West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, the Horn of Africa, and small and island states
The region is the analytical container, not a claim that there is one African lived reality. Each of these geographies differs inside itself as much as it differs from the others, and no country stands for any of them.
Broad window
Fri 21 May, about 2:00 AM to 5:00 AM Toronto timeIn Lagos: Fri 21 May, about 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM. The hours belong to the conversation, not to one region: contributors from anywhere take part wherever the question needs them.
Taking part
Contributor expressions of interest are not open.
The question in play
How must leadership change when the systems people depend on are changing faster than institutions can adapt?
The relay's opening question, carried from Toronto. Middle East & North Africa transforms it live, and this movement receives that version when its own begins.
Regional reality
Regional Reality
Sub-Saharan Africa contains extraordinary human, entrepreneurial, natural and institutional capability, but much of that capability operates through systems that remain fragmented by geography, infrastructure gaps, small and divided markets, unreliable energy, costly logistics, uneven institutional capacity and limited pathways for firms and people to grow. The region's demographic expansion makes the stakes unusually high: hundreds of millions of people will enter working age over the coming decades while most new workers currently enter low-productivity or informal employment. The leadership challenge is therefore not simply to discover Africa's potential or attract more investment. It is to connect capabilities that already exist, build the systems that allow them to reinforce one another, and create sufficient scale for people, firms and communities to turn participation into durable productivity and prosperity.
Capability → Connection → Scale
What these three words mean here
Capability
Already here: people, entrepreneurship, agriculture, minerals, renewable resources, cities, digital innovation, institutions, diaspora, regional organizations, communities, Indigenous and local knowledge, productive firms, informal enterprises and social institutions. This region is not described by what it lacks. Capability can exist without being connected to systems capable of multiplying its value.
Connection
The hinge, and not only physical infrastructure. Electricity, roads, rail, ports, corridors, broadband, digital networks, payment systems, customs, standards, finance, skills-to-firm pathways, agricultural value chains, regional power pools, regional markets, procurement and institutions, working together. Connection means system interoperability. The opposite of fragmentation is not necessarily centralization. It is connection.
Scale
Not every organization becoming large. Access to systems large, reliable, interoperable and predictable enough that people and firms can specialize, invest, process, manufacture, export, hire, learn, innovate, withstand shocks and reach larger markets. Scale is not merely getting bigger. It is creating systems large, reliable and interoperable enough for capability to compound.
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
Capability becomes transformative when systems connect it to sufficient scale.
The region's inquiry starts from capability that already exists and asks what the systems around it do with it. It is organised around:
Which existing capabilities remain disconnected
Productivity inside the work people already do
What has to happen after access arrives
Systems that must interoperate before a market exists
Where value accumulates, and why it is not always where the resource is
This is what LEAD48's research sees in Sub-Saharan Africa: the tensions, the evidence and the questions it raises. It is where the inquiry starts, not a boundary around it. The conversation needs people who can strengthen it, challenge it, complicate it or take it somewhere it has not gone, and a well-evidenced challenge to this reading is as strong a contribution as support for it.
Prevailing conditions Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What is changing here?
Each condition is backed by the sources listed with it. Open a source to see what it says and where it stops.
Demographic scale is arriving faster than high-productivity employment
The working-age population is growing by tens of millions a year, while most new workers enter agriculture, household enterprise or other low-productivity activity rather than wage employment.
Detail and scope
The region's working-age population rose from 534.6 million in 2014 to 723.6 million in 2024, roughly a third of the global increase, while own-account and contributing family work remained 71.2 percent of employment against 42.5 percent worldwide. Africa's jobs challenge is simultaneously a job-creation challenge and a productivity challenge inside the work people already do, and treating it only as a shortage of formal corporate employment describes the smaller half of it.
Scope: Region-wide, and the composition differs sharply: own-account work runs from 11.7 percent of employment in South Africa to 84.5 percent in Ethiopia.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Population ages 15-64, total
Sub-Saharan Africa's working-age population rose from 534.6 million in 2014 to 622.2 million in 2019 and 723.6 million in 2024: an increase of 189 million people in a decade. World working-age population rose by 506 million over the same period, so roughly a third of the global increase arrived in this region.
Published
2024 (series values for 2014 to 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2014 to 2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa, against the world total
Limitations
A count of people of working age. It says nothing about who is working, at what productivity, for what earnings or under what protection, so it measures labour supply arriving rather than opportunity available.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
Energy access is economic infrastructure before it is an energy statistic
A connection matters most when it powers irrigation, cold chains, processing, manufacturing, enterprise, clinics, schools and digital systems, and not when it is counted.
Detail and scope
Access reached 53.3 percent of the region's population in 2023 against 91.6 percent worldwide, and within the region it runs from 22.1 percent to 89.5 percent. Access matters most when connection becomes productive capacity: reliability, affordability and a use to put the power to decide whether a connection changes an economy or only a statistic.
Scope: Universal in the region and unequal within it, with the reliability and affordability layers uneven even where access is high.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
Source World Bank, from IEA energy statistics (2023)
World Development Indicators: Electric power consumption (kWh per capita)
Electric power consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa was about 377 kWh per person in 2023, down from about 385 in 2022.
Published
2023 (series values for 2023, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-22)
Evidence period
2021 to 2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa, World Bank regional aggregate (weighted average)
Limitations
Power plant output net of transmission, distribution and transformation losses and of plants' own use, divided by mid-year population. It covers all sectors, not households alone, and it is not an access rate, not a measure of reliability and not a measure of productive use by firms.
Source World Bank, from World Bank Enterprise Surveys (2025)
World Development Indicators: Firms experiencing electrical outages (% of firms)
72.4 per cent of firms in Sub-Saharan Africa experienced electrical outages over their last complete fiscal year, in the latest available surveys.
Published
2025 (latest aggregate, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-22)
Evidence period
Latest available Enterprise Surveys, pooled into a regional aggregate labelled 2025
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa, World Bank regional aggregate (unweighted average of countries)
Limitations
The aggregate pools each country's latest Enterprise Survey, so it is not a single year's survey, and the data service does not list which surveys it includes. It measures whether a firm experienced any outage in its last fiscal year, not how often or for how long, and not what outages cost. Enterprise Surveys cover formal firms.
Africa's economic geography remains more fragmented than its political geography suggests
A continental agreement exists. Customs, logistics, standards, payments, transport, power and digital systems still do not work as one market.
Detail and scope
The AfCFTA covers 55 member states and about 1.3 billion people on paper, signed in 2018, in force since 2019, trading since 2021. Political integration creates permission. Operational interoperability creates markets, and the second is built system by system rather than signed.
Scope: Continental, and felt hardest by landlocked economies and by firms whose markets stop at a border they cannot cheaply cross.
Source AfCFTA Secretariat, African Union (2026)
About the AfCFTA
"The overall mandate of the AfCFTA is to create a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of approximately US$ 3.4 trillion", bringing together "the 55 countries of the African Union (AU) and eight (8) Regional Economic Communities (RECs)". The agreement was signed in March 2018 by 44 of 55 member states, entered into force on May 30, 2019, and trading commenced on January 1, 2021. The page records these milestones and no measure of trade conducted under them.
Published
2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
March 2018 to 2026
Geography
The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Limitations
The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
Natural wealth does not determine where value accumulates
Minerals, agriculture and energy resources sit in one place; the processing, skills, firms, infrastructure and markets that capture their value often sit somewhere else.
Detail and scope
Manufacturing value added was 10.2 percent of GDP across the region in 2023 against 15.2 percent worldwide, and several resource-rich economies sit at the bottom of that range. Possessing an asset and possessing the system that captures value from it are different capabilities.
Scope: Region-wide, and the answer is not automatically national: some value chains are more rational regionally than duplicated country by country.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP)
Manufacturing value added was 10.2 percent of GDP across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, against 15.2 percent worldwide. Within the region: South Africa 13.0, Ghana 11.1, Nigeria 9.3, Rwanda 8.6, Zambia 8.5, Tanzania 8.4, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 8.2, Kenya 7.5 and Ethiopia 4.5 percent. Countries holding substantial natural wealth are among the lowest on this measure.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A share of GDP, so it moves with everything else in the economy, and it counts recorded manufacturing only. It shows where processing and manufacturing sit in an economy, not where along a value chain the value is captured, and not what would have to change for that to shift.
Delivery quality increasingly determines whether ambitious frameworks become experienced outcomes
National strategies, regional agreements, climate plans, energy compacts and infrastructure programmes exist in quantity. What differs is whether they arrive.
Detail and scope
Africa's implementation challenge is increasingly not a shortage of ambition, but the ability to connect policy, institutions, infrastructure, finance and delivery so that a plan becomes something people experience.
Scope: Region-wide, and the difference between countries on this measure is larger than the difference in their ambitions.
Source AfCFTA Secretariat, African Union (2026)
About the AfCFTA
"The overall mandate of the AfCFTA is to create a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of approximately US$ 3.4 trillion", bringing together "the 55 countries of the African Union (AU) and eight (8) Regional Economic Communities (RECs)". The agreement was signed in March 2018 by 44 of 55 member states, entered into force on May 30, 2019, and trading commenced on January 1, 2021. The page records these milestones and no measure of trade conducted under them.
Published
2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
March 2018 to 2026
Geography
The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Limitations
The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
Inside the region Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
One region, several realities
None of these stands for the others.
West Africa
Informal enterprise at scale, agriculture and food systems, cross-border regional trade, energy constraints, a very young workforce, digital finance, transport corridors, fast urbanization and long-standing regional institutions. Nigeria's size makes it consequential and not representative: own-account and family work is 66.7 percent of employment there and 60.3 percent in Ghana, whose electricity access at 89.5 percent is among the region's highest and Nigeria's 61.2 percent is not.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
The region's most developed experiments in regional integration, digital systems, agricultural value chains, logistics corridors, energy expansion, entrepreneurship, labour mobility and refugee hosting. Kenya is not the subregion: its 76.2 percent electricity access sits well above Tanzania's 48.3 and Ethiopia's 55.4, and its 64.0 percent own-account employment well below Tanzania's 83.9 and Ethiopia's 84.5.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
Minerals, forests, very large hydropower potential, the region's widest infrastructure gaps, weak regional connectivity, contested institutional capacity and value chains that mostly begin here and end elsewhere. It is not reducible to minerals and conflict: the Democratic Republic of the Congo has 22.1 percent electricity access and 8.2 percent of GDP in manufacturing, which is a connection and value-capture problem before it is anything else.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP)
Manufacturing value added was 10.2 percent of GDP across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, against 15.2 percent worldwide. Within the region: South Africa 13.0, Ghana 11.1, Nigeria 9.3, Rwanda 8.6, Zambia 8.5, Tanzania 8.4, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 8.2, Kenya 7.5 and Ethiopia 4.5 percent. Countries holding substantial natural wealth are among the lowest on this measure.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A share of GDP, so it moves with everything else in the economy, and it counts recorded manufacturing only. It shows where processing and manufacturing sit in an economy, not where along a value chain the value is captured, and not what would have to change for that to shift.
Industrial capability, mining, the region's largest electricity system, freight and port logistics, deep inequality, regional power trading, manufacturing and infrastructure reform. South Africa is one economy in it, not the subregion: its 11.7 percent own-account employment and 13.0 percent manufacturing share are unlike Zambia's 70.5 and 8.5 percent, and the reform questions differ accordingly.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP)
Manufacturing value added was 10.2 percent of GDP across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, against 15.2 percent worldwide. Within the region: South Africa 13.0, Ghana 11.1, Nigeria 9.3, Rwanda 8.6, Zambia 8.5, Tanzania 8.4, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 8.2, Kenya 7.5 and Ethiopia 4.5 percent. Countries holding substantial natural wealth are among the lowest on this measure.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A share of GDP, so it moves with everything else in the economy, and it counts recorded manufacturing only. It shows where processing and manufacturing sit in an economy, not where along a value chain the value is captured, and not what would have to change for that to shift.
Climate exposure and drought, mobility and displacement, agriculture and pastoral systems, ports and trade corridors that serve landlocked neighbours, fragility in parts, and resilience systems built to work under interruption. Ethiopia's 55.4 percent electricity access and 84.5 percent own-account employment describe an economy where connection and productivity questions arrive together.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
Where relevant to a question: small domestic markets, dependence on external connection, energy imports, climate exposure, tourism concentration, fiscal constraint and a structural reliance on regional systems that larger neighbours can treat as optional. Scale is not a choice here, which is why these states test the movement's mechanism most directly.
Who experiences the region differently Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
Who experiences this differently?
No region is a single story. These groups are named from the evidence, not as a complete list.
People working in informal and household enterprise
Own-account and contributing family work is 71.2 percent of employment across the region, against 42.5 percent worldwide. This is an employment system, a livelihood system, an entrepreneurial space, a productivity challenge, a protection challenge, a financing challenge and a pathway into markets, all at once. It is not failed formalization, and the question is how productivity and protection improve without destroying the livelihoods the reform is meant to strengthen.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
Source International Labour Organization (ILOSTAT) (2025)
Informal employment rate by sex: ILO modelled estimates, November 2025
Informal employment was about 87.6 per cent of total employment in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2025, and about 87.9 per cent in 2024.
Published
2025-11
Evidence period
2023 to 2025 estimates; later years are projections
Geography
ILO's Sub-Saharan Africa grouping
Limitations
ILO modelled estimates, and ILO notes that imputed observations carry high uncertainty. The definition follows the 13th ICLS and includes own-account workers and employers in informal enterprises, own-use producers including subsistence farming, contributing family workers and employees in informal jobs, and it includes agriculture. It is a share of workers, not a measure of informal firms' size, productivity or finance, and it is not the same measure as vulnerable employment.
189 million people were added to the working-age population in a decade. Demography creates labour supply. Productive systems determine whether that becomes prosperity, which is why this is stated as a condition to be met rather than as an asset already banked.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Population ages 15-64, total
Sub-Saharan Africa's working-age population rose from 534.6 million in 2014 to 622.2 million in 2019 and 723.6 million in 2024: an increase of 189 million people in a decade. World working-age population rose by 506 million over the same period, so roughly a third of the global increase arrived in this region.
Published
2024 (series values for 2014 to 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2014 to 2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa, against the world total
Limitations
A count of people of working age. It says nothing about who is working, at what productivity, for what earnings or under what protection, so it measures labour supply arriving rather than opportunity available.
Production is often not the binding constraint. Storage, cold chains, roads, border processing, standards, finance and processing capacity decide how much of what is grown reaches a market at a price worth growing it for, and how much is lost on the way.
Source Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (2026)
SDG 12: Indicator of global food losses (SDG 12.3.1a)
The percentage of food lost globally after harvest, on farm and in transport, storage, wholesale and processing, is estimated at 13.3 percent in 2023, and "sub-Saharan Africa remains the highest at 23.0 percent, up from 22.1 percent."
Published
2026 (living indicator page, read 2026-09-22)
Evidence period
2023, compared with 2015
Geography
The SDG region sub-Saharan Africa (the page does not list its members), and the world
Limitations
Model estimates, and the page notes that small changes fall within expected model oscillation. Food loss is not transport cost and not delay, and it excludes waste at retail and by consumers. It does not show what share of the loss happens in transport, and it is a regional estimate, not a measure of any one value chain or of the food transport case in this region's research.
Firms meet the fragmentation directly: unreliable power, costly logistics, small domestic markets, incompatible standards across borders and finance priced for risk. Each is survivable alone; together they cap how large a productive firm can become.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP)
Manufacturing value added was 10.2 percent of GDP across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, against 15.2 percent worldwide. Within the region: South Africa 13.0, Ghana 11.1, Nigeria 9.3, Rwanda 8.6, Zambia 8.5, Tanzania 8.4, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 8.2, Kenya 7.5 and Ethiopia 4.5 percent. Countries holding substantial natural wealth are among the lowest on this measure.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A share of GDP, so it moves with everything else in the economy, and it counts recorded manufacturing only. It shows where processing and manufacturing sit in an economy, not where along a value chain the value is captured, and not what would have to change for that to shift.
Women are concentrated in exactly the activities where own-account work, cross-border trade, agriculture and household enterprise sit, which means the region's productivity and protection questions are disproportionately theirs. Connection measures, from payments to border processing to finance, change their economics first.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
What the evidence complicates Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What might we be getting wrong?
Common assumption
Africa's young population is automatically a demographic dividend.
What the evidence shows
Demography creates labour supply. Productive systems determine whether that becomes prosperity. 189 million people joined the working-age population in a decade while own-account work stayed above 70 percent of employment, which is labour supply arriving faster than productive systems to absorb it.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Population ages 15-64, total
Sub-Saharan Africa's working-age population rose from 534.6 million in 2014 to 622.2 million in 2019 and 723.6 million in 2024: an increase of 189 million people in a decade. World working-age population rose by 506 million over the same period, so roughly a third of the global increase arrived in this region.
Published
2024 (series values for 2014 to 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2014 to 2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa, against the world total
Limitations
A count of people of working age. It says nothing about who is working, at what productivity, for what earnings or under what protection, so it measures labour supply arriving rather than opportunity available.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
Formal wage employment matters, and productivity, earnings and protection must also improve in agriculture, household enterprises and informal firms where the majority already work. A strategy aimed only at formal employment leaves most of the region's workers outside it.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
A connection becomes transformational only when households, firms and institutions can use it productively, reliably and affordably. Access at 53.3 percent of the population is a count of connections, and it does not say what any of them powers.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
Resource possession and value capture are different capabilities. Manufacturing value added is 10.2 percent of GDP across the region against 15.2 percent worldwide, and some of the most resource-rich economies sit lowest on that measure.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP)
Manufacturing value added was 10.2 percent of GDP across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, against 15.2 percent worldwide. Within the region: South Africa 13.0, Ghana 11.1, Nigeria 9.3, Rwanda 8.6, Zambia 8.5, Tanzania 8.4, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 8.2, Kenya 7.5 and Ethiopia 4.5 percent. Countries holding substantial natural wealth are among the lowest on this measure.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A share of GDP, so it moves with everything else in the economy, and it counts recorded manufacturing only. It shows where processing and manufacturing sit in an economy, not where along a value chain the value is captured, and not what would have to change for that to shift.
Continental integration means signing trade agreements.
What the evidence shows
Customs, logistics, standards, payments, transport, electricity and digital systems must interoperate before agreements become usable markets. The AfCFTA has been in force since 2019 and trading since 2021; its own secretariat reports mandate and milestones rather than trade conducted under it.
Source AfCFTA Secretariat, African Union (2026)
About the AfCFTA
"The overall mandate of the AfCFTA is to create a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of approximately US$ 3.4 trillion", bringing together "the 55 countries of the African Union (AU) and eight (8) Regional Economic Communities (RECs)". The agreement was signed in March 2018 by 44 of 55 member states, entered into force on May 30, 2019, and trading commenced on January 1, 2021. The page records these milestones and no measure of trade conducted under them.
Published
2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
March 2018 to 2026
Geography
The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Limitations
The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
Technology allows Africa to skip institutional development.
What the evidence shows
Technology may bypass a specific constraint, and reliable institutions, energy, regulation, physical infrastructure and skills remain necessary for scale. Any claim that something was skipped has to say what was skipped, what replaced it, and which dependencies remained, or it is a slogan rather than a finding.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
Communities and institutions operating under severe constraint may hold adaptive and delivery capability that conventional measures do not capture. What looks like absence is often capability the measuring instrument was not built to see.
Common assumption
Africa needs external solutions more than functioning connections among its own capabilities.
What the evidence shows
External capital and expertise can matter greatly, and fragmented domestic and regional systems prevent both local and external resources from becoming durable productive capacity. Money arriving into a disconnected system produces projects rather than compounding capability.
Leadership challenges Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What must leaders do?
The conversations this region will prioritise. Not a ranking of the region's biggest problems.
Connect Capability
What changes when leaders stop asking only what a country lacks and start asking which existing capabilities remain disconnected?
The anchor priority. Every other priority here is a particular case of it, and the mechanism it tests is that capability becomes transformative when systems connect it to sufficient scale.
"The overall mandate of the AfCFTA is to create a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of approximately US$ 3.4 trillion", bringing together "the 55 countries of the African Union (AU) and eight (8) Regional Economic Communities (RECs)". The agreement was signed in March 2018 by 44 of 55 member states, entered into force on May 30, 2019, and trading commenced on January 1, 2021. The page records these milestones and no measure of trade conducted under them.
Published
2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
March 2018 to 2026
Geography
The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Limitations
The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
Make Work More Productive Where People Already Work
How do leaders raise productivity, earnings and protection when most workers will not immediately enter formal wage employment?
Agriculture, informal firms, household enterprises, skills, finance, markets, technology and social protection meet in the work the majority of the region already does.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Population ages 15-64, total
Sub-Saharan Africa's working-age population rose from 534.6 million in 2014 to 622.2 million in 2019 and 723.6 million in 2024: an increase of 189 million people in a decade. World working-age population rose by 506 million over the same period, so roughly a third of the global increase arrived in this region.
Published
2024 (series values for 2014 to 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2014 to 2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa, against the world total
Limitations
A count of people of working age. It says nothing about who is working, at what productivity, for what earnings or under what protection, so it measures labour supply arriving rather than opportunity available.
Source International Labour Organization (ILOSTAT) (2025)
Informal employment rate by sex: ILO modelled estimates, November 2025
Informal employment was about 87.6 per cent of total employment in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2025, and about 87.9 per cent in 2024.
Published
2025-11
Evidence period
2023 to 2025 estimates; later years are projections
Geography
ILO's Sub-Saharan Africa grouping
Limitations
ILO modelled estimates, and ILO notes that imputed observations carry high uncertainty. The definition follows the 13th ICLS and includes own-account workers and employers in informal enterprises, own-use producers including subsistence farming, contributing family workers and employees in informal jobs, and it includes agriculture. It is a share of workers, not a measure of informal firms' size, productivity or finance, and it is not the same measure as vulnerable employment.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
Source World Bank, from IEA energy statistics (2023)
World Development Indicators: Electric power consumption (kWh per capita)
Electric power consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa was about 377 kWh per person in 2023, down from about 385 in 2022.
Published
2023 (series values for 2023, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-22)
Evidence period
2021 to 2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa, World Bank regional aggregate (weighted average)
Limitations
Power plant output net of transmission, distribution and transformation losses and of plants' own use, divided by mid-year population. It covers all sectors, not households alone, and it is not an access rate, not a measure of reliability and not a measure of productive use by firms.
Source World Bank, from World Bank Enterprise Surveys (2025)
World Development Indicators: Firms experiencing electrical outages (% of firms)
72.4 per cent of firms in Sub-Saharan Africa experienced electrical outages over their last complete fiscal year, in the latest available surveys.
Published
2025 (latest aggregate, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-22)
Evidence period
Latest available Enterprise Surveys, pooled into a regional aggregate labelled 2025
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa, World Bank regional aggregate (unweighted average of countries)
Limitations
The aggregate pools each country's latest Enterprise Survey, so it is not a single year's survey, and the data service does not list which surveys it includes. It measures whether a firm experienced any outage in its last fiscal year, not how often or for how long, and not what outages cost. Enterprise Surveys cover formal firms.
Which systems must interoperate before continental integration becomes something firms and people can actually use?
The execution question behind the continental agreement: customs, standards, payments, logistics, transport, electricity, services and digital systems, each of which has to work across a border before a market exists.
"The overall mandate of the AfCFTA is to create a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of approximately US$ 3.4 trillion", bringing together "the 55 countries of the African Union (AU) and eight (8) Regional Economic Communities (RECs)". The agreement was signed in March 2018 by 44 of 55 member states, entered into force on May 30, 2019, and trading commenced on January 1, 2021. The page records these milestones and no measure of trade conducted under them.
Published
2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
March 2018 to 2026
Geography
The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Limitations
The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
Capture More Value from What the Region Already Produces
What capabilities must surround natural resources, agriculture and energy so that more value is created, retained and reinvested locally?
The question is deliberately open. Local processing is not automatically optimal, and a regional value chain may be more rational than the same chain duplicated in every country.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP)
Manufacturing value added was 10.2 percent of GDP across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, against 15.2 percent worldwide. Within the region: South Africa 13.0, Ghana 11.1, Nigeria 9.3, Rwanda 8.6, Zambia 8.5, Tanzania 8.4, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 8.2, Kenya 7.5 and Ethiopia 4.5 percent. Countries holding substantial natural wealth are among the lowest on this measure.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A share of GDP, so it moves with everything else in the economy, and it counts recorded manufacturing only. It shows where processing and manufacturing sit in an economy, not where along a value chain the value is captured, and not what would have to change for that to shift.
Tensions Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What trade-offs must they navigate?
These are to investigate, not to resolve on a slide. Each side of a tension is a legitimate demand.
Access and productive use
Access targets are countable, fundable and politically legible. Productive use is slower, harder to attribute and is what decides whether the access changes anything.
Reaching people who have no connection at all is a real obligation. So is making sure a connection powers something that raises income.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
Informal and household enterprise provides the income most people live on, and it also limits protection, productivity, finance and firm growth.
Protecting existing livelihoods is legitimate. So is raising the productivity and protection of the work those livelihoods consist of.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
Regional systems create scale no member holds alone, and each shared system is a decision a government no longer takes by itself.
Sovereign control of national infrastructure and revenue is legitimate. So is the capability that only exists when systems are shared.
Source AfCFTA Secretariat, African Union (2026)
About the AfCFTA
"The overall mandate of the AfCFTA is to create a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of approximately US$ 3.4 trillion", bringing together "the 55 countries of the African Union (AU) and eight (8) Regional Economic Communities (RECs)". The agreement was signed in March 2018 by 44 of 55 member states, entered into force on May 30, 2019, and trading commenced on January 1, 2021. The page records these milestones and no measure of trade conducted under them.
Published
2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
March 2018 to 2026
Geography
The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Limitations
The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
Extraction produces revenue now and is compatible with almost no domestic capability being built; value creation takes energy, skills, infrastructure and time.
Revenue that funds budgets today is not a luxury. Nor is building the system that captures more of the value tomorrow.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP)
Manufacturing value added was 10.2 percent of GDP across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, against 15.2 percent worldwide. Within the region: South Africa 13.0, Ghana 11.1, Nigeria 9.3, Rwanda 8.6, Zambia 8.5, Tanzania 8.4, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 8.2, Kenya 7.5 and Ethiopia 4.5 percent. Countries holding substantial natural wealth are among the lowest on this measure.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A share of GDP, so it moves with everything else in the economy, and it counts recorded manufacturing only. It shows where processing and manufacturing sit in an economy, not where along a value chain the value is captured, and not what would have to change for that to shift.
Ambitious frameworks attract finance and attention; delivery capacity decides how much of either becomes something people experience.
Setting an ambition beyond present capacity is how capacity gets built. Matching it to delivery is how plans stop becoming documents.
Source AfCFTA Secretariat, African Union (2026)
About the AfCFTA
"The overall mandate of the AfCFTA is to create a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of approximately US$ 3.4 trillion", bringing together "the 55 countries of the African Union (AU) and eight (8) Regional Economic Communities (RECs)". The agreement was signed in March 2018 by 44 of 55 member states, entered into force on May 30, 2019, and trading commenced on January 1, 2021. The page records these milestones and no measure of trade conducted under them.
Published
2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
March 2018 to 2026
Geography
The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Limitations
The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
Every response is classified as established, promising, early, contested, failed, and documented with the Response Case Protocol: Attempt → Conditions → Mechanism → Evidence → Outcome → For whom → Cost / trade-off → Unintended effects → Transferability.
Mission 300Promising / rapid implementation
Attempt
Connect 300 million people to electricity by 2030 through country compacts that tie policy reform, utility performance, grid and distributed generation and private capital together.
Conditions
Electricity access at 53.3 percent of the region's population in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide, with utilities that often cannot finance expansion from their own revenue.
Mechanism
Country-level compacts rather than project finance alone: policy reform, utility reform, connection targets and capital aligned on the same plan.
Evidence
Access across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, ranging from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to 89.5 percent in Ghana.
Outcome
Promising, in rapid implementation. Its design is the lesson rather than its targets: scale requires alignment among policy, finance, infrastructure and delivery, not financing alone, and the connection number will not by itself show whether that alignment held.
For whom
Households and enterprises currently unconnected, unevenly by country and by whether the connection is reliable enough to use.
Cost / trade-off
Speed of connection and depth of utility reform pull against each other, and the second is what keeps the first working.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle. A connection target met without productive use or utility solvency would be the risk the design is meant to avoid.
Transferability
The compact model, aligning reform, finance and delivery on one plan, is the part that travels.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
South Africa's energy and freight reformActive reform / demonstrated improvement
Attempt
Unblock the electricity and freight rail and port systems that were constraining an economy with substantial existing industrial capability.
Conditions
87.7 percent electricity access and 13.0 percent of GDP in manufacturing, the region's largest industrial base, held back by generation shortfalls and freight logistics failures rather than by missing capability.
Mechanism
Market reform opening generation to private investment, and operational and institutional reform in rail and ports.
Outcome
Active reform with demonstrated improvement in the locked research. The lesson generalises: removing system bottlenecks can release capability that already exists, which is a different intervention from creating capability.
For whom
Industry, mining exporters and every household that experienced the outages; the benefits arrive first where the bottleneck was binding.
Cost / trade-off
Opening a state-dominated system to private participation is politically expensive and is what made the throughput gains available.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
High as a diagnosis: look for the binding system constraint before adding new capability.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP)
Manufacturing value added was 10.2 percent of GDP across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, against 15.2 percent worldwide. Within the region: South Africa 13.0, Ghana 11.1, Nigeria 9.3, Rwanda 8.6, Zambia 8.5, Tanzania 8.4, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 8.2, Kenya 7.5 and Ethiopia 4.5 percent. Countries holding substantial natural wealth are among the lowest on this measure.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A share of GDP, so it moves with everything else in the economy, and it counts recorded manufacturing only. It shows where processing and manufacturing sit in an economy, not where along a value chain the value is captured, and not what would have to change for that to shift.
Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net ProgrammeEstablished / evolving
Attempt
Protect households against shocks while building community assets, through public works and transfers rather than relief alone.
Conditions
An economy where 84.5 percent of employment is own-account or family work, with recurring drought and limited formal social protection.
Mechanism
Predictable transfers tied to public works on watersheds, roads and community infrastructure, with financial inclusion and livelihood components.
Outcome
Established and evolving. It shows that social protection can protect capability today while building productive and environmental assets for tomorrow, which is a connection argument rather than a welfare one.
For whom
Rural households exposed to drought and food insecurity, and the communities whose watersheds and roads the works build.
Cost / trade-off
Public works tie transfers to labour, which reaches assets and excludes those least able to work.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
High in principle: protection designed to build assets rather than only to cushion.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
Kenya's youth employment and opportunities workEstablished / demonstrated results
Attempt
Move young people into income through skills, enterprise support and connection to actual markets rather than training alone.
Conditions
A labour market where 64.0 percent of employment is own-account or family work, and where training without a market to enter produces certificates rather than income.
Mechanism
Skills, enterprise finance and market linkage delivered together, on the premise that the binding constraint is often the connection rather than the skill.
Outcome
Established with demonstrated results in the locked research. The lesson is the one the region keeps producing: skills interventions work better when they are connected to markets, entrepreneurship and a real pathway into income.
For whom
Young people entering work, and the enterprises that employ or are started by them.
Cost / trade-off
Market linkage is slower and more expensive per participant than training alone, and is what makes the training pay.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
High, and it is the same finding as the region's energy cases in a different sector.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
Create a single continental market across 55 member states and eight regional economic communities.
Conditions
An economic geography more fragmented than its political geography, with customs, standards, payments, logistics and transport systems that do not interoperate across borders.
Mechanism
A continental legal framework, ratified nationally, with implementation through customs, standards, rules of origin, payments and transport work that each country and community has to carry out.
Evidence
The agreement covers a market of about 1.3 billion people and approximately US$3.4 trillion in combined GDP, was signed in March 2018 by 44 of 55 member states, entered into force on May 30, 2019, and trading commenced on January 1, 2021. Its own secretariat records these milestones and no measure of trade conducted under them.
Outcome
A historic framework with incomplete implementation, and the flagship case of this movement's mechanism. Agreement creates permission; interoperability creates the market. Signature and ratification are not functioning integration, and the absence of operational evidence in the agreement's own account is itself the finding.
For whom
Firms and traders who could use a continental market, if the systems underneath it worked across borders.
Cost / trade-off
Continental scope made the agreement historic and made implementation a function of the slowest system in every corridor.
Unintended effects
Not established. Where formal integration lags, informal cross-border trade continues to substitute for it, which hides part of the cost.
Transferability
The distinction transfers everywhere: legal integration and operational interoperability are different projects.
Source AfCFTA Secretariat, African Union (2026)
About the AfCFTA
"The overall mandate of the AfCFTA is to create a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of approximately US$ 3.4 trillion", bringing together "the 55 countries of the African Union (AU) and eight (8) Regional Economic Communities (RECs)". The agreement was signed in March 2018 by 44 of 55 member states, entered into force on May 30, 2019, and trading commenced on January 1, 2021. The page records these milestones and no measure of trade conducted under them.
Published
2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
March 2018 to 2026
Geography
The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Limitations
The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
Nigeria and AfCFTA trade implementationEarly acceleration / implementation
Attempt
Make the continental framework operational from the largest national market in the region, through customs, export facilitation and firm-level readiness.
Conditions
A large domestic market, manufacturing at 9.3 percent of GDP, and continental rules that only become real when a market of this size uses them.
Mechanism
National implementation work, customs and trade facilitation, and support for firms to export under the agreement's rules of origin.
Outcome
Early acceleration. The case matters structurally rather than numerically: continental frameworks change when large national markets make them operational, and the same national scale that makes this consequential is why Nigeria is not a proxy for West Africa.
For whom
Nigerian exporters and their regional counterparts; the benefit depends on whether the corridor and customs systems work at the other end.
Cost / trade-off
Opening a large protected market is contested domestically and is the condition for the continental market existing at all.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
The sequencing insight travels: a continental agreement moves when its largest markets implement it.
Source AfCFTA Secretariat, African Union (2026)
About the AfCFTA
"The overall mandate of the AfCFTA is to create a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of approximately US$ 3.4 trillion", bringing together "the 55 countries of the African Union (AU) and eight (8) Regional Economic Communities (RECs)". The agreement was signed in March 2018 by 44 of 55 member states, entered into force on May 30, 2019, and trading commenced on January 1, 2021. The page records these milestones and no measure of trade conducted under them.
Published
2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
March 2018 to 2026
Geography
The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Limitations
The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP)
Manufacturing value added was 10.2 percent of GDP across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, against 15.2 percent worldwide. Within the region: South Africa 13.0, Ghana 11.1, Nigeria 9.3, Rwanda 8.6, Zambia 8.5, Tanzania 8.4, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 8.2, Kenya 7.5 and Ethiopia 4.5 percent. Countries holding substantial natural wealth are among the lowest on this measure.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A share of GDP, so it moves with everything else in the economy, and it counts recorded manufacturing only. It shows where processing and manufacturing sit in an economy, not where along a value chain the value is captured, and not what would have to change for that to shift.
African food transport networksSystem failure / high-impact opportunity
Attempt
Move food from where it is grown to where it is eaten, across roads, borders, storage and cold chains.
Conditions
Production capacity that exists, alongside poor roads, costly and slow border processing, missing cold chains and storage, and standards that differ across every border a consignment crosses.
Mechanism
No single mechanism: the network is the sum of national transport, storage, border and standards systems that were not designed to work together.
Outcome
A system failure, and it is recorded as one. Producing value is not enough when the system cannot move it: food is lost between farm and market while neighbouring countries import the same commodity. It is simultaneously the region's clearest high-impact opportunity, because the capability is already there and only the connection is missing.
For whom
Farmers who lose the value of what they grew, traders who absorb the delay, and consumers who pay for both.
Cost / trade-off
Fixing it requires coordinated investment across several national systems at once, which is precisely why it has not been fixed.
Unintended effects
Losses are absorbed quietly by producers and consumers rather than appearing as a visible failure anyone owns.
Transferability
The diagnostic transfers: measure the system between production and market, not production alone.
Source AfCFTA Secretariat, African Union (2026)
About the AfCFTA
"The overall mandate of the AfCFTA is to create a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of approximately US$ 3.4 trillion", bringing together "the 55 countries of the African Union (AU) and eight (8) Regional Economic Communities (RECs)". The agreement was signed in March 2018 by 44 of 55 member states, entered into force on May 30, 2019, and trading commenced on January 1, 2021. The page records these milestones and no measure of trade conducted under them.
Published
2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
March 2018 to 2026
Geography
The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Limitations
The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
Regional power integrationEstablished direction / incomplete system
Attempt
Trade electricity across borders through regional power pools, so that generation in one country can serve demand in another.
Conditions
Generation capacity unevenly distributed, national grids built to national specifications, and access ranging from 22.1 to 89.5 percent across neighbouring countries.
Mechanism
Power pools with shared rules, interconnectors and trading arrangements layered onto national systems.
Outcome
An established direction with an incomplete system. The insight is structural: some national capabilities become more valuable when they stop being exclusively national, and a generator serving one market is worth less than the same generator serving several.
For whom
Consumers and industry in importing countries, and generators in exporting ones; the landlocked and the small gain most.
Cost / trade-off
Trading power means depending on a neighbour for a system no government wants to depend on anyone for.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
High, and it is the clearest existing proof of this movement's mechanism inside the region.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
Critical minerals and regional value chainsHigh potential / contested transition
Attempt
Capture more of the value of the minerals the energy transition depends on, through processing, manufacturing and regional production systems.
Conditions
Substantial mineral endowments alongside manufacturing at 10.2 percent of GDP regionally, limited reliable power, thin processing capability and skills that have to be built.
Mechanism
Processing requirements, industrial policy, regional value-chain arrangements and the energy and skills investment they depend on.
Outcome
High potential and a contested transition. The location of the resource does not have to determine the location of the value, and nothing here implies that local processing is automatically superior: processing requires reliable power, skills, capital and a market, and a regional value chain may be more rational than the same chain duplicated in every country that holds an ore body.
For whom
Mining regions and their workforces, and whichever economies build the processing capability.
Cost / trade-off
Requiring processing before the power, skills and market exist can cost the investment altogether; waiting for them can mean the transition passes.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
The question transfers; the answer is specific to each mineral, market and power system.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP)
Manufacturing value added was 10.2 percent of GDP across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, against 15.2 percent worldwide. Within the region: South Africa 13.0, Ghana 11.1, Nigeria 9.3, Rwanda 8.6, Zambia 8.5, Tanzania 8.4, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 8.2, Kenya 7.5 and Ethiopia 4.5 percent. Countries holding substantial natural wealth are among the lowest on this measure.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A share of GDP, so it moves with everything else in the economy, and it counts recorded manufacturing only. It shows where processing and manufacturing sit in an economy, not where along a value chain the value is captured, and not what would have to change for that to shift.
Electricity access without productive useMixed / systemic gap
Attempt
Nothing was attempted here. This is what has happened where connection targets were met without the reliability, affordability, demand and utility finance that make a connection productive.
Conditions
Access rising toward and past half the population, alongside supply that is intermittent, tariffs households cannot afford to use much of, and utilities whose revenue does not cover the cost of serving new connections.
Mechanism
Connection programmes measured and funded on connections, with productive use, reliability and utility solvency treated as separate problems.
Evidence
Access reached 53.3 percent of the region's population in 2023, a measure that counts connections and says nothing about reliability, affordability or use.
Outcome
Mixed, and a systemic gap. This case is deliberately not celebratory: a connection is an input, not an outcome. Where access rises and consumption, enterprise use and utility finances do not, the result is a statistic that improved and an economy that did not.
For whom
Connected households and enterprises who cannot use the supply, and utilities carrying the cost of serving them.
Cost / trade-off
Counting connections is what made access fundable, and it is also what let the harder layers go unfunded.
Unintended effects
Utility balance sheets weakened by connections that generate little revenue, which then constrains the next expansion.
Transferability
The warning transfers to every infrastructure category: what gets measured becomes what gets delivered.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
The region remains the subject. The 4Ps help interpret what the evidence means for leadership.
What the evidence asks us to examine
People create capability. Process connects it. Planet provides and constrains the productive base. Portfolio decides what reaches scale. Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
How each P reads in this region
People
Who carries the consequences?
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
The evidence asks Who holds the capability this region runs on?
People create capability. Producers, entrepreneurs, workers, farmers, traders, creators, institutional actors and community leaders already hold the knowledge, enterprise and adaptive practice the region runs on: 71.2 percent of employment is own-account or family work, which is a vast entrepreneurial and productive system rather than an absence of one. Nobody here is a beneficiary by default.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Population ages 15-64, total
Sub-Saharan Africa's working-age population rose from 534.6 million in 2014 to 622.2 million in 2019 and 723.6 million in 2024: an increase of 189 million people in a decade. World working-age population rose by 506 million over the same period, so roughly a third of the global increase arrived in this region.
Published
2024 (series values for 2014 to 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2014 to 2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa, against the world total
Limitations
A count of people of working age. It says nothing about who is working, at what productivity, for what earnings or under what protection, so it measures labour supply arriving rather than opportunity available.
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
The evidence asks What connects capability to the systems that multiply it?
Process connects it, and it is the dominant P for this region. Customs, standards, utilities, transport, finance, procurement, regulation, digital interoperability and institutional delivery decide whether capability compounds or stays local. This is where fragmentation is actually made, one incompatible system at a time, and where connection has to be built: the opposite of fragmentation is not centralization, it is connection.
"The overall mandate of the AfCFTA is to create a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of approximately US$ 3.4 trillion", bringing together "the 55 countries of the African Union (AU) and eight (8) Regional Economic Communities (RECs)". The agreement was signed in March 2018 by 44 of 55 member states, entered into force on May 30, 2019, and trading commenced on January 1, 2021. The page records these milestones and no measure of trade conducted under them.
Published
2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
March 2018 to 2026
Geography
The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Limitations
The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
The evidence asks What does the productive base provide, and what does it constrain?
Planet provides and constrains the productive base. Land, water, forests, minerals, agriculture, energy resources, climate and ecosystems are the material this region's economy is built from, not only a climate exposure attached to it. The same base that holds the world's critical minerals and enormous renewable potential also sets drought, soil, water and ecosystem limits on what can be produced and where.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP)
Manufacturing value added was 10.2 percent of GDP across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, against 15.2 percent worldwide. Within the region: South Africa 13.0, Ghana 11.1, Nigeria 9.3, Rwanda 8.6, Zambia 8.5, Tanzania 8.4, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 8.2, Kenya 7.5 and Ethiopia 4.5 percent. Countries holding substantial natural wealth are among the lowest on this measure.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A share of GDP, so it moves with everything else in the economy, and it counts recorded manufacturing only. It shows where processing and manufacturing sit in an economy, not where along a value chain the value is captured, and not what would have to change for that to shift.
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
The evidence asks What gets built to the point where it reaches scale?
Portfolio decides what reaches scale. Roads, grids, rail, ports, digital networks, irrigation, industrial zones, regional corridors and institutional investment all compete, and the choice is not only what to build but what to build far enough that it becomes usable at scale. Half a corridor, an unreliable grid or a standard adopted by one country of six is capital spent without connection achieved.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
"The overall mandate of the AfCFTA is to create a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of approximately US$ 3.4 trillion", bringing together "the 55 countries of the African Union (AU) and eight (8) Regional Economic Communities (RECs)". The agreement was signed in March 2018 by 44 of 55 member states, entered into force on May 30, 2019, and trading commenced on January 1, 2021. The page records these milestones and no measure of trade conducted under them.
Published
2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
March 2018 to 2026
Geography
The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Limitations
The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
SDG connections Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
Which Goals does this touch?
A Goal appears here only when a cited source supports the link.
SDG 7
Affordable and clean energyPrimary
7.1: Ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services
Access, reliability, affordability and productive use are four different problems, and the region is measured mostly on the first. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Access to electricity (% of population)
Access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa was 53.3 percent in 2023, against 91.6 percent worldwide. Within the region it ran from 22.1 percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 48.3 in Tanzania to 76.2 in Kenya, 87.7 in South Africa and 89.5 in Ghana, with Nigeria at 61.2, Rwanda 63.9, Ethiopia 55.4 and Zambia 51.1. The spread inside the region is wider than the gap between the regional figure and the world.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
8.2: Achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation
Productivity inside the work people already do is half of the region's jobs challenge. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
9.1: Develop quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder infrastructure
Transborder infrastructure is the connection this movement is about. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2023)
Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP)
Manufacturing value added was 10.2 percent of GDP across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, against 15.2 percent worldwide. Within the region: South Africa 13.0, Ghana 11.1, Nigeria 9.3, Rwanda 8.6, Zambia 8.5, Tanzania 8.4, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 8.2, Kenya 7.5 and Ethiopia 4.5 percent. Countries holding substantial natural wealth are among the lowest on this measure.
Published
2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2023
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A share of GDP, so it moves with everything else in the economy, and it counts recorded manufacturing only. It shows where processing and manufacturing sit in an economy, not where along a value chain the value is captured, and not what would have to change for that to shift.
10.2: Empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all
Who reaches the connected systems, and who stays outside them, is the distributional question here. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
13.2: Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning
The productive base and the climate exposure are the same land, water and energy systems. Evidence-backed
SDG 17
Partnerships for the goalsPrimary
17.11: Significantly increase the exports of developing countries
Primary, not supporting: shared systems, interoperability and regional integration are structurally part of this movement's mechanism. Evidence-backed
Source AfCFTA Secretariat, African Union (2026)
About the AfCFTA
"The overall mandate of the AfCFTA is to create a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of approximately US$ 3.4 trillion", bringing together "the 55 countries of the African Union (AU) and eight (8) Regional Economic Communities (RECs)". The agreement was signed in March 2018 by 44 of 55 member states, entered into force on May 30, 2019, and trading commenced on January 1, 2021. The page records these milestones and no measure of trade conducted under them.
Published
2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
March 2018 to 2026
Geography
The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Limitations
The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
1.4: Ensure equal rights to economic resources, basic services, technology and financial services
Whether a connection is affordable decides whether it reaches the people it was built for. Evidence-backed
SDG 2
Zero hungerSupporting
2.3: Double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers
Food produced and food lost between farm and market are the same case, seen from two ends. Evidence-backed
SDG 4
Quality educationSupporting
4.4: Substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship
Skills connected to a market produce income; skills alone produce certificates. Evidence-backed
SDG 5
Gender equalitySupporting
5.a: Give women equal rights to economic resources, access to ownership and control over land and financial services
Women are concentrated in exactly the activities the connection measures would change first. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
Own-account and contributing family work was 71.2 percent of employment across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2024, against a world figure of 42.5 percent. Within the region it ran from 11.7 percent in South Africa and 39.8 in Rwanda to 64.0 in Kenya, 66.7 in Nigeria, 70.5 in Zambia, 81.8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 83.9 in Tanzania and 84.5 in Ethiopia. Most work in the region is not wage employment, and that is where productivity and protection have to improve.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
6.4: Substantially increase water-use efficiency and address water scarcity
Water is part of the productive base, in irrigation and processing as much as in households. Evidence-backed
SDG 11
Sustainable cities and communitiesSupporting
11.a: Support positive economic, social and environmental links between urban, peri-urban and rural areas
The link between a city and the countryside that feeds it is a connection problem. Evidence-backed
SDG 16
Peace, justice and strong institutionsSupporting
16.6: Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels
Delivery capability is institutional before it is technical. Evidence-backed
Why these Goals, and why these are primary
Primary Goals carry the region's inquiry; supporting Goals are touched by it. They are not equally weighted. Goal 17 is primary here rather than supporting, because shared systems, interoperability and regional integration are structurally part of this movement's mechanism.
The movement
What this movement asks
The question this movement carries Capability is already here. What has to connect before it reaches the scale where it compounds?
Theme Capability, connection, scale
Broad window Fri 21 May, about 2:00 AM to 5:00 AM Toronto time. In Lagos: Fri 21 May, about 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM.
LEAD48 curates the conversations inside this movement from the research on this page and the perspectives below. You do not need to choose a session: bring what you know to the inquiry, and the matching is LEAD48's work.
Contributor expressions of interest are not open.
The shape of a movement
How a movement moves
The same beats in every region, in the same order. What fills them, and how long they take, is this region's own.
View the beats every movement runs through
Baton Handover In
The incoming and outgoing regions are both live. Intellectual content, not an emcee transition.
Opening Regional Provocation
One strong regional voice frames the movement: what is happening in this region right now, and why should the rest of the world care?
Regional Reality
The evidence: what is actually true in this region.
Responses, Experiments and Tensions
The practical core: what is being tried, and where it is contested.
Regional Synthesis
What we learned, what challenged our assumptions and where we disagreed.
Baton Question + Handover Out
The signature moment. The baton never simply moves: it evolves.
Perspectives sought Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What perspectives strengthen this inquiry?
The kinds of knowledge and experience this inquiry needs. They describe perspectives, not places: one person may bring several, and a strong case or a well-evidenced challenge counts as much as a title.
Knowledge must come from across the region, not from one part of it:
West Africa
Credible knowledge from West Africa, and not only from its largest economy.
East Africa
Credible knowledge from East Africa, and not only from its most visible technology ecosystem.
Central Africa
Credible knowledge from Central Africa, on more than minerals and fragility.
Southern Africa
Credible knowledge from Southern Africa, and not only from its largest economy.
Horn of Africa
Credible knowledge from the Horn of Africa, including delivery under interruption.
Small and island states
Small and island-state perspectives where the question makes them relevant.
View the knowledge this movement needs
Informal and household enterprise
Knowledge required Runs, finances or works with informal and household enterprises.
Why this is needed This is where most of the region's employment sits, and it is understood from inside rather than from the label.
Jobs and productivity
Knowledge required Works on employment and productivity where wage employment is not the norm.
Why this is needed The jobs challenge and the productivity challenge are the same problem here.
Women's economic participation
Knowledge required Works with women producing, trading and running enterprises in the region.
Why this is needed The activities the connection measures would change first are disproportionately women's.
Youth employment
Knowledge required Delivers pathways from education or training into income for young people.
Why this is needed 189 million people joined the working-age population in a decade, and the pathway is the constraint.
Agriculture and value chains
Knowledge required Works across production, storage, processing and market access in food systems.
Why this is needed Production is often not the binding constraint; what happens to the crop afterwards is.
Electricity access
Knowledge required Delivers connections, including distributed and off-grid systems.
Why this is needed Access is where the region is measured, and where the harder layers begin.
Utility reform
Knowledge required Has worked on the finances and operations of a power utility.
Why this is needed Utility solvency decides whether the next expansion is possible at all.
Distributed energy
Knowledge required Builds or operates mini-grids and distributed generation.
Why this is needed Much of the remaining access gap will not be closed by the main grid.
Transport and logistics
Knowledge required Moves goods across the region's roads, rail, ports and borders.
Why this is needed The cost and time between production and market is where value is lost.
AfCFTA implementation
Knowledge required Implements the continental agreement inside a customs authority, ministry or firm.
Why this is needed Implementation is the whole question, and it is done by these people.
Customs and standards
Knowledge required Works on customs procedure, rules of origin or standards harmonisation.
Why this is needed Interoperability is built here, one procedure at a time.
Regional power markets
Knowledge required Trades or regulates electricity across borders.
Why this is needed This is the region's clearest working example of national capability becoming regional.
Digital infrastructure and payments
Knowledge required Builds digital identity, payment or interoperability systems.
Why this is needed Digital systems solve one connection problem and reveal the next one, which is the useful question.
Small and growing firms
Knowledge required Runs or finances firms trying to grow past the domestic market.
Why this is needed Firms meet every fragmentation at once, and can say which one binds.
Industrial policy
Knowledge required Designs or evaluates industrial and processing policy in the region.
Why this is needed Value capture is attempted through these instruments, with mixed results worth hearing.
Critical minerals
Knowledge required Works in mining, processing or minerals policy.
Why this is needed The contested transition needs people who can hold its potential and its conditions together.
Processing and manufacturing
Knowledge required Runs processing or manufacturing operations in the region.
Why this is needed Whether local processing works depends on power, skills, logistics and markets that operators know precisely.
Climate resilience
Knowledge required Delivers resilience in agriculture, water or infrastructure.
Why this is needed The productive base and the climate exposure are the same systems.
Social protection
Knowledge required Designs or delivers social protection at scale.
Why this is needed Protection that builds productive assets is a connection instrument, not only a welfare one.
Delivery in fragile contexts
Knowledge required Keeps services or systems running where institutions are under severe strain.
Why this is needed Capability under constraint is real capability, and conventional measures miss it.
Regional institutions
Knowledge required Works inside a regional economic community or continental institution.
Why this is needed The systems that would connect the region are governed here.
Finance and investment
Knowledge required Finances infrastructure, firms or trade in the region.
Why this is needed Capital arriving into a disconnected system produces projects rather than compounding capability.
Urban systems
Knowledge required Plans or runs a fast-growing African city.
Why this is needed Cities are where the region's productive connections are made or missed.
Indigenous and local knowledge
Knowledge required Holds land, water, agricultural or community knowledge, where the question makes it relevant.
Why this is needed Capability the measuring instruments do not see is still capability.
Diaspora and cross-border capability
Knowledge required Works across the diaspora on investment, skills or enterprise links.
Why this is needed Some of the region's capability is already connected internationally and not yet regionally.
The baton
The question moves
It arrives. Middle East & North Africa hands this movement the question.
This region changes it. Everything above is what it is changed by.
It leaves changed. Europe receives whatever this movement earns in the room.
No question is written in advance. Each movement's question is earned live, in the room, and published here once it has been.
Global report contribution
What this movement will contribute
How this movement feeds the report
What this movement will contribute to the LEAD48 Global Leadership Report 2027. Every field is filled from the live movement, and disagreement is preserved rather than resolved. The record keeps what the evidence said, what LEAD48 inferred before the event, what contributors challenged or added, and what LEAD48 concluded afterwards, as four distinguishable layers. The pre-event version is never overwritten.
What this movement finds is written in the room during the relay and becomes its part of the LEAD48 Global Leadership Report 2027. How the five outputs work
Research gaps and limitations Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What this evidence cannot show
These are limitations, not blockers. They are published so a reader can judge the evidence for themselves.
View what this evidence cannot show
Seven response cases carry no verified figures of their own
South Africa's reform, the Productive Safety Net Programme, Kenya's youth work, Nigeria's AfCFTA implementation, food transport networks, regional power integration and critical minerals are described from the locked research without primary-source figures attached to the case itself. They say so rather than asserting numbers.
Affects: Responses and experiments
No verified measure of intra-African trade is attached
The integration case rests on the agreement's legal milestones, because its own secretariat publishes no figure for trade conducted under it and no independent series was verified in this cycle. The absence is consistent with the argument being made and is still a gap in the evidence.
Affects: Responses and experiments, Prevailing conditions
Energy is evidenced at the access layer only
The brief argues that access, reliability, affordability and productive use are four different things, and the verified evidence covers the first. Reliability, tariffs, consumption and enterprise use are asserted as the argument rather than measured here.
Affects: Prevailing conditions, Responses and experiments
Own-account employment is a proxy for informality, not a measure of it
The category counts own-account and contributing family workers. It includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise, and it carries a judgement in its name that the brief does not accept.
Affects: Inside the region, People
Subregional evidence is uneven and country-led
The six analytical geographies are differentiated using country indicators, which is better than a single regional average and still not subregional evidence. Small and island states carry no verified figures at all in this cycle.
Affects: Inside the region
The food transport failure is classified without its numbers
The case is classified as a system failure on the locked research. Post-harvest loss, transport cost and border delay figures are not attached, which is the evidence that would size the opportunity it names.
Affects: Responses and experiments
Research and evidence
See the evidence
Every claim on this page links here. Participants' contributions do not statistically represent the whole region.
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2014 to 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2014 to 2024 · Geography: Sub-Saharan Africa, against the world total
Population: People aged 15 to 64
Limitations: A count of people of working age. It says nothing about who is working, at what productivity, for what earnings or under what protection, so it measures labour supply arriving rather than opportunity available.
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2024 · Geography: Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Population: Own-account workers and contributing family workers, as a share of employment
Limitations: A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2023 · Geography: Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Population: Share of the population with an electricity connection
Limitations: A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
World Bank, from IEA energy statistics · 2023 (series values for 2023, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-22) · Evidence period: 2021 to 2023 · Geography: Sub-Saharan Africa, World Bank regional aggregate (weighted average)
Population: Net electricity consumption per person, across all sectors
Limitations: Power plant output net of transmission, distribution and transformation losses and of plants' own use, divided by mid-year population. It covers all sectors, not households alone, and it is not an access rate, not a measure of reliability and not a measure of productive use by firms.
World Bank, from World Bank Enterprise Surveys · 2025 (latest aggregate, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-22) · Evidence period: Latest available Enterprise Surveys, pooled into a regional aggregate labelled 2025 · Geography: Sub-Saharan Africa, World Bank regional aggregate (unweighted average of countries)
Population: Formal firms surveyed by the Enterprise Surveys
Limitations: The aggregate pools each country's latest Enterprise Survey, so it is not a single year's survey, and the data service does not list which surveys it includes. It measures whether a firm experienced any outage in its last fiscal year, not how often or for how long, and not what outages cost. Enterprise Surveys cover formal firms.
AfCFTA Secretariat, African Union · 2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: March 2018 to 2026 · Geography: The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Population: The continental market the agreement covers on paper
Limitations: The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2023 · Geography: Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Population: Manufacturing value added as a share of national income
Limitations: A share of GDP, so it moves with everything else in the economy, and it counts recorded manufacturing only. It shows where processing and manufacturing sit in an economy, not where along a value chain the value is captured, and not what would have to change for that to shift.
International Labour Organization (ILOSTAT) · 2025-11 · Evidence period: 2023 to 2025 estimates; later years are projections · Geography: ILO's Sub-Saharan Africa grouping
Population: Informal employment as a share of total employment, both sexes
Limitations: ILO modelled estimates, and ILO notes that imputed observations carry high uncertainty. The definition follows the 13th ICLS and includes own-account workers and employers in informal enterprises, own-use producers including subsistence farming, contributing family workers and employees in informal jobs, and it includes agriculture. It is a share of workers, not a measure of informal firms' size, productivity or finance, and it is not the same measure as vulnerable employment.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) · 2026 (living indicator page, read 2026-09-22) · Evidence period: 2023, compared with 2015 · Geography: The SDG region sub-Saharan Africa (the page does not list its members), and the world
Population: Food lost from production up to, but not including, retail, across a basket of ten main commodities
Limitations: Model estimates, and the page notes that small changes fall within expected model oscillation. Food loss is not transport cost and not delay, and it excludes waste at retail and by consumers. It does not show what share of the loss happens in transport, and it is a regional estimate, not a measure of any one value chain or of the food transport case in this region's research.
This region's five documented outputs become its part of the LEAD48 Global Leadership Report 2027. How the five outputs work
