SCALING UP AFRICA’S RENEWABLE POWER
This sense of optimism is also increasingly coming from the business community and investors, both in Africa and internationally. The reasons for this are varied and understandable.In the 2000-2019 period, most African countries experienced rapid economic growth and the continent as a whole averaged about 4.6% growth in gross domestic product (GDP), the second highest in the world3. Social welfare and human development improvements followed, with 11 countries attaining middle – or higher – level of income status, and 17 African countries now having “emerging” or “frontier” economy status.
These positive high-level trends appear to be substantiated by a variety of international and regional institutions, which forecast positive macro-economic scenarios for Africa in the coming years (Figure 1). Due to the current health and economic crisis, short-term scenarios have changed, but long-term macro-economic predictions are likely to remain unvaried, with key findings including:
• highly positive economic growth projections for Africa, showing an average GDP increase of about 4% per year in the 2020-2024 period (although with significant cross-regional and cross-country variations);
• many African countries being among the fastest growing global economies, with GDP growth of above 6% on average between 2020 and 2024;
• one in four people on Earth will be African by mid-century, with the total number of Africans in 2030 expected to reach 1.7 billion;
• urban and peri-urban areas hosting around half of the continent’s population by the next decade, with a share of young and working people expected to surpass that of China by 2035;
• these developments taking place in a vibrant economic setting, including a rising start-up scene made up of talented and digitally-savvy entrepreneurs.