In this chapter Cilliers introduces the growing divergence in income and other indices of well-being between Africa and the Rest of the World. He touches on various aspects such as extreme poverty and Africa’s marginal role in the global economy and illustrates the challenge by comparing the divergent experiences of South Korea and Ghana in demographics and income, before moving to introduce matters relating to productivity, digitisation, agriculture and manufacturing. The chapter presents key characteristics of Africa compared to other countries and regions to 2040, defines some of the terms, introduces the International Futures forecasting platform that is used for the forecasts, and the structure of the book.