Will we be happy? Will we be rich? Ask Nkosazana

 

By Charles Onyango-Obbo0
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On the first day of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa last Thursday, chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma read out an “e-mail from the future.”

The e-mail, written to a hypothetical “Kwame Nkrom” by “Nkosazana,” painted a rosy picture of Africa in 2063. That Africa is a global manufacturing hub, a knowledge centre. It is a very bright continent, lit up hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, and good old fossil energy.

And most significantly, it is an Africa at peace with itself, having sorted out the root causes of disastrous conflicts.

So, how likely is any of this? For its size, Africa is sparsely populated so one could say it has lots of room to grow. Demographers speak of a “dramatic boom” in Africa’s population over the next 90 years. Some projections have Africa’s population at a whopping three billion by 2065 (to round off Nkosazana’s 2063).

But even before it gets there, by 2050, Nigeria with about 420 million people, would have surpassed the United States’ 400 million as the world’s third most populous country — after China, which by then is projected at 1.4 billion, and India at 1.6 billion.

Most Africans will be living in cities, and there will be so many mouths to feed, all the food that the continent grows will be consumed by its citizens. So, Africa will not be exporting food in 2065. It will be importing lots of it, but because it will be richer, it will be able to afford it.

My sense, though, is that most food will be synthetic and manufactured in factories, not grown, by 2065.

Africa will be lit, yes, but I don’t see a very long future for fossil fuels and hydropower energy. First, the leading technological nations will long have shifted to renewable energies, and solar and geothermal will be the stars.

If geothermal and solar are king, they will create an unusual mix of African superpowers, mostly of those nations that have already shown an appetite for it — Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Namibia, Djibouti, Senegal, Botswana and from North Africa, Tunisia. The only fossil power nation that will be at the African Big 15 table will be Nigeria.

But the leading source of wealth in Africa, and also of raw power, in Africa could also be the resource that is running out fastest — water. If water is decisive, that power league will look different. Tanzania will be among the big hitters, along with Congo-Brazzaville, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, and the likes of Mozambique.

Being the AU summit, it is understandable that Dlamini-Zuma avoided the one reality that is more certain than a rich Africa in 2065 — a more fractured continent.

In fact, for Africa to become very rich, many of the present 54 nations will need to break down further into practical bits.

Don’t be surprised if there are at least 65 new African nations by 2065. My candidates for breakup: Nigeria, Cameroon, DR Congo, Kenya, Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, Mali, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, and Cote d’Ivoire. Fifty years to go.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com. Twitter: @cobbo3