Africa and Asia from a Futurists Perspective

So I am Charlotte Kemp. I often hesitate when I introduce myself because I'm not entirely sure how to do that because I do a number of things and I love all the things that I do. So it's really hard to say that I'm not doing one thing or another. So I am a professional speaker. I've been very involved in the leadership of speaking organizations in my career. I am also a futurist. And I also write, I coach, and I occasionally put on webinars like this one. This one is slightly different from my regular content because what I normally do is I do a webinar about a futures topic that I find to be very important, and I have done some research and I want to share that topic with people. And when we have a webinar like this, we explore the topic, we unpack it, I learn a whole lot, and then it becomes something that I can share with other audiences and clients. And I very often write a book that accompanies that particular webinar. I'm not entirely sure that I'm going to be writing a book around this because this topic is too daunting. And I know that as professional speakers, we're supposed to position ourselves as having a certain amount of expertise. My expertise is that I was born in Africa. I love Africa, and I get really annoyed when Africa is dismissed for certain reasons. And, and I know that my experience of Africa being overlooked is mild in comparison to so many other people in Africa whose very real challenges are overlooked and dismissed and ignored by the world in general. But part of what really, really concerns me or interests me about the question about Africa also relates to Asia. And I know that I'm going to use some very broad terms here, and I apologize. I don't mean to dismiss anything, but Africa itself is a continent of over 1 billion people, 52-odd countries, as many languages and religions. So we're talking about very broad concepts. So I hope you will give me the leeway to talk about this in broad terms so that we've got a bigger picture, and then we can narrow it down in our own work to something that is more tangible and relatable. But it is these big concepts that very often we miss out on. So as I mentioned, commented when Ann asked me earlier, my husband Richard and I are— we're in Malaysia at the moment, and we've been here for almost 2 months. We're living in an apartment in KL and we go out and do various things and we meet with speaker colleagues mostly. We have a few adventures. Next month we're going to Vietnam, then we're coming back to Malaysia. We're hoping to get to Philippines, and if we can get to any other places in this time, we'd like to do that as well. Why are we doing this? Because we can. Because Vietnam in particular is on Richard's bucket list. And because we had an opportunity this year just to have an adventure without doing our regular work— we're still doing our regular work. We, we can work from, from anywhere we have internet connection. But we had an opportunity to, to do this travel. And so we grasped the opportunity. And I wanted to come to Asia because I find with the speaking world and with the futures world, that very often we're seeing examples come from so-called Western countries, so from North America, from Europe. Ideas about speaking, the idea that speakers from those places are better or wiser or more insightful than speakers from Africa or from Asia, the idea that models and concepts and business tools that have been developed in those other places can just be brought and applied to where we are, and it will just fix our problems in Africa. And there's lots of really delightful stories about how that simply won't work. So we took this opportunity for me to expand my brain and my thinking in terms of challenging the assumptions that I know I have about the world, But as a futurist, how are those assumptions limiting what I understand and the value that I can bring to clients? So we're here in Asia just to literally expand our brains and our networks and to have some adventures and meet some wonderful people. But then I thought, let's really kind of dig into this. So I'm going to share with you a couple of ideas that really intrigue me about what we're dealing with. And I'm doing this from a futurist perspective. And I'm also going to confess that there are certain things that I don't want to talk about. So when we talk about futures thinking, there are lots of drivers of change, the things that happen that cause change to happen in a country, in a region. And this acronym PESL kind of summarizes what those drivers of change are. So PESL stands for politics, economics, social issues, technological advances, legislation, and the environment. And there are other things as well that apply. There's, you know, religious considerations. There are lots of other things that apply, but that's kind of like the summary of them. This conversation is not going to be addressing the political issues that we are challenged with at the moment. It's not going to be talking about the war, the invasions, and the genocides. Those things are happening. They are terrible. They need to be dealt with. But this is not my area of expertise, and I'm not going to pretend to add any real value to them. But what I do also know is that some of the conversation I want to explore is not separate from, but kind of like a— and there's gonna be many times that I'm gonna pause because I really want to say things carefully with respect to not sound like I'm dismissing anything. I want to talk about demographics and demographic changes and how our brains think about innovation and creativity. Those are very long-lasting issues. The war will come and go, terrible things will happen, But we're still gonna have these demographic issues we have to deal with, and we're still going to have to think about how we think about innovation and creativity, because we still need to respond to the world that we're in. So that's where I would rather focus, while recognizing that those other issues are, are certainly very important. So let me take you to a bit of a fun conversation here, and this is about demographics and the world's population. And I honestly could sit with a big cup of coffee and spend hours on this particular website. At the end of the presentation, after I got the recording, I will send you an email and I'll have some of these links, so don't stress if you can't find them right now. I will share them, but this one is quite easy to find. It's populationpyramid.net. You can see the name down at the bottom left-hand corner. Now, what this population pyramid does is it demonstrates, and you look at it for a minute or 2, it makes sense to you. So men on the right, women on— men on the left, women on the right. And for every 4 years of age, they indicate how many people are represented there by those little lines. And this looks like a pyramid. This is the world population. So anybody, just make a comment now if you can see it. You can, you know, put your mic on. What is startling about this particular graphic that you're seeing? What causes you to go, hmm, I didn't realize? Anybody want to volunteer a comment? All right, let me show you. The graph on the right is the current graph in 2026, the year we're in. The one on the left is in 1970. And while the graph looks sort of similar, if you look at those numbers, they've more than doubled. So why am I looking at from 1970 to 2026? That's the year we're in. In 1970, a book was issued called Future Shock, and it's by Alvin Toffler, and it's really an amazing piece of work. And I have another book and a topic all about future shock and polycrisis. But one of the reasons I love that book is because it was launched in the year that I was born. So do your maths. I was born in 1970. In my lifetime, in 5 and a half decades, the world's population has more than doubled. That means something. That has an impact on our lives and how we experience things. We could spend time just talking about that. But let's dig in a little bit closer to home. The next graph compares Africa's population, so the whole continent, from 1970 to 2026. The same sort of shape of graph, and again, you can see the numbers go from 365 million people to 1.5 billion people in, in 5.5 decades. All right, so those of you in Asia, what do you think your graph looks like? So on the left-hand side, there's your graph back in 1970, over 2 billion people. Your graph doesn't look like that anymore. It now looks like that. That is very interesting because while your population is still growing, the rate of how Asia's population is growing is vastly different. So if we compare the 2 in current— now this year, Africa has this really wide base More and more children are being born into Africa than are being born into Asia. That implies that over time Asia has an aging population and Africa has a young population. That implies that there are going to be challenges in the future. Anybody want to suggest what any of those challenges are? If you want to put into the chat box, I'll have a, a quick look here in the chat box. So any comments? about what this could mean for Asia if your population is a little bit smaller at the bottom. And I see you're sharing LinkedIn links, which is great. I always love that. All right. Any ideas? What is the difference here? What is the implication? I can't be the only one with opinions on this particular meeting. Anyone want to make a comment?

While it's quiet, can I say something?

Yes, please do.

It seems to me at first glance, it seems to me that Africa's in a situation with a young population growing through. Asia's in a situation with a retiring population over the next few years and no young people to work and raise the money that's going to be needed to support the older people. And as an older person myself, I would be rather worried about that.

Well, luckily you live in Africa, not normally in Asia. But yes, exactly. Thank you. And that is the implication. When we have a lot of younger people, broadly speaking, we need to make sure that they are educated well, that they can find jobs, that they can earn money, that they can take care of their families. And how do we create enough working opportunity for people in Africa, whereas Asia doesn't have as many younger people coming into the market than they've had in the past. And that could mean that schools will close, that there will be less in taxes, that there will be fewer young people to take care of those older people, and that maybe broadly speaking, we need to lean in a little bit more into into the kind of technologies that we need to take care of older people that we wouldn't need to do in Africa. I've always found this kind of frustration when I've looked at, you know, in South Africa at home, when somebody brings in a new technology and it's very efficient and it's automated and 50 people are being put out of a job because of it. And I'm going, well, that's great. That automation is great. But that doesn't actually help Africa. It doesn't help South Africa. It doesn't help those people who are now unemployed and can't take care of their families. And now there are fewer taxes. The only people that that efficiency is actually serving would be the people who own the business who now don't have to pay wages and just have to maintain a machine. So we have different requirements in these 2 areas. And comment, too many children in Africa, often without access to education. Absolutely. Increased global migration. And that is a huge question. When you spend time later on this website, not now, because then you won't listen to me. When you go to this website later, they do have some other graphics at the bottom, and then you'll start thinking about other things. So have a look at those migrations as well, because that is, that is really interesting. Uh, Divesh, hi, Divesh. It's— he's— you're saying, um, Asia will be aged in the next 2 decades while Africa will be ready to support the rest of the world. We certainly hope so. And would be interesting to see graphs with added dimensions of pandemics. Yes, and there are some other interesting little tweaks, um, from that. COVID didn't have as much of an impact, um, on the overall graphs as, as we might have expected. But yeah, there are some very interesting things. It's an amazing opportunity for work migration between Africa and Asia. Yes, it is. And who's taken advantage of that? China. There are, and I mean, obviously lots of information, and I don't have all the data here, but I do have some of these narratives and these stories. But there's one particular project in Kenya Where China has come in and they're developing certain infrastructure for Kenya, and new schools have opened, and young people are going to these schools and being educated, and they're learning Chinese. They're speaking fluent Chinese in Kenya because China has invested in there. So China sees that, that kind of connection. And if we have time at the end, I'll show you a few more graphs about like Malaysia itself and Asia, China and Japan, and their graphs.

All right.

So there are, there are opportunities. When I first heard about this, when, when I first started studying futures thinking, the term was proposed that there is in Africa a demographic dividend. So there's an opportunity at a certain point in the future when those young people are educated and become productive and are earning and adding to the economies of Africa, that it will pay off. greatly for the continent. That same demographic dividend could actually be a huge liability if we cannot educate those people, if they do not have opportunities. That would be disastrous. So that is something we have to, you know, when we look at data, it's not just, oh, good or bad. It really depends on our perspective and what we're trying to achieve with it. So context is essential. All right. So let's carry on a little bit. The question I'm going to ask you just to think about here is what surprised you the most about looking at those graphs? What made you feel a little uncomfortable or question things that you might not have thought about? You can pop that into the chat box if you like, but I want you to think about that in the future. When we look at these really big pictures— and normally my work is a lot more granular, it's like, how do you develop your thinking so that you can develop the challenge that you have in your workplace this quarter. Okay, this is a much bigger conversation, but we do need to all expand our brains. But what surprised you the most just looking at those demographics? But let me show you a few more. We're looking at the relative demographics of different regions, but we also need to look at population density. And this graph very broadly The paler parts of the graph show places that have lower density, so there are fewer people there, and the darker places have higher density. There are more people in those areas. I think Hermine is here from Namibia, and I think Namibia is like the 2nd or 3rd least dense place in the entire world, but absolutely one of the most beautiful. So let's dive in a little bit more as we look at this. You can see that in Asia, some of those areas are a lot denser than parts of Africa, and that's an important thing to note as well. And India being one of the highest. I think I saw a graph somewhere the other day, a map where they had a circle around this, like around India, but a bit broader, saying that, like, I don't know, something ridiculous, like over 50% of the world's population are just in that part of the world. And that really gives you a bit of perspective about the people in the rest of the world and what is going on. But let me give you another perspective as well. I don't know if you've ever encountered this. This is the Mercator projection. So what this means is when you take a map of the world and you try and put it around a globe, like the globes that we used to all have in our offices, you know, in the past, it needs to around the globe, it's looking kind of quite relative. But when you try and take that 3D picture and make it flat, you get, you get an image that is false. So look at those places that are really getting smaller. The United States is not nearly as big in comparison to other places as it appears, only because of how that, that this graphic has been designed. So here it is without all the movement. The darker places are the real sizes, the pale places outlines. That's what it appears to us to be. And when you put all of those continents and things, those countries into Africa, you can see a larger size of Africa. I presented this as a presentation in Canada a couple of years ago, and I showed the size of Canada to South Africa and then I showed them the true sizes, and there were audible gasps from the audience because in North America everything just seems a lot bigger. And to see that they were actually a lot smaller than it seemed was a bit of a shock to them. So these are some of the things I just want us to have in the back of our minds. I just want us to challenge it. And most of all, it's because of this Western bias that we are constantly exposed to. So I'm going to confess a few things here. Many years ago, I had the opportunity to travel overseas. I was unmarried at the time, and I was going to go to Washington, USA to attend an event, and I went via London. And I got my tickets all sorted out and everything. There were other dramas. I left like currency at home. Anyway, and I got lost in London. I got off a train station. I thought, I know where my hotel is, but I actually don't know where that area is. And I got lost and I'm lost alone in London. And it, I didn't even quiver for a moment. I wasn't worried or concerned. I found my way. I got somebody to help me. I got to my hotel. A short while after that, somebody invited me to speak in Nigeria. And my very first physical reaction was to go cold and say, I can't go to Nigeria because I don't have a frame of reference for Nigeria at all. It seems to me so foreign. And it was that first knee-jerk reaction of, I don't know what to do there. And then the second one was, how could I go to another continent? How could I go to London and get lost and not be worried, but be afraid to go to Nigeria? And a lot of that is because of the bias, because of how I was raised, because of what I was exposed to, because In, in my world, and because of how I was raised and educated in an apartheid system in South Africa, I have centered the Western world in my thinking, and the so-called Western world being North America and Europe. In South Africa, white people were called Europeans. I was labeled a European even though I was born in Africa, and it took a woman from Cameroon to call me to say to me once in a meeting, Charlotte, African women like us need to do this. It was the first time anybody had called me an African, and it was startling to me that my— the education system of the apartheid government was so effective that it took me until that age to realize what they had done to my thinking. But now I see it everywhere. In terms of the speaking world, Richard and I were invited to speak in Tanzania, and we traveled to Tanzania along with a Nigerian colleague who lived in South Africa. He was on the same flight. We got there, we met with other speakers, we were there early for the client, we engaged with all of the client's activities and promotional things, and then the client took us out to dinner, and as he's driving back, he stops by a big billboard on the side of the road. He's very entrepreneurial. He owned the billboards and he's advertising his own conference on his billboard. And the big picture of the main speaker, the headline speaker, was an American whose name I had not heard, and I've still never come across this person. But in Tanzania for this conference, the American speaker coming to Tanzania was the big headline. The people coming from South Africa and Nigeria and others who'd driven there, you know, arrived there early and worked, we weren't as important as the American speaker. And 2 days before the conference, the American speaker's people contacted the conference people and said, you know, he's not coming. It's not worth it. He's not going to earn enough money. And he pulled out at the last minute. And for me, that was like a pivotal moment when I decided we can't put up with this anymore. We can't just give into this bias, this centering of everything that is in North America and Europe, and assume that it is right because they're telling us that it is right. I did go to Nigeria, by the way. Richard and I went together. We had a fantastic time. We went back again. I think Nigerian people are some of the loveliest people, and I would love another opportunity to return there. And I have also confessed that Everything that I know about the United Kingdom comes from my 2 short visits to London and whatever I've learned about on Midsummer Murders. And apparently that's a bit of a bias as well. So, you know, we really need to be aware of how we think about these things. And here's another one that really, really upset me when I discovered it. They talk about Africa being poor and the starving children in Africa and Africa's so behind in so many things. And do you wanna know the reason why, you know, the rest of the country, the rest of the world at least has to give so much in aid to Africa? Why? Why? Because that green arrow is money coming in, $3 billion coming into Africa. This is based in 2017. There is a report for it and I'll send you the link. But look at all those other arrows. That is money leaving Africa. Taken out as loans to other governments, illegal logging and fishing, money coming out in terms of multinational profits where they're just taking the profits right out of the country, the continent, where they're taking out the minerals and other resources out of the continent. Africa is not poor. Africa is wealthy. Africa's wealth is being extracted for the benefit of other places in the world. One of the most ironic stories I heard was Burkina Faso. It's kind of up in the bulge there, West Africa. It was a French colony. And the French government owned a whole lot of mines and operations in Burkina Faso, and they got a new president and he put his foot down and he said, no, why should these things, why should the value be taken out of Burkina Faso and sent to France?

Why?

And why do we have to speak French and teach our children French in school and wear French-style clothing? And so he nationalized a whole lot of things, and there was a huge uproar, and it affected the French economy. It affected the French economy to the point where in one of the diplomatic conversations between France and Burkina Faso, the comment was made, If you will just give us our profits back, then we can keep sending you aid. Which is really ironic because we don't need aid if you stop taking the money out of Africa. So before I go on any further of a rant, I really need us to challenge this. I know I'm talking about Africa here and not about Asia, but we have inherited so many frameworks about how we think about things. And until we have the courage to face them and question them, we're going to be victim to them. And there are far too many people in far too many countries that are victims to other parts of the world where we should stop doing that, where we should challenge it. And this is, this is just one of those examples. Okay. My question to you, you can put into the chat box, what is the bias that bothers you most about Africa, about Asia, about your country? What is the thing that really, really bothers you? Yeah, Freddie, total exploitation there. There's an international bias against locals, Asians, and African populations. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. So think about the biases that bother you. But I want to go on and have another quick look at something. I want to look at innovation because when I was exploring this, one of the interesting comments that came up— a colleague of mine does a lot of work about innovation, and he said almost in passing that a couple of innovation professors from a university in Germany had come out to Africa to do some research and to work on a project here. Why did they go to Africa? Well, because everything worked in Germany. Everything worked. So there was no need for innovation. All there was was optimization. So they had to come to Africa to discover something. And there are so many innovations in Africa that are really quite fascinating. So I wanna look at that a little bit more in a moment. Hi, I'm Western, but I've been in Africa and Asia for 20 years, terribly bored by the fact that they thought leadership continues to be seen as better when it comes from the West. Hmm. Yep. When there's so much wisdom in the Global South. You're absolutely right that there is incredible wisdom and there are pockets of people around the world who are realizing that and saying that our technology and sophistication has separated us from, from a sense of reality about the world. And that, that separation is a very thin veneer. And when things break, people don't know how to respond, um, because people are just not in touch anymore with the, the wisdom that has been inherited. Anything that is, that is ancient is either kind of, um, mocked like a novelty, like it's, um, you know, something that you can put into a fortune cookie, which is apparently not even Chinese, um, but, you know, it's kind of like it's reduced to something that is entertaining or it is dismissed as something primitive rather than valued for real wisdom. And that for me is incredibly offensive. All right, we're going to look at innovation. I do try not to be too ranting, but sometimes I do get really annoyed. Okay, so I want to look at some things in African Asian, and I've just picked up a couple of different topics. I just want to like point out a few things very broadly about them. So we're going to look at education and how it compares. So in Africa, a lot of space, a lot of distance between people. There's not a lot of infrastructure, which means that education in Africa is very often informal and adaptive, and that their biggest priority is being able to reach all the students. Whereas in Asia, some of what they're looking at is, is, you know, predictive analytics and investment in education and optimizing and preparing students for the future. When we looked at power and energy, there are lots of places in Africa where people are off-grid, where energy is decentralized, where people have to access energy in other ways and they have to make use of old traditional ways of getting energy or solar energy, you know, hydro, etc. In Asia, we got large-scale and centralized energy. What is very interesting right now is that with the energy crisis, the oil crisis because of the war on Iran, there are parts of the world where they're having to make decisions about accessing energy. And the person who was listing how all the different countries are responding to it. Apparently in Vietnam, I think they're— Sri Lanka, Wednesdays are now a public holiday. Not this Wednesday, but every Wednesday is a public holiday. Schools, government, universities are all shut, only emergency services, because they need people to stay at home and not use fuel because there isn't enough fuel reserves in the country. So this person is listing how all the different countries are responding. Then he gets to South Africa and he goes, Oh no, wait, they had that already. So in South Africa, we've learned how to deal with not having enough energy and how that— how we need to respond. It is a frustration. It is something we need to overcome. But we've had to be innovative in how we respond. That's one of our lessons. Financial inclusion. One of my stories that I speak about almost every time I speak about innovation in Africa is M-Pesa. It started in Kenya, and it was a way for people to use feature phones to do financial transactions, not your cool app on your smartphone with, you know, graphics and everything else, but the old-fashioned kind of feature phone where you would text message. And M-Pesa allowed people to make financial transactions to take loans, to buy insurance, to send money home for family, to pay for education, all on their phones in a way that completely leapfrogged the fact that they did not have the infrastructure there to build banks. You can't build a brick-and-mortar bank in a remote place. It's not financially viable. But these M-Pesa options, you know, completely leapfrogged that that restriction. But on the other hand, in Asia, where we're already using all this technology, we now can use super apps. And a super app is what, you know, you log in, you're able to do everything. So Alipay is one example. And Rich and I both have Grab on our phones, and we can order food. And we can order deliveries, and we can buy other things. You can do all these things on your app because now it's been integrated and And it's at scale. What else do we have? We're looking at health issues. And in Africa, again, because of the distance between places, there's a lot of work being done with drone deliveries. And there's a company called— the name just escaped me, but they actually— oh, Zipline. They actually can send drones out long, you know, on long flights to go and deliver things that are required. And I went to a technology conference a while ago and saw that they've got these augmented reality training systems. So if somebody is in the field and they need to deal with a medical emergency or a veterinary emergency and they don't have that particular training, they can pull up on a device an augmented reality application that will talk them through the steps of actually doing that health thing that they need to address, which is amazing. It's an amazing use of innovation technology that allows them to do that. Whereas in Asia, here we're actually looking at predictive analytics efficiency, longevity of life, and great innovations. A colleague of mine, her daughter had a really rare form of cancer, and she came to Singapore to get treated. It's the only place, the first place in the world that can actually address that particular form of cancer. So there are those kinds of responses. Then we look at transport. I mean, this is fairly, fairly obvious. We've got informal transportation, adaptive responses. So plans are made to, you know, how do you get over this particular river or this floodplain that has just moved? Whereas in Asia, there's more investment in precision and timing and reliability. So lots of different ways of looking at how Africa and Asia address important issues. But now let's look at what this actually is. When we think about Africa, we very often think about Africa in terms of having a scarcity, a lack of something. And while I'm working with this, I'm going, I do not want to use those traditional words. And then I realized that the word was constraint. Africa works under certain constraints, whereas Asia can work with an abundance of certain things. And that opened my mind up. Now I'm thinking, well, this is really interesting. We're talking about constraints and abundance, but what exactly are we saying? So I know that I'm kind of stuttering through this because I was really struggling with the words. There's an exercise we very often do, um, when we're working with teams, and it's an improv exercise where we don't want to use the word but, we use the word and. So you don't say, oh, this, we could do this, but it won't work, we'll do something else. We say we could do this and we could do that. And when you use the word and, you build on a concept, you, you explore something new, you give your brain permission to open up and explore something rather than shut down and say it won't work. So I want you to use the word and Rather than use the word but, and rather than use the word versus, because every time I tried to do this, it was like Africa versus Asia. Again, it's— we're not in competition here. I mean, I know there is going on. Doesn't matter. We're not in competition. This is about learning how to learn from each other, how to develop thinking, how to challenge, how to evolve, and how to collaborate in the face of things that are happening in other parts of the world. So I want to use the word and rather than battle versus, but it got even more interesting. The question I want to ask you and put into the chat box if you want to explore just now, what do you feel about the words abundance and constraint? And while you're thinking about that, I'm going to pause and tell you a quick story. I, I have another topic that I developed. It's called 2 Trends, 2 Trends That Explain the World Today. And the trends are the trend from scarcity to abundance and from binary to fluid. And when you put those 2 trends and you cross over, you get these 4 scenarios that explain so much about the world. Everything that we're struggling with is we don't have enough, or there's a whole lot of, or it's right or wrong, black or white, yes or no, or the world is a lot more fluid and there are many different ways of expressing things than those very sharp binaries. would imply. When you, when you put that together, it's a very, very rich conversation. Anyway, so I've got a book, I've got a webinar, um, and I was putting some content out and, and I sent it. And I'm always on LinkedIn and connecting with people on LinkedIn and sharing ideas. And this somehow ended up, um, on, on it. Somebody in Nigeria saw my message to him. And he turned it into a lecture. And he was obviously so incensed that he would not hear me. He would not hear that I was agreeing with him. He just felt like, you know, here's this white girl from South Africa, and I'm going to tell her what it's truly like in Africa. And, and I felt for him, but I also felt frustrated that we couldn't have a conversation about it because he was saying, here in Africa, we never had scarcity until the colonialists came and told us. And took things from us and then put us into these systems. And now we have scarcity. And I do broadly agree with him about that. But when you look at scarcity and abundance or abundance and constraint, there are other ways of looking at them. So I invite you to consider this. When I started putting this presentation together, I was looking at Africa under constraint, Africa being innovative under constraint, and Asia being innovative under abundance. But then I asked a few other questions. When we look at technology, Asia's got an abundance of technology. It's flowing. We're optimizing. We're doing— we've got super apps. There are things we can do here. It's amazing in Asia. And Africa uses technology, but there isn't as much access to technology. So it's under constraint. When we look at land size, technically Asia, the bigger, broader definition of Asia is bigger than Africa, but both very large land masses, a really huge part of the world that we're looking at. When we look at infrastructure, Asia has got better infrastructure, more access, more integration, you know, transportation, everything else. Asia has more infrastructure than Africa. When we look at demographic potential, Africa has more potential than Asia, even though the population is bigger. But Africa's demographic potential is with those young people, that potential dividend. So there's a lot that could happen. When you look at the natural resources, Asia has more fossil fuels than Africa, but Africa has more mineral wealth from the other minerals than Asia. And then you can look at, you know, the future workforce. Africa is potentially a bigger growing workforce than does Asia. So all of a sudden, those definitions of who is constrained and who has abundance suddenly have to be redefined because it's not as simple as that. It's not as simple as that. So this raises questions when we're thinking about innovation. We need to be asking questions now. So under constraint, the question is, who is being excluded? I attended a presentation in Cape Town some time ago, and it's a small tech company, and they designed some amazing technology also about financial inclusion. And the young man who was speaking about it, and it was all young people in this company, and they all were wearing jeans and t-shirts, But they were like a really sophisticated tech company. And he said, when we started, the investors wanted us to improve, you know, applications and deliveries and things. He said, I could not spend my life trying to optimize your pizza delivery getting to you 20 seconds earlier. I wanted to design technology that would address the 99% of people who do not have access to the technology in Africa. So who has been excluded? That's the innovation question. Under a situation of abundance, then how do we make this better? Those are the questions that we can be asking. Another question is under constraint, how do we make a better system? You know, if the system doesn't work, how do we make a better system versus optimizing the current system? And as a futures concept, this is essential. There is so much best practice and business school, you know, case studies of examples about how things should be done, the way we need to say that really worked well in 1970 or in 2010, but it is no longer relevant. We cannot keep optimizing a current system if the system is faulty. We have to make a better system. We have to make a better model, a better decision. We've made choices. Better choices need to be made. And that's an innovation question. And then under constraint, how can we become more efficient and more creative versus under abundance? The innovation question becomes how do we, how do we scale and how do we build in redundancies? South Africa has no redundancy in terms of power generation. We would like that situation, but we don't have it. And so we need to be more efficient or we need to be more creative about how we use our power. So you can see the whole time these innovation questions are not as simple as just doing something better or more novel or making a product look cool. It has to be a different way of thinking. And we learn that from, from Africa and from Asia. So a couple of quick questions. What are you, you most curious about? This question for you. What are you curious about exploring in terms of innovation? But I'm going to leave you with a few other futures questions. The work that I actually do is helping people develop thinking fit for the future, and that word FIT stands for foresight, insight, and transformation. So foresight is the, the futures thinking exercise that we have, uh, the futures tools, um, the futures conversations. The insight is realizing how, how we frame things, how we've centered certain things in our lives, um, the biases we have And, and what we do or do not like about ourselves, about our organizations that might need to change. And if it changes, then it's transformation. We're going to be changing anyway. We're going to be challenged anyway. We may as well transform intentionally into something better. So that's the work that I do. So the questions from this conversation is, what demographic assumption are we making that may not hold? I know that's a huge question. Like, I'm not expecting— this is not a government decision here about, you know, demographic assumptions. But we can look at the same sort of thing. I work with an organization that has a leadership succession plan crisis right now. That's a teeny tiny demographic assumption. They assumed that people would step up. And it's not happening because they haven't had the foresight to develop that. How are we failing in our foresight? By making assumptions about the people that are available to us? Second question is, where are we innovating from comfort instead of from necessity? And that's a challenging question because, because we all pursue comfort. We'd like to have comfort. It's, it's a relief to have comfort. But when we are too comfortable and we don't challenge ourselves, then we will miss things. Partly why Richard and I are here is to discomfort ourselves. And boy, have I been discomforted. I apologize, Richard. But that allows us— that it changes our frame of reference. It changes the circuits in our brain, and it makes us see things differently, and that makes us innovative. So where are we innovating from comfort instead of necessity? And Who are we not yet in conversation with that we should be? Are we not talking to younger generations? Because what do they know? Are we not talking to older generations because they're so out of it? You know, what they know is irrelevant now. Are we not talking to another country? Are we not talking to other people in the broader part of our industry? And should you be in conversation with me, because what I do is coaching, consulting, training. I do webinars, keynotes, and microlearning on futures thinking so that we can ask better questions about the future, so that we can think more clearly about the future. And when we get that right, then we get to not compete but to co-create, and not just whatever happens next, but we get to co-create our preferred future. And I would prefer to see more conversations happening between incredible people in Africa and Asia and the innovation and potential that we have on these 2 continents. Thank you. I'm going to now turn and see if there are any questions and comments in the chat box. It looked very busy, but I couldn't keep an eye on the whole thing. Anybody want to make some comments right off the bat? We're all friends. Speak up if you can.

Charlotte, it's Mimi. I'll add something if that's okay.

Yes.

Hang on, my video's off. Sorry, I'm in a Starbucks down the road from you. In fact, I just messaged you and I was like, you're in Kuala Lumpur. I live in Kuala Lumpur.

Why are we not having coffee?

Right now? Yes.

Anyway, to be continued.

Okay, what I thought I'd just say is I found this very inspiring, and to be honest, in my work I find it very hard to come to any sessions ever. Your title really grabbed me, and the reason it did, and your content as well, I think that, and I mentioned this in the chat box earlier, there are so few people that truly believe in these regions. There's a lot of rhetoric There's a lot of good headlines. But when it comes down to thought leadership and consulting or keynote speaking or whatever you do in that kind of services space, everybody always reverts back to the US and Europe.

I know.

So I just found it very inspiring to spend an hour listening to someone who thinks differently, and I'm assuming a room full of people who think differently. So yes, that's what I wanted to add. Thank you. Because I think if we could, I have no idea what everyone on this call does, but if we could work together, we could make progress because it's time, right? It's time for the thought leadership and that leadership to shift across the world to the Global South. And thank you, thank you for sharing this today. It was energizing for me.

Oh good, good. I'm glad. David, I'll get to you in just a moment, but I just want to kind of follow on that comment. And this was a public conversation, so I'm going to risk saying it. I'm a member of the Association of Professional Futurists, and I have a lot of respect for them. And the, um, there's a kind of like a chat function, and so somebody will start a conversation and others will weigh in, and people like me, we'll just sit there and read through this like vast amount of knowledge and insight. It's really fascinating. And a conversation started a couple of months back about population and declining populations, and they're talking about Asia and they're talking about Europe and they're talking about like Finland and places like that where there's like some serious challenges because there are such, you know, few children being born, and that has huge implications on the country. And I'm looking at this going, why is nobody saying anything about Africa? You know, this is interesting, but what about Africa? And I wasn't ready to dive in, but I'm watching this. And then somebody said, what about Africa? Because Africa's got this. And I'm going, yay! And it was acknowledged. And the very next conversation went back to Europe and North America. And I'm going, this was an opportunity to really— and it's my fault for not, you know, leaning into that conversation. But to say, oh yeah, and then there's Africa, but anyway, and carry on with the rest of the world and miss what is so fundamentally different here. And that was frustrating to see from that. And I have respect for that organization because they started in the United States But it is meant to be an international organization. So they actively recruited people, and then they looked at their leadership and they said, we just got one president after another from the US. This isn't right. And they put a plan in so that the leadership is moving around the world. So I know that they're trying. I know they're trying. I know they care. They're futurists. They know that this is important, and yet they still snapped back to the Western conversation without giving Africa too much thought. So it's the framework that we really have to challenge and keep exploring. So thank you for that, and we'll definitely get together. David, you had a question or a comment?

I did. I mean, first of all, I'm possibly the only person in Europe here, which is a good one.

You're still very welcome, sir.

I had to get up for this, so—

Okay.

You're very special for me to do that. Um, I worked in 22 different countries, and I'm now retired— well, I'm not retired, but I mean, I'm old enough to be retired. I'm in Spain.

Yes.

And I do a lot of work to do with interculturality, which is very relevant to this. And my fight is always with the 5 European gurus and all those folk in America who've no idea about the rest of the world.

Yeah.

And I— so I think you're doing a great job here because I'm comparing Africa and Asia, something I don't do even though I've been in both of them. So I think you did very well, and I'm very proud of you for coming out and doing this. And you're right, all these ideas about Global South, and I mean, I do lots of stuff, at least I have lots of colleagues who work with that, with colonialism and, and the consequences. And the thing is, in, in Europe, you forget about colonialism. It's like, it's like years ago, it's all gone. But of course, yeah, when you're working with Africa and Asia, it hasn't gone. And that's right, big lesson to learn, that it's still there. All those things, all the exploitation of the conquerors from Europe is still there. And a lot of Europeans think that was a great thing, and I just think, what?

Yeah.

I just find it astonishing. I think it was a great thing, all these people. And the example I put in the book, uh, in, in the chat, was someone recently put this video up comparing— I think it was Kenya, might not have been Kenya— and there's this picture of the 1970s and now. And the '70s was all these cars going down this motorway, and now they had a market in the middle of the road. And I'm saying, well, that's exactly what Europe's doing, is getting rid of all these cars and putting streets and markets in. Isn't that a great lot of progress? And that was the wrong answer. Yeah, which is the truth. Anyway, thank you.

Thank you.

It was getting up for Charlotte.

Thank you very much. Anybody else want to comment? Per, do you have anything to say?

Yes, I always have something to think.

Yes, it is.

Hello, Charlotte. Thank you very much. I really enjoyed this because what I've seen a lot of organizations when I talk about this is that they don't They're actually not aware of the demographic differences between regions and how these are affecting their businesses going forward. For example, there was a Japanese company a couple of years ago that looked at the demographics of Japan and realized that their business, which was baby nappies, was dying. So they swapped into adult nappies. which is a booming business. And that's where you can look at the demographics in the different regions and you find opportunities and threats in that. And that's what I think is a fascinating start for all in future talk, is looking at what's happening with the people that are our customers and our suppliers and take it from there going forward. So thank you very much. Great. I enjoyed it.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Yeah, and that's one of the interesting things is like these threats and opportunities is that I try very hard not to automatically label something good or bad. Like when you see trends like, oh, that's a terrible trend, or that's a great trend. Like for whom, you know? When the currency rates change, like it might cost us more from South Africa to buy something You know, but when it changes the other way, then those of us who are earning in, in dollars or euros, we're getting more money. So it's not good or bad. It just depends on the perspective and the context and, and, and what you can do with it. I mean, there are some terrible things in the world. I'm not going to deny, but a lot of the stuff is just labeled for the convenience of some people who have previously been convenienced and now don't like it.

Okay.

Yes, certain people would prefer us not to speak about things. Good. All right, folks, thank you very much. I really enjoyed sharing. I see lots of notes there in the chat, and I'll have a look through them just now. But thank you for allowing me to share these ideas. Like I said, they have been challenging because growing up as a white South African, there's been so much about racism, that we've had to learn and unlearn and discover and realize and confront. And it's been really challenging. And very often you want to say something, you're not sure if that is offensive, if it's automatically from your childhood, or if it's something that you really believe. So a lot of this is very personal to me to be able to express. So thank you for this space. And I know I'm now going to just put it up onto YouTube, and who knows how people will respond to things. But that's— it's okay. It's okay because we need to have these conversations. So thank you very much for spending this time for me, with me, for getting up early and for sharing your ideas. And I really appreciate it. And I'll be sending you an email later on with some links and some insights. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you, Charlotte. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you, Charlotte.