Africa Program - The Sixteenth Council

AI in 2025: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

By 2025, artificial intelligence has shifted from disruptive innovation to strategic infrastructure. It is boosting productivity, accelerating scientific discovery, and expanding access to knowledge, while simultaneously intensifying labour disruption, market concentration, and governance gaps. More troublingly, AI is eroding trust in information, enabling surveillance, and compressing decision-making in ways that strain democratic and security systems. AI is no longer a neutral tool; it is a force multiplier whose impact depends less on capability and more on the strength of institutions that govern it.

South Africa, the G20, and the Limits of Host-Nation Power: A Geopolitical Analysis

South Africa’s G20 membership is not America’s to revoke, but Trump’s attempt to bar Pretoria from the summit exposes a deeper crisis in global governance. It signals a sharp downturn in U.S.–South Africa relations, threatens the credibility of the G20, and risks pushing emerging economies closer together against unilateralism. By standing firm, South Africa defends not only its place at the table but the principle that multilateral forums cannot be controlled by any single host.

The Missing Middle: The Structural Financing Gap That Keeps SMEs Small

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) drive over 90% of African businesses and are vital to employment, innovation, and industrialisation. Yet many remain trapped in the “missing middle”—too large for microfinance but too small or informal for bank loans or venture capital. This structural financing gap limits their ability to expand, modernise, or join regional value chains. Without growth capital, SMEs operate below potential, reinforcing inequality and slowing Africa’s broader economic transformation and competitiveness.

A Generation in Flux: Youth, Migration and the New Political Contract

Africa’s post-independence promise to its youth—dignity, work, and belonging,has eroded. Today, with a median age under 20, most young Africans face exclusion from jobs and politics, while leaders remain decades older. Migration has become a silent protest, reflecting disillusionment with stagnant governance. Youth no longer seek token inclusion but credible participation and reform. Unless governments rebuild trust through opportunity and accountability, Africa’s brightest generation will keep voting with their feet—reshaping politics, economies, and the continent’s future from afar.

Aspiration or Implementation: Friction and the AfCFTA’s Great Experiment

A shipment from Accra to Lagos should take a day but often takes four—stalled by paperwork, checkpoints, and unofficial fees. This reflects the persistent barriers undermining the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Launched in 2021 to create a seamless African market, AfCFTA promised lower tariffs, unified trade rules, and continental growth. Yet, nearly four years later, non-tariff barriers, weak infrastructure, and fragmented regulations continue to slow progress. Vision remains high, but real implementation lags behind ambition.

Localizing Intelligence: Africa’s Fight for Inclusive AI

When African computer scientist Atika Elshazli tested a breast cancer detection model, it failed her patients—not from error, but exclusion. Most AI training data comes from the West, leaving African realities invisible in the code. Across the continent, a new movement is rising to change that—anchoring artificial intelligence in ethics, data sovereignty, fairness, and access. If Africa grounds AI in its own values like Ubuntu, it won’t just catch up to the future; it will redefine its moral frontier.

How Africa’s Infrastructure Gaps Are Holding Back Regional Value Chains

Despite the promise of AfCFTA, Africa’s regional trade remains stunted by a critical and underexamined barrier: infrastructure. This dispatch argues that fragmented, underfinanced, and nationally siloed infrastructure systems are preventing the emergence of regional value chains. From broken transport links to disconnected power grids and outdated customs systems, the lack of coordinated, production-enabling infrastructure is the single most decisive bottleneck to industrial integration. Without a radical shift in governance, finance, and planning, Africa risks missing its moment in the global value chain race.

Reimagining Nigeria’s Business Environment for Inclusive Growth

Nigeria’s private sector holds immense potential, but systemic frictions—regulatory inefficiencies, infrastructure gaps, and weak contract enforcement—continue to limit growth. This report offers a structural assessment of the business environment across five critical pillars, highlighting the urgent need for institutional reform. While recent policy efforts show intent, deeper, systemic change is required to unlock investment, drive innovation, and position the private sector as a key engine of national development. The time for coordinated, transformative reform is now.

From Presence to Power: Can Africa Redraw the Map of Global Governance?

Africa is no longer absent from global governance—it’s increasingly present, from BRICS to the G20. But visibility without influence is a hollow victory. Despite symbolic gains, real power remains elusive, scattered by internal disunity and institutional limits. To shape the world order, Africa must build leverage, not just presence—through coherence, strategic diplomacy, and reform from within. The seat at the table is not the prize; what Africa does with it is.

The Sahel Without France: Who Fills the Void?

France’s military exit from the Sahel didn’t leave a vacuum—it exposed one. As Russian operatives, Turkish drones, and Gulf aid flood the region, violence has only intensified. The era of Françafrique has ended, but what follows is a scramble, not a solution. This article explores the fractured aftermath, the foreign agendas now shaping the Sahel, and the urgent case for African-led security built on legitimacy, not foreign leverage.

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