“You cannot get out of the way of things you cannot see coming towards you” – the words of American Futurist, R. Buckminster Fuller. This means you can dodge a projectile coming in your direction – if you can see it coming.
So will you like to know what to expect in 2016?
Well, we are going to do something dangerous on AfricanPod in this episode. We are going to make predictions for 2016.
I am Phillip Nyakpo, this is AfricanPod, the good news and the bad news about Africa.
We are determined to do something dangerous on AfricanPod to start 2016.
We want to make predictions for the year.
The problem is, only fools try to predict the future with any level of certainty.
Events over the past year alone shows that most economists have been dead wrong on predictions.
So in 12 months from now, come back and listen to this episode once again and decide how accurate our prediction is, because there is very little good news, and a lot of bad news.
But let’s play it safe.
Instead of making predictions for 2016, let us say we are making some intelligent extrapolations for the year 2016:
So here we go:
At the very least, the year 2016 is going to be the start of an unprecedented sharp global economic decline which will be felt across all six continents including Africa.
The economy of many countries will remain both fragile and volatile.
Selfish politicians will campaign vigorously to be elected to office and plunder the wealth of nations.
There will be squabbles over elections and election results, because elections are not going to be about the welfare of people – but about satisfying the greed of many people wrongly and tragically called leaders.
The unsuspecting masses will be given grandiose promises and urged to allow tricksters to get into office.
Governments will be stunned by slumping energy and commodity prices, resulting in deeper deficits particularly for African countries.
The evidence is already popping up around the world and countries that have not known the pain of deficits are experiencing the shock. An example is Saudi Arabia which recently announced that they spent more than 90 billion dollars that they didn’t have, and that everyone will have to pay extra for petroleum to address the unexpected shortfall.
For a country that has been the world’s leading exporter of petroleum for decades, it is as if the sky is about to fall.
Similar shocks will be felt in African countries with significant reliance on mining and energy, and they include Nigeria, Angola, Ghana and South Africa. In the case of South Africa, the signs are already in the open as its currency, the Rand, struggles to retain value.
As the sky seems to fall over Africa in 2016, the International Monetary Fund will order countries on the continent to cut back public expenditure and retrench workers across the continent.
Millions of people will be adversely affected by this, and they will feel the immediate effect in their household budget.
Multi-national companies across the world, especially in mining and manufacturing and energy will lay off hundreds of thousands of workers due to the deflationary pressures on commodity prices. This will be exacerbated by cheap automation made possible by smarter and relatively inexpensive software.
Only a dozen robots will be required replace thousands of workers over a short period of time while the sky is falling.
Currencies around the world are going to be hammered, all currencies in fact. It will be a race to the bottom, and some will go down faster than others.
Purchasing power of paper currencies held by million will evaporate.
Or more accurately, purchasing power will be transferred from those with little to those who have more. Unchangeably, the rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer.