“The issue of service delivery comrades, we have to do it… its service delivery improvement or death for us,” President Ramaphosa of South Africa speaking to a gathering ANC councillors

The continent is in a worrying state. COVID, and burdensome debt and lethargic economic growth have led to stagnating economies that are not creating jobs or opportunity and there is a young population that is angry about it. Add to this a politics that is old and unresponsive to the pressing needs of the day – the average age of African presidents is 65.

Across the continent there is a potent cocktail of frustrated masses of young people who when they turn angry are ready to explode, and in some countries it already has. In Kenya this has actualised in the Gen Z protests, the Arab Spring had roots in the same dynamics of frustration and anger. Mozambique, Angola and Togo have recently been rocked by youth led protests and as we have seen in Burkina Faso, Sudan, Tunisia, and Egypt protests can topple governments.

I’ve written previously about the need for a single minded focus on jobs and growth but that is not something that will turn around African citizens lives overnight. Something that will quickly make a difference and help to change attitudes and reduce frustrations is service delivery. The boring everyday business of governing.

Why service delivery.

We interact with government every day in a myriad of ways from the fundamental like education and healthcare, to the mundane like collecting rubbish and filling potholes, to the vital like issuing critical documents like IDs birth certificates and passports.

In the grand scheme of things this may seem small in comparison to infrastructure, trade deals, and war and peace. However, the mundane has an enormous impact on people’s lives. People who cannot start businesses, get jobs, or go to university because they do not have documents. Being forced to live in terrible conditions due to uncollected garbage, dilapidated roads, and leaking water pipes. The despondency bad health care and education cause among those who have no other choice but to use public services is tragic.

Giving citizens crap services has three crucial impacts; first it degrades the quality of people’s lives and in doing so undermines their dignity. Second it creates frustration and anger that feeds into the broad dissatisfaction that if left to fester can topple governments. Third it creates friction (extra costs and lengthens timelines) in the economy and the opportunity for extractive corruption that undermines jobs and businesses (especially small and micro-enterprises). Even the World Bank in its institutional assessment of African countries notes that “there is an urgent need for governments in Africa to improve the delivery of essential services to promote inclusive, sustainable growth.”

Smart governments should recognise this and recognise that service delivery is cheaper and more practical to implement than all the grand projects and visions. In this era of constrained fiscal space focusing on the possible things that will improve people’s lives and improve their everyday experience with government would actually give African governments the credibility they need for people to support grand policy implementation.

Delivery is dignity.

People’s everyday experiences matter. To be forced to spend money for a private solution to a public service, or pay a bribe to get a basic service, or be forced to endure the humiliation of a degraded service is infuriating and it undermines the dignity of everyone forced to interact with those dysfunctional systems.

Service delivery matters to peoples livelihoods. Bad service delivery sucks energy and capital out of businesses and economies that desperately need them to drive growth and create jobs.

In providing bad services governments are hobbling themselves and their economies. Fixing them requires no more than doing what is budgeted for properly. Focus on getting the “simple” things right that improve people’s everyday experiences. Then maybe we can build grand visions of the future.