In 2016, AWDF embarked on a strategic planning process focused on the question of how AWDF and African women’s organisations can contribute to shaping the future of Africa. To ground this planning, AWDF worked with Kenyan foresight practitioner Katindi Sivi Njonjo to produce a trends analysis – bringing together the gendered data around Africa’s future trajectories. The resulting report Futures Africa: Trends for Women by 2030 is the first of its kind, offering both statistics and analysis around key political, economic and social trends, and illuminating gaps in the data needed to accurately plan for the future.

Alongside this empirical process, the AWDF staff team and advisors brought in their creative imaginations to generate scenario stories that depict four possible states for Africa in 2030 from a feminist and woman’s rights perspective. The stories are shaped by an analysis that the key independent drivers of change for women in Africa will be:

• shifting demographics (age and migration);
• the expansion and use of ICTs,
• (geo)political power dynamics;
• the nature of education.

The scenario stories have been made into an animation series in collaboration with Zimbabwean animator/illustrator Mationesa Wade, and soundscape by Ghana’s DJ Keyzz.