(2x18) Shadow of the Foundation: Part 3, Episode 3
Europe and its African colonies remain the last vestiges of the old nationalistic United Nations system of international governance. Africa, having no strong nationalistic power following the collapse of its communist institutions, is entirely and more totally subjugated by Europe, which in turn has simultaneously avoided the division within its own populace, as seen in Columbia and Auei, by providing social programs to its free population – allowing more of them to remain free – at the expense of the African colonies.
But the Euro-African economy is still built on now-outdated principles of human labor, while the rest of the world, now united in the Internation, live luxurious lives on the backs of automatons who are nothing but happy to serve all of humanity to the best of their hyper-competent ability. With the mere provision of charity derived from that International bounty to Africa, the societies there are lifted up out of their poverty and subjugation to Europe, and happily unite with the rest of the Internation in due time. Europe itself holds out as the last home of nationalism, but as their economy begins to collapse in the absence of the African labor it was built upon, they too in time capitulate to joining the International community.
To commemorate the unification of the world, an enormous pyramid-shaped self-sufficient museum of world history called the Arcology is constructed in the Sahara Desert; a fourth and final Starbridge is constructed near Lake Victoria; and work begins on a project to span all four equatorial Starbridges in an enormous, planet-girdling geosynchronous spacestation dubbed the World Ring. Meanwhile, though Earth has at last been united, the last vestiges of the old United Nations system still survive on the self-sufficient Lunar colonies, who continue to eye the Internation with suspicion for centuries to come.