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The world today is in an unstable situation not seen in a hundred years. The geopolitical order that has kept the world running all these is now facing an existential crisis. Never has it been more important for individual nations to look after its own interests first rather than committing themselves to an equitable rules-based international order, spearheaded by the UN. At this crucial juncture, it becomes very important to see how the various regions of the world are stacked up to face the oncoming challenges. Of all the regions, the African continent seems to be the most vulnerable in terms of regional strength but also presents the most opportunities for competing powers to exert their influence.
The African continent consists of more than 50 countries, representing about one fifth of the world’s population. Given their past record of military coup, corruption, international debt, internal tribal warfare and so on, the region is the least developed in the world. This has given outside powers the opportunity to take advantage of existing faultlines and further deepen the crisis. The frequency with which news of military coups come out of the continent shows the lack of improvement in the political and social structure of the region over the last 7 decades since colonialism ended in the continent. The cultural and economic diversity of Africa can be seen in 4 different dimensions – 1. Religion; 2. Language; 3. Ethnicity; & 4. Colonizer Culture. While the first three are understandable, the fourth point makes it a very difficult situation for any meaningful resolution. The main issue in Africa has been the arbitrary borders drawn up by the colonizers at the end of the Berlin conference, which is popularly known by the term Scramble for Africa. Due to the arbitrariness, members of the same tribe got divided between different nations. These divides persisted even after independence and have degenerated into inter tribal war and civil unrest.
India got independence about the same time as the African countries but the advantage that India had was that India came out relatively better since India got independence as a single entity under a common constitution and central government. Despite multiple doomsday predictions by political observers in the first few decades, India has come out of the initial years as a sovereign, strong and united nation. From there on, the country has grown from strength to strength, especially concerning equitable development, internal and external security, social progress and larger geopolitical heft. The investment into higher technological domains like nuclear weapons and space were largely possible due to the stability of India’s polity and common national goals. In the present era of global uncertainty, India’s demographic advantage, economic progress, common market and digital connectedness has more than supplemented India’s geopolitical leverage. More than all the other things, the biggest advantage has been that Indian external and internal borders at the time of independence and even afterwards have not been arbitrary. The Indian demographic landscape is as complex as the African demographic, with the following dimensions – 1. Religion 2. Language and dialect 3. Caste 4. Ethnicity 5. Colonizer culture. In India’s case, the fifth point – that is the colonizer culture – is not a determining factor, since almost the entire landmass that constitutes India was under the British at the time of Independence. If it were not so, then we can all imagine what sort of a mess India would have been. The limited non-British presence has had its share of difficulties. Areas like Puducherry and Goa have developed their own distinct culture simply because the colonizer was different from the rest of their kin. This example clearly shows how Africa has been having serious challenges in regional integration. Over the years, the changes in state boundaries in India have reflected in the community demographics of the region and those that have become minorities as a result of such changes are rightly protected by the overarching Indian constitution and central administration. Such a system has ensured both local stability as well as national stability, which has given India its geopolitical leverage, which Africa lacks.
In such a scenario, the African nations can very well take inspiration from India’s political experiment and adapt it to suit their needs. The countries may begin by elevating the African Union from a summit level to a functional supranational government, having military and diplomatic powers. This will ensure that no one member nation can begin any armed conflict against any other member. The nations may next choose to stop using different currencies and adopt a single currency, which can be pegged to a basket of global currencies or to gold. This can ensure the basic foundation required for any future common market reforms. The next logical step would be to have a centralised election for such centralization of policy. The Indian election machinery can give valuable inputs in conducting free and fair elections for such a diverse demographic in terms of geographical, social and cultural markers. This will also imbibe in the African population the benefits of democracy and can help individual countries conduct elections even for their local government with such high standards. Then comes economic policies. Here, the sentiment would be to leave individual countries to develop their own models. But the benefits of having interconnected roadways, railways, and common market policies outweigh any radically localized policies in the long run. Though it needs much more flexibility in giving up taxation and project clearance laws of individual countries, the Indian example shows how collective bargaining achieved by the Indian people has positively affected development in all parts of the country. And lastly the effort of all African countries coming together would make the larger nations respect their concerns better in terms of not meddling in internal affairs, avoiding debt trap diplomacy and overall stability of the nations. Larger nations, particularly China, are currently able to put the African nations in a economically difficult position because the sovereign nations can borrow unlimited money without any constitutional consequence until everything collapses. India, if it had chosen to splinter into multiple countries, would have had foreign agents actively propping up unfavourable regimes and bankrupting the nation as a whole, something which actually led to colonization in the first place.
So in conclusion, the African nations can look into converting the African Union into a much better federation or confederation with clearly defined roles and responsibilities and whose members are elected directly by the people in free and fair elections. While the issue of sovereignty and decentralized decision making is definitely a concern, the Indian experience shows that giving up the short term benefit of sovereignty for the long term benefit of collective bargaining benefitting the entire population should be looked into with more urgency in order for Africa to grapple with the emerging challenges of a multi polar unstable world order.
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