What will sub-Saharan Africa’s ‘elephant economies’ look like in 2040-50?

Sub-Saharan Africa’s economic future defies simplistic narratives. Today, the region is a theater of paradoxes: Dynamic growth sectors coexist with systemic vulnerabilities, and demographic promise is tempered by governance deficits. The region’s current growth engines — Kenya’s tech-driven services, Ethiopia’s industrial parks, and Rwanda’s governance reforms — are the more notable illustrations of how pockets of modernization clash with systemic frailties, tempering growth and undermining prosperity. Despite GDP growth rates exceeding 5 percent, such gains risk irreversible erosion if energy deficits, youth unemployment, and reliance on volatile commodity exports go unaddressed.
Clearly, the path forward is neither linear nor guaranteed: Nations prioritizing institutional transparency, regional trade integration, and skill-based education could potentially unlock $1.5 trillion in annual GDP by 2040. Conversely, complacency risks entrenching cycles of informality and political fragility, crippling the region with self-imposed restraints from the refusal to make strategic choices today.
One of those choices involves weaning sub-Saharan Africa’s economies off its reliance on raw material exports — a double-edged sword. Nigeria’s struggle to reduce oil dependence reveals progress tempered by vulnerability, as non-oil sectors such as agriculture and tech struggle to fill the gap. Angola and Zambia face similar risks, with copper and crude oil prices dictating fiscal health despite efforts to expand mining processing and tourism.
Furthermore, gross infrastructure deficits complicate these challenges. With just 43 percent of the region’s population connected to reliable power, industries from textiles in Ghana to automotive assembly lines in Kenya grapple with productivity losses. Meanwhile, urban centers such as Lagos and Kinshasa, projected to swell by 5 percent annually, strain under housing shortages and inadequate transport networks, stifling potential gains from a consumer class expected to reach more than 1 billion by 2040.
Worst of all, governance remains a wildcard: While Botswana’s diamond revenue management offers a model for leveraging resource endowments to secure key reforms, endemic graft in similar resource-rich states deters foreign capital. Beyond man-made deficits, climate pressures amplify risks too. Erratic rainfall in Ethiopia’s highlands and cyclones in Mozambique threaten nearly two-thirds of the workforce which is reliant on agriculture.
On the other hand, a marked rise in green energy investments, such as Kenya’s geothermal expansion and Nigeria’s solar mini-grid initiatives, signal adaptive potential. For the region’s economies to shed the “commodity curse,” scaling value-added industries, modernizing infrastructure, and embedding climate resilience into policy could unlock some $3 trillion by 2040.
Besides untapped potential, there is palpable optimism in this part of the world. Sub-Saharan Africa’s youth bulge — with a median age of 19 — positions it to outpace aging economies, provided education and job creation align. With a labor force set to exceed China’s by 2040, the region could channel this into manufacturing or tech-driven sectors, mirroring India’s IT boom. For instance, mobile money, led by Kenya’s M-Pesa, has already democratized finance, enabling 40 million small businesses to transact digitally, creating new opportunities and previously unimaginable pathways to prosperity.

With a labor force set to exceed China’s by 2040, the region could channel this into tech-driven sectors, mirroring India’s IT boom. 

Hafed Al-Ghwell

By 2040, Africa’s elephant economies could very well eclipse Asia’s historic growth trajectories if only they manage to consolidate institutional reforms, industrial ecosystems, human capital, and climate resilience. For instance, Rwanda’s tech-driven governance — built on digitized land registries and anti-corruption courts — offers a replicable model for stabilizing institutions, but systemic enforcement remains a problem.
Secondly, Ethiopia’s Hawassa Industrial Park, despite debt and labor disputes, shows how state-backed zones can anchor textile and agro-processing exports. Integrating such hubs with major logistics corridors and significant infrastructure investments requires synchronized energy grids and port upgrades to reduce intra-African shipping costs, still 50 percent higher than global averages.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s tech sector, fueled by ventures such as Flutterwave, taps into a youth bulge and huge diaspora, but 60 million secondary school-aged children remain excluded from education. Closing this gap demands hybrid models: Kenya’s M-Pesa-backed vocational micro-academies, for instance, merge fintech with skills training. Health systems also need parallel overhauls; reducing under-five mortality rates — still double the global average — would preserve a workforce pivotal to sustaining GDP growth rates above 5 percent.
Finally, while Kenya’s geothermal plants now supply 40 percent of its electricity, scaling climate adaptation requires de-risking investments in projects such as Zambia’s drought-resistant cassava farms through blended finance. Without tripling green bond issuances by 2030, climate shocks could erase 15 percent of regional GDP, jeopardizing the very foundations of these emerging giants. Success will depend on how well leaders can align fragmented policies with cross-border pragmatism.
Gulf and North African nations are uniquely positioned to help reshape and transform sub-Saharan Africa’s economic transitions via targeted investments that blend strategic necessity with opportunity. Saudi Arabia’s $1 billion pledge to African agribusiness, part of its Vision 2030 diversification push, so far targets Senegal and Sudan to guarantee food security at home. Elsewhere, the UAE’s port expansions in Mozambique and Angola signal Abu Dhabi’s ambitions to have sizable stakes in key logistics nodes, which ultimately enhance Africa’s export corridors while securing Gulf supply chains.
Meanwhile, Morocco, leveraging its strategic location as a bridge between Arab, European, and African blocs, is pursuing policies that display a curious fusion of regionalism and resource pragmatism. Its rapidly developing solar sector offers replicable models for the continent’s other sun-rich zones, especially where energy deficits hinder industrialization.
However, there is also some geopolitical calculus at play here.
As Chinese lending wanes amid debt fears and Western aid stalls, Gulf states are deploying cultural affinity and project funding as soft power tools. Saudi and Emirati sovereign funds, eyeing cobalt and lithium reserves, are currently structuring deals with DRC and Zimbabwe to lock in critical minerals for their own energy transitions and the future green industries that will power post-oil economies. Concurrently, North Africa’s technical prowess — Morocco’s phosphate-based fertilizers, Egypt’s Nile Delta drip irrigation systems — is being exported to drought-prone regions, blending commercial and developmental gains.
Yet rival actors continue to complicate this calculus. Foreign mercenary networks exploit existing governance, while drones and construction firms entrench external actors in fragile states teetering on collapse. To counter harmful perceptions of gross opportunism and extractivism, Arab investors must localize ventures, combining capital with skills and technology transfers to create export-ready industries.
In sum, sub-Saharan Africa’s 2040 horizon demands hybrid growth strategies — pairing mobile finance with green hydrogen hubs, regional rail grids with AI-driven agritech, for instance. For Arab partners, success hinges on equity: Structuring deals that prioritize value-added processing over raw exports, aligning with Africa’s shift from mere supplier to stakeholder. This rebalanced dynamic could redefine enduring South-South collaboration in a deeply fragmented world that is seeing more countries look inward, eschewing risky overseas “adventures.”

• Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and executive director of the North Africa Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. X: @HafedAlGhwell