Africa is navigating multiple transitions at once. Energy systems are changing. Climate policies are reshaping investment and trade. New technologies are transforming production and work. Critical minerals are acquiring new strategic importance. Global economic relationships are being reorganised.
These transitions will have profound consequences for African development.
Yet many dominant transition frameworks originate in economies with very different starting conditions: established infrastructure, relatively high levels of energy consumption, mature industrial systems and greater fiscal capacity. Applying these pathways without sufficient attention to African circumstances can constrain development choices or create new vulnerabilities.
The Resilient Transitions Programme examines how Africa can navigate major transitions while expanding productive capacity, improving livelihoods and advancing structural transformation.
The programme starts from the proposition that transitions should not simply be processes to which African countries adjust. They are arenas in which development pathways, economic opportunities and future capabilities are being determined.
Our work therefore asks how African countries can shape transitions around their own priorities, circumstances and development ambitions.
Economic resilience is often understood as the capacity to withstand a shock and return to previous levels of activity. For developing economies undergoing structural transformation, that definition is too narrow
The more important question is whether economies can continue building productive capacity, creating livelihoods and advancing development when the conditions under which they operate change.
African economies face vulnerabilities arising from climate shocks, commodity dependence, debt pressures, food and energy insecurity, supply-chain disruptions, changing trade regimes, technological change and geopolitical competition. These pressures frequently interact, allowing disruption in one part of the system to propagate through others.
The Resilient Economies and Development Programme examines how African economies can reduce these vulnerabilities while continuing to transform.
It approaches resilience not as an alternative to economic transformation, but as one of its foundations.
Resilience ultimately depends on decisions: what governments anticipate, what institutions prepare for, what capabilities they build and how quickly they can learn when circumstances change.
Yet many institutions are designed around relatively stable assumptions, sectoral mandates and short planning cycles. Emerging challenges increasingly cut across these boundaries. Climate, technology, economics, demographics and geopolitics interact in ways that make linear prediction difficult and conventional planning less reliable.
The Institutions, Governance and Foresight Programme examines how African institutions can become better equipped to make consequential decisions under these conditions.
Its focus is not on predicting the future. It is on strengthening the ability of institutions to consider different possible futures, recognise emerging risks and opportunities, adapt when assumptions change and make decisions that remain robust under uncertainty.
