New World Order - Africa

Population: 1.3 billion

Area: 30 million km²

GDP: $ 1.1 trillion

GDP (per capita): $ 1,200

Economic Growth: 5.16%

Democracy? Mostly no

Unlike the countries I have previously written about, Africa proves the most difficult to assess its potential. One of the biggest obstacles is the fact it is not one country, rather a continent of 54 independent nations. There is great diversity in Africa, there are more spoken languages there than any other continent and all major religions are represented somewhere. There are also major obstacles that Africa needs to tackle before it can become a great power.

Africa is a seriously unstable continent; there have been numerous conflicts since the end of the colonial era between states and within states. One of the major issues is that when the European colonists left the continent, borders of the newly independent states were largely unchanged. In terms of ethnicity, the borders made no sense; they cut through tribes and religious groupings. In a continent as poor as Africa, this was a recipe for disaster.

The following graphs should hopefully give you a visual idea of the problems faced by Africa.

The first graph represents the Human Development Index, the better the quality of life people have in a country, the higher the HDI. It is measured out of a maximum of one, the highest HDI in the world is Norway with 0.943 and the lowest is the Democratic Republic of the Congo on 0.286. HDI is calculated using data related to life expectancy, literacy, education, standards of living and quality of life.

The second graph relates to how free Africa is (as rated by Freedom House). As you can see Africa is not a particularly free continent, with only a few countries being rated as free. This is a very important factor in the development of a country. If you look at the wealthy nations of the world, countries with very high HDI and very high GDPs, they are almost all free. The only non-free wealthy nations, are the Gulf States.

The third graph shows African country’s life expectancy, as you can see it is very low, no African country has a life expectancy higher than 74. In fact, the two worst nations, Mozambique and Swaziland have life expectancies that Britain would have had during the Roman Empire. That’s how bad this continent is. AIDs poses a major threat, since it first emerged as an epidemic in the 1980s, African nations have watched their life expectancies decline rather than rise! The situation of Africa’s health is horrible, and it is preventable. Most people in Africa die completely needlessly, to combat AIDs people need quick access to contraceptives. If Africa was to have clean drinking water, this would also cause a dramatic rise in the life expectancies. If you do wish to do some good, donate to WaterAid, the charity does phenomenal work to combat the lack of clean drinking water. Dirty water is a source of a whole host of diseases and we must help Africa remedy this terrible, human tragedy.

I could sit here and list you 101 problems Africa is facing that other continents simply do not face to the same degree, but I think my point has been made. Before Africa can become a world power it has some serious issues it must deal with first, poverty, the lack of democracy, education, health just to name a few.

I do not believe that Africa will become the next powerhouse, the five other nations I have reviewed will move into the spotlight. I do believe, though, that if Africa can sort out its issues, it could one day replace the countries at the top of the world. But the countries it will one day replace will not be the Western nations; it will be China, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil.