Three plausible conditions in 2031 and 2036, built from Kenya's own recorded
history. Not a prediction — a stated set of assumptions you can check, disagree with, and recompute.
New here? This is one of 54 country briefs on Africa 2036 Intelligence, an
evidence-based foresight instrument. Values marked with a year are measurements; values attached to a
scenario are projections computed from this country's own history. Where a value is missing it is shown
as missing, never estimated.
EACCOMESAIGADEvidence: ConsideredDeep country review
How much weight this outlook bears
The evidence base is reasonably complete, current and stable enough to reason about. Still a scenario, not a prediction.
Core indicator series are close to complete.
Most recent observation is from 2025 — current.
Growth has been comparatively steady (sd 1.61), so the central path is more meaningful.
Country-specific policy and project evidence has been reviewed and cited.
Why this matters
The same seven questions are asked of all 54 countries, and every answer below is
computed from Kenya's own evidence and model state — nothing here is written by hand, so
nothing here can drift away from the data it rests on.
7 of 7 questions can be answered from the evidence held for Kenya.
What could materially change by 2031
Conditional projection
Household electricity access moves from 77% of the population (2024) to between 86% and 92% by 2031, depending on the scenario. Simple continuation gives 89% — a rise of 11.8 percentage points.
In people rather than percentages: about 7.2 million would still be without it in 2031 under continuation — 6 million fewer than in 2024, because the population grows as the share improves.
Internet use moves from 35% of the population (2024) to between 42% and 50% by 2031, depending on the scenario. Simple continuation gives 45% — a rise of 10.4 percentage points.
In people rather than percentages: about 35.1 million would still be without it in 2031 under continuation — 2.3 million fewer than in 2024, because the population grows as the share improves.
Output per person spans $2,523 to $2,962 by 2031. The $439 between them is under a quarter of today's $2,363.
That spread is the distance between scenarios, not a margin of error — and it is a national average, which does not identify whose income moved.
The population reaches about 64.2 million — roughly 6.7 million more people than in 2025, about 40.2 million of them of working age.
This figure is the same in all three scenarios. Most of the people who will be alive in 2031 have already been born.
What could materially change by 2036
Conditional projection
Household electricity access moves from 77% of the population (2024) to between 90% and 96% by 2036, depending on the scenario. Simple continuation gives 93% — a rise of 16.3 percentage points.
In people rather than percentages: about 4.7 million would still be without it in 2036 under continuation — 8.6 million fewer than in 2024, because the population grows as the share improves.
Internet use moves from 35% of the population (2024) to between 46% and 58% by 2036, depending on the scenario. Simple continuation gives 52% — a rise of 16.7 percentage points.
In people rather than percentages: about 33.7 million would still be without it in 2036 under continuation — 3.7 million fewer than in 2024, because the population grows as the share improves.
Output per person spans $2,665 to $3,576 by 2036. The $911 between them is a quarter to a half of today's $2,363.
That spread is the distance between scenarios, not a margin of error — and it is a national average, which does not identify whose income moved.
The population reaches about 69.8 million — roughly 12.3 million more people than in 2025, about 44.2 million of them of working age.
This figure is the same in all three scenarios. Most of the people who will be alive in 2036 have already been born.
Who may benefit
Interpretation
Smallholder farmers, if input costs, storage and roads improve alongside prices
People connecting for the first time, who move from no access to some — a larger step than any later improvement in speed or price
Traders and informal businesses newly able to be paid and to hold money outside cash. Whether that converts into borrowing is not measured here
Domestic firms with access to nearby compute
a population where 90% of people aged 15 and over already held a bank or mobile-money account in 2024 — the payment rail exists here, so what is gained depends on what is built on top of it rather than on reaching people at all
people coming online for the first time — internet use rises 23 percentage points by 2036 under the fastest band, which is roughly 20.6 million more people connected than in 2024
firms close enough to delivered compute to use it without buying international bandwidth
Who may be excluded
Interpretation
Rain-fed farming households, first and hardest, in a bad season
Educated young people whose qualifications do not convert into work
A state that must regulate technologies it has too few trained people to assess
Rural, older, poorer and less literate people, who are last in every connectivity sequence
Households already spending most of their income on food
Civilians in contested areas, for whom no economic scenario on this page is the operative question
Grid customers competing with data centre load for the same power
the 65% of people not online in 2024, for whom every digital projection on this page is a statement about somebody else
young people already outside work at 15.2% in 2025, in a labour market the projections grow but do not restructure
rain-fed farming households — 46% of employment in 2025, in a country already withdrawing 33% of its renewable water
What must happen for this to be plausible
From the evidence
The Masakhane African Languages Hub was established in July 2025 and opened a grant programme to fund dataset development for 50…. Recorded as funded: it still has to be implemented rather than merely resourced before it counts as a change in how things work.
Kenya's National AI Strategy was launched in March 2025, and Kenya is noted for the scale and financing of its rollout plan. Recorded as approved: it still has to be funded and staffed before it counts as a change in how things work.
The Creative Economy Support Bill (Senate Bill No. 30 of 2024) is before the Kenyan Parliament and would establish a statutory…. Recorded as proposed: it still has to attract financing before it counts as money in motion.
For the Acceleration band to describe the decade, growth per person has to hold near 3.8% a year. This country has reached that rate before — its best year in the window was 5.7% — but has not sustained it across the 15-year record the band is drawn from.
What could invalidate this outlook
Interpretation
Climate exposure & disaster risk — A multi-season drought or a major flood event affecting the main producing regions. Discrete climate events are outside any band built from recent averages.
Food & water systems — A regional harvest failure, or a change in the affordability of food imports.
Political instability & conflict — Onset or escalation of armed conflict. The modelled band is drawn from economic history and contains no war; if this occurs, disregard the quantitative path entirely.
Population pressure & the youth cohort — A significant revision to the UN World Population Prospects for this country. The population path here is carried through unchanged and is the least uncertain input on the page.
Education & workforce capability — A sustained collapse or expansion in enrolment, or large-scale emigration of trained professionals.
Digital infrastructure — A step change in device or data affordability, or a major submarine cable landing.
AI, automation & compute ownership — A large compute or connectivity investment landing domestically, or a regulatory change altering where data may be held.
What to watch now
From the evidence
Real GDP per capita growth sustained above 3.84% for three consecutive years → The Acceleration band would be the better description of the decade.
Real GDP per capita growth below 1.1% for two consecutive years → The Disruption band would be the better description of the decade.
Electricity access above 92.1% by 2031 (momentum path reaches 88.8%) → Energy access is running ahead of the momentum path.
2 recorded items here rest on a source this platform has not confirmed against the issuing institution. Confirmation or contradiction of them would change what can be said.
A general election was scheduled for August 2027. This is a scheduled event, not a commitment anyone has to deliver. It is listed because transitions move policy; its outcome is not projected here.
Climate exposure & disaster risk and Food & water systems are assessed as binding here. Movement on them would change the outlook faster than movement inside the growth band.
The three futures
The assumption, stated in full
Annual real GDP growth minus annual population growth, 2011–2025 (15 years). Mean 2.47%, standard deviation 1.61. Scenario rates are mean ± 0.85 sd, clamped to this country's own 5th–95th percentile and to [-6%, +9%].
Momentum — 2.47% a year
Present trajectories broadly continue.
Policy, investment, institutions and demographics carry on behaving as they have. No collapse, no breakthrough. This is not a forecast of what will happen — it is the shape of the recent past extended forward, which is the baseline every other scenario should be judged against.
The recent past, extended. The question it asks is whether that is enough.
For Kenya this is 2.47% a year per person,
drawn from its own 15-year record (2011–2025),
not from an outside view of what this country might do.
What it is good at
Predictability. Institutions, tariffs, procurement and delivery capacity behave as they already do, so plans made today mostly survive contact with the decade. Existing programmes finish. Nothing has to be rebuilt.
What it costs
Everything that is currently too slow stays too slow. Where a gap is closing at two points a year and the population is growing at three percent, continuation means the absolute number of people excluded rises even as the percentage falls.
Who it reaches last
Whoever is already last. Continuation preserves the existing sequence of who gets connected, treated, schooled and paid — it does not reorder it.
What it quietly assumes
That the conditions of the last fifteen years hold for the next ten: no default, no major conflict, no discrete climate event, and no external shock large enough to break the trend the band is drawn from.
How it is usually misread
Momentum is routinely read as the safe or neutral case. It is neither. It is the case in which nothing is done differently, and for several countries on this platform that is the most consequential choice available.
Measure
2026
2031
2036
Population (same in all scenarios)
58.6m
64.2m
69.8m
Working-age population (15–64) (same in all scenarios)
35.9m
40.2m
44.2m
Real GDP per capita
$2,421
$2,735
$3,090
Electricity access
81.3%
88.8%
93.3%
Internet use
38.1%
45.4%
51.7%
Acceleration — 3.84% a year
The country sustains the pace of its own better years.
Reform, investment, regional trade, energy build-out, education and institutional capacity perform above the recent average — at a rate this country has actually reached before, held for a decade rather than a year or two.
Not a miracle — this country's own good years, held for a decade instead of a season.
For Kenya this is 3.84% a year per person,
drawn from its own 15-year record (2011–2025),
not from an outside view of what this country might do.
What it is good at
Compounding. A rate held for ten years does something a rate held for two cannot: it changes the level, not just the direction. Access gaps close inside the horizon rather than beyond it, and the working-age bulge arrives into an economy that has grown to meet it.
What it costs
Speed is unevenly distributed by default. Growth concentrates where infrastructure, credit and skills already are, which in most of these economies means the largest city and the formal sector. Faster national numbers can coexist with a widening internal gap, and this platform cannot see that gap because the indicators behind it are national.
Who it reaches last
Rural, informal and non-connected populations, unless something specific is done to reach them. Acceleration reaches them faster in absolute terms and no sooner in sequence.
What it quietly assumes
Sustained implementation capacity — the same institutions delivering at their best, continuously, for a decade. It is the strongest assumption on this platform, and the historical record for holding a peak rate that long is thin everywhere, not only here.
How it is usually misread
Acceleration is routinely read as the target. It is a description of a pace, not of a distribution, and it says nothing about who the growth reaches.
Measure
2026
2031
2036
Population (same in all scenarios)
58.6m
64.2m
69.8m
Working-age population (15–64) (same in all scenarios)
35.9m
40.2m
44.2m
Real GDP per capita
$2,454
$2,962
$3,576
Electricity access
83.1%
92.1%
96.4%
Internet use
39.7%
49.9%
58.3%
Disruption — 1.1% a year
The country runs at the pace of its own worse years.
Debt service, weak implementation, instability, climate shocks, capital flight or external shocks hold performance at the low end of realised experience. Note the limit: this band is drawn from recent history, so it does not represent a war, a default or a catastrophic climate event. Those are listed as named risks instead of being given a false number.
Not collapse. The low end of what this country has already survived — which is the point.
For Kenya this is 1.1% a year per person,
drawn from its own 15-year record (2011–2025),
not from an outside view of what this country might do.
What it is good at
Clarity about what is load-bearing. The commitments that survive a bad decade are the ones with financing already closed and construction already started; everything at announcement stage is what disappears first. Disruption is the scenario that separates the two.
What it costs
Time. Gaps that would close inside the horizon move outside it, and a cohort passes through school, into work and into household formation while the conditions do not improve. That cost is paid by specific ages of specific people and is not recoverable later.
Who it reaches last
Nobody new is reached. The people this scenario hits first are those with the least buffer — households already spending most of their income on food, workers in rain-fed agriculture, and anyone whose access depends on a service that gets cut before it gets extended.
What it quietly assumes
That the bad years look like the bad years already in the record. It does NOT model war, sovereign default or a catastrophic climate event — those are outside any band built from realised history, and this platform names them as risks instead of giving them a number it cannot support.
How it is usually misread
Disruption is routinely read as the collapse case. It is the opposite: it is bounded by what has already happened, which makes it the most conservative of the three about how bad things could get.
Measure
2026
2031
2036
Population (same in all scenarios)
58.6m
64.2m
69.8m
Working-age population (15–64) (same in all scenarios)
35.9m
40.2m
44.2m
Real GDP per capita
$2,389
$2,523
$2,665
Electricity access
79.9%
85.6%
89.6%
Internet use
37%
41.9%
46.4%
GDP per capita paths are expressed in constant present-day dollars — a real-output path, not a forecast
of prices or exchange rates. Population comes from the UN World Population Prospects and is carried
through unchanged, which is why it does not vary between scenarios: ten-year demographic momentum is
close to fixed.
Early signals
Thresholds derived from the model itself. You can check which band reality is tracking without waiting for us to tell you.
Real GDP per capita growth sustained above 3.84% for three consecutive years
The Acceleration band would be the better description of the decade.
Real GDP per capita growth below 1.1% for two consecutive years
The Disruption band would be the better description of the decade.
Electricity access above 92.1% by 2031 (momentum path reaches 88.8%)
Energy access is running ahead of the momentum path.
Internet use above 49.9% by 2031 (momentum path reaches 45.4%)
Digital foundations are running ahead of the momentum path.
Lived experience
What the projected numbers would mean for ten representative situations. Not predictions, and not stories about real people.
Momentum · 2036
What the projected numbers would mean, taken together, for ten representative situations under
Momentum in 2036.
These are not predictions and not stories about real people. Each one states the evidence it rests
on, the assumptions it makes, and who the improvement would miss.
A young person entering the workforce
Roughly 8.3 million more people reach working age between 2026 and 2036. They enter a labour market where 15.2% of 15–24s were already counted as unemployed in 2025, and where 46% of all work is in agriculture (2025). Under Momentum, internet use moves from 35% to 52% — a materially larger share of this cohort can reach work, training and customers beyond walking distance. With tertiary enrolment at 10.4%, most will not pass through formal higher education, so what they can do at 25 is set by what employers and informal apprenticeship actually teach — not by universities.
Better if
Technical training is aligned to what employers actually hire for, and the evidence on which courses lead to work is published.
Worse if
The cohort arrives faster than jobs, training places or electricity, in which case a demographic dividend becomes a grievance.
Who this misses
Young people in farming households, who typically leave school earliest and are furthest from the connectivity and training that the projection describes.
Assumptions and evidence
Working-age population follows the UN World Population Prospects projection, unchanged.
Youth unemployment is an ILO modelled estimate and understates underemployment in largely informal labour markets.
Connectivity gains are assumed to reach young people at least as fast as the population average — historically optimistic.
Population aged 0–14 36.3% · 2025Youth unemployment, 15–24 (ILO modelled) 15.2% · 2025School enrolment, tertiary (gross) 10.4% · 2024Employment in agriculture 45.8% · 2025Individuals using the internet 35% · 2024
A small-business owner
Electricity access moves from 77% of the population (2024) to 93% by 2036 under Momentum. That measures connections, not hours of supply: a workshop counted as served may still be waiting on power for part of the day, and this platform holds no outage or tariff data for it. Domestic credit to the private sector stood at 31.8% of GDP in 2023, which is substantial for the region. Plausible implication, not measured: a credit-to-GDP ratio this high is consistent with borrowing being easier for small firms, but the ratio is an aggregate and cannot show which firms were refused or why. A firm-level credit survey would establish it. 90% of people aged 15 and over held an account at a bank or other financial institution, or personally used a mobile-money service, in 2024. Mobile money is counted. Plausible implication, not measured: account records are the kind of evidence a lender can price risk against, so widening ownership could open borrowing to traders without land title. Nothing in this platform measures whether that has happened here — lender practice, or credit-bureau coverage, would show it. Average output per person in the surrounding market moves from $2,363 to $3,090 a year. That is a national mean and does not identify whose income changed.
Better if
Collateral registries, insolvency procedure and payment rails are fixed before credit is subsidised.
Worse if
Credit is expanded into a weak enforcement system, producing bad loans rather than businesses.
Who this misses
Unregistered traders, who are the majority of businesses in most of these economies and are invisible to both the credit statistics and the policies built on them.
Assumptions and evidence
GDP per capita is expressed in constant present-day dollars and describes average output, not the income of any particular household.
Electricity access measures connection, not hours of supply or price. A connected business with eight-hour outages is counted as served.
Domestic credit to the private sector is a stock ratio. It does not distinguish lending to large firms from lending to small ones, and most of the businesses this situation describes are unregistered and outside it entirely.
Access to electricity 77% · 2024Domestic credit to private sector 31.8% · 2023Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+ 90.1% · 2024GDP per capita $2,363 · 2025
A farmer or food producer
46% of the country's workers were in agriculture in 2025. Cereal yields averaged 1,758 kg per hectare — well below what the same seed achieves with reliable inputs, water and storage, so the largest available productivity gain is not a new technology but the ordinary one already used elsewhere. By 2036, 93% of the population has electricity under Momentum — the precondition for irrigation pumps, cold storage and anything that stops a harvest rotting between field and market. 52% internet use puts price information, weather and pest identification within reach of a phone, for those who have one and can afford data. Undernourishment affected 36.8% of people in 2023: food exists in the region and cannot affordably be moved, which is a roads and storage problem more than a farming one.
Better if
Investment goes into what happens after harvest — storage, roads, cold chain, market information — not only into what happens before it.
Worse if
A multi-season drought arrives, which no band on this platform models, or input costs rise faster than farmgate prices.
Who this misses
Rain-fed smallholders without irrigation, who feel a bad season first and hardest, and women farmers, who in most of these countries hold weaker land tenure and less access to credit.
Assumptions and evidence
National electricity and connectivity projections are applied to a rural situation, though rural access consistently lags the national figure.
Yield gaps are treated as closeable with existing technology; that assumes input supply, credit and extension services that may not exist.
Employment in agriculture 45.8% · 2025Cereal yield 1,758 kg/ha · 2023Prevalence of undernourishment 36.8% · 2023Freshwater withdrawal as share of available resources 33.2% · 2022
A healthcare worker, and a patient
There were 2.9 physicians per 10,000 people in 2023. The population they serve grows by 11.2 million between 2026 and 2036, so holding the current ratio requires training and retaining staff at that rate merely to stand still. Electricity reaching 93% by 2036 under Momentum is what makes a vaccine cold chain, a functioning theatre and a night-time delivery possible outside the largest towns. Out-of-pocket payments were 24% of health spending in 2023. Under-five mortality stood at 38.8 per 1,000 live births (2024).
Better if
Health financing moves toward pooled, prepaid arrangements, and task-shifting is supported by law rather than tolerated informally.
Worse if
Trained clinicians emigrate faster than they are replaced, or external health financing contracts.
Who this misses
People in rural districts and informal settlements, where the physician ratio is a fraction of the national figure, and anyone whose care is rationed by ability to pay at the point of service.
Assumptions and evidence
Workforce density is a national average; it conceals extreme concentration in capital cities.
This platform holds no projection for health workforce or financing — only the current position against a projected population.
Physicians per 1,000 people 0.29 / 1,000 · 2023Out-of-pocket health expenditure 24.2% · 2023Under-5 mortality rate 38.8 / 1,000 · 2024
A teacher, and a student
The school-age population grows with a national population rising by 11.2 million to 2036. Gross secondary enrolment was 84.3% in 2023 and tertiary 10.4%. Government spent 4% of GDP on education in 2024. Under Momentum, 93% of households have electricity by 2036 — which is when homework after dark stops being a privilege. 52% internet use makes digital material reachable for that share of students, and no more; 48% of the population remains outside it.
Better if
Electricity and connectivity reach schools ahead of the national average rather than behind it, and teacher supply grows with enrolment.
Worse if
Enrolment expands faster than teachers are trained, converting access gains into larger classes and weaker learning.
Who this misses
Girls in regions where secondary completion diverges sharply by gender, and children in households where the opportunity cost of school attendance is immediate income.
Assumptions and evidence
Gross enrolment ratios can exceed 100% and include students outside the standard age range; they measure participation, not learning.
This platform holds no measure of learning outcomes, teacher supply or classroom quality — a substantial gap in describing education.
By 2036 under Momentum, roughly 36.1 million people in this country are online — the domestic audience reachable without leaving it. That is up from about 35% of the population in 2024 to 52%. 90% of people aged 15 and over held a bank or mobile-money account in 2024, so being paid directly by that audience is mechanically possible for most of it. Production still depends on power: 93% household electricity access by 2036 sets how far studios, editing and streaming can spread beyond the main city.
Better if
Payment rails work across borders and royalties are collected and enforced domestically rather than captured offshore.
Worse if
Data costs stay high relative to income, or distribution platforms owned elsewhere capture the value created here.
Who this misses
Creators working in languages the major platforms do not support well, and anyone without a device capable of running current tools.
Assumptions and evidence
Domestic reach is calculated as projected internet use multiplied by projected population. It counts people who can technically be reached, not an audience.
This platform has now reviewed 1 creative-economy document for this country. None of them measures individual earnings, so this situation still rests on reach and payment infrastructure, not on income.
Individuals using the internet 35% · 2024Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+ 90.1% · 2024Population aged 0–14 36.3% · 2025
Someone who makes and sells things — cloth, furniture, beadwork, beauty
This is the part of the creative economy that is made by hand and sold in person, and it is the part official statistics see least. 1 document has been reviewed for this country, measured under the creative frame. No creative financing or policy programme has been found for this country, so a maker's access to capital in 2036 depends on the same general banking conditions as any other small trader. 90% of people aged 15 and over held a bank or mobile-money account in 2024. Being paid without cash is therefore possible for part of the market and not the rest. Projected internet use of 52% by 2036 sets how much of the selling can happen beyond the physical market. Power at 93% household access decides whether a workshop can run a machine, a kiln or a cold chain outside the main city.
Better if
A registration or support scheme reaches unregistered makers instead of only formal firms, and payment and delivery costs fall faster than import competition rises.
Worse if
Formalisation arrives as a licensing cost before it arrives as access to finance, or cheap imported substitutes reach the urban market before domestic producers can supply it.
Who this misses
Makers outside the main urban markets, those without an account or a smartphone, and the large majority whose businesses are not registered and therefore invisible to every programme recorded here.
Assumptions and evidence
Handmade and small-workshop production is largely informal and largely unmeasured. Nothing here is an estimate of the sector's size, and this platform does not have one for this country.
Account ownership, internet use and electricity access are used as conditions for trading, not as measures of creative income. No reviewed source in this country reports what makers earn.
Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+ 90.1% · 2024Individuals using the internet 35% · 2024Access to electricity 77% · 2024
A trader using regional markets
Trade was 38% of GDP in 2025, so what happens at a neighbour's border arrives as a domestic price within months. This country sits inside EAC, COMESA, IGAD. It was among the first participants in the AfCFTA Guided Trade Initiative, which means preferential trade under the agreement has actually been tested here rather than only ratified. 90% of people aged 15 and over held a bank or mobile-money account in 2024 — the share able to settle across a border without carrying cash.
Better if
Rules of origin are agreed on contested product lines and applied at national customs, not just gazetted.
Worse if
Regional blocs fragment further, or preferential tariffs remain unimplemented at the border despite ratification.
Who this misses
Small cross-border traders, disproportionately women, who operate below the threshold at which formal preferential regimes are usable at all.
Assumptions and evidence
Trade openness is a national accounts ratio and says nothing about the cost or time of a specific border crossing.
This platform holds no country-level data on intra-African trade share, non-tariff barriers or border clearance times — the measures that would matter most here.
Trade (exports + imports) 37.5% · 2025Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+ 90.1% · 2024
A family in a growing city
Urban population was growing 2.9% a year in 2025, doubling roughly every 24 years. On the projected population, of the order of 3.6 million additional people are living in this country's towns and cities by 2036. 40% of urban residents were in informal settlements in 2022 — housing built faster than it was serviced. Under Momentum, 93% of the population has electricity by 2036. The decisions that determine whether this family's commute is one hour or three — where roads, water mains and drainage go, and which land is reserved before it is built on — are being made now, and are expensive to reverse afterwards.
Better if
Land for roads, water mains and drainage is bought and reserved before settlement arrives — the cheapest infrastructure decision available and the one most often skipped.
Worse if
Growth outpaces servicing, in which case today's new neighbourhoods become the next decade's retrofit problem at many times the cost.
Who this misses
Renters and residents without secure tenure, who bear eviction risk and are usually the first displaced when upgrading finally arrives.
Assumptions and evidence
Urban share is held constant when estimating additional urban residents; in practice it is rising, so this is a conservative figure.
This platform holds no city-level data. National averages conceal very large differences between a capital and a secondary town.
Urban population 32.2% · 2025Urban population growth 2.9% · 2025Population living in slums 40.5% · 2022
A citizen dealing with government
Government effectiveness scored -0.3 in 2024 on a scale running roughly −2.5 to +2.5. With 52% internet use by 2036 under Momentum, permits, payments, registrations and records can plausibly be handled without a physical queue for that share of the population — the most tangible improvement most citizens would actually notice. Voice and accountability scored -0.4 (2024). Which of those two things digital government becomes is a question of oversight, procurement terms and law rather than of technology.
Better if
Digital public infrastructure is built with data protection law, independent oversight and offline fallbacks from the start.
Worse if
Identity and payment systems become a precondition for services before coverage is universal, excluding people from entitlements they already hold.
Who this misses
People without formal identity documents, who are disproportionately rural, poor, migrant or stateless — and who are excluded twice when services move online.
Assumptions and evidence
Governance indicators are perception-based composites. They signal direction and relative position, not measured administrative performance.
Connectivity is assumed to be usable for government services; in practice affordability, literacy and identity documentation each gate access again.
Government effectiveness -0.3 · 2024Voice and accountability -0.35 · 2024Government revenue excl. grants 18.6% · 2023
A member of the diaspora weighing return or investment
Remittances were 4.2% of GDP in 2024, against foreign direct investment at 0.4% — meaning money sent home by citizens abroad is already larger than foreign investment, and arrives in household hands without conditions. Under Momentum, real output per person moves from $2,363 (2025) to $3,090 by 2036, about 2.5% a year. By 2036, 93% electricity access and 52% internet use set what can actually be operated on the ground. Rule of law scored -0.5 (2024), which is the measure that most often decides whether a diaspora investor commits capital rather than only sending support.
Better if
Property registration, repatriation of profits and dispute resolution are made predictable — the three things that convert diaspora sentiment into diaspora capital.
Worse if
Currency controls or an unpredictable tax treatment of returning residents make commitment more expensive than continued remittance.
Who this misses
Diaspora members without capital to invest, whose contribution is already the largest single external flow and who are rarely the audience for investment policy.
Assumptions and evidence
GDP per capita paths are in constant present-day dollars and assume no exchange-rate or price forecast.
Remittance ratios are balance-of-payments estimates and exclude informal channels, which are substantial in most of these countries.
Personal remittances received 4.2% · 2024Foreign direct investment, net inflows 0.4% · 2024GDP per capita $2,363 · 2025Rule of law -0.46 · 2024
Acceleration · 2036
What the projected numbers would mean, taken together, for ten representative situations under
Acceleration in 2036.
These are not predictions and not stories about real people. Each one states the evidence it rests
on, the assumptions it makes, and who the improvement would miss.
A young person entering the workforce
Roughly 8.3 million more people reach working age between 2026 and 2036. They enter a labour market where 15.2% of 15–24s were already counted as unemployed in 2025, and where 46% of all work is in agriculture (2025). Under Acceleration, internet use moves from 35% to 58% — a materially larger share of this cohort can reach work, training and customers beyond walking distance. With tertiary enrolment at 10.4%, most will not pass through formal higher education, so what they can do at 25 is set by what employers and informal apprenticeship actually teach — not by universities.
Better if
Technical training is aligned to what employers actually hire for, and the evidence on which courses lead to work is published.
Worse if
The cohort arrives faster than jobs, training places or electricity, in which case a demographic dividend becomes a grievance.
Who this misses
Young people in farming households, who typically leave school earliest and are furthest from the connectivity and training that the projection describes.
Assumptions and evidence
Working-age population follows the UN World Population Prospects projection, unchanged.
Youth unemployment is an ILO modelled estimate and understates underemployment in largely informal labour markets.
Connectivity gains are assumed to reach young people at least as fast as the population average — historically optimistic.
Population aged 0–14 36.3% · 2025Youth unemployment, 15–24 (ILO modelled) 15.2% · 2025School enrolment, tertiary (gross) 10.4% · 2024Employment in agriculture 45.8% · 2025Individuals using the internet 35% · 2024
A small-business owner
Electricity access moves from 77% of the population (2024) to 96% by 2036 under Acceleration. That measures connections, not hours of supply: a workshop counted as served may still be waiting on power for part of the day, and this platform holds no outage or tariff data for it. Domestic credit to the private sector stood at 31.8% of GDP in 2023, which is substantial for the region. Plausible implication, not measured: a credit-to-GDP ratio this high is consistent with borrowing being easier for small firms, but the ratio is an aggregate and cannot show which firms were refused or why. A firm-level credit survey would establish it. 90% of people aged 15 and over held an account at a bank or other financial institution, or personally used a mobile-money service, in 2024. Mobile money is counted. Plausible implication, not measured: account records are the kind of evidence a lender can price risk against, so widening ownership could open borrowing to traders without land title. Nothing in this platform measures whether that has happened here — lender practice, or credit-bureau coverage, would show it. Average output per person in the surrounding market moves from $2,363 to $3,576 a year. That is a national mean and does not identify whose income changed.
Better if
Collateral registries, insolvency procedure and payment rails are fixed before credit is subsidised.
Worse if
Credit is expanded into a weak enforcement system, producing bad loans rather than businesses.
Who this misses
Unregistered traders, who are the majority of businesses in most of these economies and are invisible to both the credit statistics and the policies built on them.
Assumptions and evidence
GDP per capita is expressed in constant present-day dollars and describes average output, not the income of any particular household.
Electricity access measures connection, not hours of supply or price. A connected business with eight-hour outages is counted as served.
Domestic credit to the private sector is a stock ratio. It does not distinguish lending to large firms from lending to small ones, and most of the businesses this situation describes are unregistered and outside it entirely.
Access to electricity 77% · 2024Domestic credit to private sector 31.8% · 2023Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+ 90.1% · 2024GDP per capita $2,363 · 2025
A farmer or food producer
46% of the country's workers were in agriculture in 2025. Cereal yields averaged 1,758 kg per hectare — well below what the same seed achieves with reliable inputs, water and storage, so the largest available productivity gain is not a new technology but the ordinary one already used elsewhere. By 2036, 96% of the population has electricity under Acceleration — the precondition for irrigation pumps, cold storage and anything that stops a harvest rotting between field and market. 58% internet use puts price information, weather and pest identification within reach of a phone, for those who have one and can afford data. Undernourishment affected 36.8% of people in 2023: food exists in the region and cannot affordably be moved, which is a roads and storage problem more than a farming one.
Better if
Investment goes into what happens after harvest — storage, roads, cold chain, market information — not only into what happens before it.
Worse if
A multi-season drought arrives, which no band on this platform models, or input costs rise faster than farmgate prices.
Who this misses
Rain-fed smallholders without irrigation, who feel a bad season first and hardest, and women farmers, who in most of these countries hold weaker land tenure and less access to credit.
Assumptions and evidence
National electricity and connectivity projections are applied to a rural situation, though rural access consistently lags the national figure.
Yield gaps are treated as closeable with existing technology; that assumes input supply, credit and extension services that may not exist.
Employment in agriculture 45.8% · 2025Cereal yield 1,758 kg/ha · 2023Prevalence of undernourishment 36.8% · 2023Freshwater withdrawal as share of available resources 33.2% · 2022
A healthcare worker, and a patient
There were 2.9 physicians per 10,000 people in 2023. The population they serve grows by 11.2 million between 2026 and 2036, so holding the current ratio requires training and retaining staff at that rate merely to stand still. Electricity reaching 96% by 2036 under Acceleration is what makes a vaccine cold chain, a functioning theatre and a night-time delivery possible outside the largest towns. Out-of-pocket payments were 24% of health spending in 2023. Under-five mortality stood at 38.8 per 1,000 live births (2024).
Better if
Health financing moves toward pooled, prepaid arrangements, and task-shifting is supported by law rather than tolerated informally.
Worse if
Trained clinicians emigrate faster than they are replaced, or external health financing contracts.
Who this misses
People in rural districts and informal settlements, where the physician ratio is a fraction of the national figure, and anyone whose care is rationed by ability to pay at the point of service.
Assumptions and evidence
Workforce density is a national average; it conceals extreme concentration in capital cities.
This platform holds no projection for health workforce or financing — only the current position against a projected population.
Physicians per 1,000 people 0.29 / 1,000 · 2023Out-of-pocket health expenditure 24.2% · 2023Under-5 mortality rate 38.8 / 1,000 · 2024
A teacher, and a student
The school-age population grows with a national population rising by 11.2 million to 2036. Gross secondary enrolment was 84.3% in 2023 and tertiary 10.4%. Government spent 4% of GDP on education in 2024. Under Acceleration, 96% of households have electricity by 2036 — which is when homework after dark stops being a privilege. 58% internet use makes digital material reachable for that share of students, and no more; 42% of the population remains outside it.
Better if
Electricity and connectivity reach schools ahead of the national average rather than behind it, and teacher supply grows with enrolment.
Worse if
Enrolment expands faster than teachers are trained, converting access gains into larger classes and weaker learning.
Who this misses
Girls in regions where secondary completion diverges sharply by gender, and children in households where the opportunity cost of school attendance is immediate income.
Assumptions and evidence
Gross enrolment ratios can exceed 100% and include students outside the standard age range; they measure participation, not learning.
This platform holds no measure of learning outcomes, teacher supply or classroom quality — a substantial gap in describing education.
By 2036 under Acceleration, roughly 40.7 million people in this country are online — the domestic audience reachable without leaving it. That is up from about 35% of the population in 2024 to 58%. 90% of people aged 15 and over held a bank or mobile-money account in 2024, so being paid directly by that audience is mechanically possible for most of it. Production still depends on power: 96% household electricity access by 2036 sets how far studios, editing and streaming can spread beyond the main city.
Better if
Payment rails work across borders and royalties are collected and enforced domestically rather than captured offshore.
Worse if
Data costs stay high relative to income, or distribution platforms owned elsewhere capture the value created here.
Who this misses
Creators working in languages the major platforms do not support well, and anyone without a device capable of running current tools.
Assumptions and evidence
Domestic reach is calculated as projected internet use multiplied by projected population. It counts people who can technically be reached, not an audience.
This platform has now reviewed 1 creative-economy document for this country. None of them measures individual earnings, so this situation still rests on reach and payment infrastructure, not on income.
Individuals using the internet 35% · 2024Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+ 90.1% · 2024Population aged 0–14 36.3% · 2025
Someone who makes and sells things — cloth, furniture, beadwork, beauty
This is the part of the creative economy that is made by hand and sold in person, and it is the part official statistics see least. 1 document has been reviewed for this country, measured under the creative frame. No creative financing or policy programme has been found for this country, so a maker's access to capital in 2036 depends on the same general banking conditions as any other small trader. 90% of people aged 15 and over held a bank or mobile-money account in 2024. Being paid without cash is therefore possible for part of the market and not the rest. Projected internet use of 58% by 2036 sets how much of the selling can happen beyond the physical market. Power at 96% household access decides whether a workshop can run a machine, a kiln or a cold chain outside the main city.
Better if
A registration or support scheme reaches unregistered makers instead of only formal firms, and payment and delivery costs fall faster than import competition rises.
Worse if
Formalisation arrives as a licensing cost before it arrives as access to finance, or cheap imported substitutes reach the urban market before domestic producers can supply it.
Who this misses
Makers outside the main urban markets, those without an account or a smartphone, and the large majority whose businesses are not registered and therefore invisible to every programme recorded here.
Assumptions and evidence
Handmade and small-workshop production is largely informal and largely unmeasured. Nothing here is an estimate of the sector's size, and this platform does not have one for this country.
Account ownership, internet use and electricity access are used as conditions for trading, not as measures of creative income. No reviewed source in this country reports what makers earn.
Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+ 90.1% · 2024Individuals using the internet 35% · 2024Access to electricity 77% · 2024
A trader using regional markets
Trade was 38% of GDP in 2025, so what happens at a neighbour's border arrives as a domestic price within months. This country sits inside EAC, COMESA, IGAD. It was among the first participants in the AfCFTA Guided Trade Initiative, which means preferential trade under the agreement has actually been tested here rather than only ratified. 90% of people aged 15 and over held a bank or mobile-money account in 2024 — the share able to settle across a border without carrying cash.
Better if
Rules of origin are agreed on contested product lines and applied at national customs, not just gazetted.
Worse if
Regional blocs fragment further, or preferential tariffs remain unimplemented at the border despite ratification.
Who this misses
Small cross-border traders, disproportionately women, who operate below the threshold at which formal preferential regimes are usable at all.
Assumptions and evidence
Trade openness is a national accounts ratio and says nothing about the cost or time of a specific border crossing.
This platform holds no country-level data on intra-African trade share, non-tariff barriers or border clearance times — the measures that would matter most here.
Trade (exports + imports) 37.5% · 2025Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+ 90.1% · 2024
A family in a growing city
Urban population was growing 2.9% a year in 2025, doubling roughly every 24 years. On the projected population, of the order of 3.6 million additional people are living in this country's towns and cities by 2036. 40% of urban residents were in informal settlements in 2022 — housing built faster than it was serviced. Under Acceleration, 96% of the population has electricity by 2036. The decisions that determine whether this family's commute is one hour or three — where roads, water mains and drainage go, and which land is reserved before it is built on — are being made now, and are expensive to reverse afterwards.
Better if
Land for roads, water mains and drainage is bought and reserved before settlement arrives — the cheapest infrastructure decision available and the one most often skipped.
Worse if
Growth outpaces servicing, in which case today's new neighbourhoods become the next decade's retrofit problem at many times the cost.
Who this misses
Renters and residents without secure tenure, who bear eviction risk and are usually the first displaced when upgrading finally arrives.
Assumptions and evidence
Urban share is held constant when estimating additional urban residents; in practice it is rising, so this is a conservative figure.
This platform holds no city-level data. National averages conceal very large differences between a capital and a secondary town.
Urban population 32.2% · 2025Urban population growth 2.9% · 2025Population living in slums 40.5% · 2022
A citizen dealing with government
Government effectiveness scored -0.3 in 2024 on a scale running roughly −2.5 to +2.5. With 58% internet use by 2036 under Acceleration, permits, payments, registrations and records can plausibly be handled without a physical queue for that share of the population — the most tangible improvement most citizens would actually notice. Voice and accountability scored -0.4 (2024). Which of those two things digital government becomes is a question of oversight, procurement terms and law rather than of technology.
Better if
Digital public infrastructure is built with data protection law, independent oversight and offline fallbacks from the start.
Worse if
Identity and payment systems become a precondition for services before coverage is universal, excluding people from entitlements they already hold.
Who this misses
People without formal identity documents, who are disproportionately rural, poor, migrant or stateless — and who are excluded twice when services move online.
Assumptions and evidence
Governance indicators are perception-based composites. They signal direction and relative position, not measured administrative performance.
Connectivity is assumed to be usable for government services; in practice affordability, literacy and identity documentation each gate access again.
Government effectiveness -0.3 · 2024Voice and accountability -0.35 · 2024Government revenue excl. grants 18.6% · 2023
A member of the diaspora weighing return or investment
Remittances were 4.2% of GDP in 2024, against foreign direct investment at 0.4% — meaning money sent home by citizens abroad is already larger than foreign investment, and arrives in household hands without conditions. Under Acceleration, real output per person moves from $2,363 (2025) to $3,576 by 2036, about 3.8% a year. By 2036, 96% electricity access and 58% internet use set what can actually be operated on the ground. Rule of law scored -0.5 (2024), which is the measure that most often decides whether a diaspora investor commits capital rather than only sending support.
Better if
Property registration, repatriation of profits and dispute resolution are made predictable — the three things that convert diaspora sentiment into diaspora capital.
Worse if
Currency controls or an unpredictable tax treatment of returning residents make commitment more expensive than continued remittance.
Who this misses
Diaspora members without capital to invest, whose contribution is already the largest single external flow and who are rarely the audience for investment policy.
Assumptions and evidence
GDP per capita paths are in constant present-day dollars and assume no exchange-rate or price forecast.
Remittance ratios are balance-of-payments estimates and exclude informal channels, which are substantial in most of these countries.
Personal remittances received 4.2% · 2024Foreign direct investment, net inflows 0.4% · 2024GDP per capita $2,363 · 2025Rule of law -0.46 · 2024
Disruption · 2036
What the projected numbers would mean, taken together, for ten representative situations under
Disruption in 2036.
These are not predictions and not stories about real people. Each one states the evidence it rests
on, the assumptions it makes, and who the improvement would miss.
A young person entering the workforce
Roughly 8.3 million more people reach working age between 2026 and 2036. They enter a labour market where 15.2% of 15–24s were already counted as unemployed in 2025, and where 46% of all work is in agriculture (2025). Under Disruption, internet use moves from 35% to 46% — a modest widening, meaning connectivity remains a sorting mechanism rather than a leveller. With tertiary enrolment at 10.4%, most will not pass through formal higher education, so what they can do at 25 is set by what employers and informal apprenticeship actually teach — not by universities.
Better if
Technical training is aligned to what employers actually hire for, and the evidence on which courses lead to work is published.
Worse if
The cohort arrives faster than jobs, training places or electricity, in which case a demographic dividend becomes a grievance.
Who this misses
Young people in farming households, who typically leave school earliest and are furthest from the connectivity and training that the projection describes.
Assumptions and evidence
Working-age population follows the UN World Population Prospects projection, unchanged.
Youth unemployment is an ILO modelled estimate and understates underemployment in largely informal labour markets.
Connectivity gains are assumed to reach young people at least as fast as the population average — historically optimistic.
Population aged 0–14 36.3% · 2025Youth unemployment, 15–24 (ILO modelled) 15.2% · 2025School enrolment, tertiary (gross) 10.4% · 2024Employment in agriculture 45.8% · 2025Individuals using the internet 35% · 2024
A small-business owner
Electricity access moves from 77% of the population (2024) to 90% by 2036 under Disruption. That measures connections, not hours of supply: a workshop counted as served may still be waiting on power for part of the day, and this platform holds no outage or tariff data for it. Domestic credit to the private sector stood at 31.8% of GDP in 2023, which is substantial for the region. Plausible implication, not measured: a credit-to-GDP ratio this high is consistent with borrowing being easier for small firms, but the ratio is an aggregate and cannot show which firms were refused or why. A firm-level credit survey would establish it. 90% of people aged 15 and over held an account at a bank or other financial institution, or personally used a mobile-money service, in 2024. Mobile money is counted. Plausible implication, not measured: account records are the kind of evidence a lender can price risk against, so widening ownership could open borrowing to traders without land title. Nothing in this platform measures whether that has happened here — lender practice, or credit-bureau coverage, would show it. Average output per person in the surrounding market moves from $2,363 to $2,665 a year. That is a national mean and does not identify whose income changed.
Better if
Collateral registries, insolvency procedure and payment rails are fixed before credit is subsidised.
Worse if
Credit is expanded into a weak enforcement system, producing bad loans rather than businesses.
Who this misses
Unregistered traders, who are the majority of businesses in most of these economies and are invisible to both the credit statistics and the policies built on them.
Assumptions and evidence
GDP per capita is expressed in constant present-day dollars and describes average output, not the income of any particular household.
Electricity access measures connection, not hours of supply or price. A connected business with eight-hour outages is counted as served.
Domestic credit to the private sector is a stock ratio. It does not distinguish lending to large firms from lending to small ones, and most of the businesses this situation describes are unregistered and outside it entirely.
Access to electricity 77% · 2024Domestic credit to private sector 31.8% · 2023Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+ 90.1% · 2024GDP per capita $2,363 · 2025
A farmer or food producer
46% of the country's workers were in agriculture in 2025. Cereal yields averaged 1,758 kg per hectare — well below what the same seed achieves with reliable inputs, water and storage, so the largest available productivity gain is not a new technology but the ordinary one already used elsewhere. By 2036, 90% of the population has electricity under Disruption — the precondition for irrigation pumps, cold storage and anything that stops a harvest rotting between field and market. 46% internet use puts price information, weather and pest identification within reach of a phone, for those who have one and can afford data. Undernourishment affected 36.8% of people in 2023: food exists in the region and cannot affordably be moved, which is a roads and storage problem more than a farming one.
Better if
Investment goes into what happens after harvest — storage, roads, cold chain, market information — not only into what happens before it.
Worse if
A multi-season drought arrives, which no band on this platform models, or input costs rise faster than farmgate prices.
Who this misses
Rain-fed smallholders without irrigation, who feel a bad season first and hardest, and women farmers, who in most of these countries hold weaker land tenure and less access to credit.
Assumptions and evidence
National electricity and connectivity projections are applied to a rural situation, though rural access consistently lags the national figure.
Yield gaps are treated as closeable with existing technology; that assumes input supply, credit and extension services that may not exist.
Employment in agriculture 45.8% · 2025Cereal yield 1,758 kg/ha · 2023Prevalence of undernourishment 36.8% · 2023Freshwater withdrawal as share of available resources 33.2% · 2022
A healthcare worker, and a patient
There were 2.9 physicians per 10,000 people in 2023. The population they serve grows by 11.2 million between 2026 and 2036, so holding the current ratio requires training and retaining staff at that rate merely to stand still. Electricity reaching 90% by 2036 under Disruption is what makes a vaccine cold chain, a functioning theatre and a night-time delivery possible outside the largest towns. Out-of-pocket payments were 24% of health spending in 2023. Under-five mortality stood at 38.8 per 1,000 live births (2024).
Better if
Health financing moves toward pooled, prepaid arrangements, and task-shifting is supported by law rather than tolerated informally.
Worse if
Trained clinicians emigrate faster than they are replaced, or external health financing contracts.
Who this misses
People in rural districts and informal settlements, where the physician ratio is a fraction of the national figure, and anyone whose care is rationed by ability to pay at the point of service.
Assumptions and evidence
Workforce density is a national average; it conceals extreme concentration in capital cities.
This platform holds no projection for health workforce or financing — only the current position against a projected population.
Physicians per 1,000 people 0.29 / 1,000 · 2023Out-of-pocket health expenditure 24.2% · 2023Under-5 mortality rate 38.8 / 1,000 · 2024
A teacher, and a student
The school-age population grows with a national population rising by 11.2 million to 2036. Gross secondary enrolment was 84.3% in 2023 and tertiary 10.4%. Government spent 4% of GDP on education in 2024. Under Disruption, 90% of households have electricity by 2036 — which is when homework after dark stops being a privilege. 46% internet use makes digital material reachable for that share of students, and no more; 54% of the population remains outside it.
Better if
Electricity and connectivity reach schools ahead of the national average rather than behind it, and teacher supply grows with enrolment.
Worse if
Enrolment expands faster than teachers are trained, converting access gains into larger classes and weaker learning.
Who this misses
Girls in regions where secondary completion diverges sharply by gender, and children in households where the opportunity cost of school attendance is immediate income.
Assumptions and evidence
Gross enrolment ratios can exceed 100% and include students outside the standard age range; they measure participation, not learning.
This platform holds no measure of learning outcomes, teacher supply or classroom quality — a substantial gap in describing education.
By 2036 under Disruption, roughly 32.4 million people in this country are online — the domestic audience reachable without leaving it. That is up from about 35% of the population in 2024 to 46%. 90% of people aged 15 and over held a bank or mobile-money account in 2024, so being paid directly by that audience is mechanically possible for most of it. Production still depends on power: 90% household electricity access by 2036 sets how far studios, editing and streaming can spread beyond the main city.
Better if
Payment rails work across borders and royalties are collected and enforced domestically rather than captured offshore.
Worse if
Data costs stay high relative to income, or distribution platforms owned elsewhere capture the value created here.
Who this misses
Creators working in languages the major platforms do not support well, and anyone without a device capable of running current tools.
Assumptions and evidence
Domestic reach is calculated as projected internet use multiplied by projected population. It counts people who can technically be reached, not an audience.
This platform has now reviewed 1 creative-economy document for this country. None of them measures individual earnings, so this situation still rests on reach and payment infrastructure, not on income.
Individuals using the internet 35% · 2024Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+ 90.1% · 2024Population aged 0–14 36.3% · 2025
Someone who makes and sells things — cloth, furniture, beadwork, beauty
This is the part of the creative economy that is made by hand and sold in person, and it is the part official statistics see least. 1 document has been reviewed for this country, measured under the creative frame. No creative financing or policy programme has been found for this country, so a maker's access to capital in 2036 depends on the same general banking conditions as any other small trader. 90% of people aged 15 and over held a bank or mobile-money account in 2024. Being paid without cash is therefore possible for part of the market and not the rest. Projected internet use of 46% by 2036 sets how much of the selling can happen beyond the physical market. Power at 90% household access decides whether a workshop can run a machine, a kiln or a cold chain outside the main city.
Better if
A registration or support scheme reaches unregistered makers instead of only formal firms, and payment and delivery costs fall faster than import competition rises.
Worse if
Formalisation arrives as a licensing cost before it arrives as access to finance, or cheap imported substitutes reach the urban market before domestic producers can supply it.
Who this misses
Makers outside the main urban markets, those without an account or a smartphone, and the large majority whose businesses are not registered and therefore invisible to every programme recorded here.
Assumptions and evidence
Handmade and small-workshop production is largely informal and largely unmeasured. Nothing here is an estimate of the sector's size, and this platform does not have one for this country.
Account ownership, internet use and electricity access are used as conditions for trading, not as measures of creative income. No reviewed source in this country reports what makers earn.
Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+ 90.1% · 2024Individuals using the internet 35% · 2024Access to electricity 77% · 2024
A trader using regional markets
Trade was 38% of GDP in 2025, so what happens at a neighbour's border arrives as a domestic price within months. This country sits inside EAC, COMESA, IGAD. It was among the first participants in the AfCFTA Guided Trade Initiative, which means preferential trade under the agreement has actually been tested here rather than only ratified. 90% of people aged 15 and over held a bank or mobile-money account in 2024 — the share able to settle across a border without carrying cash.
Better if
Rules of origin are agreed on contested product lines and applied at national customs, not just gazetted.
Worse if
Regional blocs fragment further, or preferential tariffs remain unimplemented at the border despite ratification.
Who this misses
Small cross-border traders, disproportionately women, who operate below the threshold at which formal preferential regimes are usable at all.
Assumptions and evidence
Trade openness is a national accounts ratio and says nothing about the cost or time of a specific border crossing.
This platform holds no country-level data on intra-African trade share, non-tariff barriers or border clearance times — the measures that would matter most here.
Trade (exports + imports) 37.5% · 2025Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+ 90.1% · 2024
A family in a growing city
Urban population was growing 2.9% a year in 2025, doubling roughly every 24 years. On the projected population, of the order of 3.6 million additional people are living in this country's towns and cities by 2036. 40% of urban residents were in informal settlements in 2022 — housing built faster than it was serviced. Under Disruption, 90% of the population has electricity by 2036. The decisions that determine whether this family's commute is one hour or three — where roads, water mains and drainage go, and which land is reserved before it is built on — are being made now, and are expensive to reverse afterwards.
Better if
Land for roads, water mains and drainage is bought and reserved before settlement arrives — the cheapest infrastructure decision available and the one most often skipped.
Worse if
Growth outpaces servicing, in which case today's new neighbourhoods become the next decade's retrofit problem at many times the cost.
Who this misses
Renters and residents without secure tenure, who bear eviction risk and are usually the first displaced when upgrading finally arrives.
Assumptions and evidence
Urban share is held constant when estimating additional urban residents; in practice it is rising, so this is a conservative figure.
This platform holds no city-level data. National averages conceal very large differences between a capital and a secondary town.
Urban population 32.2% · 2025Urban population growth 2.9% · 2025Population living in slums 40.5% · 2022
A citizen dealing with government
Government effectiveness scored -0.3 in 2024 on a scale running roughly −2.5 to +2.5. With 46% internet use by 2036 under Disruption, permits, payments, registrations and records can plausibly be handled without a physical queue for that share of the population — the most tangible improvement most citizens would actually notice. Voice and accountability scored -0.4 (2024). Which of those two things digital government becomes is a question of oversight, procurement terms and law rather than of technology.
Better if
Digital public infrastructure is built with data protection law, independent oversight and offline fallbacks from the start.
Worse if
Identity and payment systems become a precondition for services before coverage is universal, excluding people from entitlements they already hold.
Who this misses
People without formal identity documents, who are disproportionately rural, poor, migrant or stateless — and who are excluded twice when services move online.
Assumptions and evidence
Governance indicators are perception-based composites. They signal direction and relative position, not measured administrative performance.
Connectivity is assumed to be usable for government services; in practice affordability, literacy and identity documentation each gate access again.
Government effectiveness -0.3 · 2024Voice and accountability -0.35 · 2024Government revenue excl. grants 18.6% · 2023
A member of the diaspora weighing return or investment
Remittances were 4.2% of GDP in 2024, against foreign direct investment at 0.4% — meaning money sent home by citizens abroad is already larger than foreign investment, and arrives in household hands without conditions. Under Disruption, real output per person moves from $2,363 (2025) to $2,665 by 2036, about 1.1% a year. By 2036, 90% electricity access and 46% internet use set what can actually be operated on the ground. Rule of law scored -0.5 (2024), which is the measure that most often decides whether a diaspora investor commits capital rather than only sending support.
Better if
Property registration, repatriation of profits and dispute resolution are made predictable — the three things that convert diaspora sentiment into diaspora capital.
Worse if
Currency controls or an unpredictable tax treatment of returning residents make commitment more expensive than continued remittance.
Who this misses
Diaspora members without capital to invest, whose contribution is already the largest single external flow and who are rarely the audience for investment policy.
Assumptions and evidence
GDP per capita paths are in constant present-day dollars and assume no exchange-rate or price forecast.
Remittance ratios are balance-of-payments estimates and exclude informal channels, which are substantial in most of these countries.
Personal remittances received 4.2% · 2024Foreign direct investment, net inflows 0.4% · 2024GDP per capita $2,363 · 2025Rule of law -0.46 · 2024
Structural forces the growth model cannot see
The quantitative band on this page extrapolates fifteen years of this country's own growth. It is
defensible because it is narrow — and what it cannot see is anything those fifteen years did not
contain. These are those things, assessed from evidence and deliberately not converted into numbers.
Climate exposure & disaster risk
Binding constraint
641,000 new displacements from disasters were recorded in 2023. Freshwater withdrawals stood at 33% of renewable resources (2022). 46% of employment is in agriculture (2025). Climate is not an environmental topic here — it is the household income of most of the workforce, and a bad season is a nationwide wage cut.
Why the growth model cannot see this
Climate impact is non-linear and arrives as discrete events. A decade of trailing growth contains the droughts that happened, not the ones now becoming more likely.
Freshwater withdrawal as share of available resources 33.2% · 2022Employment in agriculture 45.8% · 2025New displacement associated with disasters 641,000 · 2023Prevalence of undernourishment 36.8% · 2023
Food & water systems
Binding constraint
Undernourishment affected 36.8% of the population in 2023, on cereal yields of 1,758 kg/ha. At this level food security is the operative development question, ahead of any growth path.
Why the growth model cannot see this
Food security is a function of income and logistics as much as of harvests. Food usually exists in the region and cannot affordably be moved — a distribution failure that output data does not describe.
Political stability scored -1.4 in 2024. Instability at this level can move the outcome outside the modelled band in either direction, depending on whether it consolidates or spreads.
Why the growth model cannot see this
Conflict does not appear in a trailing growth average until after it has already happened. A country at peace for fifteen years has no war in its variance.
Political stability and absence of violence -1.36 · 2024Internally displaced people 10,000 · 2025Refugees originating from this country (UNHCR mandate) 13,325 · 2025
Population pressure & the youth cohort
Material
Population is projected to rise 19.1% by 2036 (58.6 million → 69.8 million). Services, housing and jobs must expand at that pace before any improvement in living standards registers.
Why the growth model cannot see this
Per-capita growth already nets out population, which hides the absolute scale of what must be built. A constant GDP per capita with a doubling population means twice the schools for the same living standard.
Population aged 0–14 36.3% · 2025
Education & workforce capability
Material
Gross tertiary enrolment was 10.4% in 2024, on secondary enrolment of 84.3%. The pipeline is thin relative to the technical capacity the next decade will demand.
Why the growth model cannot see this
Human capital compounds on a decade lag. The tertiary enrolment rate today sets the ceiling on what the state can regulate and what firms can build in 2036, and no growth average encodes that.
35% of people used the internet in 2024, and 90% of adults held an account (2024). Enough reach for real services, not enough for universal ones.
Why the growth model cannot see this
Connectivity is a platform for other sectors rather than a sector itself. Its absence caps what health, education, finance and government can each become, in ways no aggregate growth figure separates out.
Individuals using the internet 35% · 2024Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+ 90.1% · 2024Fixed broadband subscriptions 3 / 100 · 2024
AI, automation & compute ownership
Material
One of the five markets holding effectively all of Africa's data centre capacity. That is a genuine advantage and a genuine responsibility: the terms of ownership, power supply and regulation set here determine whether neighbours gain a nearby alternative to offshore hosting, or simply a nearer landlord.
Why the growth model cannot see this
The economic value of AI accrues to whoever owns the compute, the models and the data. A national growth figure records output, not who captured it or where it was booked.
Individuals using the internet 35% · 2024Access to electricity 77% · 2024
Energy availability
Watch
77% of the population had electricity in 2024.
Why the growth model cannot see this
Electricity is a precondition, not an output. A growth average cannot express that a factory, clinic or data centre simply cannot be operated at all.
Access to electricity 77% · 2024Access to electricity, rural 67.1% · 2024
Urbanisation
Watch
Urban population was growing 2.9% a year in 2025, with 32% already urban.
Why the growth model cannot see this
Where people live determines what infrastructure is worth building. The decisions being made now about land, water mains and drainage are expensive to reverse and invisible in GDP.
Urban population growth 2.9% · 2025Urban population 32.2% · 2025Population living in slums 40.5% · 2022
Health-system resilience
Watch
2.9 physicians per 10,000 (2023). Out-of-pocket share 24% (2023).
Why the growth model cannot see this
A health shock removes labour and imposes costs simultaneously. Systems that were already thin absorb nothing, and the growth record of a decade without a pandemic says nothing about the next one.
Physicians per 1,000 people 0.29 / 1,000 · 2023Out-of-pocket health expenditure 24.2% · 2023Under-5 mortality rate 38.8 / 1,000 · 2024
Institutional capacity & regulatory reform
Watch
Government effectiveness scored -0.3 in 2024.
Why the growth model cannot see this
Implementation capacity is what separates an announced plan from a delivered one. It is the single largest reason infrastructure pipelines across this continent under-deliver, and it is invisible in output data.
Government effectiveness -0.3 · 2024Regulatory quality -0.33 · 2024Rule of law -0.47 · 2024
External & geopolitical influence
Watch
FDI was 0.4% of GDP, remittances 4.2%.
Why the growth model cannot see this
Financing terms, security partnerships and market access are set in other capitals. They change faster than a fifteen-year average can register, and they change most sharply for the countries with least leverage.
Foreign direct investment, net inflows 0.4% · 2024Personal remittances received 4.2% · 2024
Regional integration
Supportive
Member of 3 recognised regional bodies, with trade at 38% of GDP (2025). Overlapping memberships bring duplicated obligations, but they also mean this country sits inside most of the continent's integration machinery rather than outside it.
Why the growth model cannot see this
Market access changes the ceiling on what is worth producing. A trailing average is drawn from the market a country had, not the one a treaty may give it — or take away.
Trade (exports + imports) 37.5% · 2025
3 further forces assessed as not evident or unknown
Commodity dependence
Not evident
Natural resource rents were 1% of GDP in 2021. This economy is not primarily rent-driven, which removes one common source of volatility.
Why the growth model cannot see this
The growth band averages across a commodity cycle, which flatters producers in a downswing and understates their exposure in an upswing. Price is set elsewhere and transmits to the budget within a quarter.
Total natural resources rents 1.2% · 2021Exports of goods and services 15.8% · 2025
Sovereign debt & fiscal distress
Unknown
Debt is not reported; revenue alone cannot establish fiscal position.
Why the growth model cannot see this
A default is a discontinuity. Trailing variance cannot contain an event that has not yet occurred, and debt service crowds out the spending that produces future growth long before any default.
Government revenue excl. grants 18.6% · 2023
Major infrastructure completion
Unknown
No infrastructure evidence has been reviewed for this country yet. This is a research gap, not a finding of absence.
Why the growth model cannot see this
A dam, port or corridor that has never existed contributes nothing to a trailing mean, then changes the economics of a whole region the year it is commissioned.
What would invalidate the modelled band
Climate exposure & disaster risk. A multi-season drought or a major flood event affecting the main producing regions. Discrete climate events are outside any band built from recent averages.
Food & water systems. A regional harvest failure, or a change in the affordability of food imports.
Political instability & conflict. Onset or escalation of armed conflict. The modelled band is drawn from economic history and contains no war; if this occurs, disregard the quantitative path entirely.
Population pressure & the youth cohort. A significant revision to the UN World Population Prospects for this country. The population path here is carried through unchanged and is the least uncertain input on the page.
Education & workforce capability. A sustained collapse or expansion in enrolment, or large-scale emigration of trained professionals.
Digital infrastructure. A step change in device or data affordability, or a major submarine cable landing.
AI, automation & compute ownership. A large compute or connectivity investment landing domestically, or a regulatory change altering where data may be held.
Research depth and transparency
Deep country reviewLast reviewed 2026-07-25
Evidence across at least four of the five target areas, at least eight items, and at least one primary or official source.
Reviewed items
10
Categories covered
9 of 24
Target areas covered
5 of 5
Primary or official sources
4
Secondary or tertiary sources
6
Verified items
8
Unverified items
2
Oldest source
2024
Newest source
2026
Reviewed country evidence
10 items across 9 categories,
reviewed 2026-07-25. Every item carries a publisher, a date, a link and a delivery status.
An announcement is not an asset — status is the field that matters most here.
Kenya has one of the continent's most financed AI strategies and one of its least resolved fiscal positions. Both are live at once.
Kenya was reported to be negotiating a new IMF programme while relying heavily on domestic borrowing, with IMF credit outstanding among the largest in Africa.
Primary verification attempted and NOT achieved. A search of IMF press releases returned Kenya reviews only up to the seventh EFF/ECF review of June 2024, and no 2026 press release confirming a new arrangement or staff-level agreement. The IMF Credit Outstanding page publishes a consolidated all-member total, not country figures. This claim would be settled by either an IMF press release announcing a new Kenya arrangement, or the IMF Kenya country page's "Financial Position in the Fund" table. Until one of those is inspected, the status stays Unverified and is not upgraded.
Partially operationalAlready in effectofficialVerified delivery
Kenya replaced the National Hospital Insurance Fund with the Social Health Authority, which took effect in October 2024 and had registered over 22 million people by May 2025 across three funds: primary healthcare, social health insurance, and emergency, chronic and critical illness.
Scenario implication. Registration is not the same as coverage, and coverage is not the same as care received. The scheme moved to Treasury-funded contributions during 2025, which the government itself framed as a response to voluntary contributions proving unsustainable. Whether SHA is a financing reform or a rebranding is the question the 2031 horizon answers.
The source is the implementing ministry reporting on its own programme. Independent assessments of SHA reimbursement performance have been critical; those have not yet been reviewed here.
OperationalAlready in effectsecondaryVerified delivery
The first cohort under Kenya’s Competency-Based Curriculum entered senior school in January 2026, with roughly 1.2 million Grade 9 learners moving to Grade 10 and placed across STEM, Social Sciences, and Arts and Sports Science pathways on a 60/40 split between the national junior-school assessment and school-based assessment.
Scenario implication. A curriculum that streams at 15 into pathways including an explicit arts-and-sports track changes the composition of the workforce arriving in the labour market from about 2029 — inside the 2031 horizon, not the 2036 one. Whether senior schools have the laboratories and teachers each pathway requires is the constraint, and no verified national figure for that readiness has been found.
Under constructionBears on 2031secondaryConstruction commenced
Kenya published an Artificial Intelligence Strategy covering 2025 to 2030, and the Maseno Centre for Applied AI is collecting voice data for five languages spanning three language families: Dholuo, Maasai and Kalenjin (Nilotic), Somali (Cushitic) and Kikuyu (Bantu).
Scenario implication. Sampling across three language families rather than five Bantu languages is a deliberate methodological choice, and it matters: a model that works across families generalises to far more of the continent than one tuned to a single one. No benchmark result on these languages has been published yet.
FundedBears on 2031ContinentalunverifiedsecondaryFinancial close
The Masakhane African Languages Hub was established in July 2025 and opened a grant programme to fund dataset development for 50 African languages, supported by Google.org, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the International Development Research Centre and the Gates Foundation.
Scenario implication. Recorded on Kenya`s page because the hub is based there, and marked continental in scope because its output is not Kenyan. The financing is entirely external — four foreign or philanthropic funders and no African state — which is the single most important fact about who will own the resulting corpora.
Needs a second source: the hub`s own grant announcement or a funder disclosure.
ProposedBears on 2031primaryPolitical announcement
The Creative Economy Support Bill (Senate Bill No. 30 of 2024) is before the Kenyan Parliament and would establish a statutory framework for the creative sector, including a support fund, a credit guarantee scheme, a creative voucher system and recognition of prior learning for self-taught practitioners.
confirmedKenya`s Creative Economy Bill Moves to National Assembly, Paving Way for Industry Reform
— IFACCA — International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies, 2025-10.
Adds: Establishes parliamentary progress the Bill text alone cannot: that the Bill passed the Senate and was forwarded to the National Assembly in 2025. A published Bill proves a draft exists; this proves it moved.
Creative and cultural intelligence
1 creative-economy item. Each one states the
measurement frame it was produced under. Frames are not
interchangeable: the same country measured as "cultural industries", "creative industries" and
"copyright industries" can differ by a factor of three, and figures from different frames must
never be added, compared or averaged.
The Creative Economy Support Bill (Senate Bill No. 30 of 2024) is before the Kenyan Parliament and would establish a statutory framework for the creative sector, including a support fund, a credit guarantee scheme, a creative voucher system and recognition of prior learning for self-taught practitioners.
What was measured. Creative industries — cultural industries plus design, advertising, architecture and often software.
Limits of this figure. A Bill is not a law. The text is published by Parliament and its existence is verified; its passage, commencement date and funding are not. The Bill has attracted public criticism over proposed levies and content take-down powers, so the enacted text may differ materially from the one recorded here.
Contested. Kenyan press reporting has raised objections to cost and content-removal provisions in the draft.
Who captures the value. Not established by the evidence
Scenario implication. Under Momentum, Kenya’s creative sector remains formally unrecognised in statute and continues to operate without a dedicated financing route. Enactment is the observable event that separates Acceleration from Momentum here; the platform does not assume it.
AI implication. The Bill’s scope is drafted to include gaming, animation and augmented reality, which places AI-assisted production inside the proposed framework — unusual among African creative statutes.
Africa-wide creative-economy statistics — UNESCO's fashion trade figures, UNCTAD's creative goods
and services totals — exist and are held on this platform, in the continental systems layer. They
are deliberately not repeated on any country page. An Africa-wide total divided by 54, or quoted
beside a national flag, is the single most common way a creative-economy claim becomes false.
Readings
The platform's own interpretation of the evidence, set in serif and marked so it never reads as
measurement. Each cites the values it fired on.
DriverInterpretation
Population is projected to rise from 58.6 million in 2026 to 69.8 million by 2036 — an additional 11.2 million people, 19.1% more than today. This is the most fixed variable in every scenario on this page: the people who will be adults in 2036 have already been born. What is genuinely uncertain is not how many there will be, but what they will have to work with.
Population (estimates & projections) 58636412 · 2026
DriverInterpretation
46% of employment was in agriculture in 2025, producing 23% of GDP (2025). The distance between those two numbers is the country's productivity problem stated in one line: most people work where least value is created. It also means climate is not an environmental topic here — it is the household income of the majority, and a bad season is a wage cut for most of the workforce.
Employment in agriculture 45.788 · 2025Agriculture, forestry & fishing value added 23.16 · 2025
RiskInterpretation
Youth unemployment stood at 15.2% in 2025, against 5.4% overall on ILO modelled estimates. Measured unemployment understates the problem in economies where most work is informal — the sharper question is not whether young people are working but whether the work pays, accumulates skill, or leads anywhere.
Gross tertiary enrolment was 10.4% in 2024. A country cannot regulate, procure, audit or localise technologies it has too few people trained to understand — this constrains AI adoption, energy planning and public administration simultaneously, and it takes a decade to fix, which is exactly this platform's horizon.
School enrolment, tertiary (gross) 10.419 · 2024
RiskInterpretation
32% of the population had access to clean cooking fuels in 2023. Household air pollution is one of the largest and least-discussed health burdens on the continent, and it falls disproportionately on women and young children who spend the most hours near the fire.
Access to clean cooking fuels 31.6 · 2023
DriverInterpretation
35% of people used the internet in 2024, against 126 mobile subscriptions per 100 people (2024). Owning a phone and being genuinely online are different things. The distance between them is affordable data, a device that runs modern software, power to charge it, and content in a language you read. That distance decides who any AI deployment reaches.
Individuals using the internet 34.976 · 2024Mobile cellular subscriptions 126.478 · 2024
OpportunityInterpretation
90% of people aged 15 and over held an account at a bank or other financial institution, or personally used a mobile-money service, in 2024. Mobile money is counted in that figure, and in much of Africa it is most of it. Plausible implication, not measured: ownership at this level is the layer on which credit scoring, insurance, instant payments and cross-border settlement could be built. Whether any of those have been built on it here is not measured by this series; a supervisory or payment-system report would show it.
Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+ 90.12 · 2024
RiskInterpretation
There were 2.9 physicians per 10,000 people in 2023. Workforce scarcity at this level is what makes task-shifting, community health workers and decision-support tools consequential rather than merely fashionable — and it is also why emigration of trained clinicians is a first-order economic issue, not a footnote.
Physicians per 1,000 people 0.289 · 2023
RiskInterpretation
Undernourishment affected 36.8% of the population in 2023 — on current population, in the order of 21.6 million people. Food security here is a function of income and logistics at least as much as of harvests: food usually exists somewhere in the region, and cannot affordably be moved to where it is needed.
Prevalence of undernourishment 36.8 · 2023
OpportunityInterpretation
Cereal yields averaged 1,758 kg per hectare in 2023, well below what the same seed achieves under reliable inputs and water. The yield gap is the largest single productivity opportunity in the economy — and closing it is an input, credit, storage and road problem more than a technology problem.
Cereal yield 1757.5 · 2023
DriverInterpretation
Government effectiveness scored -0.3 in 2024 on the Worldwide Governance Indicators scale (roughly −2.5 to +2.5), below the global mid-point, with regulatory quality at -0.3. These are perception-based composite measures and should be read as a signal about implementation capacity rather than as a verdict — but implementation capacity is precisely what separates an announced plan from a delivered one.
Government effectiveness -0.298 · 2024Regulatory quality -0.334 · 2024
RiskInterpretation
Political stability and absence of violence scored -1.4 in 2024, in the lowest band of the Worldwide Governance Indicators. At this level, the distance between scenarios is set less by economic policy than by whether the security situation holds. The disruption band on this page is drawn from recent economic history, and it does not capture what a further deterioration would mean.
Political stability and absence of violence -1.356 · 2024
DriverInterpretation
The country hosted 617,125 refugees as at 2025. Hosting on this scale is usually carried by the poorest border regions rather than by capitals, and rarely appears in the national economic narrative despite being one of its real features.
Refugees hosted (UNHCR mandate, by country of asylum) 617125 · 2025
Who this lands on
Likely to gain
Smallholder farmers, if input costs, storage and roads improve alongside prices
People connecting for the first time, who move from no access to some — a larger step than any later improvement in speed or price
Traders and informal businesses newly able to be paid and to hold money outside cash. Whether that converts into borrowing is not measured here
Domestic firms with access to nearby compute
At risk of being left behind
Rain-fed farming households, first and hardest, in a bad season
Educated young people whose qualifications do not convert into work
A state that must regulate technologies it has too few trained people to assess
Rural, older, poorer and less literate people, who are last in every connectivity sequence
Households already spending most of their income on food
Civilians in contested areas, for whom no economic scenario on this page is the operative question
Grid customers competing with data centre load for the same power
Decisions available now
Put money into what happens after harvest — storage, roads, cold chain, market information. Yield gains that rot on the way to market do not raise incomes.
Build state capacity to evaluate and procure technology, not only to use it. A regulator that cannot read a model card cannot govern a deployment.
Attack device and data cost directly, and require local-language performance in public digital procurement.
Security first, in the plain sense: no economic scenario on this page survives contact with sustained violence.
Artificial intelligence — one layer, not the whole story
FoundationsInterpretation
With 35% internet use (2024) and 77% electricity access (2024), AI-mediated services can reach a substantial minority — largely urban, largely younger, largely already connected. Deployments built on these foundations will tend to widen the gap with everyone else unless they are explicitly designed not to.
Individuals using the internet 34.976 · 2024Access to electricity 77 · 2024
Work and productivityInterpretation
With 46% of employment in agriculture (2025), the dominant AI question here is not white-collar displacement — the exposed occupations barely exist at scale. It is whether AI reaches farming and informal trade at all: pest and disease identification, weather and price information, and credit assessment for people with no formal credit history. The risk is exclusion, not redundancy.
Employment in agriculture 45.788 · 2025Employment in services 41.733 · 2025
Compute and ownershipInterpretation
This is one of the five markets holding effectively all of Africa's data centre capacity. That is a real advantage and a real responsibility: capacity concentrated here serves the region, and the terms on which it is owned, powered and regulated will shape whether neighbouring countries gain a nearby alternative to offshore hosting, or simply a nearer landlord.
Language and inclusionInterpretation
Adult literacy was 82% in 2000. Systems that only work in a former colonial language, in text, for confident readers, will reach the people who already had access to services. Voice interfaces and genuinely capable local-language models are the difference between AI as a broadening technology and AI as another sorting mechanism — and that capability depends on datasets that mostly do not exist yet, which is itself an opportunity for whoever builds them.
Adult literacy rate 82.23 · 2000
Government and civil libertiesInterpretation
Government effectiveness scored -0.3 (2024) and voice and accountability -0.4 on the Worldwide Governance Indicators. AI in public administration can compress waiting times for permits, payments and records — the most tangible improvement most citizens would notice. The same infrastructure supports surveillance as easily as service delivery; which one it becomes is a question of oversight, procurement terms and law rather than of technology.
Government effectiveness -0.298 · 2024Voice and accountability -0.354 · 2024
Information integrityInterpretation
With 35% of people online (2024), synthetic audio and video are cheap enough to matter in elections, communal disputes and markets. Detection is not a solved problem anywhere, and it is hardest for exactly the languages and dialects with the least training data — which describes most of the continent's information environment.
Individuals using the internet 34.976 · 2024
The twenty-dimension profile
20 dimensions. 12 rest on a document or a
measurement, 2 are inferred from adjacent
indicators, 5 were searched without
result, and 1 have not been examined at all.
That last number is a statement about this platform, not about Kenya — and keeping the
two apart is why there is no score here.
Can this country power a data centre without taking supply from households?
Household electricity access is 77.0% (2024), rural access 67.1%. No document on generation capacity for compute has been reviewed, so this is inferred from household access alone — which is a poor proxy for industrial supply.
Why it matters. Compute is a load before it is an industry. A country adding megawatts of IT load onto a grid that already fails is choosing between two customers, and the choice is political, not technical.
What would change this. A grid operator statement, a power-purchase agreement for a named facility, or a published reserve-margin figure.
MeasuredConnectivity foundation
How much of the population can reach a network at all?
35.0% of the population used the internet in 2024, with 126 mobile subscriptions per 100 people and 3.0 fixed broadband subscriptions per 100.
Why it matters. Every AI application that reaches a person reaches them over a connection. The connectivity number sets the ceiling on adoption regardless of what is built.
What would change this. Nothing — this dimension is measured. It ages rather than changes state.
DocumentedData-centre capacity
Is there compute inside this country, or only compute it rents elsewhere?
1 document reviewed on data centres or connectivity infrastructure. Announced capacity and installed capacity are recorded separately, and the delivery status on each is the field that matters.
Why it matters. Where the compute sits determines who sets the terms, where the jobs are, and whose law applies to the data. It is the difference between a market and a customer.
What would change this. An operator announcement with a named site, a commissioning notice, or an installed-IT-load figure.
Not evidentInternational bandwidth
How does traffic leave the country, and how many ways are there out?
No verified cable landing recorded for this coastal country in the systems layer.
Why it matters. A landlocked country, or a coastal one served by a single cable, pays more for bandwidth and loses it entirely when the cable breaks. Route diversity is a resilience property, not a luxury.
What would change this. A cable consortium landing announcement, or an IXP traffic figure showing how much traffic stays domestic.
Governance
DocumentedNational AI policy or strategy
Has the state written down what it intends to do about AI?
1 AI policy or strategy document reviewed. Adoption of a strategy is recorded; implementation against it is not.
Why it matters. A strategy is not capability. But its absence means every decision about compute, data and procurement is being taken case by case, usually by whoever arrives with a proposal.
What would change this. A published national strategy, a cabinet approval, or an AU-level commitment with a national instrument behind it.
UnexaminedData protection and privacy law
Is there a law governing what may be done with data about people here?
This platform has not yet reviewed data-protection legislation for this country. The African Union Malabo Convention and a substantial number of national laws exist; none has been read and cited here. This is a research gap, not a finding.
Why it matters. Training data comes from somewhere. Without an enforceable data-protection regime, the terms on which a country's population becomes training data are set entirely by whoever is collecting.
What would change this. The national data protection act, the establishment of a supervisory authority, or a first enforcement action.
Not evidentGovernment AI adoption
Is the state itself using these systems, and on whom?
No document found on government use of AI systems in this country. Deployments in eligibility, policing and border control are rarely announced, so absence here is weak evidence.
Why it matters. Government is usually the largest single deployer in a low-income economy, and the deployments that matter most — benefits eligibility, policing, border control — are the ones least likely to be evaluated in public.
What would change this. A procurement notice, an audit, a parliamentary answer, or a civil-society investigation.
InferredDigital public infrastructure
Is there national identity, payment and data-exchange infrastructure for AI systems to attach to?
No DPI document reviewed. Account ownership of 90.1% of adults (2024) is used as a partial stand-in for payment rails, and stands in for nothing else.
Why it matters. DPI decides whether an AI service can identify a person, be paid, and read a record. It is the rail that determines whether an application reaches anyone.
What would change this. An identity system enrolment figure, an instant-payment system launch, or a data-exchange layer going live.
Capability
MeasuredResearch capacity
Does the country fund people to work on this?
Research and development spending was 0.81% of GDP in 2024. For reference, sustained capability-building elsewhere has generally required above 1%.
Why it matters. Capability compounds and cannot be imported at short notice. R&D spending in 2026 sets what is possible domestically in 2036, not in 2028.
What would change this. A national R&D survey, or a named research institute with published funding.
DocumentedSkills and tertiary education
How many people are being educated to the level this work requires?
Why it matters. Tertiary enrolment today is the technical workforce of 2036. It is one of the few variables on this platform whose effect on the far horizon is close to arithmetic.
What would change this. Graduate numbers by field, or a national skills programme with enrolment figures.
Not evidentStartup and venture ecosystem
Is there private capital forming around this domestically?
No startup or investment-ecosystem document found. Continental venture funding is concentrated in four markets, so absence is the majority case.
Why it matters. Where the capital comes from decides where the equity ends up. An ecosystem funded entirely offshore builds capability locally and captures returns elsewhere.
What would change this. A funding total from a named tracker, a domestic venture fund launch, or a public co-investment vehicle.
DocumentedLocal-language technology
Do these systems work in the languages people here actually speak?
2 local-language technology documents reviewed.
Why it matters. A model that performs well in English and badly in the working language of a market excludes most of that market from anything built on it — and does so invisibly, because the failure looks like a user problem.
What would change this. A published benchmark on a named language, a corpus release, or an evaluation by a local research group.
MeasuredData about the country itself
Does the data needed to build anything useful here exist?
This country has values for 97% of the indicator series carried on this platform. Thin coverage is concentrated in the countries with the weakest statistical systems, so it compounds: the places hardest to model are the places least modelled.
Why it matters. Models are built on records. A country whose own statistical system is thin cannot be modelled well by anyone, including by itself, and thin coverage is not randomly distributed.
What would change this. A census, a household survey release, or a national statistics office publishing an open data portal.
Consequence
MeasuredWork and exposure
What kind of work does the economy actually consist of?
45.8% of employment was in agriculture (2025); 41.7% in services (2025). Youth unemployment was 15.2%. Exposure to automation follows this composition, and no country-specific study of it has been reviewed here.
Why it matters. The automation debate imported from high-income countries assumes an office-heavy workforce. Where most employment is agricultural or informal, the near-term exposure is different in kind, not just in degree.
What would change this. A national labour-force survey with occupational detail, or a country-specific exposure study.
Not evidentApplication: agriculture
Is anything being applied to the sector most people work in?
No agricultural-technology document found, in an economy where 45.8% of employment is agricultural (2025). The gap between where the workforce is and where the documented activity is, is the finding.
Why it matters. Advisory, weather and pest-detection systems are the applications with the widest possible reach in most of these economies, and the ones least represented in the funding.
What would change this. An extension programme with enrolment figures, or an evaluation of an advisory service.
DocumentedApplication: health systems
Is any of this reaching clinical care or health financing?
1 health-system document reviewed, against 0.29 physicians per 1,000 people (2023). None of the reviewed documents concerns AI in clinical care specifically.
Why it matters. Diagnostic support matters most where clinicians are scarcest, which is exactly where the infrastructure to run it is thinnest. The two constraints are inversely correlated.
What would change this. A ministry deployment, a regulatory approval for a diagnostic device, or a published clinical evaluation.
DocumentedApplication: creative production
What do generative tools do to the sectors that make things people watch, wear and hear?
1 creative-economy document reviewed, 1 of which bear on AI. No reviewed source in any country measures the effect of generative tools on creative employment or earnings — that is a continental gap, not a national one.
Why it matters. Screen and music production are among the most directly exposed activities anywhere, and in several of these economies they are among the fastest-growing measured sectors. Nobody has published what happens when the two meet.
What would change this. A sector survey, a union or guild position with membership data, or a rights-body statement on training data.
DocumentedInformation integrity
How exposed is public life here to synthetic media?
1 election or political-transition document reviewed. Voice and accountability stands at -0.35 (2024) on the World Bank's standardised scale, where 0 is the global average.
Why it matters. Synthetic audio and video are cheapest to produce and hardest to verify exactly where fact-checking capacity is thinnest and elections are closest.
What would change this. An electoral commission position on synthetic media, a platform transparency report covering the country, or a documented incident.
Not evidentCompute ownership and value capture
If compute is built here, who owns it and where do the returns go?
1 compute document reviewed, none of which states ownership structure or where returns accrue. Announcements routinely omit this, which is itself worth noting.
Why it matters. A data centre built, owned and operated by a foreign firm, serving foreign customers, on subsidised local power, is an export of electricity dressed as an investment. Whether that is what is happening is an ownership question, not a capacity question.
What would change this. A shareholding disclosure, a tariff or tax-incentive instrument, or a power-purchase agreement made public.
DocumentedRegional and continental position
Does anything about this country's AI position depend on its neighbours?
Member of 3 regional blocs recorded in the continental systems layer, with 1 trade or AfCFTA document reviewed. Digital-trade provisions specifically have not been reviewed for this country.
Why it matters. Bandwidth transits borders, power pools cross them, and AfCFTA governs whether a service sold in one market can be sold in the next. None of this is decided nationally.
What would change this. The AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol's ratification status for this country, or a regional data-flow agreement.
Current position
Every measure the platform holds for Kenya, with the year of observation. Gaps are shown as gaps.
Economy & growth
Measure
Value
Year
GDP per capita
$2,363
2025
GDP
$135.9bn
2025
GDP growth, annual
4.6%
2025
Inflation, consumer prices
4.1%
2025
Manufacturing value added
7.1%
2025
Government revenue excl. grants
18.6%
2023
Central government debt
not available
Population & demography
Measure
Value
Year
Population
57.5m
2025
Population growth, annual
1.9%
2025
Population aged 0–14
36.3%
2025
Population aged 15–64
60.7%
2025
Fertility rate, total
3.17
2024
Life expectancy at birth
63.8 yrs
2024
Cities & urbanisation
Measure
Value
Year
Urban population
32.2%
2025
Urban population growth
2.9%
2025
Urban population, total
18.5m
2025
Population living in slums
40.5%
2022
Work, skills & youth
Measure
Value
Year
Unemployment, total (ILO modelled)
5.4%
2025
Youth unemployment, 15–24 (ILO modelled)
15.2%
2025
Employment in agriculture
45.8%
2025
Employment in services
41.7%
2025
Female labour force participation rate, 15+
63%
2025
School enrolment, secondary (gross)
84.3%
2023
School enrolment, tertiary (gross)
10.4%
2024
Adult literacy rate
82.2%
2000
Government expenditure on education
4%
2024
Health & public services
Measure
Value
Year
Current health expenditure
4.4%
2023
Out-of-pocket health expenditure
24.2%
2023
Under-5 mortality rate
38.8 / 1,000
2024
Maternal mortality ratio
149 / 100k
2023
Physicians per 1,000 people
0.29 / 1,000
2023
Safely managed drinking water
not available
Agriculture & food systems
Measure
Value
Year
Agriculture, forestry & fishing value added
23.2%
2025
Cereal yield
1,758 kg/ha
2023
Prevalence of undernourishment
36.8%
2023
Food imports
16.3%
2024
Arable land
11.4%
2023
Energy & resources
Measure
Value
Year
Access to electricity
77%
2024
Access to electricity, rural
67.1%
2024
Access to clean cooking fuels
31.6%
2023
Renewable energy consumption
67.7%
2021
Total natural resources rents
1.2%
2021
Digital & AI foundations
Measure
Value
Year
Individuals using the internet
35%
2024
Mobile cellular subscriptions
126.5 / 100
2024
Fixed broadband subscriptions
3 / 100
2024
Account at a bank or mobile-money provider, age 15+
90.1%
2024
Research & development expenditure
0.8%
2024
High-technology exports
3.2%
2024
Trade, investment & enterprise
Measure
Value
Year
Trade (exports + imports)
37.5%
2025
Exports of goods and services
15.8%
2025
Foreign direct investment, net inflows
0.4%
2024
Personal remittances received
4.2%
2024
Domestic credit to private sector
31.8%
2023
Governance & institutions
Measure
Value
Year
Government effectiveness
-0.3
2024
Regulatory quality
-0.33
2024
Rule of law
-0.46
2024
Control of corruption
-0.8
2024
Voice and accountability
-0.35
2024
Political stability and absence of violence
-1.36
2024
Climate & environment
Measure
Value
Year
CO₂ emissions per capita
0.38 t
2024
Forest area
6.2%
2023
Freshwater withdrawal as share of available resources
33.2%
2022
Agricultural land
49.5%
2023
Security, migration & displacement
Measure
Value
Year
Net migration
-27,330
2025
Refugees hosted (UNHCR mandate, by country of asylum)
617,125
2025
Refugees originating from this country (UNHCR mandate)
13,325
2025
Internally displaced people
10,000
2025
Military expenditure
1%
2024
What we do not know
2 of 74 tracked measures have no value for Kenya. They are never estimated.
Central government debtSafely managed drinking water
Sources
Every value above comes from one of these series, republished by the World Bank Indicators API from the primary compilations named.