Africa

Introduction
Africa’s economic development and the Sustainable Development Goals With the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in September 2015, the world shared a new commitment to a future where women and men in all countries can live a decent life with full respect for human rights and dignity. For Africa this is a special challenge due to the large number of people who daily face conditions of vulnerability. The idea of ‘sustainable development’ that led to the SDGs originated from several contributions.

Introduzione
Migration is sustainable when it meets the needs of countries of origin, transit and destination, while accompanying migrant populations without depleting natural and human resources Under what conditions do we consider migration sustainable? What do we mean by sustainability of migration in an age when more people are on the move on a global scale? What does this mean with regard to the specific case of the African continent? While intra-continental African migration has decreased by approximately 38% in the last 15 years, the number of people moving from one African country to another is still greater than the number of those leaving Africa for Europe by approximately 68.5%.

Introduction
Africa and the Middle East are the two regions of the world with the highest conflict burden. Since the mid-1990s, Africa has gradually improved across all measurements of death and war (Figure 1). These positive changes are due to several factors, including greater regional cooperation, decreased intrastate wars, economic growth, and increased democratic governance.
The types of conflicts have also changed: from wars of independence, long term civil wars, and intrastate wars, conflicts are now due to weak governance structures and state presences which are exacerbated by religious and ethnic differences as well as to transnational crime and global governance failures.

Negli ultimi mesi il fronte del jihad è sembrato ridefinirsi attraverso nuove direttrici: dall’Iraq alla Siria verso l’Egitto e la Libia, attraversando il deserto dell’Algeria e del Mali sino all’Africa occidentale, confermando la tendenza all’irradiamento delle formazioni radicali islamiche in Africa e ribadendo la trasformazione della fascia sahelo–sudanese immediatamente a sud del Sahara in una regione di instabilità e insicurezza. Alla luce di questo, il Sahara ha acquisito una nuova centralità geopolitica: se già dal 2013 l’attenzione si era focalizzata sul Mali e sull’intervento internazionale contro le formazioni radicali islamiche e secessioniste che ne avevano occupato il nord, l’attentato di Grand–Bassam (Costa d’Avorio) del 13 marzo scorso sembra rivelare un ulteriore passo avanti nella strategia dei gruppi terroristici. La concomitante rivendicazione di Aqim e al–Mourabitoun pare offrire una duplice chiave di lettura: da una parte, una nuova frontiera geopolitica della minaccia, con organizzazioni capaci di operare in luoghi sensibili ma storicamente distanti dalle tradizionali aree d'azione; dall’altra, la possibilità di una convergenza tra i numerosi gruppi (compreso Boko Haram), ora pronti a collaborare in una nuova e fluida convergenza tattica.