The African continent is offside concerning world politics. It is overshadowed by the growth of countries like China, India or Brasil. The colonial times influences the continent. A predominant monoculture exists in the industry and the agriculture.  Primarily it is oriented towards the export of commodities. In 1948 the proportion rests by 7.4% and is now declined to 1.5%. Just a few countries like South Africa, Botswana, Equatorial Guinea and the island Mauritius made the leap towards emerging economies but democracy and human rights are still not established. Social conditions regarding to life-span, infant mortality or access to drinking water are even worse than the poorest Asian regions.  The majority of “failed countries” are located in Africa.

Compared with this fixed western option of Africa there are changes during the last few years. In January 2008, the ManagerMagazin headlined “Reversal of Trend – The whole continent experiences an economic break-up. Are the german economy missing the chance in the emerging market?” Therefore the ScMI AG thought about Africa’s development opportunities in form of scenarios

• Scenario 1: Collapse of the nation state – Domination of ethnic groups and external influences causes anarchy and diverse conflicts.
• Scenario 2: Contradiction in the southeast block – western culture as objective against the NIC supported totalitarian structures.
• Scenario 3: Muddling Through – Economic progress remains an ideal
• Scenario 4: Fragmentised Africa turns away from the Westerners – Totalitarian Nation states control the economic development
• Scenario 5: Go West : Think East – Economization and global opening cause resistances against democratic structures
• Scenario 6: Democratic Africa – civil society follows the western world

The scenarios show different point of views concerning the African continent. Further more they are an example for the Scenario Management method regarding the development of regional scenarios. You can download a brief flyer (only in german at the moment) here.