confidentially speaking
The Africa Confidential Blog
Multi-speed Africa in 2018
Blue Lines
In politics as in economics, 2018 will be the year of the
variable-speed Africa, as our special survey of the year ahead makes
clear. Sometimes, the sharp differences are between regions:
high-growth economies in Ethiopia,
Tanzania and Kenya in the east
compared with slow growth South Africa,
Angola and Zimbabwe in the
south. Sometimes, there are sharp differences within regions: Côte
d'Ivoire, Ghana and Senegal are growing strongly but Nigeria's forecast
growth for the year barely exceeds population growth. Nigeria's
lacklustre economic revival points to a continuing negative trend: some
of the continent's biggest economies, such as Angola and Algeria, are
chronically under-performing.
The political contrasts across Africa are sharper still. South
Africans are following in minute detail the constitutional and judicial
manoeuvring aimed at removing Jacob
Zuma from the state presidency. In
Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya and Nigeria, constitutional and electoral
reform is on the table, even extending parliamentary oversight of
presidents' spending. But in Somalia,
Sudan, South Sudan, Central
African Republic, and Libya,
the contest for power is more about armed
groups than amendments to the constitution. To that list must now be
added Congo-Kinshasa, where
President Kabila's obduracy is
sparking
several disparate rebellions, and Cameroon,
where four decades of
misrule are coming home to roost as rebellion takes hold in the
country's western provinces.
