Trends make order out of developments. While 2025 saw a medley of individual developments striking with regularity in all fields of human endeavour, these could be better comprehended for the role they play by placing them within ongoing trends.

Throughout the year, IOA has been noting and analysing developments key to Africa’s economic and societal growth. These can be catalogued in four main thematic areas: Developmental, Economic, Political and Technological. For more details, IOA position paper analyses of each of these topics are available on the IOA website, but for now, IOA highlights two defining developments in each field made in 2025.

Developmental

1. Sahel Resilience Project ties development to environmental concerns

In the past, developmental work in Africa involved building on existing human and natural resources to create prosperity. In 2025, the devastation wrought by climate change shifted the developmental paradigm into a more fundamental, survival-oriented mode. This new project type is exemplified by the ongoing work on the Sahel Resilience Project. Running the length of the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, Africa’s Sahel region separates the Sahara Desert to the north from the continent’s tropical areas to the south.

The Sahel Resilience Project targets environmentally fragile areas, such as the Lake Chad Basin and many of the Western Sahel countries. Contrary to widespread belief, Lake Chad has not shrunk in the 21st century. However, its volume is 90% less than it was 60 years ago, while the surrounding population has grown from seven million to 50-million.

To address the needs of the many who compete for diminished natural resources, such as from Lake Chad, the Sahel Resilience Project is establishing climate-disaster warning systems. It is also launching projects that mitigate environmental damage throughout the region to help vulnerable ecosystems cope with the challenges inflicted by climate change. Climate resilience agriculture is one innovation being introduced.

2. Energy deficit is finding solutions

Africa’s economic and societal development has lagged in part due to a lack of electricity to businesses, homes and schools. To meet these needs, 2025 saw an array of energy-related projects find funding and support throughout Africa, although many involved fossil fuels. One of the year’s ambitious partnerships was the South Sudan-Sudan energy pipeline reopening that had been closed due to Sudan’s civil war. The closure had decimated oil-producing South Sudan, which depends on Sudan’s ports for export. Pipeline reopening was announced in January, and after weathering months of disruptions such as drone attacks, full resumption of exports was achieved in November, to the benefit of both countries.

In East Africa, the Eastern Electricity Highway Project was developed to transmit 200 MW of electricity from the Ethiopian hydroelectric dams to Kenya. However, by November, 400 MW of power were being transmitted. This was not planned to happen until 2026. In 2025, the East Africa Power Pool (EAPP), a regional power-sharing agreement for its 13 member states, launched a centralised Day-Ahead Market (DAM) to facilitate regional electricity trading, particularly through the integration of renewable energy production. For the 620-million people falling with EAPP, the body continued to stimulate countries’ move away from fossil fuel power generation and toward electricity generated from renewable energy.

As reported enthusiastically at the major African energy forums African Energy Forum in Cape Town in September 2025, West Africa’s energy scene progressed through such 2025 developments as countries’ integration into the regional grid the West African Power Pool (WAPP), which at the end of the year was only months away from being fully operation, major gas-to-power projects like Nigeria’s ANOH Gas Processing Company that turns natural gas into various products. In North Africa, the Algerian government announced a US$50-billion investment in oil and gas projects through 2027 to boost production from the Hassi R’Mel field and bring to bring new fields online. The country aims to increase annual gas production to 200 billion cubic meters over the next five years. In February 2025, the Saudi firm Egypt’s state-owned power utility the Egypt Electricity Transmission Company signed a US$ 2.3-billion deal to build a 2 GW wind farm, which will be Egypt’s largest, and scheduled for completion by 2026.

Economic

1. The African Continental Free Trade Area is on track

The United Nations (UN) Economic Commission for Africa has predicted that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will boost intra-Africa trade by up to 25% by 2040, earning up to US$ 70-billion in trade that would not exist otherwise. The AfCFTA seeks to further promote cross-border trade across the continent by dropping tariffs and other trade barriers, thereby facilitating easier trade among African countries. A sufficient number of African countries have ratified the AfCFTA treaty to set its policies in motion, including opening borders, removing tariffs for planes using national airspaces, reducing tariffs on imported goods and other measures.

In September, 2025, US$ 44-billion in trade and investment deals involving intra-African trade specific to industrial diversification were highlighted at the Intra-African Trade Fair in Algiers, Algeria. Industrial products favoured in trade deals were food products, machinery and vehicles. Getting African-made manufactured goods into other African countries has been inhibited by differing national customs procedures at borders. AfCFTA was instituted largely to end such bureaucratic encumbrances to trade, and its policies are being instituted at a national level. For example, Nigeria by the end of 2025 employed a Unified Customs Management System to streamline customs procedures and thus reduce this pernicious form of non-tariff trade barrier at most Nigerian ports and border posts.

2. Infrastructure development fuels growth in other sectors

Investment in airports, highways, railways and seaports continued to be robust in 2025 as governments and regional bodies recognised transportation routes as essential to economic and societal growth. Some infrastructure developments were internal as individual countries followed the trend of privatising their railways and seaports. Others were bilateral, such as landlocked Malawi’s deal with Mozambique in April 2025 to facilitate the movement of its goods by rail to Mozambique’s port. In exchange, Malawi has committed to refurbishing hundreds of kilometres of dilapidated Mozambican rail lines for the project.

South Africa’s transportation body Transnet operates a 21 232-km rail network, which comprises 85% of all rail lines in Africa. In January 2025, the South African government ratified and adopted the Luxembourg Rail Protocol, paving the way for Transnet’s privatisation, which will bring in private investment to make the line more efficient if this occurs.

China remained a primary investor in African transportation infrastructure as a means to bring African mineral resources to seaports for use in Chinese industries. Beyond this, China generated US$13 in revenue from every US$ 1 invested in African port infrastructure, primarily from revenue earned by Chinese firms hired by African governments to manage the ports.

Political

1. International realignment through trade

While European relations with Africa remained strong in 2025, Africa’s relations with eastern and western superpowers were more fluid: Whether China or the US were Africa’s largest single-country ally was a matter of discussion throughout 2025. The US already held this position by, in 2024, recapturing its lead over China in total investments in Africa.

However, the current US administration spent the year criticising and seeking to diplomatically isolate South Africa, insulted Somalia and other African states and alluded to a possible war with Nigeria. Meanwhile, the US dispensed with soft diplomacy initiatives that had succeeded in engendering good will and political fealty. The US ended its long-standing developmental programme USAID, causing the estimated deaths of 600 000 Africans, including 400 000 children, when food and medicines were halted. Funding freezes and programme disruptions have hindered the work of another popular and successful American initiative US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar). Pepfar has been credited with saving 26-million lives since its inception in 2003.

China, on the other hand, did not move to fill the humanitarian gap left by the US, indicating that Beijing relies more on military alliances and trade than on soft diplomacy to build influence in Africa. While the US erected trade barriers against African imports in 2025, China observed the 15th year of its Belt and Road Initiative by noting that more than one third of the initiative’s projects are in Africa.

Trade relations are tied to diplomatic and political relations, and shifting East-West influences are gauged by signposts such as currency preferences. Only one African country has not joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative, while two major African financial institutions have joined the yuan-based Cross-border Interbank Payment System network. African nations are not replacing their national currencies with the yuan but are increasingly using it for international transactions rather than the US dollar.

2. Regional and international bodies provide influence in numbers

Africa’s political affairs in 2025 were carried out multilaterally through a network of regional developmental blocs, the transcontinental African Union (AU) and the transglobal UN. The constructive collaborations between the AU, Europe’s transcontinental body the European Union and the UN was heightened through partnerships in specific national projects and regional efforts towards addressing climate challenges and strengthening security. The 7th African Union-European Union Summit in Luanda in November concluded with a joint declaration, reaffirming that partnerships require political will and underscoring commitments to developing mutually beneficial trade ties and security measures.

On the 80th anniversary in 2025 of the establishment of the UN, the world’s aid work in Africa provided essential humanitarian and security efforts. However, African member states felt the continent was at a political disadvantage by its exclusion from the UN Security Council (UNSC). Efforts are ongoing to seat an African member state on the UNSC to finally have a say in global policy.

The UN’s 2025 Africa Dialogue Series theme of justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations reflected the African Union’s theme of the year. Reparations cannot be actualised without UNSC agreement on a mechanism to provide such compensations for the historical crimes of the African slave trade. More broadly, an African presence representative on the UNSC would acknowledge the continent’s global importance and its 1.5-billion people – nearly one fifth of the world’s population.

The UN’s oldest and largest peacekeeping operation continued in 2025 with the Organization Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Other UN humanitarian organisations are mitigating the effects of climate change on food production through their ongoing projects like Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN and the UN World Food Programme. Health challenges arising from environmental and other issues are being addressed through governmental partnerships with the World Health Organization and the UN’s child welfare organisation UNICEF. These four bodies have presences in every African country.

Technological

1. Digital expansion fills gaps and needs

The lack of internet connectivity in Africa has posed a developmental challenge. A majority of Africans have been unable to access business, educational and other opportunities online. However, African governments, supported by regional and international bodies like the UN Development Programme, responded during the year with digital initiatives to get populations online and ensure governmental and news services are available digitally. Private businesses with digital services and technologies have been at the forefront of digital connectivity and usage projects.

The trend toward AI that has characterised ICT in 2025 was reflected in the work of Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile network operator which surpassed 50-million Kenyan customers in July 2025 in in its use of AI to make Kenya East Africa’s primary information and communications technology hub. The development of human capital to run AI and other systems is another ICT trend which in 2025 was exemplified by the South African mobile telecommunications provider MTN. The firm’s Nigerian subsidiary has led Nigeria’s digital transformation, and in June 2025 pledged nearly US$ 2-billion towards the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy’s Three Million Technical Talent programme.

2. Making strides in digital literacy

Perhaps the most crucial long-term development of 2025 (a year highlighted by digital advances) was the efforts made to enable Africans to use digital platforms. A digitally literate African population took a stride forward when it was learned at the year’s beginning that for the first time more than half — 51% — of Sub-Saharan Africans owned smart phones. The trend is likely to continue. By 2030, projections forecast that 88% of Sub-Saharan Africans will possess these devices, enabling them to access mobile apps for banking, amusement, news and education.

Africa’s online education market is projected to reach US$ 1.5-billion by 2030. Individual African countries are digitalising their education systems at their own pace. In December 2025, Gabon introduced the Connected School digital education project in Libreville and Oyem – supported by Moov Africa, Gabon Télécom and Chinese technology firm Huawei – to commence the digitalisation of the national education system.

At the e-Learning Africa conference in Accra, Ghana, in April 2025, best practices were shared among tertiary educationalists for the design and execution of programmes that allow students to obtain higher education degrees online. The African Development Bank announced in May that its digital initiatives have brought basic internet services to 66-million Africans, while educators keep their virtual classrooms in place to accommodate new learners.

Written by In on Africa