23 Maggio 2022 Pubblicato da Marco Tosatti

Marco Tosatti

Dear readers of Stilum Curiae, with the permission of the author, whom we thank, we are re-printing this article by Professor Ettore Gotti Tedeschi which appeared in La Verità on May 16. Enjoy your reading.

§§§

We Europeans will regret not having understood many things twenty years ago, as the G8 for Africa concludes, especially with many promises made but few kept. We should have imagined that Africa could have become in perspective the great partner of Europe, of Italy itself, having a certain experience in addition. Not so much the colonial experience in Italy, as the one thanks to our holy missionaries who have brought so many values to African soil.

Thanks to Adam Tooze’s newsletter, I read an abstract of a very recent book written by Edward Paice, director of the Africa Reseach Institute (” Youth Quake “). What he writes is not a novelty, but it is an opportunity to reflect on it.

Let us prepare for an African demographic earthquake. In 1914 Africa had about 6% of the world’s population, today it has 17%, in 2050 it will have 20-25%, but estimates (regardless of the value of estimates for now) indicate that in 2100 it will have 35-40% of the world population.

Will Africa then lead the fate of the world? Are we today worrying about the role of Asia when in thirty years the world will be rather influenced by Africa, and dominated by it in eighty years?

Today we are focusing all our attention, and tensions, on an Asia that after a couple of centuries is returning to have a dominant role in the world. Asia has now returned to being central thanks to the selfish myopia of the West that for fifty years has considered the birth rate a negative factor of civilization and has begun a consumerist economic cycle, deindustrializing and precisely consuming goods produced largely at low cost in Asia, where it has relocated production. Thus, making it in just a few decades an economic power superior to the West.

But in thirty years’ time, will Africa take the role of Asia?

The past, present and future of the world is linked (even if recognized in only a twisted and contradictory way) to demography, and specifically, today, above all to the prospects of growth of the African population.

I repeat that I gladly leave out the analysis of statistical trends in demographic matters over the next 80 years (i.e. until 2100), as too linked to unpredictable factors (fertility, economy, climate, famine, disease ..), but the estimates of 2.4 billion Africans by 2050 (thirty years from now), are more realistic, since they will be brought about by human beings largely already born today.

African population growth will relativize Asian domination and produce new West-East, North-South challenges. This is key to understanding the prospects of the future history of the world and humanity. But also of economic development, of the environment, of politics, of morality.

Beginning with the second half of the twenty-first century all the balances or imbalances we are witnessing today will have changed. And Africa will be at the center of this story. I hope that those who know that the responsibility for government and strategic choices is not only in the short term, but also in the long term, will take this into account.

§§§

Condividi i miei articoli:

Tag: africa, gotti

Categoria: Generale