What is Africa going to do about China and the US as rivalries between the two superpowers intensify? What about the continent’s young people, tired of their old and unimaginative leaders? How quickly can we make the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) — launched on January 1 and aimed at bringing together our 1.3-billion people into a $3.4-trillion economic bloc — really work?
Despite the headlines, the havoc wreaked by the Covid-19 pandemic is not the only trend we have to look out for in 2021. There are many others — from migration to climate change to geopolitics — that we will need to grapple with if we are to lift the continent out of its challenged state. In SA xenophobia, local government elections and economic devastation are trends which will require our attention.
The US and the UK have in recent years gone hawkish on China. Outgoing US President Donald Trump has had guns blazing against China. The UK, which just five years ago was looking to the East as the next great frontier in its business relationships, has similarly gone frosty on China.
Africa, on the other hand, has kept its arms wide open to both China and the US. Don’t raise the thorny issue of what China is doing to its own people, the Uyghurs. Don’t mention Trump’s attempts to reverse the outcome of a free and fair election either. Africa’s voice on human rights has gone deathly quiet on China, and its tongue cannot be found when the US president flouts democratic norms and practices.
The continent will increasingly become a playground for Chinese and US geopolitical games. Its leaders need to be thinking about this very carefully. Two elephants are about to have a huge fight. Africa will be trampled on — if it allows itself to be. Can we rely on the AU to be thinking this strategically?
Africa’s young people will not be kept quiet any longer. They demand answers. Watch the young people this year
In the meantime, some key democracies on the continent are fraying. Uganda and Zimbabwe, among others, are arresting opposition leaders, journalists and activists with impunity. Not a single country on the continent — except brave and doughty Botswana — raises its voice against these outrages. What is the point of the AU when it cannot speak up on such issues? Or has it, like the Organisation of African Unity of yore, now become a protector of corrupt old men?
Young people will not stand for it. Many African leaders go on international platforms and speak of Africa’s demographic dividend — the fact that our future success lies with our young population. As we have seen with the anti-police brutality protests in Nigeria, young people everywhere are beginning to realise that they have been given a bum steer for too long by corrupt leaders.
They have learnt from the Black Lives Matter movement and other struggles. They will not be kept quiet any longer. They demand answers. Watch the young people this year.
Stability will elude parts of the continent. The sheer failure of the region to respond to alarming events in Mozambique is a tragedy for that country and for all of us. Such outbreaks will continue — and instigators and perpetrators now know that the regional organisations and the AU will fold their arms and watch.
Around the world countries are becoming insular. The UK has broken away from the EU. The effects will be felt for decades to come. We are moving away from the globalised world we foresaw in the 1990s to an insular dispensation. Africa will feel the effects — positive and negative.
Finally, the big men of the world are thriving. Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, described by The New York Times as "an icon to Europe’s far Right and a harsh critic of Brussels and European elites", is among many figures emerging with their hands tightly around their nations’ necks. Expect Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe and John Magufuli of Tanzania to embrace the tactics of these illiberal leaders.
So, what’s good? AfCFTA is good. Mobilised young people are good. Activism on issues such as global vaccine equity is good. It’s challenging, but it’s not all bad.
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