There’s no shortage of incredible stories about the central role Africa will play in the world’s future, but there is one theme in particular that captures my attention. UN demographers project that Africa will be home to a quarter of the world’s population by 2050, and as much as 40% by 2100.
This is happening because a significant portion of the world’s population growth between now and 2050, and between 2050 and 2100, is being driven by Africa.
It is in this context that SA will be abuzz with excitement when the Group of 20 (G20) Leaders’ Summit occurs in the country between November 22 and 23 to mark the culmination of SA’s assumption of the G20 Presidency from December 1 2024 to November 30 2025.
The G20 is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 sovereign countries, the AU and EU. The G20 was founded in 1999 in the wake of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. It now serves as the “premier forum for international economic co-operation”.
SA is Africa’s only sovereign country representative on the G20, and this might be the only time the G20 Presidency is held by an African nation in our lifetime.
The world’s evolving demographics will lead to pronounced changes in the global economy, international trade, and the manner in which the world’s supply chains — the complex, dynamic and constantly evolving systems that enable production and consumption — function.
Certainly, there will be several outcomes of the dialogues that occur during G20 SA. Among these outcomes, industrial transformation, storytelling and free trade are three that have to be front and centre if Africa is to start fulfilling its potential this century.
Industrial transformation and supply chain innovation and technology
The world needs Africa to industrialise, and quickly.
According to the UN, “Africa is home to some 30% of the world’s mineral reserves, 8% of the world’s natural gas and 12% of the world’s oil reserves. The continent has 40% of the world’s gold and up to 90% of its chromium and platinum. The largest reserves of cobalt, diamonds, platinum and uranium in the world are in Africa. It holds 65% of the world’s arable land and 10% of the planet’s internal renewable fresh water source.”
This transformation is about increasing Africa’s capacity for participation in the world’s ability to produce and consume goods and services by aggressively adopting, using, and developing new innovations in exponential technologies.
Exponential technologies are technologies that benefit from Moore’s law such that their positive performance characteristics increase exponentially, while the related costs of producing and adopting them in industrial and consumer applications decrease exponentially.
Such technologies cut across virtually every industry and sector within the economy. As such, one way to categorise these opportunities is by grouping them into four buckets:
- Data and artificial intelligence (AI);
- Advanced materials;
- Advanced manufacturing;
- Next-generation supply chains.
Within these buckets, data and AI has the broadest application because this category is about the use of advancements in information technology and software engineering to drive more efficient and dynamic decision-making about resource allocation within the context of shifting demographics, the climate crisis, and evolving geopolitics.
In this context:
- Cassava Technologies’ announcement of a $720m investment directed at building AI factories across the continent could not have been more timely;
- Reports of the Dangote Group’s initiatives and investments across the continent could not be more necessary since they demonstrate what is possible when private capital dovetails with public policy; and
- Rwanda’s push for 100% electricity access by 2030 could not be more laudable and salutary.
Creative industries, arts, media, narratives and storytelling
Africa, and the rest of the world, need to start telling and publicising different, better, and more inspiring stories about the continent’s past, present and future.
As an early-stage venture capitalist, there are two observations about storytelling that are always top of mind.
The first is an observation by Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia Capital: “The art of storytelling is incredibly important. And many — maybe even most — of the entrepreneurs who come to talk to us can’t tell the story. Learning to tell a story is incredibly important because that’s how the money works. The money flows as a function of the stories.”
The second is an observation by Steve Jobs: “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.”
African creatives must be empowered to tell the kinds of stories that draw all the different forms of financial, intellectual, and social capital to investment opportunities ... across the entire continent
— Brian Aoaeh
This requires increased and consistent investments in Africa’s creative economy to drive the production of goods and services related to ideas and innovations derived from the continent’s artistic output. Such investments contribute to Africa’s economic progress by fashioning, elevating, and promulgating narratives about what is possible, and inspiring Africans to solve the problems millions of their compatriots are confronted by daily through critical problem-solving and technology-driven entrepreneurship.
The ultimate goal of these activities is to empower African creatives to tell the kinds of stories that draw all the different forms of financial, intellectual, and social capital to investment opportunities: across asset classes, across industries, and across the entire continent.
In this context, the Creative Africa Nexus (CANEX) programme by the African Export-Import Bank with $2bn of funding is a great start.
Increased political zeal for the African Continental Free Trade Area
Africa is grossly underperforming economically. With a population that rivals that of China and India, Africa’s annual economic output is about $2.8-trillion in 2025. India’s is about $4.2-trillion. China’s is about $19.2-trillion.
Africa can do better.
But doing better requires the removal of visible and invisible barriers to intra-African trade in raw materials and value-added goods and services — currently the lowest among the world’s economic regions, and a source of significant added cost in manufacturing supply chains and value chains across the continent.
There must be a concerted and continent-wide push for value-added production across all sectors of activity within Africa’s economy
— Brian Aoaeh
There must be a concerted and continent-wide push for value-added production across all sectors of activity within Africa’s economy. There must be a concerted push by public and private sector organisations to harness the financial, intellectual, and social capital within Africa’s diaspora to invest in, create, and harvest the significant wealth that will result from the economic activity that occurs as the continent industrialises. There must be a concerted push to bring Africa’s youth more fully into the global economy through trade.
To be clear, none of this is easy or simple.
Efforts to increase good governance and the rule of law must be stepped up to attract financial investors. Efforts to increase political and social stability must be redoubled again and again to encourage businesses to locate physical operations on the continent rather than elsewhere in the world. Efforts to invest in Africa’s hard and soft infrastructure must be accelerated to create an environment that supports, catalyses, and accelerates industrial growth.
Efforts to incentivise high-risk investments in Africa’s early-stage technological innovation economy must be accelerated by borrowing and adapting playbooks that have worked in other parts of the world. In particular, investments in distributed manufacturing infrastructure powered by industrial AI will be key for developing economically sustainable local economies.
As Mike Mpanya, founder of Nubi AI and cofounder of 2050AI, puts it: “African youth will be the world’s first AI-native generation — a critical mass born not just into connectivity, but into intelligence itself. Coupled with the continent’s demographic boom, Africa stands as the engine that will determine whether AI drives global abundance or deepens inequality. The keys to unlocking that future will not be designed in the East or West, but by innovators on this continent creating fit-for-purpose solutions that will export African ingenuity to the world. The most important bet investors can make today is a bet on African youth — because investing in them is investing in the future of humanity.”
These efforts, and others not enumerated here, require each of Africa’s governments to collectively and individually grapple with complex, dynamic, and interconnected social issues with no universally agreed-on definitions and no universally agreed-upon solutions. These efforts will require consultation and collaboration across a broad range of stakeholders, whose interests and motivations may be ambiguous, evolving, and sometimes conflicting.
That said, we know it is possible: China’s 40-year history of economic development, the history of Singapore’s economic development, and the history of South Korea’s economic development are just some examples of large-scale economic transformation within a matter of a few decades. It will require steadfast and collective political will, but we know it is possible.
Here are two more amazing stories about Africa’s role in the world’s future:
- Africa will account for 85% of the increase in the world’s working age population between 2024 and 2050; and
- Africa will add four more megacities — Dar es Salaam, Khartoum, Nairobi, and Luanda — to the current list of Cairo, Kinshasa, and Lagos. A megacity is a city with a population of more than 10-million people. Africa will have seven out of 47 megacities globally, or 15% of the total.
It is within this context that Time Africa, Arena Holdings — the publisher of Business Day and TimesLIVE, and the New York Africa Chamber of Commerce (NYACC) are collaborating to host a series of official G20 SA Side Events on November 19 and 20 in Johannesburg.
These inaugural events seek to create a forum for open, energetic, action-oriented, and ongoing dialogue about Africa’s role in the world’s future between political leaders, business people, creatives, media, industrialists, technologists, investors and others.
The goal is to harness the energy coming out of the G20 SA Leader’s Summit to create a series of ongoing conversations that seek to galvanise action across Africa’s private and public sector to drive advances in power and energy, agriculture, industrialisation, infrastructure, and socioeconomic development.
Together, let’s envision a future in which Africa is no longer an afterthought in the world economy. Then let’s work to make that future a tangible reality.
Join us.
More information and registration details for Arena Holdings, Time Africa and the NYACC’s official G20 SA Side Events will be released in due course.
• About the author: Brian Aoaeh is a founder and managing general partner of Refashiond Ventures: The Industrial Transformation Fund. This venture capital fund invests in early-stage start-ups refashioning legacy industries through data and AI, advanced materials, advanced manufacturing, and next-generation supply chains.
This article is sponsored by Arena Holdings.
