Boris Johnson is right to convene the G7 leaders to discuss the Afghanistan debacle. While they are talking, diplomats and troops will be showing extraordinary fortitude in trying to fly thousands of people out before what started as a completely arbitrary deadline to leave next week. But the discussion will be painfully revealing of the scale and nature of the humiliation of the western world.
These powerful heads of government are reduced to discussing how they can keep an airport open with the tacit consent of the Taliban, who in turn might struggle to prevent an Isis or al-Qaeda attack. These leaders might be unable to honour the commitments they have made to thousands of Afghans to get them out. They will seek an international contact group in which China and Russia will inevitably now call the shots. And they are discussing all this when it is too late to salvage things. A discussion a few months ago would have been a better idea.
The exit from Afghanistan means western nations will face increased threats of terror attacks and a flow of refugees; they will often be preoccupied with those issues. Yet it will be vital to lift our eyes to another part of the world, whose fate over the next 20 years or so will have an impact that will make Afghanistan seem like a sideshow: Africa.
Depressingly, this whole, richly varied continent merited only one paragraph in the interim national security guidance issued in March by the Biden administration. French forces struggle to fight growing Islamist insurgencies there without conspicuous success. G7 leaders would be well advised to define a strategy and elevate the opportunities and dangers arising from the continent to the forefront of their minds.
According to the latest UN forecasts, half the growth in the world’s population over the next 30 years will take place in just nine countries, and five of those are African. The total expected increase in Africa is more than 1.1 billion, or over 100,000 more people every day for the next three decades. That is almost like adding a new China, in numerical terms.
That much bigger population will become rapidly more urbanised, leading to the emergence of vast mega-cities of digitally connected young people, while many other places around the world enter an era of stagnant or declining populations. By 2050, Africa is expected to host well over three times the entire population of Europe, a disparity never known in the modern world. Nigeria alone is predicted to be more populous than the United States.
The future of Africa will therefore be one of the decisive factors in world affairs; it will be the region of many tipping points that determine the course of global politics and economics. There, even more than in central Asia, will be the vital crossroads between building good governance or sliding into despair, civil conflict and terror. This will be the continent that determines whether most of the world will be using Chinese or American technology and standards.
Such vast growth in numbers means Africa could become such a success that it lifts more people out of poverty even than China in the past 40 years; or such a disappointment that outward migration, on a scale hundreds of times greater than anything seen so far, dominates the politics of Britain and the rest of Europe. Either way, this is one of the big events of the 21st century — and this time, no one can claim they can’t see it coming.
There is a case for optimism. Over the five years before Covid-19, four of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world were in Africa. Millions of young people are demanding better governance and an end to corruption. Last week’s election in Zambia led to an unpopular president being voted out, despite accusations of rigging. South Africa has pursued the prosecution of its former president Jacob Zuma to show the rule of law can prevail over cronyism and state capture. The commercial opportunities across the continent are immense, as burgeoning cities demand housing, infrastructure, financial services and technology.
Yet there is also a very credible pessimistic scenario. Lack of land registration in many countries inhibits the growth of property ownership and entrepreneurship. Many cities lack the infrastructure to reap the benefits of high productivity that accrue to urban centres in rich economies. Political instability deters foreign investment. Climate change will hit the whole continent hard. It is hard to look at Egypt, one of the richer African nations, growing from 100 to 160 million people without feeling that new cycles of crisis, revolution and dictatorship will follow. It is difficult to imagine DR Congo, one of the poorest, growing to nearly 200 million people and becoming a success story of human development if the standards of governance of recent years are not radically improved upon. It is impossible to envisage insurgencies in multiple countries being suppressed without external help.
Which way Africa goes is predominantly in the hands of Africans, as it should be. The West, however, has a colossal interest in pushing things the right way. A G7 meeting that looked ahead to the future of Africa would say: “We are stepping up what we do across this continent, with more consulates, embassies and trade missions. We will provide much more expertise on how cities can work well, and co-ordinate with each other the help we give to improve education and women’s rights. We are sending you the vaccines you need. We will encourage our companies to help with your digital future.”
It would say that Europeans, who complain about their strategic dependence on the US, will demonstrate in Africa their ability to give a judicious mixture of long-term military, diplomatic and economic help to states in trouble, without swinging between extremes, as we have in Afghanistan. In Somalia, western countries did work together to pay for African forces to fight al-Shabaab terrorists, to give aid and to sponsor at the UN a legitimate government. None of this involves inserting large western ground forces on African soil.
A great deal of good work is already taking place. But in Washington it is not understood that what happens in Africa could be more important than any events in the South China Sea in deciding a strategic contest with Beijing. And in Europe, the overwhelming consequences of a future crisis in Africa have not been fully absorbed. Today in Kabul, we are leaving people in the hands of extremists, to be exploited by China, and feeling betrayed by the West. We cannot afford to do the same in Africa.
