African Futures & Innovation Programme
Building a knowledge platform on the future of Africa
The challenge
The African Futures & Innovation programme (AFI) at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) undertakes long-term thematic, country and regional studies on the future of Africa. The organization required a user-friendly interface to provide access to its numerous studies and reports, including over 4,500 charts and more than a million words of text.
Solution
- We built a dedicated knowledge platform for the African Futures & Innovation programme, providing integrated forecasting on all African countries, income groups and economic regions (from the present until 2043).
- The overarching aim is to model progress towards the African Union’s "Agenda 2063" vision through the impact of various sectoral scenarios (such as agricultural development, health/WaSH, education, free trade and so on).
Navigation
Users can navigate the site geographically (by browsing specific African countries, economic regions or income groups) or thematically (by choosing a scenario of interest).
Detailed
reporting
- Each report takes the user through the geography or theme’s current path, and potential future progress based on specific interventions.
- The site also hosts a comprehensive blog, newsletter and events platform.
PDF converter
Since a large portion of the site’s target audience likes to consume content in printed format, we enabled dynamic PDF content conversion. This member-restricted feature converts the latest web copy per section into a beautifully branded PDF, with clickable table of contents and section-specific footnoting.
The result
The site was launched in June 2022 at a webinar hosted by the Daily Maverick, with a special address by South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, as well as the CEO of NEPAD, Nardos Bekele-Thomas. It continues to serve as comprehensive resource to help governments, businesses and civil societies plan for the future.