Governance, Economics, and Interdependence: Constraints and Possibilities in Sub-Saharan Africa
Paper presented at the Summer Institute on “Governance, Equity, and the Global Poor: A Curriculum Development Institute,” Sponsored by Spelman College and Interfaith Hunger Appeal, Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia, June 9-12, 1994.
The breathtaking pace of political change in Africa has surpassed any predictions or expectations….Almost every country has experienced some form of citizens’ pressure for broader public participation in political and economic decision-making. Nearly two dozen authoritarian leaders have been overthrown or forced to share power.
Africa is experiencing a revolution as profound as the wave of independence that began to sweep the continent three decades ago (Africa News 1992, 1).
Whatever democratic advances have been attained in Africa at this stage are still largely structural and/or constitutional; certainly a strong breath of fresh air, but likely to end up in some countries as only cosmetic and/or temporary. The process has a long way to go in much of the continent (Decalo 1992, 8).
There is no doubting the fact that a wave of democratization is sweeping the developing world. In the vast majority of nations, new issues, demands, and alignments are emerging on the political terrain. Popular organizations and communities and “members of all classes found themselves sufficiently empowered to undermine authoritarian rulers. The astonishing discovery that mass participation could actually help topple governments hitherto impervious to the demands of their own people has made popular involvement in government the starting point for reconstructing political order…” (Kasfir 1992, 587). Largely a response to frustrations with authoritarian rule and the suffocation of civil society, the end of the Cold War and the new disposition towards support for popular movements have invigorated these efforts. Military dictatorships have been forced to accommodate popular interests and to organize open elections. Presidents-for-life have been forced to reexamine their claims to permanent control of political power and to open up political spaces. In many developing social formations, a new political culture is emerging with popular groups forming new alliances, asking new questions, forging new programs, and expanding political spaces through demands for social justice, equity, accountability, participation, human rights, and democracy. These demands, and the new strategies designed to achieve them, mainly through multiparty political activities, have altered to a great extent the overall character of the political landscape.
The domestic political struggles have been effectively complimented (and in most cases encouraged) by developments in the global system. As indicated earlier, the end of the Cold War reduced the relevance of the tyrants and decadent political rulers of the South. The Western powers that had earlier supported dictators and brutal governments as those in Zaire, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Nigeria, the Sudan, and Somalia to use African examples, now began to make new demands on their former allies. Good governance was demanded as a precondition for further support. Good governance became part of the package of political conditionalities imposed on Third World leaders by the lenders, donors, and creditors as preconditions for economic support. In Kenya, it was the only way to get Daniel Arap Moi to reach some accommodation with domestic constituencies and allow popular elections. The election saw the opposition win a hundred seats in parliament. In Malawi, Kamuzu Banda, the country’s president-for-life was forced to make concessions to civil society when British aid was slashed in half. Even in Nigeria, sanctions from the European Community, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom were important in forcing General Ibrahim Babangida to unveil his “hidden agenda” and leave office in disgrace.
In its 1989 report on sub-Saharan Africa, the World Bank gave further credence to the growing assumption that African economies were in crisis because of the absence of good governance, decentralization, accountability and lesser government intervention in the economy. In his introduction to the report, Barber Conable, the World Bank’s President noted that “A root cause of weak economic performance in the past has been the failure of public institutions. Private sector initiative and market mechanisms are important, but they must go hand-in-hand with good governance- a public service that is efficient, a judicial system that is reliable, and an administration that is accountable to its public” (World Bank 1989, xii emphasis added). As a strategy to promote good governance, Conable suggested the urgent need for a process for “empowering ordinary people, and especially women, to take greater responsibility for improving their lives- measures that foster grassroots organization, that nurture rather than obstruct informal sector enterprises, and that promote nongovernmental and intermediary organizations (World Bank 1989, xii). Finally the Bank made the categorical declaration that consolidating the gains of structural adjustment was not enough; that African governments must address “fundamental questions relating to human capacities, institutions, governance,…;” “ordinary people should participate more in designing and implementing development programs;” the state should “no longer be an entrepreneur, but a promoter of private producers;” and that “Africa needs not just less government but better government-government that concentrates its efforts less on direct interventions and more on enabling others to be productive” (World Bank 1989, 2-5).
At a general level these are very worthy positions even if they are not new. For over a decade, African and Africanist scholars have drawn attention to the political nature and context of the African crisis. It was contended that the economic crisis which was manifested in crippling foreign debts and high debt-servicing obligations, declining foreign aid and investments, rising bankruptcies, unemployment and inflation, institutional decay and infrastructural disintegration, crime, insecurity, and rising malnutrition and social decay, were largely symptoms of serious political deformities, distortions, and disarticulations. The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) (1990, 17) admits that Africa is experiencing a crisis of “unprecedented and unacceptable proportions,” and that “the political context of socio-economic development has been characterized, in many instances, by an over-centralization of power and impediments to the effective participation of the overwhelming majority of the people in social, political and economic development.” When the World Bank and Conable talk about “good governance” and “empowering ordinary people” there is a seeming trivialization of an otherwise serious problem. The issues are conceptualized and addressed outside the historical experience and environment of Africa. There is an assumed harmony among and within social forces and classes. In fact, when “ordinary people” are empowered, what are they expected to do with the power? Are they expected to shake hands with the ruthless exploiters and oppressors of yesterday? Will they ever have the same socio-economic and political interests as those who had become outrageously wealthy from looting the public purse? Can their “empowered” institutions and communities serve the interests of the dominant elites, including military dictators? Will their interests suddenly become the same as those of foreign capital just because the magic of “good governance” has been invoked?
What the questions above signify is that there are more fundamental issues to be addressed rather than cataloging the characteristics of “good governance.” To be sure, political conditionality enables donors, creditors, and lenders to put pressure on recalcitrant, corrupt, and repressive leaders in Africa. We cannot however overlook the fact that these same Western leaders were in many instances installed, nurtured and sustained over the years by the same leaders who have now turned against them. Many African leaders have perfected the art of brutal and inhuman politics, divide-and-rule tactics, and a total commitment to retention of power through the asphyxiation of civil society. As well, political conditionality makes it possible to justify the redirection of aid and investment to other parts of the world. This has contributed to the further marginalization of Africa in the international division of labor, a situation noted by African leaders and nongovernmental organizations in the African Charter for Popular Participation: “We…observe that given the current world political and economic situation, Africa is becoming further marginalized in world affairs, both geo-politically and economically” (Economic Commission for Africa 1990, 18). More importantly, political conditionality simply complements the economic conditionality already imposed on poverty-stricken, debt-ridden, and desperate African states by the World Bank, the IMF and other creditors. In the majority of African states, development planning, financial matters and public policy were already being determined, influenced, or severely constrained by the policies, interests, and power of these bodies. Political conditionality therefore, would create a platform to using the disbursement of foreign assistance to condition, influence, and determine the content and context of politics, the political agenda, and the overall ideological content of politics. Once there is complementarity between economic and political conditionalities; and African leaders, prodemocracy activists, politicians, bureaucrats, intellectuals, researchers, business men and women, as well as grassroots organizations come to imbibe and accept the ideology of international capitalism as the driving force behind their activities, Africa would have lost once again, in spite of the end of the Cold War, the ability to be original, creative, and independent in fashioning out an internally driven agenda for reconstruction, growth, and development.
Richard Sandbrook, in a recent study of the African predicament and the implications of the World Bank’s new agenda and emphasis on “good governance” has noted that it is important not to lose sight of the “broader ideological implications” of this strategy. According to Sandbrook, “(s)ince their creation, the IMF and the World Bank have consistently aimed to integrate as many national economies as possible into multilateral global capitalist economy….Both agencies have encouraged, in countries receiving their loans, monetary, fiscal, and trade policies which extend the sway of international market forces” (Sandbrook 1993a, 4 emphasis added). Since the main concern was with the process of governance rather with the ideological specificity of political change, the World Bank and Western governments hardly concern themselves with the nature and character of the state. Policies of desubsidization, deregulation, commercialization, privatization, devaluation, and so on, prescribed by the World Bank only succeed in breaking down domestic constituencies to make the political landscape more receptive to liberal political prescriptions. While the World Bank never anticipated that its “reform” programs would push the masses to the edge of militant, even violent resistance and struggles for democracy, its policies have also created an atavistic environment and badly damaged the legitimacy of the state and dominant elites. This is the only way we can comprehend the fact that though the unequal distribution of the pains of adjustment promoted largely unanticipated political pressures, the content of these pressures have largely reflected a sort of subservience to western liberal political models and prescriptions. The impression one gets from public statements from international financial institutions and Western governments is that what African states now need to get out of their current state of decay, conflicts, crises, and near disintegration, are liberal democratic political models. Will good governance change the African State; make it more efficient and effective; increase its legitimacy, stability, and hegemony; and democratize its institutions and processes to make it more accessible to and reflective of the interests of the people? What will happen to the current custodians of state power who have actually precipitated the current crisis in Africa, and who continue to benefit from the reproduction of the status quo? Will multiparty elections resolve these contradictions? We do not think so.
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