Africanistan

While progress in Africa can be seen across the board, every day-migrants are dying in the Mediterranean. The continent is in fact a powder keg. The powder is demographics. And the detonator is unemployment. What is worrying for the continent is even more dramatic for the Sahel, a huge region of about 100 million inhabitants, where insecurity is spreading and which may act as a detonator for West Africa with a population of 700 million in 25 years.The mass unemployment of young people far more than jihadist propaganda, is the primary explanation for the dramatic collapse of Afghanistan. Despite major differences in geography and culture, there are huge similarities between the Sahel and Afghanistan, increasing insecurity, drug trafficking, and the spread of radical Islam being the most worrisome. Unfortunately the same recipes that failed in Afghanistan are again being rolled out in the Sahel. Without a radical change in the international community's behaviour, we will soon be confronted with, first, a 'Sahelistan' and then an 'Africanistan,' an African Afghanistan, but five- or ten-times worse.

Serge Michailof's sober analysis is extraordinarily relevant as Europe struggles to cope with the refugee crisis and faces renewed terrorist threats. The Sahel, with its collapsing state structures, is the next major challenge of Europe and can become a strategic challenge for the world., This is an important and well-written book. Sahelian Africa has the potential to become another Afghanistan and a real nightmare for Europe. It is still avoidable, and this book is a much-needed wake-up call., A timely and important book on the future of Africa and its potential impact on the world. A must read for anyone interested in peace, policy, and taking action to thwart terrorism before it's too late., Africanistan is obligatory reading for all who wish to avoid a mega-humanitarian catastrophe, unprecedented refugee flows, and escalating extremist attacks in North America as well as Europe, This English translation of the original French edition (Fayard, 2015) brings Michailofs thoughtful analysis of state fragility and its attendant risks to a wider audience. A seasoned development practitioner and scholar whose professional experiences have taken him to more than 60 countries in every continent, Michailof has produced a highly readable assessment of security and development challenges in Africa, particularly the Sahel zone of West Africa.

Serge Michailof had an exceptional career as a development practitioner, successively preparing development projects in Latin America, South Asia, and North Africa in an engineering firm, managing technical teams in Africa and Asia for the French Development Agency (AFD) as country director and later as the head of operations, negotiating development programmes and policy reforms at the World Bank as a senior advisor and regional director. For ten years, he was anassociate professor at the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences Po) in Paris and the Sorbonne.He is currently an associate researcher at IRIS (Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques), the leading think tank on geopolitics in Paris, and a senior fellow at the FERDI foundation (Fondation pour les Etudes et la Recherche en Développement International). He is a board member of the CIAN (Conseil des Investisseurs Français en Afrique) and the GRET (Groupe de Recherche et d'Echanges Technologiques), one of the leading French NGOs. He is a regular consultant onfragile states and post-conflict reconstruction, working for governments and international agencies, with a specific focus on institution- and state-building. During his 50-year carrier he has worked in 65 different countries on all continents.Serge Michailof studied in France (MBA at HEC, PhD in Economics, MA in Anthropology) and in the US (MIT).