Security Futures
Assessing long-term state fragility in Africa: Prospects for 26 ‘more fragile’ countries
This monograph provides a future-oriented forecast for 26 ‘more fragile’ countries in Africa using the International Futures forecasting system. The forecast is based on a model of dynamic interaction among long-term structural drivers of fragility, which is presented in terms of a mutually reinforcing system or syndrome of fragility. The forecast is presented as a base-case scenario and in terms of an optimistic and pessimistic manipulation of the base-case trends.
Fragility can be defined as low capacity and poor state performance with respect to security and development. A state is fragile when it is unable to provide for the security and development of its citizens. The majority of citizens in highly fragile countries in Africa (1) are poor, (2) experience high levels of repeated or cyclical violence, (3) experience economic exclusion and inequality, and (4) suffer from poor/weak governance. The drivers of fragility are clustered in terms of these four groups or dimensions. Each group includes internal, external, deep and proximate drivers of fragility. There is no claim that these dimensions operate at the same level or are mutually exclusive – indeed, they are not. Poverty is in many senses a deeper and less direct driver of fragility than poor governance or violence, for example. There are also considerable interrelationships among these four groups, which are accounted for in the construction of the forecasts.
Read the full feature article
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Futurist profile of the month
Apeh Omede is a lecturer and PhD researcher at the Department of Animal Science, School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England. Apeh answered a few questions about his perspective and on being a futures thinker. Read more...
Interested in being profiled as a futures thinker on FFD? Submit your profile here.
Security Bibliozone
Featured in Bibliozone this month is a collection of publications related to security futures. The selection of documents is partial and based on accessible material. Therefore, we would like to invite everyone to supplement our library with additional materials.
Publications from our FFD library: 
Various other publications are available in our FFD library on the future of security.
Musings on security in East Africa
Security has become the talk of the continent. We live in fear of the unknown. Every time that I think of what transpired at the recent Westgate attack in Nairobi, Kenya; my heart beats faster. It is very scary. What happened could happen in any part of the continent. And we would never see it coming. And even if we did, we can never be prepared for the aftermath. The physical and mostly emotional torture thereafter is immense: the impact that it leaves takes a long time to wear off. That all depends on how one is affected. For some, they never get over the ordeal; even if they do it takes longer for some than it does for the others.
Read the full FFD Blog.
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Southern Africa Horizon Scan
Included in this month's edition of the Searchlight newsletter:
• How do you balance business and philanthropy?
• Policy challenges around the spaza sector
• Making the case for Southern Africa’s dryland forests |
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Talk-@-tive
A selection of quotes about security futures.
“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future."
David Mitchell
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Videophile
Our selection of videos on this month's theme.
Including videos about A vision of crimes in the future, The Future of Intrastate Conflict in Africa, Foresight and Self-Control, Future of Prisons and many more.
View the videos... |
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Noticeboard
ITWeb Security Summit 2014
27 & 28 May 2014
29 May 2014 (workshop)
JHB, Sandton
Now in its ninth year, ITWeb Security Summit 2014 will bring together international and local IT and security professionals, practitioners, industry experts and analysts to share their experiences, acquire knowledge and gain an understanding of the key tools, techniques and strategies needed to safeguard their organisations’ most valuable asset – information.
Read more on our noticeboard
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Must Read
The Millennium Project and Beyond
Global Challenges of the Future Featured by the Special Issue of the 'Foresight' Journal “The Millennium Project and Beyond”
A Special Issue of the 'Foresight' journal, dedicated to “The Millennium Project and Beyond”, reflects on some of the pressing issues facing the future of humanity according to the views of the international “Nodes” of The Millennium Project.
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