A new global research from the Project Management Institute (PMI) has revealed that project complexity is emerging as a prominent threat to successful project delivery across Sub-Saharan Africa.

According to the PMI’s latest Pulse of the Profession® report, Driving Success in Complex Projects: From Navigating Tasks to Navigating Systems, the finding shows that projects are increasingly facing missed deadlines, decision bottlenecks, and pressure on teams as organisations race to deliver transformation amid rapid change.

The report, based on insights from project professionals and senior leaders across 35 countries, shows that 81 per cent of project professionals globally believe projects have become more complex in recent years, with 37 per cent describing the increase as significant. This increase in complexity is being driven by a combination of organisational, environmental, and human factors, including AI adoption, shifting stakeholder expectations, economic volatility, and increasingly interconnected systems.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the research highlights a particularly strong pattern of delivery disruption. According to PMI’s regional findings, missed delivery deadlines (44%) stand significantly above the global average (35%), while delays in stakeholder decision-making (41% vs. 34% for global) are emerging as another major friction point for organisations across the region. The findings suggest that complexity is increasingly slowing value alignment, approvals, and execution, creating governance bottlenecks that compound delivery challenges. Team morale is also under pressure, with 23% of regional respondents citing decreased morale as a consequence of poorly managed complexity, compared to 19% globally.

“These findings reflect the realities many organisations across Africa are already facing,” said George Asamani, MD, PMI Sub-Saharan Africa. “Africa is currently undertaking some of the world’s most ambitious transformation agendas, from infrastructure and industrialisation to digital inclusion, energy access, fintech innovation, and public-sector reform. But as the scale of ambition grows, so does the complexity behind execution.”

“As organisations attempt to deliver more projects faster, many are discovering that traditional approaches focused purely on timelines and tasks are no longer enough. Success today depends on the ability to navigate interconnected systems, align stakeholders quickly, adapt to change continuously, and build resilient teams capable of operating in uncertainty,” he added.

The report identifies three major dimensions of complexity globally: organisational, environmental, and human. Organisational complexity includes unclear governance structures, siloed teams, and competing priorities that make alignment and execution more difficult.

Environmental complexity is driven by rapid AI disruption, geopolitical shifts, regulatory volatility, and broader market uncertainty, forces reshaping project environments faster than many organisations can adapt.

Human complexity, meanwhile, is the social and cognitive dimension: competing incentives, political dynamics, and relationship pressures that affect how decisions get made, how teams build confidence, and how effectively people can lead through uncertainty.