Security Implications of African Megatrends – Assis Malaquias
Channel: Africa Center for Strategic Studies
Date: 14/06/2023

Session 1 of our Emerging Security Sector Leaders Seminar

Africa remains the most insecure and conflict-prone continent. Responding to this insecurity requires a thorough understanding of its drivers. There are several factors that will shape Africa’s peace and security and the trajectory of change in the near and long term. These factors include a web of complex, multifaceted, and ever-changing security threats including but not limited to transnational organized crime, violent conflicts, violent extremism and terrorism, cyber threats, maritime threats, state fragility, and pandemics. These security threats will be exacerbated by megatrends such as demographic change, urbanization, the rising middle class, climate change, and emerging technologies. Moreover, these security threats and megatrends, are accompanied by an underlying current of a rising governance deficit in Africa, in which states themselves have become a source of insecurity. The intersections of these megatrends will undoubtedly shape the ways that African governments and institutions will address human security in the decades to come.

These trends are inevitable, but their outcomes will depend on African leaders’ strategies and policy responses. African governments have no choice but to proactively plan for and respond to these megatrends so as to mitigate anticipated challenges and harness potential opportunities. Megatrends will have profound impacts on the security outcomes and the way security is planned, managed, and delivered to citizens. These trends create new opportunities for African governments to review their existing security policies, capacities, and institutions to better respond to these complex threats and to build trust with citizens based on their inclusion in security governance and strategy development. Effective response to these trends requires coordinating and collaborating across multiple government agencies and nation states; developing policy responses and mechanisms that are flexible, agile, iterative and adaptive; leveraging external partnership; and developing foresight capabilities. As these trends are mutually reinforcing and cannot be addressed in isolation, African countries (and their external partners) must think strategically about how to address them through national, regional, and continental policies and strategies that are feasible, proactive, creative, coordinated, and comprehensive.

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https://africacenter.org/programs/2023-essl/

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