Cambodia, 1-3 July 2026 – Cambodia has taken a decisive step toward embedding strategic foresight into national policymaking with the launch of its first National Modular Foresight Training. Organized by PAGE and UNDP in cooperation with the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), the three-day workshop on Foresight Foundations and Horizon Scanning brought together 70 members of the inter-ministerial Foresight Technical Working Group (TWG), representing 20 government ministries and institutions. It is the first in a series of three trainings scheduled for 2026, marking the transition of Cambodia’s foresight agenda from design into applied delivery.
04 August 2026
Cambodia Launches First National Modular Foresight Training to Future-Proof Its Development Path
Why Foresight, Why Now
Cambodia’s Pentagonal Strategy – Phase I and Vision 2050 set an ambitious course toward upper-middle-income status and, ultimately, a high-income, carbon-neutral economy by 2050. Yet the country’s development trajectory is increasingly shaped by structural uncertainties: technological disruption, climate vulnerability, demographic shifts, geopolitical fragmentation, and the reconfiguration of global trade – all against the backdrop of Cambodia’s scheduled graduation from Least Developed Country status in 2029.
Conventional planning tools, built for slower and more predictable cycles, are no longer sufficient to navigate these interconnected shocks. Strategic foresight offers a structured, evidence-based approach to anticipate trends, stress-test long-term economic strategies, and embed risk analysis into national planning – helping identify tomorrow’s growth drivers early and proactively navigate challenges such as the middle-income trap.
Building an Institutional Home for Foresight
The training builds on Cambodia’s National Foresight Roadmap 2025–2030, supported by UNDP and PAGE. Its institutional anchor is the inter-ministerial Foresight Technical Working Group, formally established under MEF leadership in August 2025 to track the trends shaping Cambodia’s economy, flag emerging risks, and identify new sources of growth. Following the group’s inaugural workshop in November 2025 and a scoping and validation mission in March 2026, the roadmap has entered its capacity-building phase — the stage PAGE is helping deliver. The goal is to make foresight a permanent government capability rather than a one-off exercise: building skills, securing political ownership, and embedding anticipatory analysis across ministries. Fittingly, PAGE’s support is anchored in its core agenda in the country: Cambodia’s green and just transition, which served as the live case study running through the workshop.
Learning by Doing on the Green Transition
True to a “learning-by-doing” method, participants worked on a live sectoral study of Cambodia’s green and just transition rather than abstract exercises. Over three days, they built practical competence in horizon scanning and uncertainty framing, and produced tangible outputs: working in groups, they surfaced underlying assumptions, scanned their sectors for early signals of change, and grouped those signals into thematic clusters. These were consolidated into a single cluster map: a concrete evidence base that feeds directly into the second training of the series and into Cambodia’s broader national foresight work.
Looking Ahead
Two more modular trainings will follow in 2026, progressively deepening the Working Group’s capabilities as Cambodia builds a lasting foresight ecosystem. The approach also echoes across PAGE’s wider portfolio: its forthcoming Future-proofing Business and the Economy executive programme, delivered with the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, will put senior leaders through similar scenario and foresight exercises to test business and policy pathways against a fast-changing global landscape.
