Insights in the Strategic Futures stream.
Generic megatrend lists apply to every organisation and change none. This piece walks through the megatrends most material to African infrastructure planners in the 2026 to 2030 window, with the implications each one carries for capital allocation.
A board's engagement with strategic futures work depends on the artefact it receives. A well-designed one-page foresight brief holds attention and drives decisions. A poorly-designed 30-page report ends up in the pre-read pack and is not opened.
PESTLE analysis is the most misused tool in strategic planning. Done well, it changes decisions. Done badly, it produces a generic list of trends that sits in an appendix and is never read again. What separates the two.
Scenario planning at the provincial planning-team level is not the boardroom version of the exercise. The audience is different, the outputs are different, and the workshop shape has to be different. A practical two-day format that produces artefacts a provincial team can actually use.
Strategic futures planning is not forecasting. It is a disciplined method for expanding a board's peripheral vision so the organisation stops being surprised by the same class of event twice.