by Michelle Gavin | CFR

From the dismal domestic disarray that continues to sicken and kill Americans across the country to the dysfunction at the UN Security Council and brittle fractures in international cooperation, it is easy to get discouraged about the state of the world and America’s place in it. But the future provides an opportunity to rethink tired approaches, reimagine international relationships, and pivot toward a policy agenda that meets the challenges of climate change, democratic erosion, widening inequality and metastasizing violence. That rethink requires a reckoning with the African continent, not as a venue for competition with China or proxy conflict, but as an increasingly consequential force in shaping the future.

By Ebimo Amungo

As the world honkers down in the midst of the corona virus pandemic, construction on a $17 billion petrochemical complex plodders on in Lagos State, Nigeria. The complex, comprising a fertilizer plant and a 650, 000 barrel per day petroleum refinery, is the crowning glory of the industrial conglomerate, Dangote Industries, owned by Africa’s richest man, the billionaire Aliko Dangote. Already, the fertilizer plant, the second largest in Africa, has been commissioned to produce 3 million tonnes of urea yearly. The refinery would be the largest single train refinery in the world when completed and is designed to service the Nigerian and West African markets, where almost 100 percent of petroleum products consumed is imported.