Buckle up: Here’s why East Africa will be a beautiful and wild place by 2100

However, the Census Bureau predicts that the DRC’s population will be a humongous 584 million, 153 million more than the UN projection.

By that point, the DRC will have long overtaken Ethiopia to become the second most populous African nation. If the East African Community remains as it is today, DRC’s population will be more than double that of its next largest member, Tanzania.

For Africa, the end of the century will have seen it undergo a remarkable change in population fortunes. These are the top 10 most populous countries in the world today: India (approximately 1.45 billion people), China (1.419 billion), US (345 million), Indonesia (283 million), Pakistan (251 million), Nigeria (232 million), Brazil (211 million), Bangladesh (173 million), Russia (144 million), and Ethiopia (132 million). There are only two African countries in this club.

By 2100, it will be a different story. While estimates vary, however they are calculated, the top 10 population behemoths will be India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan, DRC, the US, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Tanzania, and Egypt. From two today, Africa will have five by 2100. Three of them are currently members of the EAC, and they are likely to be four by the end of the century, with Ethiopia expected to join within the next decade.

What is the worst and best that could happen? DRC could remain embroiled in war for long and mired in poverty despite its unrivalled mineral wealth.

That poverty could, ironically, lead to even higher population growth, and it would rival Nigeria by the end of the century. In that scenario, the breakup of the DRC within the next 15 years is guaranteed.

Even without war, the size of DRC and the historical neglect and tension between its western (Kinshasa) power elite and the east have already frayed the country.

The capital, Kinshasa, already a megacity, is anticipated to grow even larger, with some projections estimating its population could reach around 35 million by 2050 and continue to expand. Some experts think Kinshasa is developing into a veritable city-state, and it would do quite well, unburdened by the rest of its unwieldy and fractious lands.

In eastern DRC, in the territories controlled by the rebel M23 Movement, there are signs that they are far better governed than those under the Kinshasa government.

A new independent, better-functioning Kivu Republic could emerge. As DRC continues in crisis, with a growing population, and overwhelms neighbours like Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda with refugees.

Or the war could end, with more enlightened and creative leadership in Kinshasa stitching together a peaceful, united, and prosperous DRC, a rich market that drives the EAC toward Africa’s richest economic region.

A peaceful and rich DRC could gobble up Rwanda, Burundi, and western Uganda. Unlike Rwanda and Burundi, which would be swallowed whole, Uganda would be divided into three: DRC would eat up a portion of the west and northwest.

Tanzania would take the lower western and central parts of Uganda. And Kenya would chew the east, northeast, and north.

DRC could also break away from the EAC, especially should Ethiopia stabilise its internal politics and join the bloc, and if Somalia too mends and crafts a more credible federal state with its restive and semi-autonomous Somaliland, Puntland, and Jubaland states. With Ethiopia in the EAC fold, there would be less incentive for DRC to remain.

Magnetic quadrangle

There are also several other unknowns. In Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki, 78, and in power for 31 years; in Djibouti, Ismail Omar Guelleh, 77, in office since 1999; and the elder of the group, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, 80, and in power for nearly 39 years, are all on their last political lap.

By 2035, greater East Africa will have to contend with a region living in a world without them at the helm. The EAC at that point could be reshaped by the Horn of Africa's political dynamics.

Seventy-five years out, is still a very long time, longer than any current EAC state has been independent. The foregoing, and a lot more, could, and will, happen. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) could come into its own.

A free trade area will make nonsense of regional blocs like the EAC. For the EAC, Tanzania will overtake Kenya – and some projections say Ethiopia – as Eastern Africa’s largest economy within the next ten years.

And if DRC becomes red hot too, with both being members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), they will suck in the EAC and SADC around themselves.

And if population and economic giants DRC, Tanzania, and Ethiopia form a magnetic quadrangle with Kenya, they will unleash a gravitational force that anchors AfCFTA around East Africa.

So, the EAC finds itself in a peculiar situation: If its larger states become economically and politically successful, and they also continue breeding like rabbits, they will kill it. The precious consolation here is that it would be a good and happy death.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. X(Twitter)@cobbo3