Since 2000, Africa's economic expansion has proceeded with vigorous momentum, maintaining an annual average economic growth rate of 5 per cent or more (IMF, 2013). This robust economic growth is expected to extend beyond 2015, as the continent benefits from opportunities created by a natural resource boom, strong internal demand from its rapidly growing middle class, increased spending on basic infrastructure by both governments and the private sector, adoption and penetration of ICT (for example, mobile telephone penetration has surpassed 90 per cent in urban areas; see The World Bank, 2010), foreign direct and portfolio investments that are projected to reach a record US$80 billion (of which US$57 billion is foreign direct investment, FDI) by the end of 2014, doubling from 2005, and sizeable diaspora remittances, projected to reach US$67.1 billion in 2014 (AfDB, 2014a). However, in 2013, Africa faced major development challenges, some of which had far-reaching implications for the continent. These can be classified as relatively recent (those of yesterday): a rapidly changing demography (youth bulge, urbanisation, horizontal inequalities) and social risks (emerging and re-emerging diseases such as Ebola and Polio, crime, drugs, illicit trade); those of the immediate present (today): transforming agriculture (food security, exports) and global/regional integration (trade, finance, migration, human trafficking, infrastructure); and those of tomorrow: climate change pressures (water and energy insecurity, land shortages/grabs, drought, desertification, coastal populations (McMichael and Butler, 2004)) and technology (UNCTAD, 2012), as well as the business ‘model’ shocks (economic competition, job creation, and natural resource governance, beneficiation and its distribution).

Africa's economies have need of not only a new dynamism to respond to global competition, but also a strategy that will enhance transformation and socioeconomic achievement beyond the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly within the context of the post-2015 development framework, and which will include a wide range of development solutions around issues such food and energy security, and enhance service delivery and social inclusion. Africa must work on securing social and political stability and build effective economic governance. This must take the form of a concerted effort in order to enhance national and regional capacity for successful and sustainable development, creating a society that can deal with questions of agency and political economy for quality service delivery, social inclusion and democratic accountability.