Handbook on African sovereignty presented in “Sirius”

The handbook “Africa 2025: Prospects and Challenges” was presented during the First Ministerial Conference of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum on November 9th, 2024, in Sochi. The English-language limited edition is the result of four years of fruitful work done by researchers of the HSE Center for African Studies.

Africa in 2025 is expected to experience significant economic growth and development. The continent’s population continues to rise, and urbanization accelerates. However, a number of challenges that should be addressed to sustain this growth and ensure that all Africans benefit from it remain unsolved. The Handbook places significant emphasis on sovereignty across all chapters, highlighting its importance in various sectors including food, ICT, energy, and creative industries.

For African countries, all the questions emphasized are of extreme importance, as Africans aspire for true independence and self-reliance, essential for successful development. Regarding this point, the book strives to promote sustainable solutions for reaching it.

In order to address current challenges in development, African governments and international partners will need to realize their potential, collaborate internationally, and share ideas to provide useful infrastructure. In this regard, this handbook, written about Africa and for Africans, seeks to be beneficial.

In particular, the “African quest for Digital Sovereignty” chapter, prepared within the framework of the Center-led E-Governance Knowledge Sharing Program, offers a broader understanding of digital sovereignty in the context of the digitalization of African states. The chapter provides unique assessments of foreign influence on digitalization processes and the role of corporations, the real status of localization of data storage and hosting of African websites. It also looks at the role of African languages in enhancing the social effectiveness of digitalization and, for the first time, assesses the availability of African languages on African e-government sites.

As the first in-depth Russian information product targeted at African audience, the Handbook marks groundbreaking attempt of Russian expertise on Africa to reach the global level, contribute to the information agenda and engage in a discussion on Africa’s development with African experts, officials, scholars and businessmen. The main points, conclusions and recommendations of the Handbook’s chapters have been supplemented and nuanced based on feedback and advice from officials, industry experts and businessmen from Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

To access the Handbook, please, follow the link.