The year will begin with the contest at the AU summit, starting this week, to elect a successor to the outgoing chairwoman of the commission, SA’s Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. The two favourites are Amina Mohamed and Abdoulaye Bathily. Mohamed is Kenya’s foreign minister, who forcefully mobilised African support against the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) indictment of her pre0sident, Uhuru Kenyatta, and his deputy, William Ruto. Senegal’s Bathily is a former cabinet minister and the UN special representative for Central Africa. Not much can be expected from either in addressing the organisation’s structural deficits.In Southern Africa, the drought should subside in 2017. SA will be beset by labour, community and student protests and anaemic economic growth. The ANC presidential conference in December will likely see Dlamini-Zuma defeat Cyril Ramaphosa, eventually becoming SA’s first female president. The sub-region’s second-largest economy, Angola, will see Eduardo dos Santos exten...

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