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Global Strategic Outlook 2027

Ten decisions the year will force, and the evidence behind each.

Bruno Hounkpati, Founding Partner and Chief Executive Officer

STG-OUT-2027-001 · 20 October 2026

The ten decisions

Each chapter serves one decision, names who owns it and sets the test to run before committing.

Chapter 1

Fragmentation is narrow: where the next unit of capacity goes, and under whose standard

The bloc penalty measures four to five percent, the American tariff level held an 11 to 12 percent band from April to August 2026 through one change of legal basis, and China's controls are suspended rather than repealed. The location decision turns on which standard survives, not on which bloc.

The decision: where the next unit of physical capacity goes, and under which standard, before the capex committee of the first quarter of 2027; owner, the chief executive with the chief financial officer.

Chapter 2

Concentration rose while prices fell: which input exposures to resolve in 2027, and which processing partnerships reached production

The top refiner's share of key energy minerals reached 72 percent while investment fell and lithium collapsed then doubled. Exposure is licence and lead time, not price; and in francophone Africa only one structure has brought a processing line into production.

The decision: which two or three input exposures to resolve before the 2027 procurement budget closes, and which processing-partnership structure to finance; owners, the chief operating officer and head of procurement, then the investment committee.

Chapter 3

Two chokepoint shocks in one year, and buffers already unwound: which single points of failure to remove in 2027, at what cost of carry

Container lines halted Hormuz transits at the end of February, the Red Sea coast changed hands in September, and firms had already shed their 2022 stock. The 2027 decision is which exposure to remove and what carrying cost to accept, not whether to hold more.

The decision: which two or three single points of failure the company removes in 2027 and what it pays to remove them, inside the window between the fourth-quarter 2026 inventory budget and the first-half 2027 carrier renewals; owner, the chief operating officer with the chief financial officer.

Chapter 4

Generation is arriving, reliability is not: captive power, grid or PPA for industrial operators in seven countries

Nachtigal and Souapiti added capacity and Cameroon and Guinea still cut power; Côte d'Ivoire sells grid power at a price closer to the European average than operators assume; Morocco alone has a legal route that has produced a corporate contract. The 2027 decision is which route to budget for, site by site, on measured outage hours rather than national averages.

The decision: for each site in Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Guinea, Togo, Benin, Cameroon or Morocco, grid supply at the regulated tariff, captive generation, or a corporate purchase agreement for the 2027 budget and any new plant; owners, the chief operating officer and the chief financial officer, then the investment committee.

Chapter 5

One firm in five, not nine in ten: which decisions to instrument with AI in 2027, and who stays accountable

Official statistics put enterprise AI use at one firm in five; the survey everyone quotes says nine in ten and measures something else. The measured gains are bounded and fall on junior work, the regulatory clock now runs to 2 December 2027, and the compute announced for Casablanca is not yet built, and none of processor grade is announced for Abidjan. The 2027 decision is which two or three decision types to instrument, with the outcome defined and the executive named before the tool is bought.

The decision: which two or three decision types the company instruments with AI in 2027, with what pre-defined measure of value, and which named executive stays accountable; owner, the chief executive with the executive committee, the board holding oversight.

Chapter 6

The 2027 signpost dashboard: twenty indicators, fixed definitions, pre-committed thresholds

The year opens on an energy shock layered over a managed trade rivalry, not the geoeconomic confrontation the January 2026 expert survey ranked first. Twenty public readings, each with its definition fixed and its threshold decided in advance, say when that has changed and which decisions in this edition the change reopens.

The decision: which twenty public indicators, read on a fixed date each quarter, tell the chief executive that the environment has moved from one scenario to another, and which decisions in this edition that move reopens; owner, the chief executive with the chief financial officer, one named person recording the readings.

Chapter 7

From participation to seizure: which contract structures survive the next code revision, and licence to operate as a capex gate

In one year and one country, a bauxite concession was withdrawn over a refinery covenant the state judged unmet and the Simandou iron-ore project shipped first ore on a structure that gives the state a free seat in the mines and the railway. The 2027 decision is which structure to finance, and how to write licence to operate into the capital decision as a dated condition rather than a risk paragraph.

The decision: which partnership and contract structure survives the next code or fiscal revision in francophone Africa, and how licence to operate is written into the capital decision as a dated condition; owners, the investment committee and the general counsel, with the operator's country manager.

Chapter 8

Finance arrives years before tonnage: on-corridor or off-corridor, which corridor, under whose rules

Lobito's financing closed in July 2026 on a capacity aim of 4.6 million tonnes a year; the line's best month had carried 37,000. Mali's cargo is moving toward Abidjan, Cotonou's growth came with a pipeline and a closed border, and Nador opened beside Tanger Med. The 2027 decision is which corridor to site on, and under whose rules, read from published tonnage and governing documents rather than from financing dates.

The decision: for the next plant, warehouse or processing unit serving Morocco, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Togo or Benin and the Sahel markets behind them, whether to site on a corridor or off it, which corridor, and under whose rules; owners, the chief executive and the chief operating officer, then the investment committee.

Chapter 9

The disclosure duty shrank, the border price rose: which sustainability investments survive on economics alone, and who carries an unpriced carbon-border exposure

Mandatory sustainability reporting in the European Union now starts at 1,000 employees and 450 million euros of turnover, while the carbon border certificate price rose from 75.36 to 82.32 euros in three quarters of 2026 and certificates go on sale on 1 February 2027. The 2027 decisions are which efficiency, solar and water measures pay on the site's own numbers, and whose export contracts say who pays the border cost.

The decision: which energy-efficiency, captive-solar and water measures to fund in 2027 because they pay on the site's own costs, and whether the carbon border cost of goods shipped into the Union is written into 2027 contracts; owners, the chief financial officer with the chief operating officer, and the commercial director for exporters in Morocco, Tunisia and Cameroon.

Chapter 10

The premium is financial flexibility, not resilience: how much slack to carry into 2027, and the calendar of the ten decisions

In the 2020 crash the measured premium sat on the balance sheet: US listed firms with more cash and less debt fell 9.7 points less, about a quarter of the average fall, while ESG scores had no significant explanatory power once finances were controlled for. French mid-sized firms still hold more cash than in 2019, and under one central bank new lending rose 13.9 percent in Côte d'Ivoire and fell 23.7 percent in Mali in 2025. The 2027 decision is how much slack to carry, and in which quarter each of the edition's ten decisions passes its evidence gate.

The decision: how much financial flexibility to carry into 2027 (days of cash, net debt to earnings, undrawn lines), and in which quarter each of the edition's ten decisions passes its evidence gate before an irreversible commitment; owner, the chief executive with the chief financial officer, answerable to the board.

Read online

The executive summary, the letter and the ten chapters are open to read on this site. Every figure carries its source, its grade and the date it was read.

Global Strategic Outlook 2027: executive summary and the Founding Partner's letter

Download the PDFs

The full edition, the executive summary and the eleven parts are free to download. Leave your work email and the files open on this page.

How to read the edition

What the grades mean

Every material finding in the edition carries a STREDGELAB Evidence Grade that says how far the evidence behind it reaches. The edition's ceiling is SEG-2: nothing in it rests on data the firm collected itself, so nothing is graded above "reproducible analysis". Every expectation stated for 2027 is SEG-0 and carries, in the same paragraph, the condition that would falsify it. A grade travels with its claim in the evidence cards that close each chapter; the identifier (CH01-C1, CH03-H2) appears in the prose where the claim is made.

Grade	Meaning	Used in this edition
SEG-0	Hypothesis	The 2027 expectations, each with a falsification condition
SEG-1	Documented pattern	Facts read from official statistics, filings, multilateral and peer-reviewed sources; press labelled where used
SEG-2	Reproducible analysis	Arithmetic shown on public series (the cost-of-carry and qualification comparisons)
SEG-3	Multi-case tested	Not used
SEG-4	Field-validated	Not used
SEG-5	Benchmark-supported	Not used
SEG-6	Independently validated	Not used

The three scenarios and the twenty signposts

The edition uses one scenario set, built on the two uncertainties every chapter shares: how intense the geoeconomic rivalry becomes, and whether the 2026 energy shock unwinds or persists, with the tightness of metals and power read separately. Scenario 1 (the baseline) is an unwinding shock under managed rivalry; Scenario 2 (the stress case) a persistent shock under hard decoupling; Scenario 3 (the live alternative) tight metals and power under managed rivalry. The fourth combination is excluded as incoherent over twelve months and the exclusion is printed so it can be disputed (Exhibit 0.1).

Each chapter's expectations state which scenario they hold in, and each test block states the scenario it is built to survive. Twenty public indicators, each with a fixed definition, a source, an update frequency, a threshold decided in advance and, wherever one could be read, a reading dated October 2026, tell the reader when the environment has moved; chapter 6 carries the full table and the mapping rule. A shift is declared when a majority of a scenario's signposts cross in the same quarter, never on one headline. The signposts are refreshed each quarter of 2027 under the Founding Partner's signature; in early 2028 the firm publishes what the edition got right and wrong.

The 2027 decision calendar

Every dated 2027 moment in the ten chapters, in one table, as printed in chapter 10. Dates marked expected are inferred from the publisher's earlier release dates and say so; the last Friday of each quarter is the dashboard's reading day. The rule that sequences the decisions: commit reversible steps first, and each irreversible one after the reading that decides it.

Quarter	Date	Event	Decision it opens or closes (chapter number)	Source
Q4 2026	10 and 27 November 2026	Suspensions of China's October 2025 export controls and of its 2024 licensing aimed at the United States expire unless a numbered notice extends them	Opens the licence contingency on the site decision (1) and the weeks of stock held against the date (2)	Chapter 1, Decision at stake and board section; chapter 2, Decision at stake and board section
Q4 2026	Fourth quarter of 2026	Inventory budget round	Opens which single points of failure to remove, at what cost of carry (3)	Chapter 3, Decision at stake
Q4 2026 to Q1 2027	Fourth quarter of 2026 to first quarter of 2027	2027 budget and financing round	Opens the slack decision (10); sets the AI tooling and training lines (5); the procurement budget closes on input exposures (2)	This chapter, Decision at stake; chapters 5 and 2, Decision at stake, which give no quarter: the placement is this edition's
Q4 2026	30 November 2026	Second trilogue on the downstream extension of the carbon border mechanism, as scheduled in a law-firm note	Opens the scope of exporters' 2028 exposure (9)	Mayer Brown, law-firm note (7 October 2026); chapter 9 found no agreement on 20 October 2026
Q4 2026 to Q1 2028	Late 2026 to early 2028	Conakry's new quay due (press)	Reopens Conakry as a second outlet for Mali (8)	Chapter 8, Decision at stake
Q1 2027	10 January 2027	The US-China truce, extended in September 2026, runs out again	Bounds the site decision (1) and the input-exposure decision (2)	Chapter 1, Decision at stake; chapter 2, Decision at stake
Q1 2027	January 2027	Guinea's 2026 bauxite export total becomes known	Reads chapter 2's hypothesis on the processing-partnership decision (2)	Chapter 2, hypothesis H2
Q1 2027	First quarter of 2027	First-quarter capex rounds approve the location of the next unit of capacity	Closes the site and standard decision (1)	Chapter 1, Decision at stake
Q1 2027	1 February 2027	First sale of carbon border certificates	Opens the importers' working-capital line (9)	Chapter 9, Decision at stake; chapter 6, row 16
Q1 2027	Early to mid February 2027, expected	Tanger Med's and Abidjan's annual releases for 2026	Opens the on- or off-corridor read for Moroccan and Ivorian sites (8)	Chapter 8, Decision at stake (the 2025 releases were dated 2 and 17 February 2026); chapter 6, The two arenas
Q1 2027	28 February 2027	First period of Morocco's surplus tariff for self-producers ends	Closes the Moroccan self-production case, which must be run before it (4)	Chapter 4, board section
Q1 2027	19 March 2027	France's deadline to transpose Omnibus I (date from the Parliament's procedure summary and a legal publisher, press)	Settles whether French first-wave companies outside the new scope still report on financial year 2025 and are exempt for 2026 (9)	Chapter 9, Decision at stake, hypothesis H3 and Limitations
Q1 2027	26 March 2027, last Friday of March	First quarterly dashboard reading	May reopen any of decisions 1 to 10 on a declared shift (6)	Chapter 6, board section
Q1 2027	31 March 2027	Quarterly holding rule of 50 percent for carbon border certificates applies	Turns the carbon-border cost into pre-funding through the year (9)	Chapter 9, Decision at stake
Q1 to Q2 2027	First half of 2027	Carrier renewals on Asia-to-Europe contracts, on chapter 3's assumption of the contract cycle	Closes the single-points-of-failure decision (3)	Chapter 3, Decision at stake
Q1 to Q4 2027	During 2027, projected (press)	Nador West Med's second container terminal	Reads chapter 8's H3 on the northern Moroccan corridor (8)	Chapter 8, Decision at stake and hypothesis H3
Q2 2027	25 June 2027, last Friday of June	Second quarterly dashboard reading	May reopen any decision on a declared shift (6)	Chapter 6, board section
Q2 2027	30 June 2027	Test date: whether both Chinese suspensions have been extended by numbered notice through this date	Reads chapter 1's H2 and chapter 2's H1 (1, 2)	Chapter 1, hypothesis H2; chapter 2, hypothesis H1
Q2 2027	30 June 2027	End of the no-gas line a Senegalese 2027 budget must carry	Closes the Senegal power-route assumption (4)	Chapter 4, board section
Q2 2027	30 June 2027	End of the dispute centre's fiscal year 2027	Reads chapter 7's H1 on contract structures (7)	Chapter 7, hypothesis H1
Q2 2027	End of the second quarter of 2027	Senegal: creditors' agreement in principle or none; IMF Board approval or none	Senegal receivables and bank lines (6); funding of Senegal-facing capex (10)	Chapter 6, row 14 and board section; this chapter, Signposts
Q3 2027	July 2027	2026 reading of AI use by French enterprises of 50 to 249 employees	Reads chapter 5's H1 (5)	Chapter 5, hypothesis H1
Q3 to Q4 2027	Second half of 2027, expected	Banque de France reading of PME and ETI finances for 2026	Reads H3; resets the French slack target (10)	This chapter, H3; expected date inferred from the two readings read, July to August 2026 for 2025 and November to December 2023 for 2022
Q3 2027	24 September 2027, last Friday of September	Third quarterly dashboard reading	May reopen any decision on a declared shift (6)	Chapter 6, board section
Q3 2027	Late September 2027, expected	BCEAO report on banking conditions for 2026	Reads H2; gates debt-financed UEMOA capex country by country (10)	This chapter, H2; date inferred from the report of 25 September 2026
Q3 2027	30 September 2027	First surrender of carbon border certificates for 2026 imports	Closes the cost of 2026 imports (9)	Chapter 9, Decision at stake; chapter 6, row 16
Q4 2027	2 December 2027	High-risk obligations of the European AI regulation apply to Annex III deployers	Closes the compliance-build window (5)	Chapter 5, Decision at stake
Q4 2027	December 2027	Kenitra battery-cell line, and at least 40 MW of processor-grade compute in Morocco, due on the chapters' hypotheses	Reads chapter 2's H3 and chapter 5's H3 (2, 5)	Chapter 2, hypothesis H3; chapter 5, hypothesis H3
Q4 2027	31 December 2027, last Friday of December	Fourth dashboard reading; end of the Congolese cobalt quota regime; deadline of this chapter's H1	Opens the slack decision for 2028 (10); input exposures and contract structures (2, 7)	Chapter 6, board section; chapters 2 and 7, Decision at stake; this chapter, H1
Q1 2028	1 January 2028	Downstream extension of the carbon border mechanism applies, if agreed on the proposed date (law-firm note)	Closes the window to price 2028 exposure into 2027 contracts (9)	Chapter 9, Decision at stake

The two arenas

Arena A is francophone Europe (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg). Arena B is francophone Africa with the diaspora and trade corridors that connect it to Europe and the Gulf, with Morocco, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Guinea, Togo, Cameroon and Gabon as the countries named most often, and the corridor ports of Tanger Med, Abidjan, Dakar and Lomé. Every chapter names its countries. No claim of the firm's treats the continent as a unit; where a source reports a regional aggregate the edition says whose it is.

How the edition was produced and checked

Each chapter began as a decision question and a validated scan of eighteen or more sources in four or more source classes, read on 20 October 2026, followed by further research on 20 and 21 October 2026, including series published only in spreadsheets or script-rendered pages. That research sought the primary document behind every figure first read through press. Each chapter passed three gates by a reviewer separate from the author: evidence integrity (every figure traced to its source with the same unit, period and population), the sceptical veteran chief executive (the five weakest claims and the strongest counter-argument to each), and claim calibration (no causal verb on a graded finding, no grade above the ceiling, a falsification condition on every expectation). The corrections were applied and a second separate reviewer verified each one. The review reports are kept in the edition's production record. Formal publication assurance, with a human countersign, precedes public release.

The STREDGE Evidence-to-Decision Cycle named in each chapter's test is the decision framework recorded in the firm's intellectual-property register (STG-IP-FMW-001, version 1.0.0) at maturity F2: its method is specified and field validation is pending. The edition uses it only to name the step in which a test runs, and makes no claim of validated results.

Corrections and challenges

Readers who find an error, a better source or a counter-example will find the channel for saying so on each page of the web edition. Corrections are logged with their dates and carried into the next version. Where two sources disagree, both are printed and the reconciliation is marked as the firm's. Where the firm could not verify something, the text says so rather than filling the gap: "not found" means not found on 20 October 2026, not that the figure does not exist.

Corrections since the issue of 20 October 2026

The letter and chapters 1 to 7 were first issued on 20 October 2026. The changes below were made on 21 October 2026, after a reading of primary pages that were not reachable on the first day, a second review of every chapter and a publication assurance review. Changes of wording that alter no fact, figure, caveat or named asset are not listed; exhibit numbers in chapters 2, 4 and 6 now follow their order on the page.

Part	What changed	Why
Letter	Sub-Saharan African states: respondents in a fifth of new cases at the World Bank's investment-dispute centre in fiscal 2026 and nearly a quarter in fiscal 2025, against 15 percent of all cases since 1966 (previously "against 2 percent of all cases since 1966"); the uranium stock seized in Niger is described as shipped despite an arbitral order barring its sale, not as sold; "BCEAO credit data" in place of "BCEAO lending"	The 2 percent was read from the wrong chart of ICSID's Caseload Statistics 2026-2 (cases by investor region); ICSID charts 10 and 12 and its fiscal 2025 release read on 21 October 2026; chapter 7 reads a ministerial statement of 4 May 2026 that nothing had yet been sold
Chapter 1	The WTO's finding now uses the report's own words: the gap between trade within and across rival blocs narrowed in 2025 and into 2026 and is no longer widening (previously "eased"); card CH01-C3 is no longer provisional; the 29 percent fall in American imports from China and China's 9.3 percent share are labelled as press	The WTO report of October 2026 was read on its own pages on 21 October 2026; the import figures come from press reports
Chapter 2	"Guinea's revocation produced a settlement" becomes "was followed by a settlement"	The evidence shows a sequence, not a cause
Chapter 3	Dakar: the port's director general is quoted as saying nearly 65 percent of Mali's transit passes through the port, replacing 70 percent of Mali's imports; the Ndayane delivery date is attributed to Le Soleil (press); "imports from China rose 6.4 percent" in place of "those imports rose 6.4 percent"; the Red Sea sentence now names its measure, "Measured by its share of Suez-or-Cape capacity, the Red Sea came less than half-way back" (previously "The Red Sea came half-way back"), 36 percent against about 80 percent before the attacks, and Exhibit 3.1 is retitled "Back in part" (previously "Half-way back"); the 36 percent is described as a share of all container capacity routed through Suez or around the Cape, in the In brief, hypothesis H1, the signpost row and Exhibit 3.1 (previously "Asia-to-Europe")	The 70 percent was the reporter's own figure; the director general's words were read in Le Soleil of 20 November 2025; the earlier wording left the denominator unclear; the share fell short of half its pre-attack level while weekly capacity stood at about half its 2023 level, so the sentence names the measure it uses; the shipping-research estimate covers all capacity routed via either route, not one trade lane
Chapter 4	IRENA's figures move to its July 2026 edition: solar at 0.044 dollars per kWh in 2025 and a four-hour battery at about 140 dollars per kWh (previously 0.043 in 2024 and 192); the Cameroonian distributor is named Eneo, now SOCADEL; the tariff difference with Europe "may sit in" reliability, connection delay and backup fuel (previously "carry"); Exhibit 4.3 added	IRENA's 2025 executive summary read on its own site; decree of 4 May 2026 renaming the utility (Ecofin, press); no measured cost decomposition supports a causal reading
Chapter 5	The second quotation from the French corporate-governance monitor is the report's own finding, not the chairs' group's agreement; In brief: the compute announced for Casablanca is not yet built and none of processor grade is announced for Abidjan; the missing number now covers France as well	Report pages 13 and 20; alignment with the chapter body
Chapter 6	The sentence that a dashboard built on activity alone would have read 2026 as a good year is withdrawn; Exhibit 6.1 added; row 19 now records that its euro area line would have been met in April and May 2026 (48.8 and 48.5); a Scenario 1 crossing now reads "shorter transit times make transit buffers less necessary"	The euro area composite index stood below 50 in April and May 2026; clearer wording of the crossing
Chapter 7	Sub-Saharan respondents: 15 percent of all ICSID cases since 1966 (previously 2 percent), 24 percent in fiscal 2025 and 20 percent in fiscal 2026; the statement that the share rose and the exhibit title "The litigation shifted to the region" are withdrawn; the signpost threshold becomes a third consecutive fiscal year above the all-time 15 percent, and hypothesis H1 is restated on that basis; the Malian complex's 2024 output is restated as about 578,000 ounces attributable to the operator's 80 percent interest (previously 723,000, on a basis not stated in the documents cited); the state's free and non-dilutable Simandou stake is labelled as press; Burkina Faso's nearly 43 tonnes of artisanal and semi-mechanised gold are attached to 2025; Senegal's Prime Minister is quoted from his office's account ("leonine"); the test sits in the Authorise step of the cycle	The 2 percent was read from ICSID's chart of cases by investor region, not by respondent state; ICSID charts 10 and 12 and the fiscal 2025 release read on 21 October 2026; source wording (Capmad, Prime Minister's office); Barrick's Annual Information Form for 2024; Mining.com relaying Reuters (13 March 2023, press)
Chapters 1 to 7	Names not recorded in the firm's intellectual-property register are withdrawn from the text: "Capex Evidence Gate" (chapters 1, 2, 4 and 7), "the Decision Confidence Index" (chapter 6), and named decision engines and readiness instruments (chapters 3 and 5); "the Exposure Map" in chapter 2 is now written as a common noun, "the exposure map"; the framework is named once per chapter by its registered name, the STREDGE Evidence-to-Decision Cycle, and its design-stage maturity is stated in the appendix; evidence cards now state contradictory evidence or that none was found	The firm's register of named assets; publication assurance review of 21 October 2026
Appendix	"The review reports are kept in the edition's production record" replaces "are published with the edition's production record"	The reports are internal working records

Assurance

Publication STG-OUT-2027-001, version 1.0, edition dated 20 October 2026. Every figure was read on the cited page on 20 or 21 October 2026, and each evidence card states its source, grade, contradictory evidence and review date. The edition was reviewed for publication against the firm's assurance standard before release.

The letter and chapters 1 to 7 were first issued on 20 October 2026. The corrected reissue and its register of corrections are among the downloads.