Afshin Molavi
Geopolitics Speaker
“Easternisation” is the key trend driving the 21st century – that’s the crux of this eye-opening and brilliantly argued talk by Afshin Molavi. If you want to understand where humanity is headed in the coming decades, I highly recommend you take a look!
Below is a summary of the key points. If you’d like to book Afshin Molavi as a keynote speaker, drop us a line.
SUMMARY
We’re living in an unpredictable and volatile world, but there are a few disruption-proof trends that mean “Easternisation” is inevitable:
(i) Demographics
– 353,423 people are born per day.
– 129 million will be born in 2018.
– Most of these will be in Asia, Africa and LatAm, i.e. in the 85% of the world outside Europe and North America.
– By 2030, 78% of the world’s population will live in Asia or Africa.
– This demographic domination by the ’emerging’ world is not a prediction – it’s with us now.
(ii) Urbanisation
– 1.5 million people per week are moving to cities. This is unprecedented in history.
– In 1800, 3% of the global population lived in cities. In 1900, 15%. Today it’s 54%. By 2050 it’ll be 66%.
– Cities are engines of economic growth, and most will be in Asia. Today, already 4 out of 5 of the largest cities are in Asia. In 1900 it was 1 out of 5.
(iii) Connectivity
– We’re in a hyper-connected age: if Facebook were a country, it’d be the largest in the world (2bn users).
– This will revolutionise emerging economies. In India, 3 people are experiencing the internet for the first time every second.
(iv)The Rising Middle Class
– The global middle class is currently 3bn.
– By 2030 it’ll be 5bn.
– 88% of the new entrants to this global class will be from Asia.
– By 2030, Asia will contain two thirds of the global middle class.
– By 2027, the world’s largest middle class will be in India.
– Already, the emerging middle class (especially in China) is revolutionising industries, whether it be hog farmers in the US or winemakers in Bordeaux.
Along with these trends there is a lot of good news, especially when it comes to the large number of people being lifted out of poverty.
But there are also accompanying problems and risks:
– Climate change and pollution.
– Geopolitical risk and economic power shifts.
– Malnutrition: can we feed this growing population? Already a lot of people are malnourished.
– Inequality: this is already a huge problem – will growth be shared evenly?
– The jobs crunch: we won’t be able to create enough jobs for the demographic boom described above. And the 4th industrial revolution of AI and automation will exacerbate the problem.