Tag: Democracy

Managing Africa’s ticking youth time bomb – the case from Kenya

In June 2024 Kenya’s youth, thousands of Gen-Z, did something extraordinary, they had enough. They came out onto the streets demanding the government drop a punitive tax bill, the finance bill, and tackle corruption and waste in government spending instead. In events, that shocked Kenya and the world the police response to the protests was heavy handed and tragic resulting in multiple fatalities, and protestors stormed parliament. Despite calling the out the army, President Ruto had to concede and withdrew the finance bill and later fired his cabinet, but the young protestors have not stopped demanding fundamental changes in the way their government is run.

The events in Kenya are not unique, Africa has seen youth revolts in North Africa (the Arab spring), Nigeria (End SARS) and in South Africa (Fees Must Fall). More importantly, the underlying conditions that led to the protests exist across the continent. A young and growing population, frustrated by economies that offer no jobs, no prospects, run by unresponsive and corrupt governments, with old men in charge. Many of these governments, are heavily indebted, having borrowed irresponsibly when money was cheap, and are now reliant on the IMF and others for support. The conditions of that support require more tax revenue, resulting in punitive taxes that over burden already struggling people.

The Finance Bill in Kenya was the trigger that set off the time bomb of disaffected youth without realistic prospects, who are angry at a government that will not listen and is wastefully corrupt and opulent while they struggle. Where to next, how do we avoid this happening again, in a way those young people don’t loose faith in democracy and turn to more radical and destructive.

Ironically the answer to the ticking time-bomb, lies in the grievances that drove it. African governments need to focus on developing and driving a radical agenda for growth that creates jobs and opportunities. As well as evolving systems of government to be more democratic, more engaging and more accountable.

Radical growth

Africa needs growth and jobs. If we are to ensure that African citizens can have dignified lives, we need to create jobs, livelihoods and incomes. As I wrote in a previous post, with jobs individuals and households have incomes, the ability to pay for housing, healthcare, recreation and invest in the future. In short with jobs come agency and dignity both for people and the nation, and dignity is at the core of any viable definition of development.

African governments must be laser focused on creating the growth and jobs needed if any significant headway is to be made. This means

These are not new ideas, or revolutionary ones. However, doing them well requires African governments to shake off their normal way of doing things which has not worked for the 70 years and focus. Not on what will enrich them as individuals or what will please donors, but what will create jobs and growth.

Engagement – responsive democracy

Our systems of governance are not fit for purpose. Most of them are jerry rigged versions of whatever colonial system had been left to us. Most post-independence leaders were focused on maintaining control of fragile post-colonial states, and thus centralised power. The democratic resurgence of the post-cold war era, focused largely on holding elections, rather than creating democratic systems that engaged with citizens and were responsive to their needs.

It is now critical that Africa create governance systems that engage and involve everyone, especially, young people who feel disenfranchised. At the core of this is three critical things.

  1. African governments must communicate. Not just when they have made decision, but their decision-making process. Tell people what the issue or choice is, the trade offs, and the options. When they intend to do some thing and when it has its impacts. Too much policy and government action on the continent is a surprise. With the rationale a complete mystery and its impacts unexplained. Kenya’s Finance Bill was never properly explained to its populace, the thinking behind it was locked in the heads of the National Treasury’s senior directors. Thus, it is no surprise that Kenyans rejected a bill that was going to make them worse off without it being explained to them why.
  1. African governments must engage with their citizens as a matter of course, in the conception, development and implementation of policy. Thus its time for governments to consider ideas such as participatory budgeting, where people are intimately involved in budget conception and development ensuring that money is spent on citizens priorities.
  1. Strengthening democracy and accountability. It is clear that voting is not enough. That our current systems of democracy, does not properly hold our leaders to account and moreover the incentives inherent in the system are skewed towards people getting into to politics and leadership for the wrong reasons.

A wake-up call

The Gen-z protests in Kenya are both a wake-up call and a reason for hope. A wake up call in that its clear that young African’s do not have unlimited tolerance for hopeless circumstances. African governments must be more engaged and responsive, and most importantly focus on the growth and jobs that our young people desperately want and need.

The protests are also a reason for hope. The young Kenyans who have come out to march and braved police brutality, are not looking to burn the system down. Rather they were looking to make it work, to make it accountable, to reset our governance processes to so that they work to ensure dignity for all rather than wealth for a few.

African governments must be proactive, and respond to their young people, or they may lose patience, and rather than make the system work, choose to tear it all down.

Participatory Budgeting for Africa: Development by the people, for the people, of the people

On the 13th of January 2020, the Matatu (minibus) operators of Kasarani in Nairobi had enough. The Kasarani – Mwiki road that was used by thousands of people every day was in a deplorable state, driving the transport operators, residents, and pedestrians crazy by doubling the price of public transport and travel times. So, they did what unhappy citizens in a democracy do, they protested. The residents of the area protested for 3 days, enduring the brutal attempts of the police to stop these protests. Tragically a 17-year-old boy was shot dead by the police, and only then did the relevant authorities and Nairobi’s elected leaders finally take notice and step in to commit to having the road fixed. This is not unique to Nairobi or Kenya, across the continent, people are constantly decrying the poor state of public goods and services that their governments deliver, in South Africa, they are so common they have a name, “service delivery protests.”

At the centre of this dissatisfaction sits the most impenetrable and stiflingly boring yet critically central government process, budgets. Complex and obscure by design, budgets are drafted and passed in a process that few understand, engage with, or can change. Yet how and where the government decides to spend public money has a direct impact on citizens, and far too often across Africa, those decisions are driven by private (often corrupt) interests or the priorities of lenders and donors. In my previous post, I argued that the pandemic has broken the system of economic, policy and political norms and Africa has an opportunity to reshape its vision of development. Part of that is recognising that markets cannot, nor should they do everything, especially delivering effective public goods and services. Coupled with that recognition must also be a change to the way that public money is spent on those goods and services because it is clear that the way we fund and hold public spending accountable is not working either. That we must bring the budget process closer to people so that it better reflects the needs and aspirations of our communities. How do we do this? Through an approach called participatory budgeting, where communities get to decide how public money will be spent in their localities.

What is participatory budgeting and how does it work.

Participatory budgeting is a process of democratic deliberation and decision making, where people come together to decide how to spend part of a public budget. It can take place on a small scale at the service or neighbourhood level, or it can be done at the city or state level. It is in reality remarkably simple people from a particular area or community come together to:

  • Discuss their issues and priorities,
  • Identify projects or services that would address those needs,
  • Vote on which one of those is going to be funded,
  • Monitor budget execution, procurement, and project implementation.

Some may argue that this is how traditional budget processes work. That the public can participate in the formal budget process by going to public participation forums and lobbying their legislators. However, as someone who has been involved in this process, it is exceedingly hard for ordinary citizens to get their concerns across. Lobbying, around government budgets, is dominated by corporations, special interest groups and politicians and it is usually focused and tax breaks, subsidies, and pet projects. Civil society is often relegated to the periphery and individual citizens are barely heard. Furthermore, this national or regional budgeting process prioritises projects and programmes at those levels over local issues that may not affect a large enough number of people to get noticed. The divide between people and their political establishments is at the widest during the budgeting process. It is hard to access the process of budget making and it is so big and complicated it is nearly impossible for the average person to understand. Here is Kenya’s budget for this fiscal year, thousands of pages of impenetrable numbers, spending and project codes, hard for even an economist or accountant to make sense of. Yet it determines how much money goes to health care, building roads, schools, paying the police etc.

Participatory budgeting does not stop national or regional budgeting, rather it just sets aside a certain amount of money for local communities to use. This is not an alien concept to African countries, where there are already various forms of federalism or devolution that see national governments give tax revenues to regional units to use in their own budgeting process. Participatory budgeting is an extension of subnational decision making at a more localised level, but most importantly it involves the participation of groups that are usually side-lined. The poor, minorities, women, and those who typically feel their voices are not heard but do not matter. By showing up, and participating, the things that matter to them can not only be heard but get funded.

From Porto Alegre to Paris

In 1989, the newly elected Workers’ Party overturned the decision-making process so that citizens decided how a portion of a city’s budget was spent. By 1997, sewer and water connections went up from 75% to 98%; health and education budgets increased from 13% to about 40%; the number of schools quadrupled, and road building in poor neighbourhoods increased five-fold. Importantly, participation in budgeting meetings grew from fewer than 1,000 people per year in 1990 to about 40,000 in 1999. Extraordinarily, participatory budgeting not only encourages people to pay taxes and fees but, in some cases, people have even asked for higher taxes – because they can see where it goes.

In 2014, after a new mayor was elected, Paris began the world’s largest experiment in participatory budgeting. In its first incarnation, Parisians could vote on how to spend €20 million on 15 possible projects identified by the city. The next year they began a comprehensive participatory budgeting exercise. €65 million was set aside and citizens generated and voted on their own project ideas. Between 2014 and 2020, the city has committed to reserving €500 million to be spent through participatory budgeting. In 2016, 158,964 people voted on how to spend nearly €100 million, including €10 million set aside for schools.

Paris and Porto Alegre are not the only cities to have tried participatory budgeting, more than fifteen hundred cities around the world have implemented some form of citizen-led budgeting. Showing that not only is it effective but it can be adapted to wildly different contexts and cultures.

Making participatory budgeting work in Africa

How can we make participatory budgeting work for Africa? Crucially, we should not be too prescriptive the contextual differences between countries, urban and rural areas, within cities, between arid, desert, coastal and forest areas, are too broad and diverse for a one size fits all solution. Rather, what we can focus on is putting the right elements in place that would allow participatory budgeting to take root.

  • Leadership buy-in. This has been critical in fostering a working and positive citizen-led budgeting process. Getting mayors, governors, and other local leadership to buy into the process creates the political space and bureaucratic support for it to work.
  • Engagement and the involvement of local civil society and community leaders. Who can help raise awareness and at least initially act as a trusted interlocutor between citizens and governments they are sceptical of.
  • Critically for participatory budgeting to work, people need to be able to participate, which means setting up spaces both physically and online where people can access information, propose ideas, debate them, vote on them and later track their progress.
  • Fundamentally for participatory budgeting to work, there must be a specific ringfenced budget available, which requires governments to set aside money that citizens can utilise.

This may all seem unlikely, but whether it was in 1989 in Porto Alegre Brazil, 2004 in Torres Venezuela, or in 2014 in Paris, these elements can and have come together. I see no reason to think that it cannot happen in Africa.

Democratic dollars

A study of participatory budgeting in Brazil not only found participatory budgets to be effective, but also to be versatile and flexible and led to the inclusion of traditionally marginalised groups in their governance.

Across the continent, we don’t just have a leadership problem we have a governance problem as well. We vote for “leaders” every few years and spend the intervening period complaining about their ineffectiveness, lack of service delivery, corruption, and stupidity. To fix this I firmly believe we must deepen our democracy and ground the policymaking process in the real needs and aspirations of citizens. Participatory budgeting is one way of doing this, giving communities a say in where some of their tax money goes, and actively seeking to address their needs and concerns. Democratising some of the Rands, Kwachas, Cedi’s, Shillings and Naira’s that are spent in vain on development every year.

It is not a panacea; our problems are diverse and will not be solved by one thing. But by bringing the power and the money closer to the people we can not only fund projects and services that are critical to those people we can strengthen our democracies and systems of governance. And that in doing so we can reshape the social contract and connection between the governed and their governments to be a genuine one of consent and delivery rather than the apathy, disappointment and coercion that all too often defines the social contract in Africa. And just as importantly, it will help Africa build a future where whole communities do not have to riot, and young men lose their lives for want of service delivery.

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.

The African leadership problem

The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the land, climate, water, air, or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership… We have lost the twentieth century; are bent on seeing that or children also lose the 21st? God forbid – Chinua Achebe

Afriwonk is a policy blog, my broad aim is to stimulate conversation and thinking about new approaches to development policy from an African perspective. I try to stay away from the politics as it can turn readers off or introduce bias, rather I try to approach development policy as a people centred issue. However, the fact remains, no matter how good your policies are, if you have bad or ineffective leadership those policies are useless, and Africa has a leadership problem.

If you look around the continent democracy seems to be receding as more leaders seek to extend their time in office, corruption and poverty seem to be as stubborn as ever, and the challenges of development such as healthcare, education, joblessness continue to grow. These issues are not intractable, I firmly believe there are solutions. However, those solutions require effective leadership, leadership that has a clear vision and agenda and that leadership will only come about if Africans themselves demand it and provide it.

A clear vision and agenda or lack thereof

In my first blog I tried to outline what development means, that for me development is people centred ,aimed at improving the lives and livelihoods of the African people. Yet we rarely hear a clear articulation of what development means from leaders on the continent. African leaders constantly promise development, but what does that mean, when they campaign they have manifesto’s hundreds of pages long but without a clear agenda or sense of priorities they are just empty promises. In South Africa the ANC is struggling to find its voice, due to the fact that while the politics of South Africa may have been transformed its economy has not, and far too many people still live in poverty. Yet, other than empty sloganeering and symbolic votes in parliament the ANC is yet to present a clear articulation of what economic transformation means to them and the agenda they will pursue to achieve it. In Kenya the Jubilee administration campaigned on a manifesto full of goodies in 2013 and just last year after his re-election the president announced a new development agenda the “big four”, but the fact remains that both the original manifesto and new agenda came from consultants who were formulating an agenda to please crowds and win votes. In Ethiopia, the governments idea of state led development has come into conflict with the desires of its people who want more than just impressive GDP growth. Vision is an essential part of good leadership. Not only have we had leaders without principle or a sense of responsibility, they lack vision. There is no clear idea of the country/continent we want, and this is how we plan to get there. Franz Fanon whose work has inspired liberation movements for decades warned that the “gravest threat to Africa’s future is not colonialism but the ‘great appetites’ of post-colonial elites, and their ‘absence of ideology’”. The lack of vision with a clear agenda has and continues to hobble the continent. It means that we have haphazard badly thought out policy that is aimed not at improving the lives of people but rather at enriching a select few at the top or winning an election. It has been part of the problem that has led to the tragic cast of thieves, despots and psychopaths that have undone the hope that independence brought. If Africa is to develop clarity of vision and well-defined agendas are needed from its leaders.

L’etat est tout de nous – the state is all of us

King Louis XIV of France was known to say ‘L’etat c’est Moi’ or ‘I am the State’, it was his way of saying that he was the absolute ruler of France. It is easy to criticise African leaders, the lack of vision, the non-existent agendas, the corruption, ethnic politics etc. but leaders are nothing without the people who follow them. If Africa is to get better leadership, it will not magically appear it must be demanded by the people. Professor Bimpe Aboyade the first woman in sub-Saharan Africa to gain a PhD in English Literature once wrote “Our problem [in Nigeria] is not just that we are unlucky to be saddled with leaders without vision most of the time, but that majority of the citizens have no idea as to what they really want out of governance except the basic necessities like food, drinkable water, shelter and good roads. You therefore have people praising to high heavens corrupt and incompetent leaders for merely patching few kilometers of road”

In many countries we spend the years between elections complaining about our leaders, decrying the corruption and poor service delivery, and yet when it comes to elections we continue to vote for them. Whether it be for ethnic reasons, or religious reasons or some form of as yet undiagnosed electoral masochism among African voters we continue to return these same leaders to office. Africa’s leadership problem starts with its people, if we as a continent want better leadership we must vote for it, to encourage the genuinely gifted and valuable leaders across all walks of African life to run for higher office and back them when they do. Fundamentally we must realise that the state is all of us, we as Africans must have a better idea of what we want as Africans and demand it from our leaders.

 The curse can be lifted

There is an Angolan anecdote, that at creation God blessed Angola with abundant mineral wealth, other nations of the world complained at the favourable disposition towards the  country, in response God told them: wait till you see their leaders. Maybe God should have also added that we should see the people who will follow these leaders.

I do not think Africa is cursed with bad leadership, there are extraordinary leaders around the continent who lead families, churches and mosques, neighbourhoods, villages, businesses, schools etc. and yes even some politicians. If Africa is to find solutions to its problems it will take leaders willing to implement them, there is no government policy that can do that. Africa’s leadership problem will require its people to take responsibility, though that is easier said than done, it is not impossible.

 

Development or democracy? A false choice that creates bad policy

“We spoke and acted as if, given the opportunity for self-government, we would quickly create utopias. Instead injustice, even tyranny, is rampant”. – Julius ‘Mwalimu’ Nyerere

There is an ongoing debate fuelled by the perception that democracy has not delivered the development that was promised during the 1990’s and early 2000’s when many African countries bowed to domestic and international pressure and instituted multiparty democracies. The argument centres on the fact that while many countries have seen some economic growth it has not been nearly enough, and the continent continues to be plagued by persistent poverty. That if you look at the fastest growing economies on the continent, such as Rwanda and Ethiopia, they have strong leaders, who can push through big reforms and policy without all the political horse trading and gamesmanship that usually kills them. They then point to East Asia, pointing out that China, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore all developed under some form of authoritarian regime. In short, the argument is that by putting democracy before development Africa has put politics before development.

This, in my view, is nonsense, development at its core is about improving the conditions of people so that they may live their lives with dignity (I develop this more fully in this post). For that to happen policy and policymakers have to be responsive to the needs of their people and the people need to able to hold those wielding power to account. It is the only way to ensure that development remains the goal rather than the personal goals of the benevolent dictator in charge.

The arguments against democracy, and why they don’t apply

The argument most often trotted out in favour of benevolent dictatorship in the development vs democracy debate is what I call the Lee Kuan Yew argument after the former authoritarian prime minister of Singapore who charted the city state’s extraordinary development path. The argument is; that like Lee Kuan Yew, authoritarian leaders can commit to policies that ensure political stability, the rule of law and economic transformation. My response to this is simple, while Lee was ruling Singapore the vast majority of Africa was being run by a succession of autocrats, dictators, and despots. From Mobutu, to Amin, to Houphouët-Boigny, to Moi etc. (one could go on for quite a while with such a list), none of them brought long-term political stability, rule of law and economic transformation to their nations. Almost all of them were corrupt, saw the law as a suggestion, fostered division rather than national identity and enacted haphazard polices that privileged short-term personal and political interests that slowed, stopped or reversed development. The evidence from authoritarian rulers in Africa, Latin America and Asia shows that Singapore is the exception not the rule and Africa cannot afford to return to that.

The second argument brought to bear is that of East Asia. Many point to South Korea, Taiwan, China and Singapore who all achieved significant development under some form of authoritarian regime. However, this argument ignores the significant differences between these states and their African counterparts. First, apart from Singapore these states are relatively ethnically homogenous with a cultural and national identity that goes back centuries if not millennia, with a common history, culture, identity and language it is easier to forge a national consensus. Secondly South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore were all key strategic U.S. allies in the cold war. This meant that not only did they get significant economic assistance the West was willing to turn a blind eye to policies that they would have (and have) lobbied against in other countries that were key to the East Asian economic miracle, such as import substitution and the protection of domestic industries. Third, they all had ways of keeping leaders accountable in some way or form, in China for instance one must rise through the party and when in leadership you are accountable to the party. It’s not perfect but it enforces discipline and has broader goals than a singular despot.

Democracy as policy

So, what does democracy have to do with development policy? In my view the link is clear, democracy makes policy makers and political leaders accountable to the people. Thus, to gain and retain political power they must respond to the needs of the people. However, this does not seem to be the case, as voters on the continent are more frequently mobilised by ethnic or religious politics than by debates around the best path to development. However, the answer to this is not to get rid of it, rather it is to make democracy better. For the past 30 years democratic reforms on the continent have tended to focus on the man (it is almost always a man) at the top or the elections themselves, rarely on citizen participation, particularly informed participation. For development policy to meet the needs of people it must be responsive to the people themselves, and the answer to this is to look beyond elections. Elections, the act of regularly choosing our leaders in a fair process, are vitally important to democracy but they should not be the only feature. When that happens, it leads to what we see in Africa today, where the political debate and climate is focused on winning the next elections. Regular citizens tend to be forgotten until the next election campaign comes around. Thus, to my mind what is needed is a way to ground policy in views and needs of the citizenry.

In Botswana they have something called a Kgotla. A public meeting usually headed by the village chief, in which deliberations are conducted and decisions are arrived at by consensus. All residents in a village are entitled to attend and can speak. The results of these deliberations are then used to form the basis of district development plans and the 5-year National Development Plans, which are then passed by parliament as legislation that guides government policy. Since independence Botswana has not only experienced stable democracy but has also been the African economy that has grown the fastest and most consistently since independence. This has been in large part due to good leadership, which holds itself and its policies accountable to the people they govern. Unlike election campaigns where politicians promise things to people and we have to hope they can follow through while in office, this system of citizen participation ensures that the voice of the people, their concerns and their priorities are not only heard but are an integral part of the policy making process.

Vox populi vox dei – the voice of the people is the voice of god

When it comes to the democracy vs development debate, I do not see a debate, I see the wrong question. The question should be, how does Africa improve its democracies to make them more responsive to the needs of her citizens. One clear way to do that is to proactively ground the policy making process in a democratic process. To create a process, which doesn’t just invite people to comment on legislation (which some countries have) but actively seeks the views of the people whom the policy will affect. For instance, if a country wants to come up with a new agricultural policy it will actively go out and seek the views of its farmers from the subsistence farmers to the industrial farmers in an open and deliberative process that allows farmers to explain the challenges that face them and their ambitions for their farms, families and communities. This would help create a policy in which they have a stake and are willing to work for and with. More broadly by grounding the policy process in a democratic process it could make policy in Africa something that is done with, by and for the people rather than to the people, and achieve real development.