Chapter 9 explores the overall risk of cybersecurity and cybersecurity resilience on the African continent. Africa ranks low on the 2018 International Telecommunication Union’s Global Cybersecurity Insecurity and the continent scores lowest of all regions in the five pillars: legal, technical, organizational, capacity building, and cooperation. With the rise of 4IR technologies, the importance of a national infrastructure is critical in evading cyber-attacks. This chapter goes on to explain how cyber disruptions impact different sectors and civil society.

On 29 March 2008, Zimbabwe’s ninth poll took place. Zanu PF felt insecure being in power, legitimised by only 47 and 19.5 per cent in the 2005 parliamentary and senate election, respectively. Following changes to the Constitution of Zimbabwe in September 2007, the electorate was asked to vote for a set of four political representatives for: president, parliament, senate and local government council. The 2008 socio-economic contexts showed that the electoral playing field and election processes and outcomes echoed excesses of previous flawed elections. The 29 March and 27 June 2008 elections were critical watershed moments in that while the March elections were the most peaceful (and even enjoyable) since the genesis of Zimbabwe’s mega-crisis in 2000, the June run-off will go down in history as the bloodiest since independence. The pre-poll arena for the harmonised elections had hallmarks of a rigged election, especially the use of state-financed patronage, poor voter education, the decrepit state of the voters’ roll and the violent pronouncements by members of the military-security sector, all of which skewed the playing field in favour of the incumbent regime.

In this chapter, we assess the links between the peaceful borders of the Southern African countries and the occurrence and proliferation of illicit transnational flows. Peace broke out in Southern Africa following the end of the regional and civil wars involving South Africa and its neighbors, and especially the domestic peaceful change that took place in South Africa in 1994, ending the apartheid regime and leading to the normalization of relations between South Africa and its neighbors. The threat of interstate warfare and violence in the SADC region has receded in the last twenty years, as the region has experienced a significant transition from war to stable peace. At the same time, in the aftermath of peace and integration, open and porous peaceful borders among the Southern African countries have enabled the occurrence and proliferation of both licit and illicit flows.