Building Africa's Futures

It is a term that is sure to draw attention. Whether you are a firm believer in the continent’s potential to become the world’s premier growth market of the 21st Century, the last unexplored global growth opportunity, or whether you are concerned perhaps whether African countries can realise such bright future prospects, ones that are strikingly different, more affluent and secure than what you see as African realities today, putting the words Africa and Futures together, is sure to draw a response.

By African futures, we practice both our imaginations of what could be, and the decisions we make today, those that lead us towards such envisioned states, of the continent and its people.

Futurist Amy Webb reminds us that today we live in the actioning era. That is, an era that requires a new kind of scenario, where we connect the near term and the far term. In this era, African nations can rehearse their own futures, the future of jobs and inspired workplaces, the future of collaborations and competition, co-existing, for us to creatively draw on.

As a result, Africans are exploring, anticipating, and preparing for potential future scenarios, playing out in the 21st Century. The builders of African futures, we see, are acquiring new capabilities in facing uncertainty of the future, piloting new strategic moves, as they navigate a new path towards their desired futures. They are the masters of a new, meta-discipline, that of leading from the future. How has this meta-discipline come about? Here we must look to Africa’s past. You see, anticipating the future is nothing new to those leading in Africa. Here, on African soil, we find African futures often hiding, in plain sight.

From Ancient Egypt to Pre-Industrial South Africa, African Futures are abound

The Egyptians are widely regarded as the foremost global superpower of the ancient world, their reign lasting for about 3 000 years, from around 3100 BC (and possibly earlier) until Egypt's conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. It possessed an array of tools to anticipate and prepare for the future. Acutely aware of its dependence on the river Nile for precious water resources, an understanding of astronomy of the times was a critical capability to master. Combined with a measure of scientific curiosity, ancient Egyptian leaders drew much of their attention to predicting, with fair accuracy I must add, the annual flooding of the river. The Egyptian calendar based their agricultural cycle of planting and harvest on such astronomical observations. Spot the star Sirius at its brightest in the sky, and the Egyptians knew that the Nile would soon begin to flood.

With such periods of flooding, the Nile brought precious water and rich topsoils to the dry lands along its path, readying the surrounding areas of the river for farmers to plant their crops. Practices such as crop rotation, pastoral nomadism, and the protection of certain forests and water sources were based on this understanding of ecological cycles and the need for sustainable resource management.

The Egyptian mathematical models of the time, while we have little first-hand account of them surviving to this day, were held in high regard by competing empires, such as the Babylonians. It was a testament to the Egyptians’ ability to anticipate and plan for future agricultural cycles, ensuring food security and societal stability over centuries.

There were clear limitations, as well, to the ancients’ use of foresight. The Egyptians did not match the Babylonians’ mastery of astronomical computations and their predictions suffered as a result. Periods of drought and the inability to forecast shifts in weather patterns, which led to large migrations out of Egypt, affected their ability to anticipate and plan for a diverse set of futurs. Climate change, it seems, while more sporadic in those ancient times, has had a marked impact on African futures.

Future-full or Future-less: It’s all in a mindset

Our mindset is a lens through which we see the world. Mindets comprise our underlying beliefs and attitudes. These guide our thinking and the information which we feed our minds with. A mindset open to new information, flexible in the face of change, and proactive in considering a range of possible futures, is essential for effective future planning and decision-making. The ancient Egyptian rulers, for example, relied heavily on consistent annual patterns, which precipitated the flooding of the Nile. It led to beliefs about the role of nature and attitudes towards the impending seasons and agricultural practices which take full advantage of them. If certain supernatural phenomenon was seen at play, it was difficult to navigate around preconceived notions or challenge a prevailing scenario. Taking a step back, it largely worked for centuries. At the same time, it lacked an openness to multiple futures, where this pattern could fundementally change, because of climatic and demographic shifts. Geopolitical turns, in the shape of Greek and Roman invasions were soon to follow.

The good news is that our mindsets can evolve. We humans have an incredible capacity to add new mindsets to our toolkit. These can be seen as new mental muscles, allowing us to open up to new information, shift long-held perspectives and hold an evolving, even conflicting pictures of the future, along multiple paths.

A futures mindset, therefore, is a broad term that describes our ability to recognise that the future is not a linear extension of the past or present, but rather multitude of possible paths, each influenced by the interplay of decisions, signals, and trends. An ability to entertain multiple perspectives and ideas simultaneously without prematurely converging on a single 'truth', considering a wider range of possibilities.

A futures mindset make us more recptive to iterative learning, where insights from experiments can be used to refine our understanding and adjust our strategies, in line with evolving realities.

African builders of the future

Where do we find builders of Africa’s futures who are employing such a futures mindset? Are they equally distributed across this vast continent or are there countries, even regions where the conditions for a futures mindset to thrive are more prevalent? Assessing this against a set of criteria in each of the 54 countries comprising this continent is a significant undertaking. However, with the use of AI, a variety of data sources can be interrogated, to provide us with a perspective that is data driven yet open to human interpretation.

As in our exploration of ancient Egypt, there were some tell-tell signs of a futures mindset at work. For example, we were looking for countries which have demonstrated resilience to short-term crises, from economic downturns to natural disasters. Such resilience followed by capacity building, often led to a diversified approach to future planning.

Secondly was transparency in both government and business policies. Leaders in these countries would more openly communicate their visions and their progress towards these, involving the public in the process through various mechanisms. Futures thinking was increasingly woven into the fabric of society, making it a standard practice rather than a discretionary one. Globally, countries such as Singapore and the UAE come to mind. Which nations would demonstrate a similar approach on African soil?

Futures literacy through formal education as well as continuous learning was another indicator of such environments, where African builders more readily employ a futures mindset.

In these countries, we saw a greater share of international collaborations and knowledge exchanges, and how global insights are adapted and applied to local African contexts. Their local economies were more diverse or with a clear intent to achieve such diversification, reflective of their futures thinking and often diverse, unconstrained aspirations.

Lastly, we had to contend with false starts - countries which looked promising at first, where the business community was engaged in futures thinking and doing yet lacking in one of our six criteria. A country which significantly lacked any of these criteria was prone to its futures building efforts faltering after several years. Confidence in holding a credible vision of the future waned and talent migrated to countries where the prospects for leading from the future were more pronounced. Sometimes elsewhere on the African continent, other times such builders of the future took a path into the African diaspora.

At the top of our list are countries such as Mauritius, Rwanda and Namibia. Rwanda, for example, has shown great resilience in its societal recovery from 1994, reducing its reliance on agriculture and investing in sectors like technology and tourism, in welcoming entrepreneurial talent and supporting international collaborations in the areas of FinTech (such as Rwanda’s KIFC and Singapore’s Elevandi, a case study which I cover in my book Challengers). We have similarly seen this in the growth of sustainable finance, advancing Rwanda’s developmental goals while promoting STEM education, as tertiary sectors of the economy grow.

Futures thinking on the African continent is on the rise. This time with greater scientific rigor and infromation exchanges, to tackle challenges with a fresh perspective. We live today in a more complex world today than either policy makers or corporate strategists ever envisioned. African futures are not merely a consequence of these, but a tool, in the hands of those willing to build, to see an opportunity in challenge and incorporate futures thinking into their execution efforts. In some parts of the continent, this can be done more readily, and with greater capacity for change. Just ask builders of the future in Rwanda, Mauritius, Namibia and several others on our rankings list.

Have a good week ahead.

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