Global Trends: How the World Is Changing

About this course

Most people's picture of the world is about thirty years out of date, and almost everyone is confidently wrong about the basic numbers — Hans Rosling proved chimpanzees picking at random beat audiences of professors. This course fixes the picture and then teaches you to keep it updated yourself. It starts with how to read world data without being fooled, and how to judge a news story or a viral claim. Then the forces actually reshaping this century: a world getting older while Africa gets younger, and what that youth bulge is and isn't; AI and automation, and which work it really changes; a shift from one dominant power to several, and what BRICS, the G20 and the AU actually do; global trade and the supply chains that decide what things cost in your market; and climate and energy, including the hard fact that the countries that did least to cause the problem carry most of the damage. It ends on Africa's own trend line — Kenya's mobile money, Nigeria's and Egypt's startups, and where the honest opportunities and the honest obstacles are. About 5 hours of core video, plus two and a half hours of optional documentaries.