Africa: A Sole Superpower In Incubation?

Fervent debates are currently underway aiming to predict the allocation of power in the future geopolitical stage. Economic analysts and futurists forecast the imminent downfall of the US-dominated status quo and herald a new, multipolar world order, where states such as China, Russia, and India vie with America neck and neck for global supremacy. Many of them altogether fail to appreciate Africa’s bright prospects. And hardly any go as far as to conceive that what today is the planet’s poorest region has every ingredient it takes, not only for being included in the power club, but also for evolving into the world’s next sole superpower.

There is one crucial step Africa has to take in order to claim its full potential: the step towards complete integration.

Panafricanism & the African Union

The idea of Panafricanism – that is the advocacy of a common cultural identity among all peoples of African descent – is not new. Its roots can be traced all the way back to the Atlantic slave trade and the colonial era, when it sought to promote solidarity among suffering Africans and unite them against their European oppressors. It gained prominence throughout Africa and the Americas and, besides revolutions, gave rise to socioreligious submovements such as Rastafarianism.

Starting with the onset of decolonization, the movement got at last institutionalized with the establishment of the Organization of African Unity in 1963. But despite its grand goals and aspirations, this entity achieved little more than help the entirety of the continent win its de jure independence. By the turn of the millennium, the continent was as ever dependent on and subjugated to foreign powers; ravaged by war, hunger, and disease.

A new promising initiative took place in 2001 when the OAU evolved into the contemporary African Union. The continent still remains by far the world’s poorest region, but nevertheless, remarkable progress has ever since been made in the areas of political stability, economic growth, poverty mitigation, food security, health improvement, education, and interstate cooperation, which culminated with the inauguration of the African Continent Free Trade Area – the world’s largest free-trade zone – on January the 1st of 2021. Under the aegis of unity, Africa seems to be emerging strong out of the bog of history. But how far can integration go?

Is complete African integration really feasible?

The AU was principally modeled after the EU. The latter has undoubtedly proven to be one of the most successful sociopolitical experiments in the history of mankind; pointedly terminating centuries-old feuds and transforming what historically was the globe’s major bloodbath arena into its peace-and-prosperity paradigm.

However, this astounding European project appears to recently have come to stagnation. The union lost one of its most critical members, and skepticism against it grows at an alarming rate among its citizens. But the very thing that constitutes the old continent’s main obstacle towards complete integration may be the dark continent’s ultimate solution to its acutest problem.

The gravest difficulty Europe has to overcome on its path towards final unification is, fundamentally, nationalism. All European member-states are constructed around tenacious national identities, based on long histories and resilient cultural and linguistic bonds. It is still a nearly unthinkable idea for most European individuals to relinquish their deep-rooted national heritages, their treasured traditions and languages, in favor of a Paneuropean identity. In 2021, the foundation of the United States of Europe still seems a theoretical, far-into-the-future prospect.

Nationalism served Europe well in the 19th and 20th centuries, when it facilitated the formation of the sophisticatedly complex states that were apt to operate the still-infant global trade networks and the industrialization that these entailed. But in the 21st century, the age of advanced economic globalization, nationalism hinders the integration Europe has to undergo to compete with superstates like the US and China.

The exact opposite case is true for Africa. The most profound problem the continent faced in the 20th century was the lack of nationalism – or the lack of any collective identity whatsoever broader than the family and the tribe. With a few exceptions, African countries are entirely arbitrary political entities, defined by Europeans over a blank map with absolutely no clue of whatever the hinterland may hide. Their inhabitants share no culture, language, and history to bind them together under a shared identity. No wonder the continent fell to tribalism and chaos after the colonizers’ departure. It’s like you put together in a big hall a few dozen representatives of each major religion and ask them to frame a new creed – but on a much larger scale… No easy task.

But it’s this past shortfall that makes Africans decidedly receptive towards the adoption of a novel, holistic identity that is relevant in the 21st century. Indeed, the Panafrican notion has already come a long way in permeating black societies in and out of Africa. Out of personal experience interacting with people throughout the continent and their diasporas, I have noticed that they have a definite tendency to foremostly identify themselves as Africans, and they will mention their country of origin in a similar fashion to an Italian man saying he comes from Tuscany.

Very much unlike Europeans, it’s hard to imagine any considerable factions of the African population opposing the procedures of the continent’s economic and political integration. After all, they have been subjected to a similar process for generations already, attending schools and dealing with bureaucracies in languages that are not their maternal ones, living side by side and working with people of diverse cultural backgrounds… It won’t make any psychological difference whether this takes place within the administrative framework of a state such as Nigeria or across the entire continent.

Some notable exceptions to this attitude exist. North Africa may feel inclined to align more with fellow Arabs in the Middle East instead of Subsaharan Africa. The Sahel, Somalia, and parts of the Congo basin may prove tough to be brought out of anarchy. Ethiopia will have to overcome its cultural superiority syndrome. The way ahead is surely full of hurdles, but these seem surmountable. In 2021, whether it will encompass the entire continent or part of it, to begin with, the foundation of the United States of Africa doesn’t seem a very remote possibility.

A united Africa as the world’s economic powerhouse

Such a new African superstate will embody the first race-wide nation in history and will be a momentous leap along humanity’s path towards a much-needed, complete globalization. Political cohesion across the continent will unequivocally put an end to its traditional miseries. A strong, universal identity will be forged among its inhabitants, which will eventually eclipse all remaining traces of tribalism. Increased cooperation and central planning will develop the infrastructure needed to vivify domestic production and intracontinental trade, stopping the region’s dependence on foreign aid. If the integration is carried out successfully, Africa will grow astonishingly through the 21st century. And if the following advantages the continent enjoys are appropriately leveraged, a united African state will march unstoppably on its way to becoming the world’s next superpower…

Demographics

The most obvious and salient advantage Africa will gain over the next few decades is, of course, its demographic composition. Whereas the developed world ages and China is on the threshold of utter demographic collapse, Africa’s population is growing – rapidly.

There is a popular notion that sees Africa’s ongoing baby boom as its doom, instead of its principal asset. This opinion only expresses a poor understanding of economics – in particular, treating the economy as a zero-sum game. This article is not meant to explain elementary economics, but on a brief note, let us understand that humans do not apportion wealth, but they create it. A nation’s wealth is, more than anything else, proportionate to its population.

Click play on the chart below and see how the world’s young population has evolved over the past century and is projected to grow over the next one.

From the following chart, you can deduce that nearly one out of three of the world’s working-age people is going to be African by 2050. This ratio is projected to rise even further by the end of the century. If this vast labor force is directed towards shared economic goals, the continent’s GDP can only grow at a comparable rate.

Natural resources

It is common knowledge that Africa hosts the largest concentrations of many valuable resources, such as fossil fuels, precious metals, lithium, bauxite, diamonds, and timber. Traditionally, due to local corruption and foreign exploitation, the continent’s regions that are richer in natural deposits are the ones that have suffered the most, in a phenomenon known as the resource curse. Given that Africa is the least explored of the inhabited continents, these reserves may further expand dramatically in the future.

If these prized resources are put under proper management by a vigorous and virtuous, central African government, numberless zones of the continent will be putting forth candidacy for becoming the next Dubais. While maintaining a high degree of self-sufficiency, Africa can then invest a large portion of its abundant human capital in locally processing its raw materials and developing its manufacturing industry, eventually growing into the world’s major exporter.

Position

Another, often overlooked benefit Africa is endowed with is its strategic position. It is situated in the center of the world, in between the rest of the continents, having wide direct access to two oceans and the Mediterranean, in close proximity to the global economic hubs.

In the following table, you will see plotted the shortest distances between all continents. Unless connected by land, the distances refer to the most direct sea route between any two mainland points and are measured in kilometers. You will notice that Africa’s average distance to all continents is nearly half the one of the rest. In the case of Asia, which is the only continent coming close, bear in mind that its distance to the Americas is gauged from the remote and uninhabited Russian northeast. Practically, the population centers on the east and south of the continent are much farther away. With that in mind, as well as the fact that it could potentially control both the traditional routes between Asia and Europe, consider what an impact an awakening Africa could have on global trade.

Diaspora

Africa’s global aspirations can be further amplified with the conjunction of its widespread, sizeable diaspora. The fact that African overseas communities, most notably in the US, are often discriminated and mistreated by local authorities and native populations will incline many individuals to ideologically and commercially associate more with the African motherland.

Climate

A last important favor Africa enjoys compared to the world’s traditional economically advanced regions is its weather. As work gets increasingly uncoupled from the physical world, there is a clear tendency for remote workers to relocate in the tropics. When the majority of all people are going to work in cyberspace, within the following decades, this phenomenon may evolve into a mass southbound exodus. Africa, maintaining the bulk of Earth’s tropical and temperate zones, is set to benefit enormously from this migration.

Pax Africana

Assuming that all this happens – that Africa unites and grows into the world’s dominant power – human civilization in its wholeness will be ushered into a new golden era. A strong Africa will act as a buffer continent between the rest of the global powers, and its success will set the example and highlight the necessity for worldwide economic and political integration. Africa’s empowerment may play a crucial role in bloodlessly achieving the inevitable globalization.