**Africa in 2020**

# National Intelligence Council 2020 Project

**Summary of Discussion by Select Panel of US Experts**

**January 9, 2004**

**The National Intelligence Council routinely sponsors unclassified
conferences with outside experts to sharpen the level of debate on
critical issues. The views expressed in this conference report \[or
paper\] are those of individual participants. They are presented not as
final reports of the NIC 2020 project but to stimulate discussion and
debate. The papers are labeled *discussion paper\--does not represent
the views of the US Government*\-\--and should not be cited in any other
manner.**

**Africa in 2020**

# National Intelligence Council 2020 Project

**Summary of Discussion by Select Panel of US Experts**

# January 9, 2004

### Introduction

The 2020 scenario exercise is designed to extend the comprehensive 2015
exercise completed by the National Intelligence Council in December
2000.[^1] This paper first reviews the 2015 document and then discusses
several important issues central to attempting to describe Africa in
2020. The paper is based on a day-long discussion held on January 9,
2004.[^2]

[Learning from 2015]{.underline}

The 2015 exercise was notable for its focus on seven global drivers
(including demographics, natural resources and environment, and science
and technology) and, primarily because of the nature of the publication,
a relatively limited review of Africa. Generally, for a more
Africa-focused analysis of 2020:

-   More attention should be devoted to how the drivers identified as
    globally important affect specific processes in Africa. For
    instance, democracy, perhaps taken for granted as a general
    condition in most of the world, will be an important driver of
    change in Africa over the next twenty years.

-   It should be understood that the drivers themselves may interact in
    complex manners, especially a decade or more from now. For instance,
    there almost certainly will be a vaccine for malaria and HIV/AIDS by
    2020, although new diseases will also undoubtedly appear.

-   Greater appreciation should be demonstrated for the potential of
    states and other actors to affect the political processes across the
    continent over the next twenty years. States may exacerbate the
    effect of the drivers or\
    they may moderate them. For instance, the "technology" of conflict
    resolution had improved in the last few years and has been on
    display in the recent burst of peace negotiations across the
    continent.

-   Critically, a better understanding of how Africa will become more
    differentiated must be developed. Perhaps the most important trend
    in Africa in the forty years since independence has been the
    increased heterogeneity of the continent. Countries are increasingly
    differentiating themselves based on performance and there is some
    indication that regions are becoming differentiated.

The decision in the 2015 document to place considerable emphasis on
demographics is certainly justifiable but demands separate attention. No
one would deny the importance of demographics in Africa. Rather, the
problem with focusing on this driver is that there is arguably more
uncertainly about demographics in Africa than elsewhere. Eighty percent
of the people in Japan who will be alive in 2020 have already been born,
but only fifty percent of the Africans who will be alive in two decades
are here today. In addition, there are other uncertainties in the
demographic projections that are especially pertinent to Africa. For
instance, whether vaccines for malaria and AIDS are developed will be
enormously consequential for Africa. Similarly, Africans may be
especially prone to airborne illnesses like SARS. Finally, Africa may be
an especially important breeding ground for zoonoses, diseases that jump
from animals to humans. The demographic driver is especially powerful
when straight-line projections portray the cumulative effect of
compounding growth rates but what those rates will be in Africa is
uncertain. There is, for instance, so much uncertainty in some regions
that it is not clear if we can predict with confidence even whether
population growth will be positive or negative.

[The 2020 Exercise]{.underline}

In order to see how the drivers play out in Africa, to highlight the
importance of human agency, and to explore the possibility of
heterogeneity, this paper will now focus on three constellations of
issues that will certainly dominate much of African politics for the
next twenty years: the future of economic management, the future of
democracy, and the future of the state system itself.

#### Economic Management in Africa over the Next Twenty Years

The profound economic crisis and conditions of scarcity that affect all
of Africa will be the most serious challenge faced by African leaders in
the next two decades. If African leaders can manage to reverse the
current decline and help their economies begin to grow again, there is
at least the possibility that the myriad other challenges facing the
continent can be addressed. Indeed, the possibility of economic growth
prompting the drivers to begin to work in a virtuous circle should not
be ignored. For instance, greater economic growth will lead to more
robust government income which could lead to more expenditures on
education for girls which will lead to a decline in the fertility rate
(because better educated girls tend to delay the age of marriage and age
when they have their first child). Similarly, an Africa that at least
had the prospect of prosperity may be able to decrease the amount of
deadly conflict that occurs because there may not be such desperation to
control the state if there are other avenues to wealth. Finally, a more
prosperous Africa would attract foreign investment and make it more
profitable for foreign companies to increase the amount of research they
do on the deadly diseases that imperil the continent.[^3]

##### Economic Management in Africa

The current status of economic management in Africa can be described
relatively simply. The agenda of economic reform and governance that has
been developed by the Washington-based international financial
institutions over the last twenty years remains, formally, the
unchallenged orthodoxy in Africa. However, there is relatively little
enthusiasm to promote reform in Africa and many governments do only what
they have to do in order to make sure that the flow of aid---vital to
the very existence of their states---continues. Few African leaders or
challengers campaign on platforms of economic reform and governance, and
the domestic constituencies for reform are limited. Indeed, even when
reforms clearly help a particular group---as many marketing changes have
aided farmers---it has been hard to mobilize that group around the
reform because overall levels of social organization are low and
politics in many African countries for so long has been devoted to
keeping people from organizing. Further, when economic reform has been
implemented, the results have often been disappointing. Whether the
relatively poor performance of reform measures has been due to technical
errors in implementation, lack of credibility of the instituting regime,
or the simple difficulty of getting anything done in Africa is
uncertain, but the continent is currently stuck with an orthodoxy that
does not generate much enthusiasm.

The only notable change in the last few years has been the return of
foreign investment to Africa, almost all of it related to the
development of energy resources in West and Southern Africa. As offshore
oil and natural gas can be developed autonomously from the rest of the
economy, it is hard to see these investments as a vote of confidence in
the economic management of the destination countries. Indeed, Angola,
Nigeria, and Equatorial Guinea are most notable for how far their
implementation of economic policy diverges from orthodoxy.

Differential government performance in implementing economic reform and
governance measures will be one of the most important drivers in
contributing to the growing heterogeneity of Africa. Some African
countries that are not seen as very good performers today will almost
certainly adopt economic reforms that will put them on a relatively high
growth rate. Relatively good performers like Botswana, Ghana, Mali,
Tanzania, and Uganda (albeit at very different levels) probably will
continue. Some countries will also do rather worse and their growth rate
will slip further. The cumulative effect of these increasingly
differential rates over twenty years will be stark. Africa in 2020 will
increasingly resemble a patchwork quilt with different parts coexisting
with each other more because of accidents of geography than similarities
in economic, political, or social performance.

Several factors will affect the likelihood of countries adopting
economic reforms. First, Africans must take ownership of economic reform
and governance and translate these ideas into concepts that the local
population supports. Whether this is done through NEPAD or through many
different national-level efforts may not matter but it remains true
that, twenty years after economic reform was proposed in Africa,
capitalism remains a dirty word and African leaders seem most
comfortable discussing reforms in Washington. They are uncomfortable
taking their record to Wall Street and largely abandon any attempt at
explaining economic reform when meeting with their own citizens, even
with farmers who have benefited directly from many of the reforms.
Second, if successful countries begin to have a demonstration effect and
embolden other leaders to implement reform, economic growth may be
contagious. Relatively successful reformers such as Ghana and Uganda
have not had this effect yet but if those who are economically
successful begin to lead Africa, the continent may become safe for
reform.

Differential performance in implementing economic reform may also lead
to increasing contrasts between Africa's regions. The most plausible
scenario is that Southern Africa begins to look increasingly different
from the rest of Africa as the economic spillover from South Africa
draws the region together and promotes growth. Southern Africa is the
only region of Africa where the largest country is doing relatively
well. In other areas (West Africa---Nigeria, Central Africa---Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DROC), and the Horn of Africa---Ethiopia), the
performance of the largest country is and will continue to be a drag on
its region. Of course, nothing about Southern Africa's economic
performance is guaranteed. South Africa, still dealing with the multiple
legacies of apartheid, must increase its growth rate or be doomed to
always being a sub-standard performer. It must also draw an increasing
percentage of the majority black population into the formal economy. Not
until Africans can look to a regular job as their source of income and
save their money in banks will South Africa will be secure. The profound
governance problems in Zimbabwe and Angola may continue to disrupt the
region. It is also possible that East Africa, with three relatively
large countries but no regional hegemon, may begin to grow again,
especially if Kenya resumes a relatively high growth rate.

##### A Continuing Orthodoxy

Given the disappointment associated with economic reform and governance
in Africa, it might be expected that the public consensus regarding
economic reform governance might be challenged in the next few years.
However, such a departure is unlikely. First, critically, there is no
intellectual challenger to today's orthodoxy. As a result, while there
are critical controversies about implementation, there is no challenger
paradigm that has emerged, nor is one likely to emerge in the near
future. The international aid community also remains committed to
enforcing at least nominal allegiance to the current beliefs. Finally,
African leaders have generally found ways of meeting their political
needs, especially rewarding politically important clients, while staying
within the general parameters of the economic reform program.

While the formal economic agenda facing African countries may not
change, it is possible that there will be a significant evolution in the
way states view their domestic responsibilities. Those African states
that are failing will increasingly try to spin-off their basic
responsibilities (including education, health and security), to a
variety of other actors. In some cases, such as domestic and
international NGOs that have been developing increasingly impressive
capabilities in service delivery, such a reallocation of
responsibilities may result in some increase in overall welfare.
However, states may also try to escape their basic responsibilities to
provide security by allowing those who can afford it to provide their
own police and paramilitary services while simply not ruling large
stretches of their own country.

***The Role of the International Community***

An important issue affecting Africa's long-term economic health is the
involvement of the international community. Western nations are unlikely
to take the steps, especially agricultural trade liberalization, that
would dramatically improve African economic possibilities. Nor, at the
same time, will Western nations walk away from Africa, despite the fact
that the return on investment of the many billions devoted to foreign
aid has been exceptionally low. The internal incentives within the aid
community point heavily to continual engagement as leaving Africa will
only hurt these bureaucracies. It is also likely to be politically
impossible for Western leaders to publicly advocate leaving Africa. The
NGO community will likely only become more influential, especially in
Europe, and will continue to have an important role in shaping the
policy agenda in Africa. The success that NGOs had in getting the money
saved from debt relief to be devoted to poverty reduction, instead of
infrastructure development or other activities that might actually have
promoted growth in African countries, shows both their power as one of
the few international forces to want to be actively engaged in Africa
and their problematic policy agenda.

The West may also not continue to accept arguably Africa's most
successful export, its people. The new African diaspora, composed
overwhelmingly of economic (as opposed to political) migrants, is the
cumulative result of the brain drain affecting many African countries.
However, these migrants play an important economic role in their home
countries because the money they send home has become an exceptionally
important export earner. In Africa's more desperate countries,
remittances are the major source of foreign currency. The West, due
perhaps to domestic politics and increasing security concerns, may
accept fewer of these migrants in the future. At the same time, the
children of the new African diaspora may be less willing to send money
to a homeland that they barely know.

A perhaps dramatic departure in the international community's approach
to Africa in the next twenty years will be a formal recognition of the
increasing differentiation of the continent and an acknowledgment that
development for some countries is simply impossible because of their
ecological conditions, their location, or their long-term political
circumstances. Indeed, the cumulative effect of desertification,
erosion, and, potentially, global warming, may push more African
countries into the category or non-viable states. Also, as Western
countries continue to try to identify winners that they can work with (a
key aspect of the Millennium Challenge Account), the problem of what to
do with countries that are not going to benefit from the traditional
provision of foreign aid will only become more stark. There may be a
movement to put these countries into a kind of economic receivership
that, while formally recognizing them as sovereign countries, allows
them to receive aid that is formally meant to be sustaining rather than
developmental. Such economic receiverships may become more acceptable if
African failed states are perceived as sources of instability for the
West or their neighbors.

###### The Future of the African State

The most basic responsibility of the state is to provide security. It is
one of the signal aspects of the failure of so many African states that
basic public safety in many countries, especially the major cities, has
deteriorated over the last two decades and, in many areas, may get
considerably worse in the future. The combustible elements that have
caused growing insecurity are well-known: the economic desperation of
millions, the absence of working police forces, the presence of large
amounts of weapons, and the political grievances of whole communities.
Some states might therefore look increasingly like archipelagoes: in
control of the capital and a few economic resources that can feed the
state but not involved, and perhaps not concerned, with providing
security for the areas in-between. Such a development is possible in
many African countries because point control of mines or other natural
resources can give the state a basic revenue stream. Indeed, since taxes
are so difficult to collect in poor countries, seeking to control key
economic assets while disengaging from large areas that would cost much
to rule is obviously a tempting strategy, no matter how disastrous it
would be for the relevant populations. Further, as the international
community grants sovereignty on the basis of who controls the capital
rather than if a state can meet its sovereign responsibilities across
its territory, the incentives are further tilted for failed states to
abandon some of their own land. As politics abhors a vacuum, others who
are willing to provide security---be they warlords, revolutionaries,
NGOs, or traditional leaders---will inevitably step forward. The
privatization of security---fueled by the desire of African citizens to
purchase protection that the state cannot provide---will inevitably
become more important.

##### Towards the Tipping Point

Once public safety begins to deteriorate, the spiral downward can
accelerate quickly. Rebuilding police forces that have been starved of
resources for a decade or more is exceptionally difficult and costly.
Countries with oil or other natural resources that might have fungible
resources that could be devoted to rebuilding security forces are
probably relatively uninterested in promoting the rule of law throughout
their territories. To date, the international community has also not
seen fit to provide assistance to security forces within African
countries at anything like the level that health and education are
normally supported. Absent a fundamental change in the way the
international community aids African police and military institutions,
further deterioration in public safety is probably inevitable and
catastrophic collapse of order increasingly likely.

African countries face increasingly complex networks of external and
internal actors that will greatly complicate efforts at state
consolidation. During the Cold War, the external environment may have
been difficult but it was relatively simple to describe and many African
countries navigated the global strategic competition between the
superpowers with considerable success. Now, African leaders face
alliances of international and domestic NGOs that may want to supplant
certain state services, criminal networks that operate freely across
borders, money launderers, poachers, refugees, and free agent military
who may be employed by states or by rebel groups. Islamic groups bent on
destabilizing the West are unlikely to try to overthrow existing African
states but will also seek the havens open to them in African states that
are failing for other reasons. The technologies of distributed
networking---including cell phones, the internet, and private
satellites---will increasingly allow networks outside the state to
prosper. Some states may be able to pick-and-choose from this
extraordinarily complex environment to their benefit. It is more likely
that the overload that so many competing forces present will cause
African states that are deteriorating to decline at an even faster rate.

The forces challenging order in any one country will be helped by the
disappearance of authority in neighboring areas. Even countries that
have a state that desires control over its territory and citizens will
find that the political swamps caused by the failure of their neighbors
make the task of governing ever more difficult. These anarchic areas
will provide important bases of operation for the many networks that
seek to disrupt other African states. Indeed, the potential negative
spillover from collapsed states is one of the important forces working
toward homogenization in Africa. It may not be the case that a
successful state can be right next to a failed state because the "bads"
(e.g. drugs, crime, refugees, and terrorists) exported by a failed
territory may overwhelm those that are trying to produce "goods." At the
very least, the forces of negative spillover may mean that states can
only consolidate when their region is doing relatively well and there is
therefore some insulation against a neighboring state that is failing.
The potential for negative spillover to disrupt the otherwise successful
experiment in West Africa is especially great because that region has a
large number of relatively small states, some of which will inevitably
fail.

The tipping point at which states go from the normal chaos associated
with most of Africa to state failure is a difficult one to identify. The
presence of competing networks to the state and increasingly weak
security institutions may move the tipping point closer to the status
quo as African citizens, businessmen, and foreign investors find it
increasingly easy to do business with those who compete with the state.
At the same time, the international community, as demonstrated most
dramatically by the Millennium Challenge Account, is increasingly
devoted to helping African successes but does not know what to do with
those countries that are failing. Finally, highly trained African
citizens can move out of failing states and, as the African in-migration
to South Africa demonstrates, toward countries that are doing relatively
well. As a result, the rate of state failure in Africa probably will
increase over the next twenty years.

##### Democratization

At the same time, democratization will continue to be a driving force in
Africa. It is stunning just how quickly democracy has come to monopolize
the political marketplace in Africa. Two decades ago, there were still
some principled arguments in favor of one-party rule and authoritarian
leaders, either military or civilian, ruled much of the continent.
Today, almost all African countries have had multiparty elections,
albeit of dramatically varying qualities, and there is no one making the
argument that African countries cannot become democratic. While the
substance of democracy (e.g. quality of elections, viability of basic
democratic institutions, such as courts and legislatures) in Africa may
be low on average (albeit variable), there is now a strong African norm
against elected regimes being overthrown. Over the next twenty years, it
is highly unlikely that democracy will be challenged as the norm in
Africa. Indeed, the average level of democratic quality will probably
increase, although the substance will again remain highly variable. As
with the conventional wisdom regarding economic reform, it is unlikely
that there will be a competitor to democracy. The international
community will also continue to support democratic reforms in Africa.
Finally, there is a strong demand for democracy from many within Africa.
Indeed, a new generation of leaders can clearly be identified in Africa,
many emerging from the private sector, who are much more comfortable
with democracy than their predecessors and who may be counted upon to
provide a strong internal dynamic for democracy in the future.

Again, there will be important differences in how individual African
countries implement democracy. Now that the elections are held routinely
almost everywhere on the continent, attention will turn to whether some
states are able to build local institutions, especially parliaments,
courts, and sub-national administrations, to begin the task of every-day
implementation of democracy. This will be dependent on political will,
national circumstances, and the ability of leaders to translate abstract
(and, to date, western) notions of democracies into concepts that are
appealing to national populations. Most democratic experiments in the
West failed repeatedly before countries came up with an institutional
mix that worked well for their particular circumstances. There is no
reason not to expect such halting progress on democracy from African
countries.

One possible predictor of how well democracy will be consolidated in a
given country is the success that the new political institutions allow
in fighting corruption. As the Moi regime in Kenya clearly demonstrated,
it is not inevitable that the adoption of the form of multiparty
elections inevitably causes even a small decline in corruption. However,
democracy's stress on public accountability could be used by other
regimes in other countries to significantly reduce corruption. Such a
gambit would earn the new political system great legitimacy and probably
make an authoritarian reversal very difficult.

Again, there may be regional variations in the implementation of
democracy. South Africa is already a democratic success while its
economic prospects are more cloudy. It can therefore be expected to have
a relatively strong effect on its region, except for oil-rich Angola.
East Africa's immediate democratic trajectory is positive, although all
three countries have an enormous amount of work to do. Democratic
progress is much less likely in Central, West, and Northeastern Africa.
Of course, there is some reason to believe that economic reform and
political progress may go together in the very long term. Ghana is such
an example, but Uganda demonstrates that considerable economic progress
can be made without recourse to multiparty elections. Even Botswana,
Africa's star economic performer, has not yet had the signal moment of
democracy: the defeat of an incumbent in an election and succession by
his opponent.

The presence of forces promoting state failure and forces promoting
democracy do not contradict each other. Both are a reaction to the
authoritarianism of the first thirty years of African independence and
the weakness of African institutions. In some cases, the competitors to
the African state will be controlled and, especially with regard to
NGOs, harnessed in ways that may actually promote the state. Functioning
courts and police systems will capture criminals and convince others
that they cannot prosper illegally. At the same time, in other places,
the networks threatening the state will overwhelm it and the very
absence of effective authority will attract even more networks that
challenge legitimate central authority.

**The African State System and the International Community**

The most prominent development in Africa since the end of the Cold War
has been the lessening of importance of the great powers and the
increasing willingness of Africans to act in a strategic manner to
promote their own interests. Sometimes, this has been for the good, as
when African countries have led or contributed significantly to
peacekeeping efforts in neighboring countries. At other times, African
initiatives have fueled conflict, as in DROC, where the armies from many
different countries at one time competed for influence and treasure.
There is sometimes a rhythm to war and peace in Africa with spasms of
violence followed by relatively intense periods of conflict management.
Currently, some of the conflicts that have been particularly pernicious
are ending either because of outright military victory (Angola),
successful negotiations (Sudan), or international intervention (Sierra
Leone). However, given perilous economic circumstances, fantastic flows
of small arms, and weak political institutions, it is probably
inevitable that combat will break out again.

Technologies for war and peace have increased in Africa. Fighters can
access weapons relatively easily and civilian platforms (such as the
Somali technicals) can be converted for battle relatively quickly. Cell
phone networks aid rebel movements as much as they help humanitarian
agencies. There is also no doubt that there has been a certain amount of
learning in Africa about how to resolve conflicts. One scenario, which
almost certainly will come true in parts, is that Africa will experience
increasingly severe bouts of conflict followed by equally intense
episodes of peacemaking. This seesaw movement may be expected given the
potential for warfare in Africa but it is not a promising future. The
amount of damage that even relatively short periods of combat do to a
country is severe, not only in civilians killed and buildings destroyed
but also in the number of capable people who flee, criminal networks who
are invited in, and investors who are dissuaded from investing. A
fundamental goal of African countries must therefore be to prevent
conflict from developing as, again, the tipping point where collapse is
a possibility is always close.

##### Maps of Power

The African state system will remain relatively constant over the next
twenty years. That is, the vast majority of the states currently
portrayed on the map will remain. There will be some changes: an
independent Somaliland and Southern Sudan are real possibilities and it
is quite possible that Nigeria and DROC will fragment. However, the map
of Africa will still be easily recognizable in twenty years. As noted
above, the real changes will be in how power is actually deployed on the
ground. Mapping how real power is exercised will be increasingly
complicated.

One of the problems that the international community will have to face
is how to understand violent challengers to existing states. As the
great ideological conflicts that once undergird international relations
have now collapsed, revolutionaries no longer march into battle with
manifestos. Yet, there may well be some rebels who are acting on real
grievances and who want to overthrow the existing state to better the
commonweal. Other rebels, of course, will have much more parochial
goals, including enriching themselves. At present, the international
community has largely abandoned the language of victory in combat. Even
with regard to the UNITA rebels in Angola, the international community
was unwilling to say that Savimbi's movement should be defeated
outright, even while imposing international sanctions to achieve that
end. Elsewhere, NGOs, who increasingly dominate discussions of war,
simply call for the laws of war to be obeyed even though such groups as
the RUF in Sierra Leone or the LRA in Uganda should undoubtedly be
defeated outright. The increasing volatility of the pace of conflict in
Africa will make it impossible for the international community not to
try to pick more winners during African combat although this exercise
will undoubtedly be fraught with difficulty.

##### Alternatives to Sovereignty

There may be a few cases where African countries have reverted to some
kind of international trusteeship. This will be, by and large, due to
humanitarian collapse. The international community will generally be
unwilling to undertake this kind of "new colonialism" and the Africans
will also chafe. It is likely that only small countries that can be
governed by the international community relatively cheaply will be taken
over, and then only for limited amounts of time. Likewise, the
international community will undoubtedly favor authoritarian leaders who
can quickly impose some semblance of order over chaos that might, after
a long and difficult process, lead to more legitimate rule. There will
be no comprehensive response to the failure of large countries. At the
same time, the international community in no case will be able to stay
away from a failed state for very long, irrespective of any evidence
that further international intervention is doing any good. The
international community will generally be tempted to try to fix failed
states but not with initiatives that are well resourced enough or
sustained to actually rebuild fundamental institutions.

***Africa's Strategic Value***

Africa's importance to the international community will not change
dramatically on a continental basis. Terrorism will not be a reason for
the international community to engage comprehensively in Africa.
Terrorists can probably be combated more directly by quick strokes of
military intervention. Oil and natural gas exports will increase from
Africa dramatically over the next twenty years, but this will lead to
less engagement than is commonly thought. The offshore nature of natural
resource production and the extremely limited ties to the rest of the
economy make production largely immune to most political developments.
For instance, exploration and production continued in Angola during the
long civil war. It is also the case that no single African country has
so much oil that it will matter greatly to the international economy,
although the cumulative effect of a large number of oil producers coming
on-line will be important in lessening the world's dependence on the
Persian Gulf.

It is not so much that the world will not care about Africa as the
questions that Africa poses will become ever more different than the
issues the rest of the world faces. Already, conferences of leaders in
most of the developing world focus on economic growth and how to
participate in the international economy. African leaders are still
fixated, as they should be, on the problems of order and of ending
large-scale violence in many parts of the continent. Africans also still
do not view as legitimate many of the economic strategies commonly
embraced by other poor countries to develop. Indeed, NEPAD can be read
as an attempt to finally legitimize the "Washington consensus" by
putting those reforms in more palatable terms. As there seems to be
little chance of a fundamental change in state consolidation across
Africa, in twenty years countries south of the Sahara will not only be
more differentiated but also, as a group, increasingly different from
the rest of the developing world. That will make it much more difficult
for the West to continue to engage in Africa.

Those African countries that are successful will, of course, attract
Western attention. If only small countries are successful, the West can
develop ties on a bilateral basis without affecting the relatively low
level of international engagement with the continent. Botswana or Ghana
or Uganda becoming increasingly integrated with the international
community will be a great boon to those countries but will not affect
how the world views Africa. However, if one of Africa's big countries
(Nigeria, DROC, Ethiopia) were to somehow takeoff, international
perceptions and engagement with Africa would become more comprehensive.
Alternatively, and perhaps more plausibly, if an entire region were to
begin to develop, international attention to that part of Africa, and
perhaps the entire continent, would change. Again, the most probable
region for increased international engagement is Southern Africa,
although a resurgent East Africa is certainly plausible.

[Conclusion]{.underline}

There are no foregone conclusions in Africa. No state is hopeless and
none, certainly, are preordained for success. The overall conclusion
from a review of these complex trends is that Africa will become more
differentiated. It will be ever-harder for African countries to succeed
but the rewards for success will be significant in terms of investment
and engagement in the international economy. It will be ever-easier for
African countries to fail, given the number of challengers to the state,
the difficulty of promoting economic growth, and prospects for violence.
The number of African countries that spin past the "tipping point" and
become failed states will increase.

As Secretary Rumsfeld has noted, there are things that we know that we
do not know and other things that we don't know that we don't know.
There will be "wildcards" that affect Africa dramatically in the next
twenty years that we cannot predict now. Drastic ecological change,
traumatic international conflict, the development of technologies that
replace African exports, and many other scenarios could affect some
African countries by 2020. The easiest prediction to make at the present
time is that most of the wildcards will affect Africa negatively. It is
very hard to imagine wildcards that would, by themselves, push African
countries on to a more positive trajectory. If nothing else, the oil
bonanza that several African countries have wasted shows that even the
discovery of enormous wealth does not necessarily help a country and
can, in fact, impoverish it. On the other hand, traumatic change can
push already weakened African countries past the tipping point
relatively quickly. Thus, most of the uncertainty surrounding Africa
over the next twenty years concerns how bad things could possibly get.

However, the ultimate wildcard for African countries is leadership. Good
leadership, even in desperate circumstances, can make a huge difference.
Neither Ghana nor Uganda was destined to experience sharp declines after
independence and neither could be guaranteed recovery in the 1980s and
1990s. Both trajectories were due to complex factors, but good and bad
leadership certainly played an important role. Those African countries
that have, by dint of good luck or other factors, good leadership that
is able to promote order, institutions, and conflict resolution have a
chance at progressing. Those that have poor leadership will find it ever
harder not to fail.

[^1]: See, National Intelligence Council, ***Global Trends 2015: A
    Conversation with Nongovernmental Experts*** (National Intelligence
    Council, 2000). Found at:
    http://www.cia.gov/nic/NIC_globaltrend2015.html

[^2]: The final version of this paper also includes written comments on
    an earlier draft from several of the January conference
    participants.

[^3]: Currently, in the US, far more money is spent on diseases that
    affect pets in the United States than afflict humans in Africa.