Akili

The two most predictable trends of the 21st century are global demographics and climate change. Africa is not responsible for the majority of emissions, but its populations will suffer the consequences more than anyone. Across energy, agriculture, and carbon, Akili is building out the continent’s climate ecosystem including electric vehicles and financing, charging and energy infrastructure, large scale forestry and regenerative agricultural projects, and sustainable food systems and supply chains.

As consumers of media, content, and advertising, African populations will only grow in importance with the growth of the middle class and disposable income across the continent. With some of the top actors, musicians, and athletes increasingly African, the significance of African culture and talent is only getting stronger. Akili Media seeks to build large scale audiences, acquiring and investing in media assets, native content production, talent representation, ecosystems like live music, and physical infrastructure. With a close connection to Commerce, Akili Media provides opportunities for reach to Akili’s portfolio and our partners.

Commerce, covering trade, transaction, and financial services, is growing rapidly in Africa alongside the continent’s demographic explosion, particularly its 170M strong middle class. Commerce is not only a good investment, it allows Akili to build and access large networks of customers. With Akili Media consolidating large scale audiences, Commerce seeks to create a set of tools and playbooks for African merchants and brands that we back to connect with those audiences.

The future belongs to Africa, but without significant improvements in health infrastructure, services, and outcomes, that future will not be bright. Treatable infectious diseases claim millions of lives each year, while preventable non communicable illnesses are growing with the middle class. Health systems are plagued by crumbling or nonexistent infrastructure, scarcity of essential medicines and a lack of trained health workers. There is a huge gap not just in funding, but infrastructure, resources, and expertise, in healthcare across the continent. As a team, Akili has more experience in healthcare than anything else, and we’re aiming to make significant investments in health and show what an ecosystem building approach can accomplish.

African youth are the most important demographic on Earth. With the world’s plummeting populations, the future looks African, and its youth are poised to be the consumers, producers, savers, taxpayers, caretakers, entrepreneurs and leaders of the near future. As technology rapidly reshapes work and productivity again and again, leaving our educational systems ineffective and ultimately obsolete, there is no population more important to educate in modern evidenced based approaches that build skills than African youth.

With the compounding of African demographics while the rest of the world experiences collapsing birth rates and populations, the significance of the diaspora will continue to grow over the 21st century. The diaspora provides a critical source of funding and support to their families back home, and are increasingly important in bridging the export of African brands and culture to the world, and importing useful advances in the world to Africa.