😎 A Few Thoughts on Africa 😎

DEMOGRAPHICS

~1.5B population / surpassed 1.5B in 2024 - 5x its 1960 level.

By 2050, expected to reach ~2.5B / by 2100, ~3.5B (medium variant, UN DESA WPP 2024).

Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region set to nearly triple: from 1.2B to 3.4B by the end of the century (Population Connection).

By 2100, 10 African countries will increase their populations at least fivefold:

Angola / Burundi / the DRC / Malawi / Mali / Niger / Somalia / Uganda / Tanzania / Zambia.

Age structure: children under 15 make up 41% of the population / youth aged 15-24 a further 19% - this is, in effect, the "demographic window," which is only now opening, at a time when it has already closed for China, Europe, Russia, and Japan.
In short, even the most bearish case = an increase of 1B people, which, any way you look at it, is a great many.

This means the economy will expand on the back of the rising generation.

Population = demand = a healthy market = appreciating asset values.

By this formula, Africa is the only region where the equation works "in the positive" throughout the entire 21st century.

RESOURCES

An enormous basket of resources.

Around 30% of the world's reserves of critical minerals:

~55% of global cobalt reserves
~38% of manganese
~80% of platinum
~62% of chromium
~25% of natural graphite

Concentration by country:

• Guinea ~25% of the world's bauxite
• South Africa - #1 in manganese
• Zimbabwe - top 5 in lithium
• DRC - ~70% of global cobalt production

Demand:

Lithium in 2024: +30%
Nickel / cobalt / graphite /

REEs: +8%

The energy sector accounted for 85% of the growth in demand for battery metals (IEA)
Also expected: +40% in demand for copper and REEs / +60–70% for nickel and cobalt / +90% for lithium by 2040.

In addition:

Hydrocarbons (Nigeria, Algeria, Angola, Mozambique + LNG projects across all the African players = infrastructure)
Uranium (Niger supplied a significant share of France's nuclear power plants)
Gold (Ghana, Sudan, Mali)
Vast tracts of agricultural land and fresh water in the Great Lakes and the Congo Basin.

WEATHER

The Atlantic "conveyor" that drags warm water from the tropics northward (part of the Gulf Stream).

The AMOC will weaken by 18-43% by the end of the 21st century even under a very high-emissions scenario / a full collapse this century is unlikely, per a Caltech 2025 assessment.
In the event of an AMOC collapse: Europe dries out, the temperature differential between northern and southern Europe grows by ~4°C, the African and Asian monsoons weaken, and the Southern Hemisphere ocean releases more CO₂.

From this, the following follows:

Part of northern Europe becomes less comfortable - a redistribution of people and investment southward.
Part of tropical Africa undergoes a physical redistribution of precipitation - drought in some places (the Sahel), intensified rainfall in others - which redraws the map of agricultural investment attractiveness.

The UAE and Arabia - on a 30-50-year horizon - risk becoming barely habitable on account of temperature, with the added powerful factor of the U.S.

Iran dynamic (which spurs an even greater flight of capital from the region) - after which their "demographic + tax bonus" deflates like a balloon.

Africa inherits their function as a growing market.
Accordingly, we may see a "migration of capital toward the equator, to the high-altitude plateaus" (Ethiopia / Kenya / Uganda / Rwanda / Tanzania / South Africa) - many sovereign wealth funds already hold land allocations there.

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