Unlocking the Potential of AfCFTA for Africa’s Young Population. (2025, May). Unicef.org. https://www.unicef.org/innocenti/reports/unlocking-potential-afcfta-africas-young-population

‌UNICEF and the Pardee Institute recently launched a collaborative report on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and its implications for Africa’s young population, led by Pardee researchers, including Deva Sahadevan, Taylor Hanna, and Jonathan Moyer.

Using our International Futures (IFs) model, the report compares three paths: no AfCFTA, AfCFTA as agreed, and AfCFTA plus strategic investments in education, welfare transfers, and research & development, all the way to 2063. The report recommends that countries put children at the center by investing AfCFTA revenue in education, health, nutrition, and green jobs, while building strong social safety nets. They also need to manage risks like job shifts, environmental impacts, and child protection issues.

Moyer, J., Sahadevan, D. (2024, December). Navigating the future: Four scenarios assessing child well-being in the twenty-first century. UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/innocenti/media/10201/file/UNICEF-Innocenti-Navigate-Future-Report-2024.pdf

As we move through the twenty-first century, humanity faces a complex array of challenges. These mutually reinforcing issues include climate change and geopolitical instability, as well as persistent socioeconomic disparities that have profound implications for children’s well-being. At such a critical crossroads, policy choices we make today will determine the welfare of future generations. In their interest, addressing this complex web of collective action problems demands a broad-based, integrated analysis focused on comprehensive and equitable solutions.

Global Outlook 2024: Prospects for children - Cooperation in a fragmented world. (2024, January). UNICEF Innocenti - Global Office of Research and Foresight.

UNICEF. (2022). "Prospects for Children in 2022: A Global Outlook." Office of Global Insight and Policy, UNICEF.

Our 2022 outlook draws on the reflections and analysis of staff from
UNICEF’s Global Insight team, supported by the Atlantic Council and the Pardee Center for International Futures, two organizations with long track records and formidable reputations in risk analysis and foresight. Jointly, we revisited the longer-term trends examined in ‘Prospects for children’, identified those that we considered to be most relevant for children in 2022, and highlighted new trends or events to be brought to the attention of our readership. Our initial findings were debated and refined during a virtual consultation held with 18 experts, leaders and young activists from around the world on 16 November 2021.

The resulting analysis is organized around ten trends (Figure 1). Annual trends, such as the ten highlighted in this report, are inevitably highly interconnected. They emerge, in part, from megatrends such as
demographics, climate change, biodiversity loss and rapid technological changes, which will shape the world in which children live over the course of the next 30 to 50 years.