The opening (copy-pasted below) from this IBM Research keynote talk by the CTO of Watson outlined why IBM has an optimistic view for "Africa" - because of projected growth in labor and capital, i.e. the two main factors of production in a capitalist economy. It is notable how the speaker collapses distinction between continent-wide scale vs nation-state at different points throughout his talk.
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"And Africa represents to us an incredible, very exciting set of opportunities. And that's for many reasons, okay, not the least of which is the African economy is expected to be about two and a half trillion dollars by next year, by the end of next year, which is bigger than countries like Brazil, Russia, India, Australia. So we have a remarkable economic base here. But another statistic, which I find very exciting...I worry about demographics around the world. And one of the great things about Africa is, you're still having babies, you're going to have 1.1 billion young people in Africa, more than India and China combined by 2040. These are remarkable numbers and this represents hope, and future for our planet, and huge set of opportunities."
