Major threats and

opportunities facing
African states,
Dr. Mung’ale, A.
INTRODUCTION
• Africa is currently facing major threats which hinders its effective
political stability, economic development, peace and security.
Major Threats
• Radicalization and violence extremism
• It is a global phenomenon, generated by the uncontrolled dissemination of
extremist ideology.
• It poses a distinctive threat to Africa partly because many African countries have
high conditions of poverty, poor governance & weakening social networks.
• Africa has been experiencing a steady increase of violent extremism over the past
decade. This escalation has been characterized in recent years by an upsurge of
violence targeting civilians. In 2021, a quarter of all violent extremist attacks were
on civilians. This compares to 14 percent in 2016.
• The frequency of attacks against civilians has varied in Africa’s major theatres of
violent extremism—the Sahel, Somalia, the Lake Chad Basin, northern
Mozambique, and North Africa. —
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Radicalization and violent extremism has taken on a transnational nature
where groups operate in multiple countries or include recruits from different
nationalities.
• What concrete and practical measures can African nations take, working at the
national, regional, and international levels, to better counter VEOs on the
continent?
• What kinds of drivers of violent extremism could security assistance, as well as
development and governance work by U.S. partners, help to address on the
local level in Sahelian communities or communities in other theaters of VEO
activity?
• How can the counter VEO focus of the 2022 U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan
Africa be successfully implemented?
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Transnational organized crimes (TOC)
• There is no single definition of organized crime, but the UN’s Palermo
Convention – which most African countries have ratified – defines “organized
criminal groups” as three or more people, existing for a period of time, that
act together with the aim of committing at least one crime punishable by
four years’ incarceration in order to obtain a financial/material benefit.
Organized crime is transnational when activities and their effects cross
national borders.
• TOC is a growing security challenge in Africa, and one that is frequently linked
to violent extremism because of the overlapping of criminal networks and
violent extremist organizations in geographic areas like northern Mali, Lake
Chad Basin, and Horn of Africa.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• The abundance of forest and minerals has made Africa countries
vulnerable to TOC. The criminal exploits the world’s second largest
rainforest in the Congo Basin and which produces over 30% of the
world’s “critical minerals.” Both of these types of natural resources
are exploited conveniently by organized criminal actors and have
adverse effects not only on national security (through conflict and
insurgency) but also on human security (through the availability of
sustainable, legal livelihoods).
 Major Threats, Cont’
• However, there are many forms of TOC in Africa, which are
perpetrated by a range of state and non-state actors. Human
trafficking, arms trafficking, and non-renewable resource crimes are
the three most widespread criminal markets across the continent.
• The state - embedded actors who facilitate TOC, do so with loosened
measures for accountable governance in place.
• TOC and political instability are mutually reinforcing, with the
commercial, criminal, and corrupt elements of TOC fostering political
economies that undermine development.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Natural Resource Discoveries
• During the past decade many valuable resources have been discovered
in previously resource-poor African countries, often in remote areas.
• While natural resources have the potential to finance development,
they also have the potential to catalyze violent conflict.
• Valuable resources have sometimes been a source of finance for rebel
groups, as with diamonds in Angola and Sierra Leone. They have also
raised the stakes for capturing power, while reducing the need for
accountability to citizens by displacing taxes as the primary source of
state revenue.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• The resource endowed region may use it as an incentive to try to
secede from the nation e.g. the Katanga region of Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC), and the Biafra region of Nigeria.
• Africa is a continent well-endowed with natural resources, among
them 30% of the world’s mineral reserves and the fact that it is the
world’s largest arable land mass (African Natural Resources Center
2015). These riches have, however, not led to concomitant
development (Beegle, Christiaensen, Dabalen & Gaddis 2016). In
addition, the natural resources have caused or fuelled numerous
conflicts, earning them the reputation of being a curse rather than a
blessing.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Resource-based conflicts have destabilized countries, weakened or
changed regimes, displaced people and had a negative impact on
development. They have not been bound by borders and include an
array of actors, from local to transnational. In some cases the
resource-based conflicts have been used to create tight control over
the state and thus over the resources too (Humphreys 2005) and in
others they have taken place with no regard for the state at all. In
addition to competition for control, factors such as climate change,
population growth, poor governance, availability of arms and
unsustainable and inequitable exploitation have further fuelled
resource conflicts.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• spatial identification, race, and so on. These exclusionary identity
loyalties may be strengthened by socio-economic-cultural political
grievances and thus contribute to the ‘othering’ or ‘dehumanisation’
of some groups. In Africa it has been found that the most important
social bonds are ethnic and regional identity (Erdmann 2004). In
addition, in many African countries there are competing loyalties,
divided among national, ethnic, religious and other lines (Sjorgen
2015). Rwanda, Kenya, Nigeria and Mali have all suffered from conflict
fuelled by identity issues.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Maritime security
• The African maritime industry or “blue economy,” in terms of fisheries,
minerals, hydrocarbons, tourism, and trade from thirty- eight costal countries
and six islands, is estimated to be worth US$ 1 trillion per year. Besides such
economic potential, over 90 percent of African exports and imports are
transported by water.
• While there is much potential, there is a tendency towards “sea blindness” and
to ignore the maritime domain and its centrality to African economic growth as
well as its security and defense.
• The maritime space has been a theater of criminal activities and is host to a
web of security threats, from Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing
(IUU), drug trafficking, natural resource theft, piracy, and armed robbery at sea.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• The protection of Africa’s maritime space and resources is a strategic security
concern of both costal countries and landlocked countries. Accordingly, the
maritime domain has become a focus of the AU Agenda 2063 and the subject
of the 2050 Africa’s Integrated Maritime Strategy (AIMS).
• Both recognize the maritime domain’s pivotal role as a catalyst for Africa’s
economic resurgence and socio-economic change. The Lomé Charter was
adopted in 2016 by the AU as a binding maritime security and safety charter
with focus on security provisions of the 2050 AIM Strategy.
• AU commitments are linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development
Goal 14, which promotes the sustainable use of oceans, seas, and marine
resources, including for development.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Several strategies have been established to improve maritime security
however, implementation of these strategies by moving them from
“paper to practice” and from “policy silo to policy integration” is
challenging, as it requires effective coordination, information flow,
and holistically addressing various maritime issues that are
interconnected.
• What is the economic potential of the African maritime space and do
you think this potential is being fully realized? Why or why not?
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Foreign Aid
• The aid relationship has created a condition of economic subservience
and of a master-servant relationship that could generate persistent
seeking and lobbying for foreign aid through borrowing.
• Moyo argues that aid was not working in Africa because it interfered
with development as the money always ended up in the hands of a
small chosen few, making aid a form of taxing the poor in the west to
enrich the new elites in former colonies.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• The Climate change
• Climate change has raised a debate among African countries, the main
concern being how to balance between economic development and
environmental sustainability.
• Developing countries have argued that they need to follow the same path
for them to industrialize and reach desired levels of development.
• With the debate on reducing emissions, developing countries have
demanded four aspects to be met for them to comply with the demands of
the West. First they want financing for adaptation, mitigation, capacity
building and technology transfer, demands that the west have been
reluctant to finance.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Political failure of States
• The post-colonial States remain incapable of fully imposing their
authority on all parts of their territory.
• Many African states are suffering from chronically poor governance
which is mortgaging its future. Some states have no ability to exercise
their sovereign powers over the full extent of their territory is the main
reason behind the increased risk of destabilisation and armed conflict. A
fragile State is a potential target for the forces of anarchy.
• While elections have been taking place on the continent, these have not
necessarily led to liberal democracy but to ‘illiberal democracy’ (Fareed
Zakaria).
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Volatile economy
• Volatile mix of economic disparities has provided the ideal recipe for
sustained conflict within African polities, laying the seeds of state
failure or state collapse. In the index of the Failed State Index issued
by the US-based Fund for Peace, the top five positions are all
occupied by African states: Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Sudan, South Sudan and Chad.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Coups d’état
• The African state has lurched from crisis to crisis since achieving independence.
Post-colonial Africa has experienced 85 coups d’état and this figure passes 100 if
one takes into consideration the various bloody failed attempts at regime change
by various national militaries.
• Between 1945 and 2000 there have been 95 conflicts on the continent with over
45 being civil wars. To compound matters further, Africa has hosted some of the
longest-running conflicts in recent times.
• Consider here the fratricidal conflicts in Chad and Sudan lasting four decades or
the almost three-decade-long civil war in Angola, or the fact that the sixteen
West African states have experienced 82 forms of political conflict, including 44
military coups.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Although successful military coups have been very few in recent
years, the military continues to threaten democratic rule through
attempted coups and by exerting hidden forms of political influence
and interference. The Security Sector Reform (SSR) agenda has been
taken on board by many southern African countries, but application
and results have been mixed. The challenges of consolidating
democratic political control over the military in Africa thus remain.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Armed conflicts
• During the past six decades, the African continent has seen some very
bloody conflicts, such as the Biafran War in Nigeria in the 60s and 70s,
the Congo Wars in the 90s, as well as the Rwandan genocide and the
Ethiopian and Eritrean war in 1999–2000, and the civil wars in Sierra
Leone and Liberia.
• The common view is that there are a vast number of conflicts in Africa
and, in fact, 2015 and 2016 were the two years with by far the most
conflicts since 1946.
• State base conflicts and non state conflicts
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Unemployment
• 60% youth unemployment in Africa and many underemployed,
• especially the most educated.
• Unemployment in most African countries is exceptionally high, even
in the most developed economies such as South Africa (where it is
over 20 percent according to government statistics), and most
economies are dominated by the informal sector and by subsistence
agriculture. This situation, compounded by low levels of education
and literacy, makes for limited life chances.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Environmental changes
• Impact of drought & famines,
• food shortages on nutrition, particularly in the Horn of Africa
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Technological challenges
• Africa lags behind in connectivity and internet access …only 3 out of
1000 are internet users in Sierra Leone …1 out of 1000 has a
computer in Niger.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• POVERTY, INEQUALITY, AND MARGINALIZATION
• Overwhelming poverty, marginalization, and inequality within and
between states, exacerbated in many cases by globalization, remains
the bedrock of human insecurity in Africa. Most African states are
characterized by massive (and often increasing) poverty and inequality.
• Most are indebted and dependent on aid, trade, and investment flows
from developed countries, resulting in a lack of “horizontal
integration,” “debt traps,” and dependence.
• While rates of economic growth have increased in many countries in
recent years, this has been accompanied by deepening inequality.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Human development challenges have been exacerbated by the
HIV/AIDS pandemic, which is worse in southern Africa than anywhere
else. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)
calculated in 2006 that there were nearly 14.8 million people in SADC
countries with HIV, an overall prevalence rate of 15.4 percent (ranging
from 0.5 percent in Madagascar to 33.4 percent in Swaziland), and
that over a million people died of AIDS in 2005—around 3,000 per
day. While there is little evidence that the pandemic is leading to state
collapse, it clearly puts additional pressures on states to meet the
human security needs of citizens, particularly on its ability to deliver
at a local level.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• GOVERNANCE ISSUES
• Weaknesses and failures of governance probably constitute the single most
important threat to the security of both citizens and states. while the vast
majority of African states have embarked on democratic transitions, these efforts
have not necessarily culminated in consolidated democracies, or for that matter
improvements in human security, at least when it comes to “freedom from want.”
In the SADC region, HDI indicators have declined overall since 1990 despite (or
perhaps because of) democratization. Traditions of one party governance and
authoritarianism run deep; old patterns of behavior, where the party is supreme
are profoundly entrenched. This is exacerbated in countries where former
liberation movements or former ruling parties under one-party constitutions
continue to hold power. This makes democratic transitions difficult.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Corruption, nepotism, informality, and presidentialism remain rife,
especially in countries such as the DRC and Angola, where elites
continue to rule in non trans-parent ways. This extends to the security
sector, and the actual practice of security sector governance often
remains opaque and personalized.
• There is in many countries a lack of military and security
professionalism, with soldiers and other security personnel violating
human rights; carrying out abuses in support of particular political
causes or self-interest; and extracting resources for their own survival
or self-enrichment.
 Major Threats, Cont’
• Transitions from war to peace, from authoritarianism or one-party
rule to democracy, from a socialist to a capitalist orientation, have
proved extremely difficult and in some cases have been associated
with new forms of conflict. Until recently, violent internecine and
fratricidal conflicts have continued to plague the region. While these
conflicts have ended, with the important exception of the eastern
DRC, disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) has
proved challenging and is often incomplete. While not a cause of
conflict per se, the continued proliferation of small arms and light
weapons certainly makes it easier for conflicts to escalate should they
begin.
 Opportunities in Africa
• Demographic growth
• The high population of youth in Africa is a great asset or potential risk.
• 1 billion people today,
• 2.3 billion by 2050
• Africa is the.. Most populous continent after Asia
• Youngest region in the world ..And will have the largest workforce by
2040 surpassing China and India
 Opportunities in Africa, Cont’
• Technology wave
• The total African mobile subscriber base is roughly 281 million and
expected to reach 561 million in 2012
 Opportunities in Africa, Cont’
• Political shifts…less conflict.. more demand for voice and
accountability
• Political stability
• Effective governments
• Rule of law
• Voice and accountability
• Control of corruption
 Opportunities in Africa, Cont’
• Rapid economic growth
• Technological revolution
• Political transformation
• Environmental challenges
• Aid landscape
• Environmental changes