The usual images of Africa are of a continent mired in conflict and squalor. But this picture, based on Africa’s most corrupt regimes, is unfair and misleading — like claiming that all Europeans are guilty of “ethnic cleansing” because of what happened in the former Yugoslavia. Yes, African has some failed states, but most of its 53 countries are mostly peaceful, agreeable places.
Last year, the annual Ibrahim Index of African governance, produced by my foundation, showed that governance had improved in two-thirds of African countries. And if we look at politicians such as Joaquim Chissano, the former president of Mozambique, or Festus Mogae, the former president of Botswana, as well as men like former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and former South African president Nelson Mandela, the high caliber of African leadership is obvious.
This matters because good governance is the cornerstone of development. Governments must establish an enabling environment for the private sector to create jobs, and officials cannot consider the public purse to be a private bank account.
Government is responsible for delivering services, but it is up to civil society to be vigilant and ensure that officials work toward these aims. A strong civil society that monitors and demands more of its leaders is vital to improving Africa’s governance. As with economics, demand stimulates supply.
The annual Ibrahim Index of African Governance tracks government performance across sub-Saharan Africa, providing a tool that allows citizens and civil-society groups to monitor their governments’ progress. We look at almost 100 indicators and define governance in a new way — as the public goods and services that should be provided to citizens. We do not measure inputs — including aid or natural-resource revenues — or government promises and commitments. We have chosen instead to measure the impact of government activities on the lives of citizens.
Alongside this focus on improving African governance, we must also put pressure on our leaders to encourage regional integration. Many small, landlocked African countries will never become serious players in the global economy without increased cooperation within their own regions. Today’s haphazard, overlapping regional integration is proving largely ineffective, and this severely hampers African countries’ ability to compete in international markets.
One of the consequences of this lack of cooperation for Africa’s 967 million people is the bureaucratic replication and currency-exchange issues that being divided into 53 countries entails. China, with 1.3 billion people, is just one country; and the EU, with 500 million people, functions as a single economic market, with most of its members sharing a single currency.
If Africa’s small and diverse nations do not come together, they will never integrate properly into the world economy, and so will not reap the benefits of our globalized world.
Economic integration must be backed up by increased intra-regional trade; less than 4 percent of Africa’s trade is between African countries, compared to over 70 percent in Europe and over 50 percent in Asia.
The IMF credits Asian intra-regional trade as the main factor behind its recent export boom and strong economic growth. Africa, with its huge and often untapped markets, must follow the same path.
Africans themselves must tackle these issues, but our international partners have an important role to play. The debate over the failure of international aid to produce development, together with the current financial crisis, have added weight to arguments against development assistance. But the argument should not be about whether to provide aid — no one can question the many successes that aid has brought, or its importance in providing a safety net for those who would otherwise be left to suffer.
The argument should instead be focused on how to get the most effective results out of aid, both for the recipients and for a donor country’s taxpayers. Aid, I believe, is best focused on infrastructure — the bridges, roads, Internet cables and power stations that will help our economies to grow and allow us to trade more easily with each other. Accompanying this should be a focus on the “software” of development — health and education.
If aid satisfies basic governance conditionality and is directed at these vital areas, Africa will have a far greater chance of progressing.
For too long there has been international dismay at the state of governance in Africa; corruption and at times a complete lack of accountability are blamed for all of Africa’s ills. Although this is largely the case, no one can claim that Africans have a monopoly on governance failures. The current financial crisis offers a perfect example, as it was poor governance in the banking sector that brought so many of the world’s great economies to their knees.
Moreover, while the international community is quick to pounce on African leaders for governance failures, it seems less enthusiastic about examining its role in the flight of African assets.
Europe and the US were slow to enact legislation barring their companies from bribing foreign government officials in return for mining concessions or other advantages, and there has been limited enforcement of the rules. Similarly, European and US banks keep the resources that are looted from Africa.
Then there is the unresolved problem of trade barriers. If African products are forced to compete in markets skewed toward European and US producers, Africans do not have a fair chance to develop. The issue of trade barriers speaks directly to the question of whether there is a genuine international commitment to Africa’s development.
Finally, there is the problem of limited resources for international peacekeeping operations in Africa — always with disastrous results. In my own country, Sudan, and its western state of Darfur, African Union (AU) troops try to protect civilians. While the AU is providing soldiers to police the conflict, the UN and the international community have been tasked with providing resources and equipment, which are widely viewed as inadequate.
No one denies that Africa has many problems. But those problems should not be allowed to obscure the continent’s many success stories — much less to be defined as Africa’s alone.
Mo Ibrahim is the founder and chair of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.
COPYRIGHT: PROJECT SYNDICATE/EUROPE’S WORLD
The EU’s biggest banks have spent years quietly creating a new way to pay that could finally allow customers to ditch their Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc cards — the latest sign that the region is looking to dislodge two of the most valuable financial firms on the planet. Wero, as the project is known, is now rolling out across much of western Europe. Backed by 16 major banks and payment processors including BNP Paribas SA, Deutsche Bank AG and Worldline SA, the platform would eventually allow a German customer to instantly settle up with, say, a hotel in France
On August 6, Ukraine crossed its northeastern border and invaded the Russian region of Kursk. After spending more than two years seeking to oust Russian forces from its own territory, Kiev turned the tables on Moscow. Vladimir Putin seemed thrown off guard. In a televised meeting about the incursion, Putin came across as patently not in control of events. The reasons for the Ukrainian offensive remain unclear. It could be an attempt to wear away at the morale of both Russia’s military and its populace, and to boost morale in Ukraine; to undermine popular and elite confidence in Putin’s rule; to
A traffic accident in Taichung — a city bus on Sept. 22 hit two Tunghai University students on a pedestrian crossing, killing one and injuring the other — has once again brought up the issue of Taiwan being a “living hell for pedestrians” and large vehicle safety to public attention. A deadly traffic accident in Taichung on Dec. 27, 2022, when a city bus hit a foreign national, his Taiwanese wife and their one-year-old son in a stroller on a pedestrian crossing, killing the wife and son, had shocked the public, leading to discussions and traffic law amendments. However, just after the
The international community was shocked when Israel was accused of launching an attack on Lebanon by rigging pagers to explode. Most media reports in Taiwan focused on whether the pagers were produced locally, arousing public concern. However, Taiwanese should also look at the matter from a security and national defense perspective. Lebanon has eschewed technology, partly because of concerns that countries would penetrate its telecommunications networks to steal confidential information or launch cyberattacks. It has largely abandoned smartphones and modern telecommunications systems, replacing them with older and relatively basic communications equipment. However, the incident shows that using older technology alone cannot
RSS