World in 2010: Africa
What does 2010 hold for Africa?
Friday, 15, Jan 2010 09:30
In the next part of a series asking the experts what's in store for the world in 2010, inthenews.co.uk turns to Africa
By Alex Steger and Matthew Champion.
2010 and Africa mean one thing for most people in and outside of the continent: the World Cup.
But the tournament's motto of "Celebrate Africa's humanity" will be lost on many of the continent's one billion residents.
For many African countries 2010 represents one of those knife-edge years where internal events and outside intervention could tip the balance between progress and stability and conflict and strife. The deadly attack upon the Togo football team as they journeyed to their Africa Cup of Nations training base illustrated how fine the line can be between the two in Africa.
After years of isolation, Somalia looms largest on the international community's African agendas. The Horn of Africa nation showed signs of permanent unity in 2009 when a coalition government assumed control of large parts of the country. But the adoption of Sharia law has not quelled Islamic fundamentalists who still seek sole control of the country. Intervention in Somalia has been non-existent since the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 and the UN withdrawal two years later. But now the expectation is, facing a highly-visible and growing threat to shipping from piracy, this will change in 2010.
Tom Cargill, assistant head of the Africa programme at Chatham House, described the next 12 months as a "key year" for Somalia.
"It will be the year in which the government, the internationally supported government, manages to push back the insurgency which dominates the country," he told inthenews.co.uk.
"Or if the insurgents manage to topple the government, then the international community has to think very hard about whether it deals with people linked with al-Qaida, who have said some pretty violent statements about the west."
In Sudan, outside forces have been more active. The country's president Omar al-Bashir is effectively a wanted man having been served with a warrant for arrest for war crimes by the international criminal court. But while the conflict in Darfur has reached an interminable, but less violent, stage, a potentially even more bloody war is brewing in the south of Africa's largest country. A peace agreement between the north and south expires in 2010, with a crucial referendum set to determine the potential break-up of the nation. Sudan's recent history has proven that problems are never solved at the ballot box alone.
The arrest in early 2009 of former Democratic Republic of Congo general Laurent Nkunda brought a small measure of peace to the central African country as the Kivu conflict came to an end. But the country at the centre of Africa's world war at the turn of the century remains "very fragile", Mr Cargill told inthenews.co.uk.
"The political accommodation that has allowed stability and the government in Kinshasa are still very fragile particularly if the DRC suffers in the recession," he explained.
Nowhere better illustrates the narrow boundary of national African politics than Zimbabwe, where against all expectations a late-2008 power-sharing agreement between president Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF and prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change is holding. Analysts are optimistic of its maintenance in 2010 and if it does, and stability and prosperity return to Zimbabwe, Tsvangirai would be a deserving recipient of the Nobel peace prize, having agreed to join a government ostensibly led by a man whose militia thugs battered him unrecognisable in previous election campaigns. A country still wracked with civil and social problems that have been bubbling for decades, Zimbabwe must also one day - perhaps in 2010 - face up to the prospect of the 85-year-old Mugabe no longer being around to govern.
In Madagascar a tentative transitional government still holds power, a year after a coup which ousted hated president Marc Ravalomanana and saw him replaced by 35-year-old Andry Rajoelina, the youngest head of state in Africa.
"This year we'll see whether some kind of stability or reasonable solution to the political crisis is found, but the signs around the government aren't good," Mr Cargill said of Madagascar.
"The government and the political elite don't seem particularly accommodating of each other so the signs aren't good."
And finally, in Libya, once the bête noire of the outside world, the west faces some uncomfortable choices. Muammar al-Gaddafi's rambling bordering on incoherent speech at the United Nations last year was a warning to the nations that have dealt extensively with Tripoli since it was accepted back into the international fold. Colonel Gaddafi rules by effective personality cult in Libya and is an exponent of the pipedream of a United States of Africa in the model of the US. In the short-term, businesses will be examining their connections to Libya, with investment terms becoming steadily more difficult.
Jon Marks, associate fellow in Chatham House's Middle East and north Africa programme told inthenews.co.uk: "Some investors are tiring and is this going to stay the same or is someone going to make a big find and confirm Libya as one of the most popular places to do business?
"Gaddafi will strive to be the big boss of Africa, but his African Union presidency has run out this year, so he hasn't got the big formal thing, but he'll try and be the boss of his area."
Mr Marks added that in Libya itself, there is only one question on Libyans' tongues.
"Long term the biggest question everyone is asking is that Gaddafi is into his 70s and how much longer can he go on, into his 80s? There is the issue of the fixed role of the Gaddafi children. Hannibal Gaddafi has had problems in France and Switzerland in the last two years which have complicated relations."
More immediately still; Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the only person convicted over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which killed 270 people, was given just three months to live when released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government on August 20th last year.