A series of global megatrends could see people radically changing how they live their lives in future.

The Growth, Innovation and Leadership (GIL) 2014 Africa summit in Cape Town this week unpacked trends ranging from shifts in the way people managed their health to increasing automation.

“We are moving from reality to virtuality in our daily lives,” information and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan senior partner Dorman Followwill told delegates at the summit.

He anticipated that much of this would be driven by connectivity and convergence, with 80-billion connected devices expected by 2020. Each user was likely to have five connected devices, while the average household would have ten by 2020. 

Frost & Sullivan’s Mega-Trends report estimated that there would be five-billion Internet users by 2020.

Followwill expected personal robots, four-dimensional (4D) printing and sensory-based tracking to become commonplace. Already there had been developments in voice recognition, touch, gesture, eye and brain tracking.

The healthcare sector could see some of the greatest advances, with a major shift anticipated from treatment to early detection. There would be more emphasis on diagnosis, monitoring and prevention.

With people constantly Googling health conditions on the Internet, the patient–doctor relationship was starting to change. 

Followwill said this sector was expected to be dominated by digital medicine, with the patient effectively becoming their own GP.

Wonder drugs, pre-emptive medicine, noninvasive surgery and tissue engineering were likely to be key trends, with health robots, wearable biosensors and implantable e-care expected to feature strongly in the future.

Followwill said three-dimensional printing was already exploding in healthcare, with 4D on the horizon.

On the energy side, Frost & Sullivan expected a 40% increase in energy demand by 2030.

Smart grid, energy harvesting and shale gas would emerge as responses to the higher demand.

"Shale gas will contribute over 40% of all US gas supply in 2035, Followwill told mainly South African business leaders at the summit.

Meanwhile, high-speed rail would connect not only cities and countries, but also continents, such as China and Europe.

Further, cities, not countries, were expected to drive wealth creation in the future.

Frost & Sullivan noted that cities like Seoul accounted for half of South Korea’s gross domestic product (GDP).

“We need to move beyond thinking about countries and look at cities as our customers.”

He said this was practical when you considered the vast wealth contained in a city like New York, where the GDP is $1.28-trillion – a figure equivalent to the fifteenth largest country in the world.

Green energy advances would also signal big changes in business approaches, with a need to integrate smart energy, smart building and smart technology.

Inroads in genetically modified food would also spark change.

Followwill said golden rice, which is a genetically modified type of rice that is expected to mitigate vitamin A deficiencies, could deliver 15% to 20% of a person's daily nutritional requirements by 2030. This could have huge benefits in poverty-stricken areas of the world.