dialogues to refine the scenarios and to validate the forecasts. These sessions brought together some of the best minds globally and systematically reviewed our forecasts of Africa’s likely development prospects. Then, from March 2021 to September 2021, AFI staff presented and discussed the forecasts across various platforms and events to further benchmark and improve the scenarios, eventually published as part of the website when it went live in June 2022.
The original version of this website modelled 11 separate scenarios for each geography. Each was supported with a separate theme and compared the Current Path forecast. At the end of 2022 the team decided to revise the scenario structure. These are now consolidated into eight scenarios, namely governance, demographics and health/WaSH, agriculture, education, industrialisation, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, technological leapfrogging and large infrastructure, financial flows and large infrastructure. In addition, we review the future of work/jobs, the impact of carbon emissions of each scenario and how global developments could impact on Africa's development (Africa in the World). During 2023 the team will add a theme on gender.
A combined Agenda 2063 scenario emulates the combined impact of all scenarios, includes the impact of a carbon tax and briefly comments on progress towards the African Union's Agenda 2063 ambitions. The Combined Agenda 2063 presents an optimistic upper ceiling for Africa's development prospects. Actual progress is likely to be more modest, particularly the constraining impact of an increasingly fraught international context which is explorted in the Africa in the World set of global scenarios. The relationship of the scenarios to one another are presented below.
Keywords
Africa
knowledge exchange
science and technology
statistics
facts and figures
prediction
sustainability
demographic transition
demographic change
economic growth
economic aspects
human mobility
energy resources
agriculture
governance