February marks a decade since the start of the “Afro-Arab Spring”. Led by technology-savvy youths, these revolutions toppled mummified dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. About 60% of Africa’s population is under the age of 25, and the future belongs to them despite the obstinate refusal of geriatric rulers to leave the political stage.
Young people are on the march in Sudan, Algeria, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Mali, Angola and Nigeria. Discontent could spread across the continent, with many leviathans unable to maintain security over their territories. These events are occurring amid a global pandemic that has devastated local economies and triggered widespread indebtedness and joblessness, even as an African Continental Free-Trade Area (AfCFTA) has euphorically been declared into existence.
In assessing Africa’s prospects in 2021, we must embark on an arduous voyage from the Cape to Cairo. In Southern Africa, SA accounts for 60% of the economy, even as it struggles to rein in public debt that is headed for 80% of GDP in 2021. Angola’s government debt represents more than 100% of its GDP. In neighbouring Mozambique, a three-year Islamist insurgency, which has spread as far as Tanzania, will continue to rage in the country’s gas-rich northern province of Cabo Delgado.
In Central Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Cameroon account for about 63% of the subregion’s economy, but both are racked by conflicts. The situation will be further worsened by the continuing political squabbling between Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi and his predecessor, Joseph Kabila.
New AU chair Tshisekedi will continue efforts with Luanda to improve ties between Kigali and Kampala. If care is not taken, Cameroon’s secessionist anglophone movement in its “Wild West” could culminate in civil conflict.
In neighbouring Central African Republic, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra looks more like “the mayor of Bangui”, as assorted militia continue to roam across his country.
The 5,000-strong French force in the Sahel has utterly failed to establish a Pax Gallica, and the neocolonial gendarme has proved to be an invalid force in the region
The 5,000-strong French force in the Sahel has utterly failed to establish a Pax Gallica, and the neocolonial gendarme has proved to be an invalid force in the region.
In Eastern Africa, regional powers Ethiopia and Kenya account for 60% of the subregional economy. Ethiopia’s prime minister and Nobel peace laureate, Abiy Ahmed, has gone to war to pacify the Tigray region. Maintaining social peace among the country’s feuding regions will remain a big challenge in 2021.
Kenya has recently assumed a two-year seat as a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council, though its debt remains more than 65% of its GDP and the government is struggling to repay Chinese loans on its $3.5bn Mombasa-Nairobi railway.
Rwanda and Uganda, long-ruling Western-backed autocrats, will continue to repress media freedom and human rights. Further afield, 230 refugees were killed in Darfur in January even as the UN continues to withdraw its peacekeepers, while more than 4-million people have been displaced in South Sudan.
In West Africa, Nigeria accounts for 64% of the subregional economy. Anarchy has spread across the country involving terrorist attacks, murderous herdsmen, ransom-seeking kidnappings and lawless lynch mobs. Nigeria could face more youth-led protests in 2021. Subregional security will further be compromised by instability in Mali and Burkina Faso. Messianic marabouts in Guinea, Ivory Coast and Togo will also continue to fuel instability, having extended their presidential tenures beyond two terms.
Returning to the North African cradle of the Afro-Arab Spring, only in Tunisia has a functioning, though fragile, democracy been established. Egypt — accounting for 50% of the subregional economy — continues to be led by an autocratic pharaoh in Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, while Libya remains divided by cantankerous warlords and foreign meddlers. Street protests will doubtless continue in Algeria: the traditional “mecca of revolutionaries”.
The continent’s youth are on an unstoppable march towards the future. Will they make this Africa’s “Year of Revolution”?
• Adebajo is a professor and director of the University of Johannesburg’s Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation.
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