Good Governance Important to Africa’s Future

 Much is made of human rights failures in Africa, and rightly so.  The denial of rights to citizens is always a sign of a despotic government that considers them subjects who owe unquestioning allegiance to its rulers.  Such governments waste the human resources present in their countries and provoke mass migrations, e.g., Eritrea, recently the fastest-emptying countries in the world until South Sudan’s conflict led to an exodus.

But human rights failures are the result of the failure of good governance.  This has not been the top priority of U.S. government policy, which focuses on current national security needs.  While such preoccupations have some justification in fulfilling the mission of protecting the homeland, these short-sighted policies only create problems down the road – both for the indigenous people of the countries in question and for the United States and the West by creating political monsters such as Mobutu Sese Seko in the former Zaire because he portrayed himself as anti-Communist.  However, accurate that portrayal may have been, it ignored Mobutu’s corruption and destruction of a budding democratic sentiment in his country, no matter how left-wing it might have been at that time. 

The reason he and his fellow despots in Africa were able to get away with their destruction of democracy and human rights in their countries is that the accountability inherent in good governance went by the wayside in full view of the world.  As I have often said to American policymakers with whom I’ve worked, it is far more important to focus on the welfare of the people rather than the usefulness of the people’s leaders.  For the people’s welfare to be safeguarded, though, there must be some level of accountability for governments.

The first place most people think of in terms of establishing accountability is at the ballot box in elections, and that usually is indeed one way to bring some level of accountability to the democratic process.  Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done.  Throughout the long period I’ve worked on African elections – reporting on them, monitoring them, helping parties and candidate run better races – it has become clear that all too many parties and candidates have poor instincts when it comes to elections.  So many of them boycott difficult elections rather than finding a way to contest them more successfully and continuing to refine their electoral efforts over succeeding election contests.

For one thing, African politicians tend to be clannish and inclined to bring the support mostly of their own ethnic groups.  Even if their group is by far the largest, that produces the absence of true accountability.  So long as parties reward their supporters, no questions will be asked about how they govern.  In fact, ethnic exclusivity promotes corruption and mismanagement – and political failures.  When I worked with Kenyan political parties in the early 1990s, there were cleavages not only between ethnic groups, but also within ethnic groups.  This made it possible for Daniel arap Moi, a politician from a small ethnic group, to create enough of a coalition with other power brokers to win the presidency with less than 40% of the vote.  Of course, it is difficult to overcome the sense of ethnic obligation a candidate’s people force on them.

I helped train parties and candidates across Africa about how best to appeal broadly to voters, but some of the basic understandings about campaigning in America were unknown in the African environments in which I worked.  For example, in America, candidates seek financial support from the people (and often big interests) to run for office, although there are wealthy candidates that fund their own campaigns.  In Africa, especially in Kenya, I found, it is the big man who is supposed to provide for the people.  This principle is cemented by the largesse of incumbents who can give out goodies around election time, with which challengers must compete.

Another means of establishing accountability is the independence of legislatures.  All too often, African legislatures have been in lockstep with the President and ruling party, mostly because they are of one mind generally and in synch politically.  Without meaningful leverage legislatively by opposition parties, there is no way to stop ruling parties from doing what they will.  In South Africa, the African National Congress has often held overwhelming dominance in the Parliament since majority rule in 1994, but the support for the party has declined in recent elections – 2009 (65%), 2014 (62%) and 2019 (57.5%). 

The domination of the ANC has aided and abetted widespread corruption in South Africa, and the rooting out of this corruption is despite the ruling party and nor because of it.  In Ghana back in the mid-1990s, it was thought that the legislature would be a guaranteed rubber-stamp for then-President Jerry Rawlings, but when a divisive value added tax issue came before government, the legislature parted with Rawlings and defeated his proposal.  There have been other examples of legislative independence since the wave of democracy in Africa in the 1990s.

The third guarantor of accountability is the court system.  Courts have the ability to overturn government actions in violation of constitutions, but so many judicial systems are set up to be influenced by the executive branch.  Most, if not all, judges in Africa are appointed and can be removed at will by presidents.  Their pay and working conditions are controlled by the executive.  Judicial systems in Africa too often don’t have the latest technology to allow for courts across the country to keep accurate records and share precedents with one another as they do in America.  That’s not by accident.  Executives have little interest in strengthening court systems that might rule against them some day.

I have been part of organizations that train parties and election officials to run better elections and train legislators to make better decisions and use their laws to be more effective in governance.  However, how do you teach judges to be more independent when they can be removed from office for making what they consider righteous decisions?  You can promote more independent judicial systems, but how much effort has been put in place to achieve that goal by donor countries, even though their private sectors would benefit from such independence by African courts.

Finally, empowering African civil societies has had a positive impact on good governance.  It has not been easy because non-governmental organizations have been hampered, hounded and shut down by their governments, but they still have called out politicians and parties on issues where they have not well served their citizens.  African think tanks have done the research that governments have not that have allowed good decisions to be made or at least identified specific problems to be addressed.  Some governments have interfered with outside support for African civil society organizations, but that must not deter such support from allowing citizen groups to identify the proper course to safeguard the rights and interests of African citizens.

The lack of good governance in Africa has been reflected in various measurements, such as the one created by entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim.  The Mo Ibrahim Foundation was established in 2006 to "bring about meaningful change on the continent, by providing tools to support progress in leadership and governance".  The Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership is an annual prize since 2007 awarded to a former African executive head of state or government based on a criterion of good governance, democratic election and respect of terms limits. With a US$5 million payment, the prize is larger than the US$1.3 million Nobel Peace Prize.

The Ibrahim Index of African Governance, a major program of the foundation, examines the record of potential recipients of the award in four categories: safety and rule of law, participation and human rights, sustainable economic opportunity and human development.  These four categories are then divided into 14 sub-categories, consisting of more than 100 indicators. In eight of the fourteen years it has been offered, no leader has been found worthy of the award. 

Rather than lament the dearth of qualifying African leaders for the prize, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, in conjunction with the African Union, the United Nations, donor nations and the international private sector should create a system of training for government officials to enable them to be more effective in their duties and to provide them with the necessary understanding of why rule of law, due process, transparency and other good governance virtues are linked to success for governments, their citizens and the local and international businesses operating in their countries. 

Oil companies have trained government officials in the energy sector, and it is in the interest of the broader international business community to do the same in wider sectors of endeavor.