Southern Africa Takes Center Stage

Michael Lee

© COURTNEY KEATING / ISTOCKPHOTO

By Michael Lee

It is five minutes to midnight on New Year’s Eve at the end of the last day of the twenty-first century. In Dar es Salaam, one of the wealthiest cities in the United States of Southern Africa (USSA), revelers from across the region have traveled on the Trans-Africa high-speed train network to witness the arrival of the new century at a massive fireworks display and international gathering in East Africa’s “harbor of peace.”

Wearing a variety of light, thermo-regulated fabrics in bright, fashionable colors, party-goers and families mill around in droves at the city’s popular waterfront overlooking the Indian Ocean, its warm waters an ancient conduit of intercontinental trade.

Dignitaries include the prime minister of China; diplomats from IndiaStan, the European Federation, and Amerinada; and the UN Secretary-General. The reason for their high-profile visit, hosted by the aging president of USSA, Nelson Bandigwa, is that the city has been chosen as a UN Beacon of Progress for the first year of the twenty-second century. As the fireworks leap suddenly into the sky at the stroke of midnight, President Bandigwa smiles to himself and then quietly sheds a tear.

Nelson Bandigwa was born in 2012; by the time he turned 10, in 2022, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) became a confederation to govern the blossoming regional common market spearheaded by South Africa and its neighbors.

In his youth, Bandigwa watched his region gradually unite, as many of its nations benefited from increased intra-African trade and infrastructure development. These vital projects included construction of extensive rail networks and large-scale hydroelectric schemes in Zambia near the famed Victoria Falls and on the banks of the mighty Congo River.

While the world passed from the Industrial Era to a new eco-scientific era after Peak Oil, Africa became a hotbed of solar-energy technology. The shift from a fossil fuel–based economy to a lower energy order based on renewables suited Africa well. The transition gradually reduced violent conflicts over dwindling resources. Nevertheless, periodic struggles over water broke out, as well as ongoing conflicts with radical Islamic and environmental groups using terror. In the wake of the new energy order, an epoch of greater general peace evolved in Africa.

President Bandigwa looked into the sky and continued to watch the fireworks through glazed eyes. Tonight, his heart felt full of years and memories of a century that had witnessed the creation of USSA and the rise of three new global superpowers: China, Brazil, and India (later called India-Stan after the unification with Pakistan following a tragic nuclear confrontation in 2028).

Africa’s time to take the center of the world stage had arrived by mid-century. The continent’s progress had taken a long and painful journey characterized by waves of development, such as the Consumer Revolution and Youth Bulge of 2000-2015, followed by the era of big infrastructure building, urbanization, and regional integration (2005-2035) and Africa’s own Green Revolution (2015-2030).

Periods of migrations to Southern Africa occurred as northern peoples sought warmer climes, escaping harsh winters when energy prices were escalating and fuel supplies were diminishing.

In addition, there had been immigrations of peoples from the overpopulated East, especially from demographically skewed China, resulting in millions of Asian settlers on the continent, a significant portion of whom intermarried with local Africans to produce a new race of Sino-Africans. This created an African urban melting pot, leading to increased diversity and cultural dynamism. Yet, the tight-knit extended family traditions of Africa were preserved throughout this time of accelerating growth and cultural diversification.

As a former professor of history, Bandigwa believed the biggest catalyst for his region’s rise to power had been its science-inspired Knowledge Renaissance of 2020-2050. In this time, the number of universities, colleges, and technical schools in the territory had more than tripled. The USSA’s leadership grew in such fields as solar energy, hydroelectricity, agriculture, food science, astronomy, and archaeology.

The nation had also developed new systems of long-term underground disposal of low-level nuclear waste in wildernesses created by climate-change induced drought, paving the way for safer deployment of nuclear power. The Southern African Space Agency (SASA) had produced several astronauts who had worked on international space stations and one of whom had been chosen for a mission of the Global Space Agency (GSA) to test the viability of establishing a human settlement in caves of Mars where water had been discovered.

Throughout Bandigwa’s lifetime, the United States of Southern Africa had been a leader in one of the world’s biggest businesses: tourism. Particularly successful were eco-tourism, archaeo-tourism, and the wildly popular sport of nonlethal hunting using sedation darts instead of live ammunition.

And finally, building on the work of the Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and on peoples’ innate spirit of Ubuntu, USSA had become widely respected around the world for its expertise in conflict resolution and the practice of racial and religious harmony.

President Bandigwa’s tear at midnight had been an expression, more than anything else, of pride for how Africa had overcome the historic humiliations that once haunted the continent.

Michael Lee is founder and chairman of the Southern African Chapter of the World Future Society (www.wfs-sa.com). He is CEO of ATMIA (www.atmia.com), a global trade association with more than 2,600 members in 60 countries. His forthcoming book, Knowing our Future, will be published November 2012 in the UK.