A continent of many traditions — and rapid transformation

An economy in transformation

The mid-2020s outlook shows real momentum, though the phrase 'Africa is booming' needs care. The African Development Bank's 2026 outlook — launched at its Annual Meetings in Brazzaville under the theme of mobilising development financing at scale — projects 4.2% growth for 2026, after 4.4% in 2025. East Africa remains the fastest-growing region (around 5.9% in 2026) and West Africa is projected near 4.7%. Growth of around four percent is significant globally, but population growth means gains per person are smaller, and development remains uneven.

The drivers

Several forces are reshaping the continent at once, and they compound one another.

• ◆A young, expanding population and rapid urbanisation creating vast new markets.
• ◆Mobile-first digital services — mobile money, fintech, e-commerce — leapfrogging older infrastructure.
• ◆The AfCFTA and its new Digital Trade Protocol building a single market across 55 economies.
• ◆Critical minerals (cobalt, copper, manganese, bauxite, graphite) and world-class solar, wind and geothermal for the energy transition.

The honest challenges

The opportunity is real, and so are the constraints. Many governments face high debt-service costs that crowd out spending on education, health and infrastructure. GDP can grow without enough good jobs — much work remains informal and insecure. Conflict and instability damage lives and investment in parts of the Sahel, Sudan, the Horn and eastern DRC. And Africa, despite a small share of historical emissions, is highly exposed to climate impacts that hit agriculture and infrastructure hardest.

How Orunmila fits

We want to build for these conditions rather than around them. That means taking real connectivity seriously rather than assuming ideal conditions; respecting many languages, since terms like orí, àṣẹ and ìwà carry meaning that one English word cannot replace; and believing that knowledge should stay owned by the institutions that create it. The aim is to build knowledge infrastructure with the continent, not extract from it.

Where Africa, Orunmila and knowledge meet

For us, Africa represents more than a market — it represents partnership, innovation, and shared growth. Orunmila draws its name and its idea from a Yoruba tradition of wisdom and careful interpretation; it feels right that the same continent shaping the future of the global economy could also shape the future of knowledge management. As businesses, institutions, universities, and communities grow, the need to organise, preserve, and use what they know only becomes more important. Our goal is to work alongside African innovators and knowledge leaders — building technology not only for today's organisations, but for the next generation of global knowledge economies. Africa's growth is real and powerful, but it is also diverse and uneven, and most valuable when it supports people, education, jobs, and long-term development.