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(MONITOR UG) Study: Uganda will be a failed state by 2030

Study: Uganda will be a failed state by 2030
By AGENCIES
Posted Saturday, December 15 2012 at 02:00
WASHINGTON

A new intelligence assessment of global trends by a US-based intelligence council projects that Uganda is at high risk of becoming a failed state within the next 18 years.

The 140-page report that is released every four years, after the US President is elected by the National Intelligence Council says Uganda and 14 other countries risk becoming a failed state because of their potential for conflict and environmental ills. The other 14 countries in the same category are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia, DR Congo, Malawi and Yemen, among others.

It says by 2030, middle classes in the developing world are expected to balloon, while the tools of war, including cyber and biological weapons, are predicted to become more readily available. Climate change is destined to make wet places wetter, and dry places more arid. And new communication technologies are described as a “double-edged sword.”

A product of four years of intelligence-gathering and analysis, the study, by the National Intelligence Council, presents grounds for optimism and pessimism in nearly equal measure.

The report states that China will outstrip the US as the leading economic power before 2030, but US will remain an indispensable world leader, bolstered in part by an era of energy independence. Russia’s clout will wane, as will the economic strength of other countries reliant on oil for revenues, the assessment says. “There will not be any hegemonic power,” the report says. “Power will shift to networks and coalitions in a multipolar world.”

Middle class
One remarkable development it anticipates is a spreading affluence that leads to a larger global middle class that is better educated and has wider access to health care and communications technologies like the Internet and smartphones.

“The growth of the global middle class constitutes a tectonic shift,” the study says, adding that billions of people will gain new individual power as they climb out of poverty. “For the first time, a majority of the world’s population will not be impoverished, and the middle classes will be the most important social and economic sector in the vast majority of countries around the world.”

At the same time, it warns, half of the world’s population will probably be living in areas that suffer from severe shortages of fresh water, meaning that management of natural resources will be a crucial component of global national security efforts.

The study also warns of the risk that terrorists could mount a computer-network attack in which the casualties would be measured not by the hundreds or thousands killed but by the millions severely affected by damaged infrastructure, like electrical grids being taken down.

The study acknowledges that the future “is malleable,” and it lists important “game changers” that will most influence the global scene through 2030: a crisis-prone world economy, shortcomings in governance, conflicts within states and between them, the impact of new technologies and whether the US can “work with new partners to reinvent the international system.”

editorial@ug.nationmedia.com

posted by MrK @ 3:35 PM