The Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies recently unveiled an important website collecting integrated datasets on the future prospects for Africa, in impressive detail. Several problem areas are identified: then potential, but also the risk, of a growing youth bulge that may provide a labor force for an economic boom, or fuel for a revolution of the poor. A vast agricultural potential is not living up to its promise, instead Africa is becoming less food secure with each passing year. 

The ISS website provides the tools to project possible future developments, alternatives and scenarios. Democracy levels are relatively high and military spending quite low. The continental free trade area has the potential to improve the efficiencies of local economies by promoting continental trade, developing complementary economic opportunities and reducing dependence on erstwhile colonial powers. 

Economic development is inevitably linked to national cohesion, to a belief in a common destiny. A successful and stable democracy can deliver this, and we see, in Kenya, the development of such a democracy that has been able to form a national identity over a number of different tribes, cultures, nations. This is apparent in the run-up to the August elections, where erstwhile comrades are standing as opponents, where alliances break and new ones form. 

Here, as elsewhere in the world, the youth is increasingly alienated and unlikely to participate in elections they see as corrupt and pointless. While youngsters would flit from one party rally to the next to see what they can gain in handouts, even cash, they are not sold on the efficiency of the electoral process. 

In West Africa, on the other hand, people are uniting against military government. In Guinea, where the military had deposed deposed President Alpha Conde after he tried to cling to power beyond his mandate. Now the military government seems, in its turn, to be reluctant to surrender power to civilians, and opposition groups are calling on the regional grouping, ECOWAS, and France to support them in achieving a speedy transition. 

While the regional groups and the United Nations has a critical role to play in the ongoing conflict in the Congo and other conflicts, there is a sad truth: you can only keep the peace when there is peace, or at least the elements for peace. The United Nations Charter spells this out in detail in its Chapter 7: The Security Council will only mandate Peacekeepers once an agreement to settle conflict has been reached. An operation to create peace by military intervention is a rarity, and not something the international community would lightly undertake. 

While future planners can clearly identify pathways to a future, the important issue, in Africa and elsewhere, is to build a national identity, a shared vision of what such a future may contain.

And the youth owns the future.