{"id":1401651,"date":"2025-05-28T16:50:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T14:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/?post_type=articles&#038;p=1401651"},"modified":"2025-05-28T16:50:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T14:50:08","slug":"why-africa-matters-in-the-new-global-order","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/articles\/why-africa-matters-in-the-new-global-order\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Africa Matters in the New Global Order"},"featured_media":1401652,"template":"","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[]},"schools":[],"areas":[21],"subjects":[522],"class_list":["post-1401651","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","areas-innovation","subjects-economics"],"custom-fields":{"wpcf-article-leadin":["In a world shaped by concentrated power and risk, Africa offers the heterogeneity and growth needed to rebalance global systems, writes David Harlley."],"wpcf-article-body":["The global order is undergoing fundamental transformation, with shifts in alignments and priorities on areas as crucial as trade, security and international development. While we have largely processed the populist sentiment that has accompanied both of Trump\u2019s terms in office, what is coming into sharper focus is the degree to which oligopolistic influence now dominates our economic and political environments. Many of us \u2013 policymakers, investors, and analysts in established economies \u2013 have been slow to confront the systemic risks this concentration poses.\r\n\r\nWithin any nation, a concentration of wealth and influence comes with increased risks of all kinds. While it may be easy enough to paint America with that particular brush, a similar picture forms when looking at it from a global perspective. The goal of any resilient system is to have many small fracture points, such that recovery is possible relatively swiftly in the event of failure. The Russia-Ukraine war, and now the quickly evolving U.S. position, make clear the extent of the damage that can be done when fracture points are as large as they currently are, due to the presence of overexposure to such dominant positions. What is unfolding today is as much a story of global resiliency as it is about the eccentricities of America\u2019s current regime. The jeopardy, however, is that at the speed with which countries are attempting to respond, the most important point may be lost.\r\n\r\nSimply stated, that point is this: America is not the problem, <em>concentrated<\/em> <em>power<\/em> is the problem. Of course, in more pleasant times, under benign stewardship, concentrated power may seem like a solution, especially when it aligns with one\u2019s own interests. As humans, we like brands, we like the simplicity of a single story that tells us what something is and assures us that it will stay that way. The illusion of safety. The bankable. The guaranteed. And the bigger the better. Marketing relies heavily on this tendency: our preference for \u201cfranchise,\u201d for the proven \u2013 and our aversion to the new and untested. What is true in business is also true on the global scale. We see the small, the nascent, the powerless as risky, and the large, the stable, the well-funded as safe. There is such a thing as a national brand \u2014 and, in recent memory, few have been more effectively managed than that of the United States. Much of the world doubled and tripled down on this brand, and now that it is not living up to its promise, we are deeply disappointed.\r\n\r\nAs they say, \u201cnever waste a good crisis.\u201d There is before us a unique opportunity to reassess risk at a global level and envision a global economy that boasts the resilience offered by decentralized power and control. For this to happen, we must let go of our attachment to the \u201cfranchise\u201d and begin to take educated risks on a multitude of stakeholders (in this case, nation-states) that can offer the diversity and heterogeneity required for a healthier set of lower-risk relationships. This should involve taking a good, hard look at Africa.\r\n\r\nThere is no other region in the world that offers the combination of resource richness, strong growth, untapped productive potential and crucially, national diversity like Africa. Asia is dominated by China, North America by the U.S. and while Europe does offer diversity, its aggregate GDP is roughly equal to that of China alone. Africa, by virtue of its history and topography, has always been a continent of great diversity. Its vast north-to-south span means that it encompasses many weather systems, permeated by pockets of harsh landscapes that have been difficult for kingdoms of the past to traverse when attempting to extend their reach. The fact that colonization occurred just as Africa\u2019s existing kingdoms had fragmented meant that, instead of consolidating into a larger political identity \u2013 like India, for example \u2013 the continent became a patchwork of smaller sovereign nation-states. Add to this diversity a youthful and growing population, quickly maturing markets, and the benefit of a tech-enabled GDP push, and it is easy \u2013 at least theoretically \u2013 to understand the arguments for Africa as a future counterbalance to a global landscape still reliant on, and subservient to, the hegemony of a few.\r\n\r\nThere is much work to be done to unlock the continent\u2019s potential, but the crucial switch to be made is attitudinal. Post-colonial Africa has largely been treated like a basket case, incompetent and incapable of contributing on the world stage. While there have certainly been enormous growing pains as African states come into their own, the broader context has been one of concerted neo-colonial pressure from former colonial powers that emphasize their interests first and foremost \u2013 often at the expense of African growth. \u00a0The provision of conditional aid by Western nations, and the often heavy-handed structural adjustment programs meted out by the World Bank and IMF have been typical of the ways the West has dealt with the continent \u2013 such policies have been headwinds to progress.\r\n\r\nHowever, there is an alternative to this zero-sum approach to the continent. Win-win, commercially oriented relationships with African nations have always been on the table \u2013 for \u00a0example private sector focused investments that emphasize in-country production rather than extraction \u2013 they just haven\u2019t been pursued with the necessary degree of seriousness. African countries and their leaders experience this as fact, and act accordingly \u2013 limiting their own visions for what can be expected out of relationships with the developed world.\r\n\r\nNow imagine the emergence of a more strategic approach to Africa, one that recognizes the world is best off when African economies can reach their potential. This would mean leveraging the continent\u2019s vast resources to create new markets, improve food security, address supply shortages, provide much-needed labor (remotely if need be), diversify trade flows \u2013 and, importantly, do all of this under a system of highly decentralized control: a polylithic economic superpower. That is, a continent with the economic resources and geopolitical weight of a China or a U.S., but with a fragmented structure \u2013 comprising many sovereign states \u2013 that ensures a broader range of interests is considered whenever influence is exerted.\r\n\r\nThe obvious response to this proposal is that Africa is simply still too small, as an economic force, to play this role \u2013 too small to take on the level of economic activity required to seriously reduce dependence on economic behemoths like China and the U.S. While that fact is certain, it is also subject to change. In the space of three decades, China\u2019s GDP went from $360 billion in 1990 (6.25% of the U.S. GDP at that time) to $17 trillion today, roughly 60% of the U.S. GDP. So, these changes do happen, and in the 21<sup>st<\/sup> century, they can happen very quickly. Rather than just <em>planning<\/em> for this potential level of growth in Africa, there is an opportunity to actively participate in bringing it into being. Countries like Kenya, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Senegal, and Nigeria are well poised to hasten their ascent up the ladder of prosperity, and if they succeed, others will follow.\r\n\r\nIt may not seem intuitive to assist in the development of future competitor economies, and doing so would represent an unprecedented shift in foreign policy for most nations. But the globalized world we now live in is simply too interconnected to regard national interest as separate from the interests and performance of other economies. China certainly understands this (whatever one thinks of its motivations), and is well ahead in making Africa an ally and key destination for investment flows into several key sectors.\r\n\r\nThe question is this: Do we believe the post-colonial, post-World War II playbook makes sense of the world as it currently is? Or does our thinking need to take a radical step forward, using the information we are gaining, rapidly, about the nature of global risk? Can we begin to see the many countries on the margins of global prosperity as critical parts of a potential new order, anchored in diversity and dispersed power \u2013 and with that, increased resilience?\r\n\r\nThis would include financial resilience; resilience in commodity markets reducing exposure to shocks; a broadened set of security agreements that bring the burden of global security under the purview of the majority. We would have newly minted, multi-stakeholder-led international agreements covering everything from trade to human rights law, reflecting the needs and values of a broader set of stakeholders \u2013 making it less likely that new centers of dominance (or weakness) will emerge. Simply put, we would have a global order fit for purpose, one built for the <em>many<\/em>, not the few.\r\n\r\nBeyond the somewhat \u201ccold\u201d question of risk, there\u2019s another question of a moral nature. While some may mourn the passing of the global order established over the last 70 years \u2013 the so-called rules-based society \u2013 for much of the world, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, those rules have never worked in their favor. They see the deck as stacked, heavily, in favor of the Global North. Many see the crumbling of the established order as an opportunity to rewrite fairer, more just rules that don\u2019t assign influence and wealth in well-established patterns of regional dominance. The fact is, the old system was creaking well before Trump\u2019s arrival. It had already failed far too many. He simply pushed it over the edge.\r\n\r\nIn the ruins of the edifice lies a unique opportunity to look outward with fresh eyes, to stop running into the towers of old and begin building bridges, genuinely anchored in hope for a renewed global community. The unique promise of Africa is that it is a continent filled with diversity and replete with potential, waiting to be unleashed and to take its place on the world stage. What if we began to take risks worth taking \u2013 working in partnership with nations that have been chronically undervalued? It may be a harder path in the short to medium term, but that path will build the structure and resilience needed for a global order set on much firmer foundations.\r\n\r\n\u00a9 IE Insights.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;"],"wpcf-article-extract-enable":["1"],"wpcf-article-extract":["In a world shaped by concentrated power and risk, Africa offers the heterogeneity and growth needed to rebalance global systems, writes David Harlley."],"wpcf-audio-article":["https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Why-Africa-Matters-in-the-New-Global-Order.mp3"]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/1401651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1401652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1401651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"schools","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/schools?post=1401651"},{"taxonomy":"areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/areas?post=1401651"},{"taxonomy":"subjects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/subjects?post=1401651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}