The Ebola crisis evoked the worst fears and clichés about Africa. Forget the vast distances between Monrovia and Asmara or Freetown and Johannesburg. Ignore the many differences between the three countries fighting the outbreak and the fifty or so states in Africa—four times larger and nearly fifty times more populous than Australia—free of Ebola. It’s all ‘Africa’, right?

Well, no. Indeed, notwithstanding the global hysteria around Ebola, the caricature of Africa as an undifferentiated monolith is fading. More and more the continent is being defined by its anchor or ‘strategic swing’ states. That’s broadly a good thing. Their success conveys far greater benefits to Africa than, say, Botswana or Mauritius—frequently lauded for their development efforts but together comprising just 0.3 per cent of the continent’s total population—ever could. But the reverse is also true. ‘Failure’ is more detrimental to Africa if it occurs in key states like Nigeria, South Africa or Kenya.

2014 was a bad year for all three but Kenya faced the most complex range of challenges. Its political, ethnic and economic fault-lines were exacerbated by attacks by the Somalia-based Islamist extremist group al-Shabaab, a never-ending refugee crisis (the second largest in Africa) and an indictment of its President, Uhuru Kenyatta, by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity (the case was finally dropped in December after three years). Read more