Answer:
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
In the next five years, Sub-Saharan Africa will become more populous, youthful, urban, mobile, educated, and networked. Projected rates of population growth for the region are the world’s highest and, with no likely imminent changes to the longstanding gender inequality issues that are largely driving high fertility, the sheer scale of the population increase will strain food and water resources, health care capacity, education, and urban infrastructure. These conditions will also generate increased migration outflows where economic growth is insufficient to support the population. As a result, a young, urban, and networked population will become the engine of economic and political dynamism, despite the waning of the geopolitical and economic trends that fueled the region’s strong performance in the past decade. At the same time, a growing population of educated and urban youth will strengthen existing trends of religious affiliation and of protests fueled by dissatisfaction with corruption, rising inflation, high unemployment, and poor government performance. In such conditions, complex security problems will mount, ethnic tension escalate, and religious extremism, particularly radical Islam and fundamentalist Christianity, will spread even further.
The region is likely to suffer from insufficient economic growth and job creation, putting a premium on good governance and further overwhelming the abilities of most governments, very few of which have implemented policies and have infrastructure—or the educated workforces—to secure “demographic dividend” economic growth by adding productive new workers. Chinese demand for commodities—a windfall for African exporters in recent years—will moderate as China’s economy cools, and aid flows may decline as developed countries’ economies remain weak and growing humanitarian needs elsewhere compete for donors.
Mass mobilization, urbanization, and religious affiliation. Given the expansion of democracy—there are more democratically elected governments in Africa today than since decolonization in the early 1960s—African publics will increasingly use protests and political action to shape government policy and drive societal change. Nevertheless, some experts warn that democracy has stalled or even reversed; the majority of these young democracies remain weak, and corrupt and badly fractured states—including the latest addition, South Sudan. The process of democratic deepening in the medium and longer term will rely on the success of a growing number of assertive civil society organizations in challenging election results, unpopular economic policies, overzealous security agencies, human rights abuses, and unwanted constitutional amendments. In this regard, Africa’s growing urban populations become crucial to democratization because the vast majority of civil society organization members will live in cities.
Rapid urbanization is also likely to stress marginal infrastructure, however, and this will combine with the increased visibility of corruption to fuel public frustration with governments’ failures to provide services. First-generation city dwellers tend to be more religious than subsequent generations, and urbanization will boost religious affiliation, possibly giving rise to religion-based conflict. Urbanization can also boost public participation in governance, potentially raising tension between political groups or serving as an engine of nation building that helps blend Africa’s mosaic of ethnicities and religions. These divergent possibilities highlight the importance of sustaining African-driven good-governance efforts through regional and subregional institutions such as the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, the East African Community, and the South African Development Community.
