A Vision of Africa's Future

Giovanni Carbone Africa is a fast-changing continent and an area of rising FUTURE AFRICA’S VISION OF A hththrt hhhghrtrtrgfgeteceq global relevance, where major transformation processes recrwcrwqrercqwcaxeqwcre. are currently underway, from demographic expansion A VISION OF Founded in 1934, ISPI is to economic development, from social progress to an independent think tank environmental challenges, from technological innovation to AFRICA’S FUTURE committed to the study of continental integration, from political change to migratory international political and pressures. How will these complex transformations shape Mapping Change, Transformations economic dynamics. the Africa of tomorrow? It is the only Italian institute This Report sets out a vision for Africa’s future based on and Trajectories towards 2030 – and one of the very few in five key traits: an archipelago of heterogeneous growth Europe – to combine research activities with a significant trajectories; the revolutionary impact of technological edited by Giovanni Carbone commitment to training, events, leapfrogging; regional integration and the growing role and global risk analysis for of sub-regional processes; the clustering of instability introduction by Paolo Magri companies and institutions. mainly around the core of the region; and the migration ISPI favours an interdisciplinary movements that originate from – but also predominantly and policy-oriented approach remain within – the African continent. made possible by a research team of over 50 analysts and an international network of 70 universities, think tanks, and research centres. In the ranking issued by the University of Pennsylvania, ISPI placed first worldwide as the “Think Tank to Watch in 2018”. € 12 A Vision of Africa’s Future mapping change, transformations and trajectories towards 2030 edited by Giovanni Carbone © 2018 Ledizioni LediPublishing Via Alamanni, 11 – 20141 Milano – Italy www.ledizioni.it [email protected] A Vision of Africa’s Future. Mapping Change, Transformations and Trajectories towards 2030 Edited by Giovanni Carbone First edition: September 2018 The analyses in this report were finalized in June 2018. The study was conducted as part of a project funded by the Directorate General for Global Affairs of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not reflect the views of ISPI or the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. Print ISBN 9788867058266 ePub ISBN 9788867058259 Pdf ISBN 9788867058273 DOI 10.14672/67058266 ISPI. Via Clerici, 5 20121, Milano www.ispionline.it Catalogue and reprints information: www.ledizioni.it Table of Contents Introduction........................................................................ 7 Paolo Magri 1. Mapping Change in Africa............................................. 15 Giovanni Carbone 2. Africa’s Multi-Speed Growth Prospects: Diverging Policy Options?............................................... 41 Thang Nguyen-Quoc, Arthur Minsat, Rodrigo Deiana 3. Sub-Regions First: The Role and Evolution of Regional Economic Communities in Africa................ 69 Brendan Vickers 4. Faster Than Expected? Technological Progress and Connectivity in Africa.............................................. 93 Michael Minges 5. Peace and Security Challenges in Africa........................... 111 Clionadh Raleigh 6. Exploring Intra- and Extra-Continental African Migration: Trends, Drivers and Policy Options......................................................... 143 Richard Mallett 7. Human Development, Education and Mobility.............. 173 Sara de Simone 8. Conclusions and Policy Implications................................ 197 Giovanni Carbone, Tiziana Corda List of Acronyms..................................................................213 The Authors.........................................................................219 Introduction Exploring Africa’s futures means telling a story of recent and ongoing fast-paced transformations. In recent years, economic, socio-political and technological changes have been thriving throughout the continent. This picture of Africa steadily dis- tanced the continent from images of poverty, conflict, passivity, and paved the way for the “Africa rising” narrative. While the challenges impeding development and progress are still many, the opportunities the continent offers are greater than ever, for locals and foreigners alike. African institutions and citizens are assertively taking control over such opportunities by increasingly tackling issues pertain- ing to Africa, from security to development, from innovation to governance. Far gone are the days in which the role played by African actors on the international stage was non-influential. In a global context where the hegemony of traditional powers is challenged by emerging ones, Africa’s participation in global affairs is finding new spaces for enhancing its bargaining power. This applies to trade as well as aid, in sectors as different as agriculture and green technologies, education and infrastructure and so forth. In this context, traditional foreign actors and emerging ones have showed (renewed) interest in Africa, attracted not only by the region’s wealth of natural resources, but also by Africa’s one billion consumers’ untapped potential. The shift from aid to investment – with foreign direct investment currently exceed- ing aid – is an indicator of how the balance of power between Africa and the rest of the world is levelling out, reducing the divide in global dynamics. 8 A Vision of Africa’s Future Transformations have involved virtually every field, as Giovanni Carbone puts it in the opening chapter of this volume. From demographic expansion and fast urbanisation to economic development, from social progress to environmental challenges, from technological innovation to continental integration, from political change to migratory pressures. And they are likely to continue at an even more accelerated pace over the next decades. By revealing why they matter for Africa’s futures, this volume focuses on seven major trends: Africa’s population, urbanisation, growth trajectories, continental economic and political integration, technological innovation, political stabil- ity, and migration. Africans quintupled from 229 million in 1950 to 1.2 billion today, and are expected to double to 2.5 billion in 2050, mak- ing up a quarter of the global population. Africa’s young social fabric (in 2050 the continent’s median age will still be under 25, projected to hit 35 only in 2100) will be hungry for energy and resources, and will act as one of the drivers of global con- sumption. It will be increasingly occupying urban areas, which have been expanding (and are expected to keep growing) at an annual rate of 3% from 2015-2020. This population flow into cities will translate into the emergence of megacities with more than 10 million citizens and a plethora of medium-sized urban centres, with rural areas becoming less central to Africans’ lives. However, although urban living correlates positively to development, more than half of Africa’s urban population currently lives in slums (projected to triple in size by 2050), showing that population increase only partially relates to wealth increase. In the period from 2000 to 2015, as Carbone notes, African economies grew at an unprecedented average annual rate of around 5%. The positive trend involved many countries: those that were already on track toward development, and those that weren’t. It also involved a variety of sectors, not only energy and mineral commodities but also ICTs, agriculture and more. This growth slowed down after 2015 due to the fall of commodi- ty prices but also climate-induced events such as droughts and Introduction 9 reduced agricultural production. Country trajectories started to diverge, with some countries continuing to grow fast (i.e. non-oil economies such as Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Rwanda, Senegal and Tanzania), while others have been experiencing a slowdown (i.e. regional giants Nigeria, Angola, South Africa, but also smaller economies such as Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe, Burundi). Against this background, Thang Nguyen-Quoc, Arthur Minsat and Rodrigo Deiana, challenge the belief that Africa as a whole is (still) rising. They argue that while in 2017 economic recovery began (at the continental lev- el), and the next 5 years should see a further slight increase in growth, Africa’s development will be unequal across sub-regions, with overall slower continental growth, if compared to the previous decade. This, in turn, will make it unlikely for the continent as a whole to meet the targets set by Agenda 2063 in its first 10-year implementation plan (2013-2023). However, ten of the world’s top twenty economies that are expected to record the highest growth rates between 2018 and 2022 are in sub-Saharan Africa. The lack of uniformity in development paths has had an impact on regional and continental efforts to enhance economic and political integration, such as the creation of Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), resulting in a rather uneven integration progress across Africa. While African leaders reached a consensus on the importance of integration to achieve growth and development, Brendan Vickers argues that for integration to work, it is not sufficient to make declaratory statements

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