Introduction

In the last few years, the world has morphed into an electronically connected interdependent atomic economic unit where a disruption in one marketplace affects the others. Consequently, it has become naïve to appraise the competitive challenges and opportunities for nations or indeed a continent without looking at the big global picture. Recent financial crises have shown in no small measure that the world is interlinked and the global commerce and industry has been transformed by the extraordinary powers of information and communication technologies. Increasingly, individuals are having much power either in the capital markets, governments or entertainments and the era of centralized political power is progressively giving way to citizen’s power. Indeed, our world is being redesigned and new waves of innovation are evolving to disrupt our modern economic structures. And this trend is expected to continue as the powers of microprocessors continue to improve and information gets cheaper.

While the redesigning process is global, the innovation race is not. Many developing nations are not adapting fast enough because of deficiency in knowledge and infrastructural capability. And the developed world will not wait for them because the competition is intense and the global economic health fragile. New technologies will continue to disrupt markets while some like nanotechnology has the capacity to destroy African commodity markets. This poses security threats if plans are not developed to retrain those that will be displaced from the industries. The debts and financial crises in the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) are showing that a single currency is not a panacea to all economic problems. As it offers a larger market, single currency also could damage a weak continental economic structure.
Focus and Thematic

In the midst of the challenges above, there are also opportunities during this redesigning process. Consequently, the objective of this Call is to establish a prestigious compilation of research advances, discussions and reviews on the challenges and opportunities as they affect Africa.

We are looking for papers on the following areas: Technology, Finance, Health, Government, Trade, Immigration, Environment & Sustainability, Education, Currency, Energy, Risk and Security, Welfare, Poverty, Employment, Corruption, Terrorism, Economic Growth, etc. Your ideas will be packaged for the African Union where they would be used to shape the future of the African continent.
We invite papers from the academic, non-governmental, professional and business communities to submit a maximum of two-page paper on what you think is the most important challenge facing the world and how that will affect Africa. You can also look at it from the other side; what is the most important challenge to Africa and how will the world affect it.

Simply, we seek:

- Describe one major challenge or opportunity in the world
- Explain how that challenge or opportunity will affect Africa
- Propose a solution on how Africa can overcome the challenge or take advantage of the opportunity

Conference Structure: This conference is free and everything will be done on the Internet. No travel and no registration. We are optimistic that we can gather insights on the pulses that will shape Africa and indeed the world in coming years.

Submission Deadline: Nov 23, 2010

Correspondence/Submission: Send the paper (in Microsoft Word) and any inquiry to info@afrit.org

Publication: Accepted papers will be published on our site and the best ones will be invited for an extended version for an edited book publication by a US publisher (to be determined). We will also compile the papers for African Union.

General Chair:
N Ekekwe, PhD
Founder, African Institution of Technology, USA
Email: info@afrit.org