By Lawrence Clinton, COO, Castor Vali
The recent decision by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to keep the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been, is both sobering and significant. This symbolic time system represents the final stage of multiple worldwide existential dangers, which include political instability, climate change, nuclear weapon proliferation, and fake information dissemination. The world is facing an alert, as our current period brings both extreme instability and vulnerabilities in global systems.
As a provider of integrated security and risk management solutions, Castor Vali sees this moment not as a point of panic but as a call to action for resilience, readiness, and responsibility.
Risk is Real — But It Can Be Managed
The Doomsday Clock is not a prophecy; it is a reminder. The threats of today are certainly real, but they are not insurmountable. From our industry perspective, the way forward is clear: we must anticipate these threats instead of waiting for them to happen. Organisations must strengthen their systems, personnel, and partnerships, which will enable them to function both ethically and effectively during times of extreme crisis.
At Castor Vali, we help our clients mitigate many of the risks highlighted in the Doomsday Clock narrative through intelligence, proactive planning and operational delivery. Our organisation provides services to mitigate risks in complex and fragile environments. This makes us the ideal partner when unstable conditions, misinformation, and weak government control heighten security threats. In this context, compliance, intelligence and integrity must be treated as fundamental requirements.
Why These Risks are Converging Now in Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa’s macroeconomic outlook presents a clear paradox. Regional growth is expected to strengthen modestly over the next few years by between 3.0% and 4.3%. Yet, conflict intensity has increased, acute food insecurity remains widespread, and poverty reduction remains slow. These overlapping pressures heighten security, operational, and reputational risk for organisations operating across the continent.
Medium-term resilience, therefore, exists alongside widening fragility and rising debt stress. Many low-income countries in the region are already assessed to be at high risk of debt distress reinforcing governance pressure and public grievance. At the same time, Africa’s working age population is expanding faster than any other region potentially adding 740 million people by 2050. This demographic momentum represents both historic opportunity and structural risk if employment creation, infrastructure, and public services fail to keep pace. Regional economic forecasts continue to point to gradual growth, but persistent inflation, higher borrowing costs, and constrained fiscal space suggest that household pressure and social tension will remain defining features of the operating environment.
Three Global Risks We Help Address
1. Political and Social Unrest
Across parts of North and Sub-Saharan Africa, fragile governance, conflict dynamics, and regional instability continue to create operating environments defined by uncertainty. As examples, the unstable governments of Libya, Sudan, and the Sahel region create conditions which lead to rising conflicts that endanger human existence, military activities, and global peace.
2024 and 2025 saw a resurgence of youth-led mobilisation across major African cities, driven by rising living costs, unemployment, and perceptions of corruption. Protest activity has become more networked, more rapid in escalation, and increasingly capable of triggering sudden policy reversals with direct implications for supply chains, licensing, and contractual stability. In parallel, according to the World Bank, conflict-affected regions now account for 80% of the continent’s acute food insecurity, affecting 120 million people, illustrating how social pressure, economic stress, and insecurity can converge quickly.
For organisations operating in these environments, unrest is no longer a contained national issue. It is a cross-border, fast-moving operational risk that requires field-based intelligence collection and protective measures, as well as stakeholder management plans, helping them stay safe while maintaining business operations.
2. Disinformation and Misinformation
One of the most modern threats identified in the Doomsday Clock statement is the widespread manipulation of truth. Deepfakes, coordinated online influence operations, and synthetic narratives now shape political perception, public trust, and even physical mobilisation on the ground.
Across Africa, the scale and sophistication of disinformation campaigns have increased sharply in recent years, with many linked to foreign state actors or domestic political competition. The Africa Centre for Strategic Studies (ACSS) confirms that nearly 60% of documented online disinformation campaigns in Africa are sponsored by foreign states. Elections, conflict environments, and major policy decisions have become focal points for digital manipulation aimed at delegitimising institutions, polarising communities, and influencing strategic outcomes. While civil society and international organisations are expanding media literacy and verification initiatives, the pace of technological change continues to outstrip defensive capacity.
In this environment, organisations require dependable local information to distinguish between authentic and fabricated content during the current time of deepfake technology and conflicting information spread. Castor Vali provides specialist information services through its Security Information Service (SIS) and Daily Monitoring and Alerts, which deliver verified information that is both timely and based on local sources. This enables our clients to distinguish fact from narrative, reducing reputational exposure, and supporting informed decision-making in fast-moving information environments.
3. Climate-Driven Instability
The climate crisis is increasingly a driver of conflict, migration and supply chain disruption in fragile environments. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the World Bank’s climate models project large-scale internal displacement over the coming decades, with up to 86 million internal climate migrants by 2050, while rapid population growth continues to place pressure on labour markets already struggling to generate sufficient formal employment.
At the same time, Africa Finance Corporation (AFC)’s 2024 State of Africa’s Infrastructure indicates that infrastructure deficits across power, transport, logistics, and digital connectivity constrain resilience to climate shocks. Financing initiatives are emerging to support adaptation and climate-resilient development, yet the scale of required investment remains substantial, and trade-finance constraints continue to limit the private sector’s flexibility during commodity, or weather-driven disruptions.
The implication for security and risk leaders is clear. Climate hazards are no longer distant environmental concerns. They are immediate social and operational accelerants capable of driving migration, urban strain, and community grievance in ways that directly affect business continuity.
At Castor Vali, we help clients anticipate and manage related security and operational risks. Through our embedded security teams, we provide risk assessments, crisis management planning, real-time threat monitoring, and evacuation planning. This enables clients to maintain continuity, protect their personnel and respond effectively to climate-related disruptions. Where operations overlap with climate-sensitive regions, particularly in the infrastructure, extractives, and logistics sectors, we provide the tools and intelligence assets to help clients stay prepared, connected, and protected.
Trust and Accountability in the Face of Uncertainty
The Doomsday Clock is also a statement about trust, or at least the erosion of it. The current world faces multiple challenges that affect global institutions and supply chains, and also challenge what people consider to be true facts. In this climate, trust becomes a strategic asset. Castor Vali established its compliance framework based on three core elements: integrity, transparency, and a speak-up culture. The Strategic Value of Compliance blog demonstrates our belief that accountability functions as a risk-control system and serves as a foundation for trust.
Final Thought: Hope Through Preparedness
Across Africa in 2026, risk is defined less by isolated shocks and more by the interaction of pressures, where protest dynamics, information manipulation, and climate-driven disruption reinforce one another and accelerate instability. In this environment, effective security depends on trusted intelligence, local understanding, and accountable delivery. By integrating these capabilities into operational planning, Castor Vali enables organisations to navigate uncertainty with confidence, protect continuity, and operate responsibly in complex and fragile settings.
The Doomsday Clock remains at 85 seconds before midnight, and Castor Vali stands firm in our mission:
‘to provide comprehensive intelligence-led security and risk management solutions tailored to our client’s needs, leveraging our deep expertise, especially in Africa to deliver exceptional services that protect our clients and the communities in which we operate’.
Preparedness is not pessimism. It is the most hopeful action we can take.
