Gatune and Najam Publish Paper in Journal Foresight on Africa’s Future

Dr. Julius Gatune, Visiting Fellow, and Prof. Adil Najam, Director, have published a paper in the journal Foresight based on the 2010 Pardee Center conference “Africa 2060: Good News From Africa”. The conference was part of the ongoing program of research on Africa 2060 at the Boston Univeristy Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer Range Future.

The paper is part of a special issue of the journal Foresight on “Is Africa the Land of the Future?” and is one in the collection of research papers on the subject.

In this paper Drs. Gatune and Najam argue that Africa’s performance over the last 50 years has been akin to a roller coaster ride of good news followed by bad news, with the bad news dominating. However since the dawn of the millennium Africa’s outlook has increasingly become optimistic. They suggest that as one looks at Africa’s future, several questions emerge: which of these gains can be consolidated? Which of the positive trends will be sustained? Has this recent period of global attention provided the continent with a real institutional scaffolding on which a positive future can be built? And what needs to be done to ensure that the dangers of chronic poverty, conflict, and institutional collapse that still lurk in the shadows will be contained long enough that they eventually disappear?

The authors further argue that there are a number of exciting opportunities that await Africa in its future, but many of these also come with potential hurdles and pitfalls. Innovation, entrepreneurship, technology, knowledge, and globalization are among the areas that have generated significant good news to record from Africa. But within each of these areas there is also the potential and reality of bad news. The choice now lies with African citizens, decision makers and societies as to whether they are able to make the type of decisions that will control the negative tendencies of these drivers and accelerate the positive tendencies.

Gatune and Najam suggest that there are nine key drivers of Africa’s future: (a) perception of Africa within and outside of Africa, (b) governance, (c) knowledge and education, (d) technology, (e) entrepreneurship, (f) globalization, and (e) societal changes within African countries and in the region as a whole. They conclude by pointing out that any of these drivers and move Africa in a more positive or more negative direction, and that ” There is no certainty that Africa’s immediate future will be any better than Africa’s immediate past. But there is plenty of reason to believe that it could be. And that decision rests in the hands of Africans themselves. The rest of the world cannot determine Africa’s future; but it can help the empowerment process for Africans to do it for themselves.

The paper can be downloaded here.