The start of this year also marks the start of a decade, a decade shaped by uncertainties and challenges that will only grow. We begin the year with one central theme that will set the international agenda, and three places we should not lose sight of.
Climate change
This will undoubtedly be the theme of the year. Initiatives such as the European Green Deal, Europe’s plan to reach climate neutrality by 2050, will depend for their success on the debate over environmental taxation. Beyond political decisions, corporate behaviour will change: industry will invest more and more in decarbonisation technologies, while holding back some investments until the legal framework is in place. Citizens will take a greater interest in plastics, mobility and food.
United States
Cornered by impeachment, Trump opened the year by assassinating the most powerful man in a major regional power. The attack on Soleimani could trigger a war. Indeed, after the Persian general’s death, the phrase World War III began trending and climbed into the most searched terms on the internet worldwide. The attack is the consequence of the link between foreign-policy decisions and the American electoral calendar. Iran will not be Trump’s only target: Venezuela and Cuba will feel the effects of an election agenda turned outwards; immigration will return to the debate, with consequences for Mexico; there will be more displays of support for Israeli expansionism, and a trade truce with China to protect American farming interests: a vast stronghold of votes.
China
Without losing sight of human rights, given the protests in Hong Kong and the repression of the Uyghurs, the world will step up the debate on the new dependencies created by debt, development aid and Chinese exports. Africa was the most visible case, but Latin America has now firmly entered China’s sights. The geopolitical context and the political polarisation from Venezuela to Nicaragua, together with the economic crisis shrinking these countries, will raise the political and social cost of handling bilateral relations. In Europe, Germany and France see China as a systemic rival, while Portugal, Greece and Italy are betting on it as a strategic partner, a holder of sovereign debt and a key investor: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure megaproject is a good example.
Africa
Four in ten people on the planet will be African by the end of this century. High African birth rates guarantee a “demographic dividend” that will last for the rest of the century. Cheaper technology is making “leapfrogging” ever more common: South Africa already has 5G, the continent manufactures cutting-edge mobile phones that are 100% African, and more than a thousand R&D centres are fully operational.
On 1 July 2020 trading is due to begin under the African Continental Free Trade Agreement. It will be the largest free trade area in the world by number of countries, and it is expected to increase intra-African trade by 50%.
Editor’s note (October 2026): the original version said the agreement “comes into force” on 1 July 2020. The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement had entered into force on 30 May 2019, and 1 July 2020 was the date set for trading to begin; trading eventually began on 1 January 2021. That sentence has been corrected. The rest of the text follows the original published on 26 January 2020.
