What will africa be like in 100 years

This site uses cookies to deliver website functionality and analytics. If you would like to know more about the types of cookies we serve and how to change your cookie settings, please read our Cookie Notice. By clicking the "I accept" button, you consent to the use of these cookies. By one in five people will be African. Here are just a few of the surprising facts and figures about Africa and its emerging success story.

The United Nations predicts that between and , Africa will add 1. The overwhelming majority of Africans today have access to a mobile phone service, but less than two thirds have access to piped water. According to research by Afro Barometer , mobile phone networks have grown faster than any other area of core infrastructure over the past decade, increasing by nearly a quarter. Less than one third of Africans currently have access to modern wastewater systems. Only 16 African brands made the top , with just two in the top Both mobile service providers operate in multiple African nations.

So, for the foreseeable future, Africa alone will have a growing amount of young people as consumers and workers. That makes the move beyond extractives investment that much more important. The EY database confirms this. Urban areas, corridors and regions present opportunities more than strategies centered solely on a given country on the continent.

As investment spreads to more sectors of the African economy, investors are also thinking in new ways about its geography. Investment rationales are less frequently based on country-level economics, and more often focused on urban areas, corridors and regions. Leading cities, such as Lagos Nigeria , Johannesburg South Africa and Nairobi Kenya stand out for their financial-technology hubs, middle-class consumers and connectivity.

Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, stands out as a city with consumer power. For the long term, cities have the potential to serve as anchors for region-based investment strategies, in particular given the announcement of the African Continental Free Trade Area.

The deal is also a signal to investors at a time when they are evaluating global supply chains. Africa attracted less FDI capital than any other region in , and the investment level per project has also fallen. That reflects the shift away from extractive-sector investments, which are typically the most capital-intensive. The first and most famous example of telecommunications creating a value chain is M-Pesa, the Kenyan mobile-money platform.

It was created to send money between people and has blossomed into a marketplace. Kenyans can use it to buy insurance, pay a barber, borrow money, or finance a pay-as-you-go solar-power system. My mother-in-law is 85 and she uses it. While these new tools are helping to broaden investment rationales, the destinations of choice for FDI are mostly familiar, according to an EY blended ranking incorporating the overall number of jobs invested, capital expenditure and job creation: South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Ethiopia.

South Africa is the most developed of sub-Saharan economies, with its deepest capital markets and understanding of the continent because, in addition to being a favored target for FDI, it is the fifth-largest source as well.

Nigeria and Ethiopia are the two countries in sub-Saharan Africa with million people or more. Nigeria is also a known investment destination for oil and gas and hosts an emerging technology hub and start-up culture.

Ghana and Kenya stand out for their relative political stability and economic diversification. Their challenge is to develop more domestic supply chains to generate economic value before exporting.

Together, the two countries produce about two-thirds of global cocoa output. FDI strategies vary by sector, but success stories in recent years illustrate common themes. In some cases, these government agencies, as well as international organizations and bilateral aid and development agencies, are willing to help investors overcome obstacles by offering sovereign guarantees, political-risk insurance, financing and instruments. Local partnerships are often useful for land acquisition, which often triggers cultural sensitivities in many sub-Saharan states.

Land registries are often incomplete or inaccurate, and non-governmental actors such as the leaders of ethnic groups or communities often wield power.

Rather than attempting to buy land, investors have often instead provided a small slice of equity to landowners, which can be private or public entities. Providing equity to state- or provincial-level governments for land helped Persianas Group develop malls in Nigeria, for example, boosting local support and political will for the projects. Several main value chains have emerged in the two decades since FDI broadened beyond extractives, based on telecommunications, agricultural and energy.

That created a virtuous cycle in which foreign entrepreneurs leveraged the payments system and the data it created to do things such as secured lending on a pay-as-you-go basis for home solar-energy kits.

This made-in-Africa model is now spreading elsewhere in the Global South. The gas-to-power narrative is a more complex one than telecommunications, with more counterparties and long-term contracts required to finance the considerable infrastructure required to move gas to power plants. But if more of these long-term projects reach completion, opportunities open up in manufacturing, and the coveted jobs that factories bring.

Governance is poised to evolve in other agencies and institutions, such as finance ministries, electricity utilities and tax authorities. The state says its contracts with private power producers leave it with a surplus it is contractually obligated to pay for, even if not used. Most African governments are open to private investment in power, particularly in building new generation capacity. Investors like Ghana due to its reputation for good governance and the general peace it has enjoyed over time.

With a consumer base of 1. Second, Africa needs to build better institutions, strengthen weak ones and introduce the ones missing. No better wake-up call is required than the present pandemic. Third, one important institution that has been abruptly disrupted is the supply chain for medicines and food, for example.

Logistics for transporting capital and consumer goods across the region need predictable structures. Building or strengthening supply chains involve fostering and providing regulations for long-term agreements and competences that leverage both private and public institutional challenges such as customs regulations.

Finally, development finance institutions DFIs such as the African Development Bank are mandated to, and are currently, trying to fill the gaps left by private financial institutions. There is an opportunity to Africa to rethink and reengineer its future. The Africa of tomorrow must look inwards for its solutions. The African Development Bank stands ready to help target and push for deeper economic transformation.

Africa needs to execute structurally transformative projects that generate positive externalities and social returns.