We are living through an era I call political creative destruction (PCD), a period in which governing institutions, elite settlements, policy orthodoxies and legitimacy frameworks are being weakened faster than credible replacements are built. Populism, technological acceleration, fiscal stress, geopolitical rivalry and collapsing public trust are no longer temporary disruptions; they are structural conditions of the age. So as PCD unfolds, these are the key trends to look out for in 2026.
Anchor states adrift
Southern and West Africa are not weak for lack of resources, but because their anchor states cannot project coherent regional doctrines. South Africa and Nigeria have the scale, markets and talent to lead, yet struggle to generate internal cohesion and shared prosperity. That creates space for figures such as Namibian President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah and leaders from the Confederation of Sahel States, including Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, to shape regional agendas.
From raw ores to hard bargains
The race for critical raw materials has moved beyond counting reserves to enforcing a full journey from geology to industrial capability. For African governments, 2026 will be about locking in contracts that marry extraction with processing and manufacturing at home, as hybrid mining, refining and state-linked agreements spread across the continent.
Statecraft decides the new scramble
The new scramble for Africa is less about flags on maps and more about the quality of statecraft. China thinks in decades and builds economic position; Russia sells security and regime insurance; the UAE pursues selective (if not destructive) leverage; the US looks for renewed relevance. Too many African elites, by contrast, still take deals that are detached from any serious national or regional project, exposing a stark asymmetry between integrated external strategies and fragmented African responses.
Tech-led financialisation: speculative economics
The most consequential technological shift is not simply big tech’s clout, but the way that AI and talk of artificial general intelligence are reshaping economic imagination faster than regulators can keep up. Capital is increasingly allocated based on hype rather than productivity or institutional readiness, while dependence on foreign cloud infrastructure and AI models hardwires vulnerability into the economic architecture of South Africa and much of the Global South.
EU-UK vassal state-ism deadlock
The EU and the UK increasingly act less like independent strategic players and more like security dependents of Washington. Their response to Russia shows how moralised narratives can stand in for hard-headed settlement, leaving African states to navigate an anxious Europe and a cautious UK that prioritise borders and security over industrial autonomy, yet still seek influence on the continent.
2026 is not about choosing sides but about recognising that the world is reorganising around power, leverage and technological control
South Africa’s stable stasis
South Africa’s post‑2024 settlement delivered calm rather than renewal. Coalition deals preserved macroeconomic and institutional continuity, but most serious reforms were already baked in before voters went to the polls. The country is stable but doctrinally thin, with no convincing growth, jobs or industrial story to tell its citizens.
Local polls as an early-warning flare
The 2026/2027 local government elections will act as a leading indicator of South Africa’s political trajectory towards 2034. Local government has become the state’s primary early-warning system: coalition arithmetic, administrative decay and infrastructure failure surface here first.
Trump graduates from Padawan to McKinley mimesis Jedi
US President Donald Trump’s admiration for president William McKinley is not mere nostalgia. McKinley fused tariffs, overseas expansion, naval power, monetary discipline and coercive diplomacy into a single project of national power, and Trump now signals a similar fusion through politicised supply chains, technological control and economic coercion.
Asean’s lesson in hedging
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ importance in 2026 rests on its refusal to back a single patron. By pairing growth and regional integration with careful hedging between great powers, Asean governments offer a pragmatic response to PCD that values resilience and room for manoeuvre over ideological purity.
The danger of hubristic collision
Thread these trends together and a defining risk emerges: miscalculation among major powers under conditions of uncertainty. When governments repeatedly test each other’s red lines, and each side overestimates its capacity to absorb pain, the odds of an “accident” with global consequences rise uncomfortably fast.
For South Africa’s governing and business elites, 2026 is not about choosing sides but about recognising that the world is reorganising around power, leverage and technological control. Those who fail to rethink national interest, strategy and institutional capability will not be neutral; they will simply be managed by others.
Pooe is an associate professor at the Wits School of Governance; he writes in his personal capacity
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