Category: Political Economy

Rethinking African debt restructuring

Under its current form, that is imperialism-controlled, debt is a cleverly managed re-conquest of Africa, aiming at subjugating its growth and development through foreign rules. Thus, each one of us becomes the financial slave, which is to say a true slave.- Thomas Sankara

Several African countries have a significant problem. They are highly indebted, in a post-covid low growth global economy, with high inflation driven by wars and broken supply chains. Many African states are unable to effectively deal with the lack of growth or cushion people from inflation. All because the hangover of the pre-covid debt binge has left us without fiscal space.

I say ‘our’ because my country, Kenya, is heavily indebted and desperately trying to avoid a default. As a result, I have watched the debt restructuring processes in Zambia and Ghana closely, as it is not unlikely that the same process will be dominate headlines in Nairobi. It is clear from the example of Zambia and Ghana, that we must rethink our approach to debt restructuring if we are going to dig ourselves out of this debt hole.

What’s going on in Ghana & Zambia

Like much of the rest of the continent Ghana and Zambia borrowed from mix of creditors. Domestic and international bondholders, syndicated loans from banks, concessional lending from development institutions, bilateral lending from foreign governments and commercial loans from state bank Chinese enterprises.

Thus unlike the debt jubilee of the early 2000’s African debt forgiveness is not a simple matter of getting it onto the agenda of a G8 meeting. You must bring all these various stakeholders, with wildly different interests, and sometimes open hostility towards each other, to the table to restructure interest and principal payments.

Unfortunately, as we can see in Ghana and Zambia these various interests combine to make a restructuring process a near impossible slog. Large IMF bailouts (often the goal of the restructuring process) is conditioned upon consensus among the majority of creditors. However, the bondholders won’t even come to the table, the Chinese (bilateral and development) can’t agree with the west, and the world bank and commercial Chinese lenders are unwilling to take terms worse than governments or bondholders. So they get stuck in limbo, both Zambia and Ghana have defaulted, but neither are anywhere near a satisfactory outcome to restructuring negotiations with their creditors.

A different approach

It’s a clear signal to the rest of the continent that we must approach this differently. African countries must restructure their debt because we need the fiscal space to invest in our countries and drive growth. We need the fiscal space to cushion citizens from the soaring cost of living. What use is a government that just pays your tax money to other people.

  1. Start talking now.

If you wait for default before you start negotiating with your creditors, it is too late. It Is crucial to sit down with your creditors before it is a crisis to restructure loan terms. If the context of a restructuring is a fiscal strategy when you are solvent rather than a crisis, your negotiating partners will be much more open to engagement. Not all of these talks will be successful, but some will be and every bit helps.

  1. Tax reform

Fundamentally only two things will get you out of a debt hole. Economic growth and revenue growth. Our complex, badly policed tax systems leak revenue and offer opportunity for corruption, while also limiting growth through encumbering businesses with unnecessary rules and compliance costs or having to pay bribes. Tax reform does not mean increasing taxes, all that will do is punish existing taxpayers. Rather African governments can aim for three things.

  1. Close compliance gaps – there are lots of people who should be paying taxes who aren’t. Bringing them into the tax system is a quick and painless way to bring in additional revenue.
  2. Create an easy, affordable, and painless pathway for the informal sector to become formal taxpaying businesses, to broaden the taxbase over the long term.

Tax reform is critical to jumpstarting our economies with organic indigenous growth and increased tax revenues will give any country more room to negotiate in a debt restructuring process.

  1. Tap into domestic capital.

One of the causes of the current crises is that African countries binged on “cheap” foreign debt. This should be a lesson to African countries that we must tap into more African capital. It is much better to borrow in our own currencies from our own people. To do so African countries need to create attractive long term bonds and investment instruments that people can invest in or even swap short term debt for. In addition, African countries should look in to the creation of diaspora bonds, aimed at tapping the pool of capital built by citizens living abroad.

  1. Communicate

I have written previously that good communication is good policy. This is doubly true when it comes to capital markets. They must believe the credibility of your policies and plans, to buy into a restructuring process. This means communicating at all levels. Through policy documents, high-level bilateral engagements, public forums, the press, public education etc. You must explain reinforce, repeat, and defend your strategy to the point that it becomes the dominant narrative. You must engage your key stakeholders (such as creditors, IMF and World Bank board members, key foreign governments, etc.), often, in person and with credible high level representatives so they are personally sold and invested in your success.

A lack of communication creates information black holes and erode any confidence in whatever restructuring plans you may have. Markets are fickle things, and capital is cowardly. A lack of confidence has plunged countries towards crises, a recent stark example being the short lived prime-ministership of Liz Truss in the UK.

Restructuring debts smartly

It is exhausting. African governments have been here before. Borrowed large amounts of money from foreign creditors, to fund development that doesn’t quite happening and end up endangering their own solvency.

The last time this happened, Africa got a debt Jubilee. That will not happen this time. The nature of our creditors and debt has changed. Our only viable pathway is to embark on debt restructuring processes that will save us from bleeding ourselves dry to pay debts rather than fund development. It won’t be easy, and we will have to pay, but a reformulated approach to restructuring could make that payment less painful and give us the space to grow.

Solving Africa’s inflation problem

Inflation is back.

Covid has ravaged our economies and scrambled supply chains. Russia invaded Ukraine upended global commodities markets. The impact of these on the global economy is that inflation is back. Prices across the board are rising, and Africa has not escaped this phenomenon, it is causing real pain, as protests across the continent show. However, Africa is in a real bind, our governments don’t have the financial firepower to cushion their citizens easily, and the causes of inflation are beyond our control in the short term.

Much like the coronavirus pandemic there are some tough choices to make. These must be tailored to our context. Outside help will be hard to come by, and for the long term, there are lessons to be learned to ensure that we use the current situation to make sure we never end up here again.

Another crisis fewer options

The current inflationary crisis is problematic because its causes are not native to the continent. Meaning that the tools at our disposal to deal with it in the short term are limited. The primary drivers of inflation are the global supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic which have not been resolved. Second the war in Ukraine has meant that two of the world’s largest suppliers of oil, gas, wheat, fertilizer, and cooking oil have suddenly stopped shipping those commodities driving the prices of food and energy up all over the world. Africa is a net importer of wheat, fertilizer, oil and gas, and cooking oil, less supply and higher prices will have broad impacts throughout the economy.  Third, the developed world’s response to inflation has been for their central banks to raise interest rates, and the Federal Reserve Bank in the USA has been particularly aggressive. This has strengthened the dollar in relation to African currencies, making buying global commodities or goods in global markets more expensive, while at the same time making dollar denominated debt payments more expensive, meaning our governments have even less money to spend on other priorities.

The causes of the current inflationary crisis are not homegrown and that severely limits the tools available to African Governments to mitigate it. Interest rate rises, the tool most commonly used to fight inflation, is effective when the cause of inflation is too much demand or an overheating economy. That is not the case here, and despite African central banks raising rates it won’t have much impact beyond dampening already weak economies. Governments have tried to use what little fiscal space they have to subsides fuel and other basic commodities. However, this too will have little impact as African governments do not have the financial firepower to do much else beyond cushion the impact of inflation rather than shield people from it.

Short Term fixes

So, what can we do in the short-term? Despite limited options there are a few things that African governments can do ease some of the pressure inflation is putting on their people. First is to look at their tax regimes, many countries levy various combinations of VAT, Excise and import duties on fuel, fertiliser, and basic food commodities. Examining and reducing those in the short term will provide some price relief, though the government may lose some revenue its much simpler and cheaper than providing subsidies.

Second, is to apply subsidies where they will have the most impact, do not subsidize fuel, that’s a losing battle with global commodity markets, rather subsidise commodities like fertilizer to ensure farmers can produce as much food as possible domestically and ease some of the pressure caused by imported food prices. Target support at public transport providers both formal and informal to enable them to keep their prices affordable. We need to spend our little money where it has the biggest impact, not where it generates the best PR.

Third help your private sector strengthen and diversify their supply chains, make your embassies and consulates available to support local companies trying to find cheaper supply alternatives or even bring the power of state to bear through diplomatic ties or credit guarantees to lower the risk and the prices local businesses have to pay for global inputs.

Fourth, governments and central banks must be honest with their people and businesses, explain why what is happening, is happening and how it is being dealt with. Managing expectations or guiding markets can be just as effective as many policy interventions.

These measures won’t stop inflation. However, they will mitigate it. Which is better than simply copying what others are doing and raising interest rates, doling out cathartic subsidies and crossing our fingers hoping for a break.

Long term solutions

I have written previously that the pandemic showed us that we cannot rely on the rest of the world to help in a crisis especially when they too are affected. The inflation-crisis is global and in Washington, London, and Brussels they are far more worried about their own people than what it is doing to the ability of poor Africans to put food on the table. Thus, we must take a step back and look at the structural issues that have landed us in this predicament and aim to fix them so that next time the global economy is thrown into turmoil we are not turned into basket cases

1.    Diversify, diversify diversify

It is critical that Africa learn from and rectify a key mistake. Over reliance on small number of suppliers will hurt when that supply is restricted. It is key that Africa deliberately looks to develop alternative sources of wheat, fertilizer, cooking oils and energy. This needs to be done both domestically, regionally, and internationally. How can we strengthen the domestic production of these goods, can we identify regional suppliers and use the ACFTA or regional economic blocs to access that supply and can we make sure there is regional and ideological diversity among our global suppliers so that if one of them ever faces crisis it is not transmitted wholesale onto the shelves of African shops?

This diversification must also extend to what we consume, President Museveni of Uganda may have sounded insensitive when he told Ugandans to eat cassava instead of bread if the price of bread is too high, but he was not wrong. If we can nudge African consumers to use goods and products that can be grown or made cheaply here, it is the ultimate insulation from supply-side driven inflation that we are experiencing now.

2.    Develop domestic debt markets

A massive problem facing governments with large amounts of foreign loans (e.g., Zambia, Kenya, Ghana etc.) is the weakening of their currencies, locking them into a vicious cycle of a strengthening dollar draining money out of the country as debt payments become more expensive. Strengthening domestic local currency debt markets will ease this pressure in the future, and while every country may not be able to develop a fully fledged bond market, that need not be an issue. African countries can issue debt in other African countries with better developed markets, it may not be ideal, but it would be cheaper for Zambia to issue Rand denominated debt rather than dollar debts.

3.    Tax systems that make sense

As pointed out previously, in many African countries the tax systems are reinforcing rather than mitigating inflation. African governments need to take a step back and look at those tax systems to identify where they do more harm than good (e.g., taxes on basic commodities) but also identifying taxes that can be used as policy levers. Raised or lowered as appropriate when needed.

4.    Africanise monetary policy

By this I mean there must be a recognition that monetary policy in Africa cannot simply copy what happens in Washington or London, or blindly implement what the IMF recommends. It is clear that our fiscal and monetary policies must be better collaborated to ensure that our debt strategies are geared to tap domestic sources as far as possible. That interventions in currency markets are timed and designed to have the least impact on citizens and that interest rates are used when appropriate in reaction to conditions and developments in our markets. To do this we must reassess the African approach to monetary policy, with the questions of what affects our citizens, markets and businesses at the centre.

5.    Fuel

Often the largest contributor to inflation is rising fuel prices. It is not possible to completely get rid of the need for oil and gas but concerted long term action can ensure that demand for oil and gas is reduced. Further reducing African economies exposure to oil price driven inflation.

What parts of our transport systems can we electrify, make more efficient or switch to alternative fuels? How and where do we invest in biofuels and renewables? What’s needed to make our energy systems more efficient? All big questions, but worth answering not only to reduce exposure to price spikes but also to make a contribution to mitigating climate change.

Rebuilding for resilience 

Inflation is painful, and we are all feeling it. From a policy perspective it is tricky to solve when it driven by factors outside of our control like wars in Europe and highly optimised supply chains falling apart. However, our policy cupboard being is not empty. There are things African governments can do in the short term to ease the pain, but it will not be a cure all and they must be honest about that.

In the long term, we must rebuild African economies with resilience in mind. Not just against pandemics but against an increasingly uncertain world where crises and economic shocks are more commonplace. There will be situations in the near future that will increase inflationary pressure globally and on African economies. We must diversify and contextualize our approach to economic policy making to ensure that this rebuilding for resilience is done with the African context, citizens, and businesses at its centre.

Africa will face inflationary crises in the future, lets use this one to make sure we are prepared for them 

 

A new vision for African Capitalism

“Having come into contact with a civilization which has over-emphasized the freedom of the individual, we are in fact faced with one of the big problems of Africa in the modern world. Our problem is just this: how to get the benefits of European society, benefits that have been brought about by an organization based upon the individual, and yet retain African’s own structure of society in which the individual is a member of a kind of fellowship.” – Julius Nyerere

 

Markets are extraordinary things. They can drive innovation, wealth creation, poverty eradication and enable people to express themselves in new and creative ways. However, markets can also be incredibly destructive. The relentless drive for profits at its centre markets often lose sight of the welfare of communities, the environment, and most destructively concern for the wellbeing and prosperity of the future beyond the next quarter or dividend payment.

For the last 30 years, Africa has been subjected to the Washington consensus. Which can loosely be defined as a set of policy prescriptions for economic reform centred on market liberalisation. Africa was encouraged (sometimes forced) to adopt free-market principles and mechanisms in their economies, as the medicine for the economic malaise that plagued the continent at the time. Today after a global financial crisis, the unforeseen consequences of the free market success of globalisation, climate change, inequality and this year a global pandemic. It is clear that the inevitable logic of liberal markets cannot and should not hold.

The current crisis of capitalism is an opportunity, to break free from the unbridled capitalism of the Washington consensus and reshape it into an African capitalism. Which considers the unique structures of our economies and societies, as well as our aspirations. To create markets that enable opportunity, reshape our relationships with global markets and that have limits, on how much of our lives and communities should be monetised.

Africa and capitalism: a troubled history and lessons for the future

For the last several centuries Africa has had a troubled history with capitalism. Driven by western capitalisms relentless drive for profit, Africa has been exploited, a source of slaves, ivory, minerals, gold, oil, and other resources that are fed into the economies of more developed nations. This was the logic that drove the slave trade and imperialism, and it is no surprise that to this day Africa has been unable to integrate into or climb to the top of a capitalist system designed with us at the bottom. These structural issues remain to this day,

Beyond the structural issues, as Mwalimu Nyerere pointed out the modern conception of capitalism has its roots in western liberalism, which is highly individualistic. Communitarian values have deep roots in African societies. Where a responsibility to society as a whole, considerations of the welfare of future generations, the importance of the land and resources it holds are all held as guiding principles.

This does not mean to say the Africans are natural communists or socialists. We have a deep appreciation for the positive power of markets, hard work, individual expression, entrepreneurship and success. Thus, the question for policymakers becomes, not whether we should have markets in the first place. Rather what should those markets look like, how do we shape and regulate them to be the kind of markets we want, that will work for Africans? That magnify those things about markets that we value, but that do not cannibalise the community in the process.

Reshaping Markets

The first priority for African capitalism would be to reshape markets within Africa so that they promote and enable opportunity and competition, that enables African enterprise and livelihoods to thrive.

The first element of this is regulatory. Regulations are often a double-edged sword. First, they can be constrictive. A report by the Africa Development Bank looking at the regulatory environment that African businesses face found that “When asked about the major constraints to their operation and growth,   almost two-thirds of African businesses rate at least one regulatory  issue as a serious concern… Collectively, overall regulatory challenges are perceived as more severe than even infrastructure and access to finance.” African businesses especially small businesses face too many hurdles, thus, we need to redesign our regulatory systems. It is not about cutting regulations as ardent neoliberals have been advocating for years. It is about designing our regulations to fit our business context, which means:

  • Redesigning our labour laws to fit our informal sectors, and gig economies as well as the changing nature of formal employment.
  • SME specific regulatory regimes such as they have in Mauritius and Zimbabwe that make the regulatory regime easier for small businesses.
  • Integrating SME’s and the informal sector into larger policy frameworks such as trade, climate change and industrial policy.

The second is tax. Most African states have complex hard to comply with tax laws, meaning most businesses and people avoid it (or bribe officials too) increasing the tax burden on those that do. Simplifying this is key to easing that burden and creating a fair playing field. More importantly, the tax regime for big corporations needs to be reworked, through lobbying and interest groups larger corporations have carved out a multitude of tax breaks and incentives for themselves. Getting rid of these not only brings in more revenue but stops the big boys gaming the system at the expense of the smaller players.

Restructuring our relationship with global capitalism.

If markets are ever to truly work for Africa, we must restructure our relationship to global capitalism. Which has been structured to extract profits from the continent. Doing this requires a series of actions:

  1. Remaking the tax regime so that foreign corporations cannot minimise the taxes they pay on profits they extract from the continent so that Africa gets its fair share.
  2. Increasing transparency, especially in the extractives sectors, over who owns what. Until we know who actually owns the companies that extract our resources, we will not be able to control them or eventually make sure that Africa has a share of that ownership.
  3. Beneficial ownership laws, that give African’s a share in the ownership of corporations on African soil. Because if we do not own the capital you cannot benefit from capitalism.
  4. Using our voice in global forums to make sure that the issues that disproportionately affect Africa such as climate change and tax evasion, are not only on the international agenda but at the centre of coalitions of nations willing to take action.

Redrawing the boundaries around markets

Public health, public education, public infrastructure, the legal system, the police, public health, national statistics, a clean environment, street lighting, etc. these are all goods that benefit the public. They help form the social contract between citizens and their governments. And for societies in Africa, they are critical, not just for improving livelihoods and cushioning people from poverty. They are important because, through our various communities ranging from family to neighbourhood groups, to church groups, we support each other. What Africa and the wider world have experienced is a simultaneous failure of both governments and markets. Governments have pulled back from public services mainly due to ideological imperatives such as market efficiency (in Africa often imposed as part of structural adjustment or public private partnerships ). And the markets which were supposed to step in, and be more efficient, do so by leaving people out.

The answer is not to let public services decline further or give in to market failures. Rather it is to draw clearer boundaries around where markets should end and where the public good begins. The Coronavirus pandemic has starkly shown up the holes in public health systems, many of which have been caused by years of underinvestment, and shifting of the burden to private healthcare, where the those who cannot pay are underserved.

We solve this by having a clear policy on the boundaries between markets and the public good. By protecting in our development policies and laws the community obligations that we have as the social contract between African governments and their citizens.

African Capitalism

In the era immediately after independence, newly minted African leaders such as Tom Mboya in Kenya with sessional Paper no. 10 and Julius Nyerere with Arusha declaration were laying out political-economic visions to guide their nations. Many of those visions fell to the wayside or failed, for any of a multitude of reasons. But, as the world is at an inflexion point Africa once again has an opportunity to forge a vision of capitalism that that does not eat us for breakfast and then throw us a few coins of aid money to make everyone else feel better. At the centre of that vision should be a rebalancing between markets and the public good. With global powers facing severe challenges at home, Africa has the space to define what its capitalism should look like. Facing mass youth unemployment, untapped potential, and the societal tension it brings Africa has no choice but to redefine its capitalism and right now is a perfect time.

 

 

Africanising Elections

“There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don’t have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

As a Kenyan, every time I watch our chaotic, polarising, sometimes farcical elections, which usually end up with the same cast of politicians with their tired approaches to development in charge. I ask the same question, I saw in a newspaper cartoon, several years ago. Is democracy bad for Africa or are Africans bad for democracy?

The more I ponder the question the more I realise that the answer is neither, but rather if African democracy is flawed, it is because it isn’t African enough. In a previous post, I wrote about how the argument that democracy does not deliver development is wrong, and that we need to think of democracy as not just elections, but broad and continuous participation in governance by citizens. In this post, I want to address the first part of that argument. Elections are not democracy, but they crucial pillar of democracy, the ultimate decision-makers in our governments are chosen through this process. If Africa is to develop and craft courageous new policy approaches to the challenges of the 21st Century it must solve its leadership problem, and that starts with elections.

Changing how we vote and what we vote for may not only help make African democracy more relevant to the African context but by making representation more diverse we can elect the leadership we need and ensure that all Africans feel like they have a stake in their democracies. Many African states have focused on reforms to other parts of the democratic infrastructure such as separation of powers, an independent judiciary and devolving power away from central authorities. These areas of reform are vitally important and must continue, however, if we do not address our electoral infrastructure the whole democratic system will be fundamentally weak and susceptible to the strongmen, dictators, and tyrants that we need to consign to the dustbin of history.

The problem with African elections

Liberal democracy has its roots in the history of the West. The Athenian idea was that citizens (men at the time) should elect their leaders. The innovation of the Romans separated and limited the powers of the leaders to prevent tyranny. The Magna Carta of England made the king a subject of the law rather than the other way around, and so on. The history of the West is in the DNA of democracy and it is a system which Africa inherited as it shed colonialism and that was pushed by the western powers in the 1990s as many African states were encouraged to make democratic reforms. And, many did so, holding elections to determine who will be running the country.

The problem is, that history and the type of elections they bequeathed, namely winner take all elections are not entirely relevant to African states. Winner takes all elections have a number of negative impacts.

First off because only one man can win (it is unfortunately usually a man) the stakes are so high that people are willing to do anything to win. This usually involves having to raise outrageous amounts of money to run a campaign and then having to make that money back while in office it’s a recipe for corruption. Or employing underhanded tactics such as rigging, voter and opposition intimidation, spreading fake news and refusing to accept the results of elections, fundamentally undermining the system to invalidate their opponents’ victory. Winner takes all elections also tend to leave behind a feeling of division and resentment in ethnically diverse societies. When the candidate you support loses, in societies where voting blocs are often based on identity such as ethnicity or religion you feel like your tribe or clan has lost, leaving you feeling marginalised and much more susceptible to radicalism and open to drastic solutions, such as supporting the overthrow of the government you do not feel a part of.

African countries spend a lot of money on elections trying to ensure they are free and fair, which is all good and well until those expensive elections breed division, corruption and rigging. This isn’t an argument to stop holding elections, rather its an argument to reform elections and electoral systems with more creativity and shaped to the African context.

Changing how we vote – One man one vote, with a twist

Elections are based on a simple principle, that every citizen has a right to decide who runs their country. In most African electoral systems, you only vote for one person, and your vote is counted once. This need not be the case, in democracies such as Australia and Ireland they employ ranked or preference voting systems. Which not only considers the choice of the voter but also their preferences about all the candidates, by having ballots where citizens rank the candidates in order of preference. Thus, not only is your vote cast for your preferred candidate, your preferences live on even if your first choice is not a front-runner.

A simple example of this is to imagine a race for a member of parliament (MP) where there are four candidates. Candidate A wins 40% of the vote, Candidate B 30%, Candidate C 20% and Candidate D 10%. In a first past the post system, which most African countries employ, the candidate with 40% of the vote would become the MP, but 60% of people didn’t vote for them, leaving you with a democratic problem. Does the candidate represent a broad enough cross-section of his constituents? In a ranked voting system, after the first round of counting the candidate who won 10% would be eliminated as there is no mathematical possibility of them winning, but the votes would live on, through whomever the voters have chosen as their second choice. Thus, if half of candidate D’s voter’s choose Candidate C and the other half Candidate B it would now be   40%   35% and C 25%. In the third round of counting you eliminate Candidate C and if his voters express a third preference that is 80% for Candidate B and 20% for Candidate A. They would respectively have 60% and 45% of the vote and Candidate B would be the winner, because more voters expressed a preference for that candidate over the other candidate.

Meaning that to win elections candidates would have to appeal to all voters rather than just a simple plurality. Furthermore, cynical strategies like trying to divide the opposition vote by backing spoiler candidates would backfire as those votes could still eventually count against them. Most important a ranked voting system gives the voters a greater voice and ensures better representation as the candidate who is preferred by the most voters would win, rather than the cleverest campaigner.

Changing whom we vote for – ending marginalisation

As spoken about earlier the diverse nature of African societies, means that marginalisation is not only a possibility it is an unfortunate reality in far too many African states. Minority groups find themselves either completely locked out of the political process or having to become junior partners to larger groups in some form of coalition. This is due to the combination of a first past the post electoral system and single-seat constituencies, where a constituency or district is represented by only one person. There is no reason why this must be the case, why should representation be limited to one specific form, in Germany and Lesotho they employ what is called mixed member proportional representation. Where people cast 2 votes one for a candidate to represent a constituency another for a party that they feel best represents your views. Parties that achieve a minimum number of votes nationally (at least 5% in Germany) get a seat in parliament in proportion to the votes they have received. This allows voters to elect who they think will represent their community best, as well as who they think would do best nationally. In addition, it means that small parties, the ones that represent minority interests, the ones who may not be able to win an individual seat, but can get a share of the national vote are represented and can ensure that those minority voices, which may have been marginalised previously are heard.

Mixed member proportional representation is a way of trying to ensure that representation is as diverse and representative as possible, that the concerns of the big groups do not drown out the concerns and interests of minority groups.

Publicly funding candidates

It is not just enough to change how we vote and what we vote for. To get the kind of responsible leadership we need, we need to give the candidates without the ability to raise huge amounts of campaign cash the opportunity to put their case to the people and that means funding. Some countries on the continent have tried some form public funding for party’s policy in an effort to make political parties less susceptible to corruption. This hasn’t really worked as parties are happy to take whatever cash they can get their hands on, legitimate or otherwise, while candidates who aren’t willing to play the dirty cash game are unable to afford to campaign are either discouraged from running, or get drowned out by their better-funded opponents. Having a pool of public funds which candidates, who meet certain criteria – such as committing to publicly disclose all non-public funding that they receive – can receive would give them the ability to put their case to the public. And it would give the public a choice. Money talks, especially in elections, and should give everyone a voice.

Africanising elections

Prior to colonialism and its practice of centralising power in the state and its chosen representatives, many African societies had consensus seeking, conciliatory methods of exercising power. Chiefs and king (where they existed) were generally not tyrannical autocrats, they were constrained by, and had to listen to their people through various mechanisms (such as Botswana’s Kgotla). Rather than doing away with democracy or allowing its continual erosion on the continent we should instead be looking to strengthen it. Draw upon our socio-cultural history of responsive people-based leadership to inspire an Africanisation of democracy, to make it more relevant and effective on the continent. Doing this requires addressing the issue at the heart of democracy, elections.

The winner takes all, money-fuelled, to-the-death contest that elections have become on much of the continent is problematic as it deepens divisions within society and feeds the cycle of bad leadership on the continent. The three mechanisms suggested here, could have the effect of making every individual vote more meaningful, make elections more inclusive and give candidates from outside the tired mainstream a viable chance to win.

Elections may not be seen by many as a development policy issue, however, I believe it is. It is through elections that we have perpetuated the cycle of bad leadership, that has led to ineffective and counterproductive policy and development outcomes. I have previously written on Africa’s leadership problem and the need for citizens to take more responsibility for and elect and support the right type of leaders. But in order to do so they must have the electoral tools available for them to do so, ranked voting, mixed member proportional representation and publicly funded candidates are tools that not only put more control in the hands of the voting public but also enable diminish the incentives to vote for the devils we know and increase the incentives for a new type of politician to run.

Democracy and elections are loud and passionate, and that is because important things are at stake. Africanising elections means making them more relevant to voters by tailoring them to the societies and realities we actually live in rather than 18th century Britain and America. Better, more relevant, and African tailored electoral systems could mean, better leadership and accountability, which will mean better policy and developmental outcomes, its something worth trying.