Togo
GDP per capita to 2060, by scenario
Constant-rate scenario path; the 2060 endpoint levels are illustrative, not forecasts.
Factor profile
Their exports are food, gold, diamonds, logistics or a small share of output, which AI neither threatens nor much boosts, so AI reaches them mainly through their own firms and governments.
How this economy meets AI
Today’s production, workforce and automation baseline — context for the scenarios, outside the AGI Growth Index.
Where output comes from (% of GDP)
Where people work (% of employment)
Informal employment
Current automation exposure
A large share of the workforce remains in agriculture and informal activity. This provides some initial insulation from cognitive automation but also limits the speed at which existing workplaces can capture productivity gains.
Sources: World Bank WDI; ILOSTAT; Global Automation Atlas (Garg, Crosta & Baier, 2026). The latest available year is shown for each measure; vintages differ, so shares may not sum to 100.
Where Togo starts
Togo is a Reform climber: growing steadily from a low base, with improving institutions. The scores show why. Catch-up headroom is 4.5 out of 5, among the highest anywhere, because a lower-income economy has far to climb. Demographics score 3.2, a young and growing workforce. Ten-year trend growth is 5% a year, and GDP per person is about $1,384 firmly lower-income. Its strengths are location and reform: the deep-water Port of Lomé, West Africa's main transshipment hub, and the Adétikopé Industrial Platform outside the capital. The binding constraints are physical. Compute and energy access scores 1, the floor. AI diffusion capacity is 1.4. Most Togolese still lack reliable power, echoing the region's gap. The Novissi cash-transfer scheme and the Cizo solar programme show real digital reach, but the hardware underneath is thin.
The three paths
These are simulations, not forecasts. The Modest path is the baseline; the two AGI scenarios fork from it. Under the Modest scenario, AI stays a normal technology. Togo would grow 5.1% a year, 24th of 157. That high rank rests on catch-up room and steady reform, the things that matter most when AI stays ordinary, and it doubles the economy in about 14 years. Under Gradual takeoff, growth would climb over two decades and reach 6.4% a year once AGI matures around 2045, a doubling in just over 11 years. But Togo's rank would fall to 105th, because a slow, broad takeoff rewards the compute and capital it lacks. Under Fast takeoff, growth would reach only 4.4% a year from the early 2030s, and its rank would slip to 135th. That is below Togo's own trend growth of 5%. In a fast world Togo would grow more slowly than it would have without AGI at all, because the labor-intensive rungs it is climbing are the first automation reprices. Politics could slow or redirect any path. How Togolese and their government respond to transformative AI is a variable the model holds constant.
How you would know which world you are in
The scenarios look almost identical until about 2030. Watch leading indicators, not GDP, and watch them live. Three global signals matter most. First, whether the METR task horizon curve keeps doubling every four to five months through 2027–28; METR publishes it at metr.org. Second, whether frontier lab revenue and capital spending keep compounding; Epoch AI tracks both at epoch.ai. Third, whether growth in the ten to twenty most-ready economies — the United States and China above all — breaks above trend in the early 2030s. Double-digit growth there within a couple of years of 2030 would signal a fast world. A point or two above trend by the mid-2030s would signal a gradual one. A fade back to trend would signal a modest one. Togo's own signals would arrive earlier than the growth data: transshipment volumes through the Port of Lomé, tenants and order books at the Adétikopé platform, phosphate demand, and how fast digital public services reach ordinary users.
If growth goes explosive
For Togo, explosive is the wrong word. Its best case is a gradual world at 6.4% growth a year, barely above the regional median of 5.7% and far behind a frontier compounding near 19.5%. In a fast world it would grow 4.4% a year, below the region and below its own history. The honest word is catch-up, not breakout. Even at 6.4%, the economy would double in just over 11 years, so a child starting school now would finish it in a country twice as rich. Faster growth would lift wages and ease the pressure on young Togolese to emigrate for work. The downside is specific. Togo's exports lean on manufacturing and phosphate, the labor-intensive work automation reprices first. If the frontier automates those tasks, the ladder Togo is climbing could be kicked away, leaving it worse off than the no-AI path. The hedge is to widen reform beyond one port and one factory zone, and to bank the gains from today's 5% trend while the window is open. Even then, the pace-setter would move to the state: the port authority, the energy ministry and the permitting offices would decide how fast anything gets built.
What Togo can do now
Three levers follow from the scores, and two pay off whether or not AGI arrives. The first no-regret lever is AI diffusion capacity, at 1.4. Digital skills, permissive deployment rules and digital government services raise productivity in any world; Togo can build on Novissi and its e-government push. The second no-regret lever is physical build speed, at 1.5. Statutory permitting deadlines, one-stop approvals and pre-zoned land with power already run to it help every investor, AGI or not. A cautious government can act on both today and lose nothing if the skeptics are right. The third lever is the bet. Compute and energy access, at 1, is the floor, and it barely moves growth if AI stays ordinary. Under a fast takeoff it becomes Togo's single biggest lever. Closing it means fixing generation and the grid first, then packaging power and land to attract hosting investment. A $1,384-per-person economy cannot fund this alone, so it needs partners. Senegal offers a model from the same archetype: it built a national data center at Diamniadio to keep public data and hosting onshore. To see how moving these scores changes Togo's path under each scenario, open the atlas's policy editor.
Use the policy editor to test how different factor scores change Togo’s modeled path. The roadmap builder below can then incorporate those targets into a 1,000-day planning prompt.
Drafted with Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, from the atlas’s data and an editorial template set by the author.
Create a 1000-day AGI and growth roadmap prompt
This prompt can be used with Claude, ChatGPT or an open-weight model hosted on your institution’s systems. It includes the atlas material for Togo: the country brief, economic structure, region, archetype and global scenarios. It instructs the model to ask for local information, use existing strategies and the political calendar, and preserve the atlas’s interpretation rules. The prompt is assembled in your browser; the information entered here is not sent elsewhere.
1 · Read the brief → 2 · Set targets in the policy editor → 3 · Generate and copy the prompt → 4 · Run it with an approved model, with high reasoning effort and web access where permitted
Instructions are generated in the selected language; the data annex remains in English. Translations are machine-drafted, and corrections from native speakers are welcome through the contact links on the start page.