The world is changing. Africa can invent what comes next.

Between 2024 and 2050, Africa is expected to gain nearly 950 million people. Over the same period, its urban population could double. Hundreds of millions of additional life paths will therefore need to be made possible: finding housing, getting around, learning, and gaining access to water, energy, health and a chosen activity. These needs concern the large metropolises, but also intermediate cities and the areas around them.

Urbanisation does not automatically create prosperity. How far ahead land, services and infrastructure are planned will determine whether cities become places of emancipation or reproduce exclusion and precarity. Climate constraints make these choices even more decisive.

The African Development Bank estimates the continent’s real GDP growth at 4.4% in 2025. This momentum nonetheless conceals very different national situations. On its own, it does not say how many people gain stable employment, reliable services or the means to start a business.

According to the OECD, about 82% of African workers are in informal employment. The World Bank estimates that 10 to 12 million young people enter the labour market each year, while about 3 million formal jobs are created. The challenge is therefore to turn demographic energy into skills, local production and more evenly shared incomes, while recognising the value created outside conventional forms of employment. Source: World Bank, 2026 ↗

Artificial intelligence is a general-purpose technology whose potential effects the OECD compares to those of past industrial revolutions. It already affects tasks of writing, calculation, programming, design and analysis; with robotics, it may also change production and services. It thus transforms the organisation of intellectual work as much as that of manual work. Source: OECD, 2026 ↗

The ILO estimates that about one job in four worldwide has some degree of exposure to generative AI. This is a measure of task exposure, not a forecast of job losses: the transformation of occupations appears more likely than their disappearance. Productivity gains, risks of deskilling and the emergence of new activities will depend on choices about training, social protection and the sharing of value. Source: ILO, 2025 ↗

This revolution raises a deeper question: what do we want to entrust to machines, and what do we want to do with our time and our capacities? Judgement, care, creation, passing on knowledge and collective decision-making remain human responsibilities. Rethinking work therefore means discussing remuneration, freed-up time and the place given to contributions useful to the community. It is a social and political debate, still open, which the NOVASCEND vision seeks to make concrete.

The capabilities of AI will not be equally accessible. In 2025, according to the International Telecommunication Union, 36% of people used the Internet in its Africa region, compared with 74% worldwide. Developing AI also requires reliable electricity, networks, computing capacity, skills, representative data and tools adapted to local languages and realities. Source: ITU, 2025 ↗

Sovereignty hinges on the capacity to set the rules: who controls the data, who owns the infrastructure, who can challenge an automated decision, and where the value produced stays. The African Union has adopted a continental strategy for responsible AI suited to the continent’s priorities. For NOVASCEND, this question goes beyond digital technology: it also concerns economic, cultural and narrative control of development, with residents as the authors of their own solutions. Source: African Union, 2024 ↗