Indices to measure soft, hard and smart power are back in vogue to the extent that the Economist magazine devoted two recent editions to its forecasts of China’s power potential (finding that it will shortly peak) and that of the United States (which it argued would remain globally dominant).

At the Institute for Security Studies’ African Futures and Innovation programme, we come to somewhat different conclusions using the integrated International Futures forecasting platform (IFs). Using IFs, we recently published a set of global forecasts on how events in the rest of the world could unfold and the impact on Africa two decades into the future. We discussed these alternative scenarios at SIPRI’s 2023 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development.

https://sipri.org/commentary/blog/2023/peak-china-declining-usa-and-future-africa