Africa: the next twenty years
J. Paul Martin
2012-12-28, Issue <
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/611> 611
<
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/85839>
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/85839
<
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/view?q=africa+map&uname=1108420488340868240
84&psc=G&filter=1#5431964682385830754>
http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/611/africa.jpg
What can Africa anticipate over the next twenty years? More of the same? If
it is not to be more of the same, what economic and political processes need
to change? J. Paul Martin looks into Africa’s future and addresses these
crucial questions.
Given the political and economic patterns set over the last 60 years, what
can Africa expect over the next 20 years? If not more of the same, what
needs to be changed?
Sixty years ago, emboldened by such figures as Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere
and Leopold Senghor, Africans were enjoying the fresh air and the
expectations of independence. The newly independent states boasted new
constitutions, new universities and new social and economic plans for growth
supported by strong development aid programs and optimistic populations.
Today the atmosphere is much less optimistic. Rather than planning for
tomorrow, most Africans, if not also their governments, are more concerned
with getting by today. Overseas aid has degenerated into a network of
lotteries where African governments and NGOs scramble to fit into funding
priorities set by Washington, Brussels and now China and India. Few are the
African governments and local NGOs that do not feel dependent on friends
from overseas. Foreign direct investment increases, but few governments
manage to guide the income into sustainable local social and economic
development. Even Africa’s civil society, where local initiative, self-help
and energy have been the most visible, is denigrated by Africa’s
intellectuals as being too focused on their international donors rather than
on responding to the needs and priorities of African communities. Given the
patterns set over the last sixty years and the situation today, what can
Africa anticipate over the next twenty years? More of the same? If it is not
to be more of the same, what economic and political processes need to
change?
TOMORROW’S AFRICA
The general trajectory of change in Africa over the last sixty years has to
a large degree set parameters that will govern what it can expect over the
next twenty years. Such a premise provides little to suggest that future
political and economic change will come in other than uneven and modest
increments. For some countries the change will be progressive, while others
may have little to show. Although arbitrary, the lens of the next twenty
years is a useful timeframe. It is short enough to be constrained by trends
and factors that are already visible. It is also a substantial enough in the
sense that in twenty years the Africans born today will be taking on their
adult roles. What is the world that Africa’s leaders are planning for them?
What can be predicted and for what does Africa need to prepare over the next
twenty years?
By 2033, it is reasonable to expect that Africa will have become an even
more important source of the world’s minerals, resulting in a strong, even
dominant, presence of large and small, legal and illegal, extractive and
agricultural industries, financed largely by external funds and protected by
national officials as needed sources of national income. As today, the
economic, political, environmental and social impact of these industries
will remain problematic. Countries that are truly able to harness the income
from these resources in ways that contribute to the general welfare of the
country have the chance to be in the progressive scenario. Those that are
unable to harness the income and to use it fruitfully will inevitably fall
into the regressive segment. As it is also likely that Africa’s mineral and
agricultural resources sector will be the major source of most governments’
revenue in the next twenty years, success or failure in benefiting from
these resources will have a serious impact on each government’s ability to
govern and to provide services to its citizens. Judging by the last twenty
years, growth in other economic sectors including, unfortunately,
traditional agriculture and especially energy will be modest and will absorb
rather than generate national income. International consumer businesses such
as Coca-Cola and communications’ corporations will continue to find markets
in Africa. Other corporations from Brazil, China and India will join them.
Some African countries will be successful in developing local industries but
even the latter will be susceptible to acquisition by their international
counterparts. Even without considering the impact of payments for Africa’s
international debt, the net result of these trends in both the extractive
and the consumer industries will be a continuing flow of wealth (funds and
non-renewable raw materials) out of Africa.
Judging by the trends visible today, this macro pattern will do little to
change wealth distribution within most states in Africa where the top 1
percent of the population control most of the domestic wealth. Only in a few
states such as Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, South
Africa and Uganda can the middle class be expected to grow significantly.
This growth will depend on diversification within those economies, on the
ability of larger segments of the citizenry to earn the income needed to
assure improved standards of family life, access to education and healthcare
as well as savings for retirement, and thus on their ability to reduce
professional brain drain. Good governance will be crucial to all. In spite
identity politics will not continue to play influential roles in the
acquisition and distribution of wealth and political influence.
One powerful determinant of Africa’s economic and political future will be
the capacity of each country to prepare and retain the range of
professionals needed to run its key private and public sectors and thus to
reduce dependence on international expertise. Building the capacity of the
needed indigenous professionals depends on each state’s education system and
especially on its universities. It is already possible to see a growing gap
between those African states such as Ghana that are able to commit major new
funds (and greater independence) to the education sector and those that are
not making any such commitments. To remain within the progressive segment of
the development spectrum, the level of in-country education must increase to
provide graduates at the different levels with the skills needed for
international personnel and the brain drain.
It is equally reasonable to predict that over the next twenty years, two
factors bringing change to social, political and human relationships across
Africa will be the continuing growth of civil society organizations and the
political presence of women. Gender mainstreaming in government is being
of President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson. Women’s organizations in Ghana have
successfully lobbied the government to pass strong legislation on domestic
violence, and are following through by building partnerships among private
and public institutions to enforce the provisions. But there are also many
negative societal forces. Violence against women in war has increased.
Trafficking of women and children still receives a low priority in
government budgets. For their part civil society organizations have expanded
their agenda and range of action, moving from cities out into the rural
areas. Local human rights groups now seek to build more cooperative
relationships with governments, rather than simply confronting them. There
is also some evidence to show that civil society has begun to persuade
Africa’s legislatures and its justice and court systems to assert more
independence from the executive branch.
Nearly ten years ago the UN set the Millennium Development Goals, a group of
development goals to be achieved by 2015. Now two years away, it is agreed
that achieving these goals in Africa is impossible in all but in one or two
countries with respect to one or two goals. Once more, promises and optimism
have to give way to reality. This time it took less than a decade. This
limited achievement has made clear that sustainable development in Africa
calls for strategies to address more directly, concurrently and
comprehensively all the ongoing major causes of underdevelopment and human
rights abuses, notably governance, civil conflicts, corruption, arms, drugs
and human trafficking, not to mention other obstacles to social order such
as the abysmal conditions of Africa’s prisons, its inadequate criminal
justice systems, identity politics, failing education and healthcare
systems, poor provisions for sanitation and clean water, the prevalence of
HIV/AIDS and other contagious diseases, as well as the many violations of
other civil and political rights that undermine fair, non-violent political
process. Africa’s governments and civil society organizations are now
confronting this basket-case scenario more systematically. In the process
they are finding forces for change but also major obstacles, all of which
have to be addressed if Africa’s youth is to look forward to a better
tomorrow.
THE FORCES FOR CHANGE
Calls for systemic economic and political change today in Africa appeal to
different ideologies and motivations, notably those of human rights,
development, pan-Africanism, anti-neocolonialism and nationalism. The
ambiguities of these languages were recently captured in the following words
by an NGO leader from Liberia: ‘Human rights and development discourses
today are laced with all kinds of hypocrisy, conditionality, selective
enforcement and notions of “Do as I say, not as I do!” European governments
and their big brother, USA, see themselves as the defenders and enforcers of
human rights standards and often talk to the rest of the world in very
condescending terms.’ Nevertheless it is the language of rights to which
local groups turn to legitimize their agenda in both domestic and
international fora. Local civic and human rights organizations increasingly
look to the promotion of rights as a step towards the political and economic
mobilization of communities. However, outside the meetings of the African
Union, most African governments eschew the language of rights, entitlements
and empowerment, especially when they talk about their domestic affairs.
Rarely is the language of rights to be seen in Africa’s primary and
secondary school textbooks or even in its university curricula. Governments
prefer to use the language of nationalism, while the languages of
pan-Africanism and anti-neocolonialism are heard largely within the domains
of Africa’s intellectuals and some politicians.
Moving beyond language and ideology, if we look for evidence of work for
future change, it is to be found in the growth of civil society, the
expansion of electronic communications, new attention to education, and the
changing partnerships among local and the international political and
economic actors. There are certainly many other forces influencing the
economic future of Africa, but these merit closer attention as they
represent more recent and potent forces of change.
1. The Growth of Civil Society
Over the last twenty years there are two sectors that have grown more
rapidly than any other in Africa: civil society and women’s organizations in
particular, and electronic communications. The growth of both fields has
been hugely facilitated by international expertise, resources and
networking. The resulting local civil society groups seek to serve needy
poor urban and rural communities in many sectors, notably education,
healthcare, legal advocacy and lobbying, as well as with respect to safe
water, sanitation and personal security. These tasks, however, require
specialized knowledge and planning skills as well as the ability to generate
the income needed for their sustainability which local groups do not often
possess. Local groups are also entering a new stage as they face local
strong criticism to the effect that they, based as the most successful tend
to be, in the main cities, are more accountable to their international
funders than to the local constituencies they serve. The growth of civil
society remains uneven. Religious organizations, for example, continue to
enjoy strong popular appeal and to provide substantial social services, but
show little growth in terms of agency in the society at large. Labor unions
have also struggled over the last twenty years. Universities remain largely
under the control of government and thus only nominally within the civil
society sector. Similarly the media in Africa has to function within varying
degrees of government control. Its growth has also been limited.
Nevertheless, overall, the size, competence and influence of civil society
are growing steadily across Africa.
2. Expansion of Electronic Communications
There have long been iconic photographic images of herd boys in Africa
watching their handful of goats. Today, far from any major town, we can see
such a herd boy with his five goats and his stick in one hand, but now with
a cell-phone in the other. Taxis in Africa rely on the cell-phone for
business. Community radios rely on call-ins from cell-phone users. Within
the last decade, cell phones have permeated the rural areas of the
continent, enabling community radios to become instruments of public debate,
social change and even banking. Information is thus circulating more quickly
in Africa today than ever before. In the human rights field, advocates are
being trained to use video and encryption technologies to collect and report
out their evidence of human rights violations.
The communications changes over the last twenty have been so massive that
their implications for social policy and planning in the future are hard to
predict. African NGOs, for example, now argue that the flow of information
to and from the villages needs to be more systematic and be driven more by
villagers’ needs. They want modern communications technologies to improve
the lives of the truly poor and increase their participation in the
political and economic decisions that affect their lives. If the pertinent
information is to be shared, discussed and evaluated in village meetings,
how do rural communities access and use information systems? Local village
and community leaders, teachers and religious figures need to be able to
select from general information flows those that match the needs of the
groups they serve.
Elsewhere in the world the potential of electronic communications has been
grasped well by the young. In fact more than Africa’s modest television
networks and weak print media, new communications technologies are likely to
undergo major growth and thus increase their influence on the political and
economic development. What role can youth play in this process? Gone are the
days in Africa when youth were routinely emancipated with defined roles and
responsibilities as adult members of the community through initiation
ceremonies and other institutions. Today in Africa many young men and women
find little to keep them in their villages. They move to the cities if not
to Europe and the United States, depriving local communities of their energy
and imagination. Could the ongoing communications revolution change this
trend, empower these young people and thus benefit their home communities?
3. Education
Education has long been trumpeted as the generator of the energy and the
skills needed for economic and political development in Africa. In practice,
over the last sixty years educational projects launched in Africa have had
great difficulty in sustaining their goals once external inputs are
withdrawn. In the 1960s, for example, promises of universal literacy and
free, universal and compulsory primary education were supposed to be
achieved by the 1980s. Today adult literacy in Africa is less than 10
percent in Niger and only about 55 percent in a relatively rich country like
Nigeria. Only a few universities in Africa enjoy the funding and
independence from government control to ensure wide-ranging thinking on the
part of their faculty members and students. The net result is that few
African countries can train and retain more than a small segment of the
cohort of the government, diplomatic, health, educational, business,
development and other professionals needed to run the country tomorrow. One
exception might be the legal profession, although this has yet to translate
into proficient criminal and civil justice systems.
Recognizing the central role that it plays, education has become a
particular target for African women’s groups. One hears women say that
Africa may not change in their lifetimes, but it must in the lifetimes of
their children. African women are successfully encouraging impoverished
African communities to contribute funds and labor for schools to educate
their children. Some international and local development groups in Africa
are utilizing traditional and non-formal approaches to capacity building and
consciousness-raising. One strategy is the increasing use of theatre and
music. Social intervention theatre, for example, is based on the premise
that communities must be involved in the planning and implementation of the
development projects. The movement uses the language of empowerment that is
often seen as subversive by governments. Education remains highly valued but
few governments are able to maintain, for example, rural schools that have
adequate facilities, qualified teachers and textbooks.
Education is, of course, only one piece in the development equation.
Economic development cannot take place without jobs and access to income
through commercial and service activities. Only then will a community be
able to sustain its economic and political development and the schools and
other capacity building needed for economic growth.
4. Changing Development Aid Partnerships
There is a growing realization that the last sixty years of external
financial and technical inputs have not paid off as expected. More experts
are beginning to believe that many of the inputs have even been detrimental
to development. The point is forcefully made in a recent publication by
Zambian economist, Dambisa Moyo entitled Dead Aid (Penguin Books, 2009).
However, the immediate demise of traditional development aid is unlikely.
More likely is an adjustment in the balance between external and internal
inputs in economic and political development. This re-thinking of
internal-external relationships is matched by a pattern of growing number of
partnerships across international aid sectors, notably among international
NGOs and some governments in the fields of human rights, development,
conflict management and the environment. Greater attention is being given to
micro financing, community self-help, and adult education. The test will be
to see how this new international re-thinking plays out in Africa’s
villages. If the goal is to strengthen the knowledge base and the ability of
the local institutions to operate without external inputs, then the new
thinking must also give more priority to local capacity building and thus
also to moving funds now being spent in head offices in New York, London,
Brussels and Geneva to in-country capacity building. The big change will be
the move from aid to foreign direct investment from the private sector in
ways that the benefits accrue to the population as a whole. This will be the
biggest challenge to Africa’s governments, namely how to ensure that their
people benefit substantially from these international private sector
investments.
THE OBSTACLES
1. Recourse to the Use of Force and Violence
While one can be amazed at the resourcefulness of individual Africans and
their families as they eke out an existence in the Africa’s sprawling urban
slums and impoverished villages, one also has to look at the systemic
obstacles they face, the ones categorically beyond their individual control.
For many, the absence of government security services means having to deal
with armed gangs seeking ‘protection’ taxes. For others, there are the
horrors associated with living in regions contested by opposing militaries,
both of which expect loyalty and material support. The last three decades
have witnessed, even under the rubric of support for economic and political
development, a massive inflow of small arms from the industrialized world to
virtually all parts of Africa. Apart from the clandestine imports, even the
guns sold to governments soon find their way to the black market, and then
to rebel groups, mercenaries and criminals, if not also to individual
citizens seeking to protect themselves and their families. The net result is
not only deaths and injuries, but also protracted civil wars, kidnappings
for ransom and the further exploitation of natural resources to pay for more
arms and ammunition. Easy access to guns makes them a common recourse for
conflict resolution, if not also for political ennui.
Reducing violence in all its forms is major challenge. The continuing
substantial legal and illegal importation of small arms to Africa means that
threats to personal security are increasing across the continent. In spite
of theories of non-violent politics, civil society has yet to develop the
strategies needed to diminish force and violence, whether it is exercised by
the state or non-state entities. Moreover, Africa is all too familiar with
the enormous challenges of building trust and effective public institutions
and services after periods of civil conflict. These challenges even include
intellectual debates about impunity and forgiveness, but also the practical
problem of finding ways to re-educate the young men and women who have been
socialized to bullying, insurgency and living by the gun. The net result is
that threats to personal security are never far away.
2. The Status of Women
Gender discrimination is to be found worldwide, as is the related
phenomenon, domestic violence. In Africa violence against women has recently
taken some virulent forms, notably within the context of civil conflicts
where rape has been and continues to be used as a weapon of war. In its more
traditional forms, gender discrimination in Africa has long been especially
problematical in terms of labor distribution within the family. In many
parts of Africa, for example, men and women share the work in the fields but
all the other domestic tasks, including often distant, daily travel to
obtain clean water, fall to the women in both monogamous and polygamous
relationships. Analogous patterns of work distribution are to be found in
urban life in Africa, with women assuring domestic life, the health and
wellbeing of the family, but also often holding down one or more jobs for
income to buy the basic necessities for their families. One major negative
consequence of this bias is to limit the women’s effectiveness as educators
of the next generation, all at a time when other traditional educational
mechanisms have broken down and the primary and secondary education systems
leave much to be desired.
While accounts of rape and other forms of sexual exploitation in Africa,
especially in conflict zones, are common, sexual harassment is also visible
in daily life in the ‘modern sector.’ There are, for example, many reports
of sexual expectations from women seeking professional advancement and from
girls wanting a good grade in class. These practices, where male
‘gate-keepers’ seek sexual favors, marginalize and undermine the potential
contributions of women to society as a whole. This comes at a time when
women are becoming more visible on the national political scene as
peacemakers and as proponents of social and economic agenda for the
population at large.
3. Identity Politics
The 2008 upheavals in Kenya sent a shiver down the spines of even seemingly
thriving democracies in Africa. Ghanaians and others worried that it could
also happen there. Nationalism, tribalism, pan-Africanism and religion are
but some of the potential sources of group identity in Africa. Many citizens
in Africa have stories to tell of how government officials favor their own
family or ethnic group over others. Such practices associated with identity
politics run the danger of igniting or heightening conflicts between one
group and another.
Academic studies on the roots of ethnic and religious violence have pointed
to diverse causes. Ethnic and religious fractionalization, for example,
leads to competition for common resources, not the least of which are land
and government appointments. Any perception of gains on the part of the one
group quickly leads to fears of their seeking a monopoly of power and wealth
in winner-take-all politics. On the other hand family, religious and ethnic
loyalties, a common language and history make for easier social mobilization
and action. Critical in these circumstances is the existence of bridges or
other mediating mechanisms between groups, especially among the leadership,
and at the level of professional and business associations. Typically the
leaders of major NGOs in Africa come from different segments of their
communities. Many have been educated to the point that they have both a
sense of being part of a nation and part of a larger movement for social
justice. Typically also their work calls upon them to work for fellow
citizens who suffer discrimination. During the Kenyan upheavals, local NGOs
were very active opposing the violence, but we have yet to see a study of
their and the public officials’ achievements.
4. Limited Accountability, Transparency and Sustainability
Many countries are in Africa are endowed with valuable oil and minerals. As
indicated above, the political and economic well being of these countries,
however, will depend on the ability of governments to harness the income
from these resources and to meet the needs of their citizens. Harnessing the
income depends on many factors. One of the most basic will be the ability of
each government to negotiate and monitor contracts and leases that maximize
the income to the nation. This will depend in turn on the presence in
government of qualified and committed officials able to develop the
contracts and the monitoring mechanisms that ensure transparency and the
best possible returns for the benefit of the citizenry. Given the high level
of dependence on income from natural resources for political development of
their countries, local civil society, human rights groups and the media must
also develop the capacity to ensure increasing accountability and
transparency on the part of government. As is the case of the government
officials themselves, such a role calls for specialized training in finance
and monitoring, skills that are not easily accessible to these local groups.
This need for local monitoring has long been felt by NGOs in Africa. In
Guinea, for example, for more than ten years, local groups have been
appealing to the international community for the advanced training necessary
to enable them to monitor the social and environmental impact of the
aluminum industry in their country.
Whether it is the kleptocratic sovereign or the local policeman trying to
pay for his child’s education by collecting bribes, even after making
allowances for different cultural practices, it is hard to see how
corruption does not seriously undermine development. The literature and
advocacy groups like Transparency International depict corruption as a
continent-wide disease. Accountability, transparency, sustainable
development and good governance are closely related in the sense that they
are mutually reinforcing and necessary. Accountability assures that there is
a formal system whereby all actors take responsibility and are held
responsible for their contributions. Transparency discourages questionable
relationships and accounting. Sustainable development requires planning and
implementation that ensures that a given project or institution will be able
to stand on its own after external inputs are withdrawn. Good governance
requires the institutionalization of all three. These qualities take many
forms. Accountability, for example, must be recognized by all the various
agencies. It must also be enforced through sanctions when it fails, whether
on the part of a public or private official, the ex-patriot development
consultant or the NGO vis-à-vis the community it claims to serve.
The literature on accountability, transparency and sustainability is now
extensive and need not be recounted here. There is a UN Convention (2005)
that emphasizes its criminal nature and calls for worldwide action. Both
accountability and sustainability have received extensive attention in UN
debates about development. All three are recognized by the international
community as critical components of development planning and training. The
challenge over the next twenty years will be their enforcement.
WHAT MUST BE CHANGED?
African countries face many powerful forces outside their control. In
addition to those considered above, there are obviously also climate change
and multiple global economic and political forces. The thesis here is that
all of them must remain as major active items on the agenda of Africa’s
governments, regional organizations and civil societies. The reasons are
simple: any single one of the obstacles could by itself hamstring
development; and each of the above forces for change is a necessary
ingredient for progress. Ignored, each has the power to undermine the whole
enterprise. Even with attention to all of these sectors, economic and
political development over the next twenty years will be uneven and
insecure. The bottom line and litmus test, however, will be how African
governments maximize, manage and reap the benefits being and to be derived
from the exploitation of their natural resources.
The trend that has to be changed at all costs is each country’s ability to
deal with its own problems and especially the ongoing exploitation of its
resources. This can only be achieved through good governance and a corps of
professionals and politicians able to assure good governance and to monitor
and regulate the wealth generation processes in ways that ensure real
benefits to the population as a whole. As can be seen in cases such as oil
development in Chad, this cannot be achieved by external organizations such
as the World Bank. National control is crucial. Building the corps of these
professionals depends substantially on each nation’s educational
institutions and the creation of living conditions which will encourage
young professionals to remain in the country and to be able to educate their
children there. The critical education sector will be higher education and
its ability to produce creative leaders for all of each nation’s social,
political and economic sectors. Although quality higher education is not a
stand-alone remedy and many other initiatives are necessary, it is certainly
an essential component if Africa is to make significant strides in economic
and political development. Governments that continue to limit the creativity
of their universities will find themselves without the local resources
needed to assure themselves and their citizens a comfortable place in the
modern world.
Received on Thu Dec 27 2012 - 21:22:40 EST
