Africa: A Hybrid Battleground

Abstract

In the context of hybrid conflicts in Africa, two fundamental traits of challenges are expected to prevail by the 2030s: (1) the traditional hybrid challenges to modern state functioning (as known today from current conflicts), against which national and international actors (African Union, NATO, European Union) can shore up defenses from provisions to active defense; (2) hybrid challenges that specifically target states already in fragile conditions, against which there will be no effective national counterbalance due to failing state functions and institutions. In the latter case hybrid challenges will exacerbate the systemic pressures (lack of security, stability, services) in these fragile states, increasing the role of non-state actors as stakeholders in providing security. The more so, because most African states will be battling the effects of population boom and all related scarcities, including water and sanitation, food, housing, employment etc., resulting in governance failure and increasing the likelihood of evolving such ungoverned/contested spaces in Africa which we have witnessed in Iraq and Syria after 2014.