The Future of Economic and Political Conflicts in Africa: Is the Continent Ready?

As countries are embracing the economic and social potential of the Internet of Everything (IoE)-the intelligent connection of people, processes, data, and things, the world is seeing the cyberspace as a new battleground Along these lines, the information age security policy, strategy, and management face exceptional challenges. Traditional strategies and approaches to security need revision to apply to a future where threats can propagate instantaneously and where the identity or location of an adversary may not be known. Is Africa prepared, preparing, or at risk? Using the Cyber Readiness Index the paper also assesses the future risks the top 12 emerging economies in Africa that have embraced ICT and the Internet may face and compares their maturity and commitment to protecting those investments using an initial objective assessment of where each country stands in cyber security across five areas including Articulation and publication of a National Cyber Security Strategy, availability of operational Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) or Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) demonstration of commitment to protect against cybercrime, availability of information sharing mechanism, investment in cyber security basic and applied research and funding cyber security initiatives broadly. This differs from previous studies that have focused only on the cyber readiness of the North Pole. Findings raise fundamental questions and concerns for the African Union (AU) on fostering partnerships between African governments to promote better information sharing by further developing collaboration tools to heighten cyber resilience against pre-empted potential cyber war and terrorism especially between or among regional economic powers