Post-Scarcity Development for Emerging Economies: Towards Hybrid Prosperity Systems Beyond Economic Output Measures

This paper proposes a hybrid model of post-scarcity development for emerging economies that abandons traditional growth-output measures and instead focuses on regenerative socio-ecological capabilities, human flourishing, decentralised technological organisation, and long-term institutional resilience. Existing development models prioritise economic output measures that reduce complex well-being to quantifiable productivity indicators, thereby obscuring structural inequalities, ecological degradation, and human vulnerabilities (Costanza et al., 2014). This paper embeds post-scarcity thinking into African realities through a multi-systemic approach renewable energy networks, digital commons, platform cooperatives, knowledge economies, local autonomy, and innovation diffusion. The argument is supported by empirical research across development studies, ecological economics, political theory, and anthropology. It concludes that post-scarcity development must be neither anti-modern nor anti-market, but rather hybrid, pluriversal and systemic.