Ten Predictions for 2008

Hillary Clinton will become the 44th US president on November 4 2008 and if she is wise and the world is fortunate she will select Barack Obama as her vice-president or appoint him to a senior position dealing with internal US policies.
The world will shift intense and expensive efforts focused on HIV and Aids to look at more ways to resolve a wider basket of the health problems facing those in the developing world. Many health challenges are easier to remedy and can significantly alter the burden of disease and the impact on communities.
One way to do this is to improve access to clean water, which will become a stronger focus on the global agenda anyhow.
Increasingly unstable weather patterns will see governments pushed to do more, environmental studies and activities will enter more school curricula globally and citizen groups will become more active. It will also put pressure on short-term insurance and make these less desirable stocks.
Globally recycling will become enforced by law in more cities, towns and nations.
The use of maize as biofuel will see further dramatic price increases in this product (it increased 60% in 2007) and will give growing countries an interesting challenge. South Africa has, in a short-sighted measure, imposed restrictions on how much maize can be sold for fuel and how much must be reserved for food. Wise nations will deliberately encourage the planting of more nutritional crops not used for biofuel, e.g. beans, cassava and rice and encourage labour-intensive agriculture to supply the world’s rapidly growing biofuel market. This demand will see the fortunes of countries that rely on agriculture, such as Malawi, continue to improve. More assistance will be given to them to improve access to markets, especially improved roads.
Big business globally will aggressively pursue policies that show environmental awareness in products and practice.
South Africa will experience an economically fraught year. It will be seen that far more aggressive steps have to be taken to combat crime and improve skills but political will will continue to lag. Food and utility prices will continue to rise substantially and interest rates notch upward as the government tries to fund an infrastructural development programme that will soar well above projections and still not employ enough South Africans.
2008 is the year that President Thabo Mbeki has to spend more time at home overseeing delivery and cracking the whip with non-performing Cabinet members, provincial ministers and local authorities. If he does this and can make a measurable impact on crime and delivery he will leave office as an important South African president and not the man heckled at Polokwane. If he chooses to engage in battle, whether overt or covert, with Jacob Zuma, he will continue to erode his own power base, will leave office humiliated and the nation will suffer serious damage.
Family will become more important. Recycling, eating fresh and seasonally appropriate food and taking greater care of the planet will remind us how dislocated and lonely our lives have become. The Progress in International Reading Literacy study, which saw South Africa come last of 40 nations in grade four children’s reading and comprehension skills, noted that unless parents read and play word and other games with toddlers, their children will struggle at school. It confirmed “the family as children’s first and perhaps most important reading teacher.” Strengthening families is not only better for us psychologically, but gives the planet a better chance.