Bracing for a foggy future

It will be the 43rd session for the World Economic Forum (WEF), better known as Davos Forum, at the Swiss winter resort, where leaders from governments, private sector businesses, academia, NGOs and others meet annually to debate world issues. It is also a place where some figures could be expected to emerge as new players in the year to come.
Some 50 heads of states, from kings to presidents and prime ministers, as well as 250 ministers from 100 countries around the globe are expected to gather here.
Though there are more than 250 issues at the table, the focus is expected to center on questions related to the US debt and fiscal problems,replacing the concentration on the euro zone crises that has been engulfing the world for the past three years.
Like the Europeans before them, the American politicians seem to be following the same steps of last minute deals that avoid painful solutions, which may anger the public.
After all every politician is having his eyes fixed on the next round of elections.
Again, what is missing is a political will that can overcome a dysfunctional system.
Yet the American problem, like their European counterparts before them, is an international one. And it is becoming more pressing now that the two months’ grace period allowed by the fiscal cliff deal will have less than six weeks to expire, which brings the issue to the fore again pressing for a solution that seems to be hard to come by.
One of the areas that may be affected by the level of uncertainty is Africa, where half of the continent’s countries are expected to do better economically.
Africa as a whole is scheduled to achieve a 5 percent growth rate this year, which could provide a base for transforming the continent from the development mode into being a hub for growth and deliver on that promise.
However, on the other hand there is the Chinese factor as Beijing continues to assert itself as a world economic power tapping Africa’s natural resources in a more aggressive way, but the Chinese economic growth itself will be affected by the way the American and European economies perform.
Yet Africa itself adds to its woes. The latest standoff in Mali between the rising Islamist powers that has been threatening the central government in Bamako. That development has prompted a military intervention by France, given its position as the champion of the Francophone group.
But that opened the way for a new development. A fellow Algerian sympathetic group stormed an Algerian gas facility taking a number of national as well as foreign hostages, including Americans, French, British and Japanese.
A regional war seems to be in the offing as some African countries are preparing to join the French.
These accelerating developments are going to have a negative impact on the expected economic growth in Africa, as it will add to the uncertainty that has characterized the rest of the world from the US to Europe and even to Asia.
The question was and still is whether China can provide the needed leadership at least economically and become the engine to fuel world growth.
The uncertainty engulfing Africa rests on the political factor just like its American and European counterparts.
With the growing political power of the Islamists whether in the Arab Spring countries or the more extreme ones mushrooming now in Somalia and some parts of West Africa, uncertainty about the political and economic future seems to be the only certain thing.
That puts an extra burden on the Davos deliberations as uncertainty seems to be getting a global dimension though with slight variations here and there.
By its very nature, the WEF provides a chance for some kind of a free brainstorming on a number of issues that could provide a chance for more concrete measures to be adopted later by established bodies.
However, with the US drifting more and more toward isolationism after it got its fingers burned in Iraq and Afghanistan in the form of deepening economic and fiscal problems, the world seems to be bracing for some period of uncertainty coupled with lack of leadership.

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