The Resilient World

Ty McCormick, writing in Foreign Policy online, sees growing signs of unrest in Sub-Saharan Africa:

Driving south from central Cairo along the corniche that hugs the east bank of the Nile, there's a giant billboard for Mercedes-Benz's newest toy. A gleaming, red, gullwing sports car -- which hovers ostentatiously above the dusty road, not a quarter mile from where beggars and street children mingle with haggard vendors hoping to pull in a few Egyptian pounds -- is framed by a simple, penetrating message: "Have it all or nothing." While many more Egyptians still have nothing today than have it all, things get substantially worse as you travel further south along the Nile, from the iconic heart of the Arab Spring into the heart of Africa.

In the last decade, give or take, the African continent has experienced tremendous economic expansion, clocking in at an average 5 percent annual growth in the 10 years before the 2008 economic meltdown. But as growth has accelerated, bestowing tremendous wealth on the fortunate -- and more often, the corrupt -- so has the gulf between those that drive fancy sports cars and those that must walk beneath them.

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But robust growth and the conspicuous consumption that inevitably follows can be risky when there are few political safety valves. The result, as we have seen in Egypt and elsewhere, is that authoritarian regimes that have allowed their economies to open up have become ripe for revolution. As John Githongo, chief executive of Inuka Kenya Trust, argues in the New York Times, "inequality, unlike poverty, is far more easily politicized, ethnicized and militarized.... It is also far more combustible because it creates an identifiable enemy -- a class that benefits disproportionately because of its unfair access to those who wield power."

There are always signs of unrest in Sub-Saharan Africa - is this time different? Where else are there clouds on the horizon?

Anthropologist Daniel Hoffman has studied the diamond miners of Liberia and Sierra Leone for the past decade and documents how casual labor can be exploited for political unrest. With elections looming in Liberia, the availability of cheap young underemployed muscle for campaign staff is a worry. (Check out Hoffman's new book The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia, coming in late August from Duke University Press).

In Mozambique, historic tensions between north (where the resources are) and the south (where the power is) continues to smolder. Some argue that the question is "when" rather than "if" an eruption will take place. For a nation that lost perhaps as much as 10% of its population in a brutal civil war, and displaced much of the remainder, one hopes that the national appetite for civil strife is small and that the answer to the question is "never". But could instability in Zimbabwe or South Africa tip the balance?

From a historic perspective, free Africa is still in the throws of a violent birth. Economic growth is not necessarily anodyne, as McCormick demonstrates.

Prof Calestous Juma, also writing in Foreign Policy online, takes a countervailing view. The conflicts described are evolutionary, not revolutionary, "offshoots of internal processes that have been underway for decades" and presumably part of the historical process leading to an African renaissance. Juma sees positive signs - "The prospect of joining larger economic trade areas already seems to be influencing the way countries resolve long-standing internal conflicts and embark on democratic transitions. In Burundi, for example, a decades-long civil war fueled by ethnic tension has been ended in part due to the country's aspirations to join an emerging East African Community (EAC) and embark on a new path of economic reconstruction. South Sudan, which has its own internal conflicts, plans to join the EAC as well, hopefully a move that will have a positive influence on political conduct in the new country."

The economic growth of Africa requires two contrary forces - order and freedom. Will African leaders be able to strike a balance between security and political freedom, or will the drive for security throttle both political opposition and political growth? The answer - yes.