Our future is African, and we haven’t a clue what that will actually look like
This is the analytical framework through which I make sense of our world. I am not going to list everything negative or pessimistic about Africa that abounds in our world. Just open any mainstream media or policy paper, and you’ll find plenty there.
I am aware of these narratives and tropes. This is not the point of this page.
1. Africa's Youth Are Key Drivers of Our Global Future
Africa is very young. And our future is inextricably linked to Africa’s youth and how they build their worlds.
Demographically, we are moving towards an African world. Africa’s median age is under 20, while the rest of the world is ageing rapidly. By mid-century, one in four people on Earth, roughly 25% of all humans, will be African. This shift marks a major turning point in global history and will profoundly shape our shared future. Demographic shifts shape geopolitics.
2. Africans are being born into a continent with unique features:
Africa has the longest and deepest record of human history.
With 55 countries (including the occupied territory of Western Sahara) in a world of 193 (excluding the Holy See but including Palestine), Africa is an international space in its own right. It makes up 28% of the world’s countries.
The global ‘international sphere’ as we know it was created through the liberation struggles of African peoples (and other formerly occupied peoples in Asia and South America) through their claims to sovereignty. The United Nations started with only 51 founding member states when its charter was signed in June 1945. The creation of the international was achieved by the former ‘Third World’.
The Pan-African vision was not instilled by the European Union or by other regional liberal trade agreement templates. Pan-Africanism, preceding the regionalism ‘turn’ of the latter half of the last century, is rooted in the radical tradition of anti-colonial resistance, self-determination, and black solidarity. It was shaped by thinkers and activists who envisioned a politically unified and economically independent Africa, free from foreign domination. As a continent-wide shared vision for liberation, it is unique in the world.
The push for unity grew out of the Pan-African and Congress Movement (1900–1945), which gave rise to the First Congress of Independent African States in Accra, Ghana, in 1958. In 1963, 32 independent African governments met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to establish the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The African Union now has 55 members.
Denied sovereignty through colonialism and imperialism, African states are exercising sovereignty in new and multiple ways, from Djibouti to the new Alliance of Sahel States, to control of resources, for instance, gold in Ghana.
Africa is the world’s fastest urbanizing region, with cities expanding at an average rate of about 3.5% per year. Unlike other global regions, urbanization in Africa shows little to no direct statistical relationship between city growth and industrial output.
Africa is very rich. As the most resource-abundant landmass on the planet, Africa is resource-wealthy by virtually every geological and agricultural metric. It holds approximately 30% of the world’s total mineral reserves.
It is the world’s most linguistically diverse continent in the world, holding roughly one-third of all known languages on Earth. Speaking multiple languages is a normal part of daily life. This cultural richness deeply shapes all aspects of society. It has shaped global culture over millennia.
Covering an area of 30.37 million km², Africa constitutes 20% of the planet's land and holds 25% of the world’s biodiversity.
3. Global labour will be African – young & working in the informal economy
Africa’s rising young workforce will drive future global labour dynamics through the expansion of the informal economy and the creation of employment outside organised labour/employee relations and traditional trade unions.
In 2025, 57.9% of the global employed population was in informal employment; the International Labour Organisation reports that the informal economy absorbs roughly 83% of total employment across Africa and about 85% in Sub-Saharan Africa. Informal entrepreneurs operate with limited capital and high uncertainty, and have developed remarkable resilience, adaptability and responsiveness to local markets. People rely on a deep understanding of the communities they serve and the social and cultural dynamics that shape demand.
Driven by informal economies, decentralised networks, and situated problem-solving, our future will be shaped by how African youth make sense of and build their world(s), and by how they create their own employment outside labour markets with stable employers.
4. The Liberal 'End of History' never happened, and it won't
African countries, societies, and spaces will not develop and echo ‘ours’ of the so-called Liberal democratic capitalist world. An obvious reason is that Africa’s riches developed, and continue to buttress, Europe and North America. Logically, if Africa is to resemble the world’s richest countries, it would need another Africa to exploit. And have armies and navies to conduct gunboat policies and subdue the people and extract the wealth.
Africa has never been embedded in the Liberal World Order.
Its future will not be an ‘End of History’ Liberal dream.
And because that remains the meta-narrative – that modernisation and good governance are Liberal-craft capable of reforming Africa - we don’t know what African futures will look like.
Because our thinking is not rigorous but shaped by ideology.
In other words, to be really clear, the world is heading in a direction we do not have a clue about (or most of us don’t have a clue about), because we are intent on our models, using the continent (for example, for the so-called Green Revolution in renewables) to meet global needs, while claiming that the problem of underdevelopment is internal to the continent.
And as we intend to keep drawing from the continent, we feed ourselves stories that Africa will become like the West if it behaves like us and follows our policies. But there is a fundamental problem with the reasoning. It doesn’t hold.
5. We need to change our minds
We are ill-equipped to think of the future because mainstream analytical frameworks miss the realities of Africa. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Professor and Chair of Epistemologies of the Global South with Emphasis on Africa at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, affirms that our analytical tools are outdated. They fail to enlighten us about the current dynamics and processes taking place across the continent and around the world. Eurocentric knowledge frameworks have structural limitations. Standard [academic] methodologies fail to capture modern global realities.
Western Liberalism expects strong formal state systems. Chinese state capitalism relies on centralised command and corporate structures. Mainstream frameworks fail because they try to force African realities into external, predominantly modernist-development templates that are acutely outdated.
These models cannot help us understand the unfolding of the 21st century. The issue now is that the thinkers, policymakers, and politicians who are still trying to push these external templates onto Africa's own realities - through paradigms of ‘good governance’, market rationality, and global capitalism - will, instead, be shaped by African processes.
And we do not know how to think about this.
6. We will live in a world of Africa's creation
Innovation in Africa is a deep and historical story of resilience, creativity, and boundless potential.
Africa is the cradle of human innovation, with a deep history of scientific and technological advancement, profound and varied artistic legacies, and diverse worldviews about humanity and its connections to the environment and deities.
The intersection of new technologies, widespread informal markets, and Africa’s rapid growth in its youth population is spurring innovation and creativity. This is particularly evident in music and movies, thereby extending its influence to a global audience.
The extent of this surge of youth, new technologies, creativity, informal economies, daring and resilience in a world decentring the West is unprecedented. And exciting. And unsettling. And there is nothing we can do to change this course.
Of course, there is climate change and the havoc it is already wreaking, and Africa will be particularly hard hit. But it will take place in a world being shaped by African processes and dynamics.