Global News Blog / IPS

Azhar Vadi

JOHANNESBURG, Nov 18 (IPS) - How can governance be improved to give development a chance in Africa? Political theorist Patrick Chabal believes a role has to be found for traditional methods of accountability to be used alongside formal systems recognised in the West.

Chabal, a professor of Lusophone African Studies at King’s College London, says Africa needs to develop its own criteria of assessment. ”African politicians should be asked to explain how the realities of representation, legitimacy, accountability and responsibility in their own countries can be reshaped to serve a more rigorous developmental agenda.”

Chabal was speaking at a three-day discussion on governance hosted by the South African Institute for International Affairs (SAIIA). Various scholars, lawmakers and analysts from across the African continent are taking a critical look at how the state and governance can be used to effectively bring about political harmony and economic prosperity in Africa.

Chabal asserted that Africa’s lack of development has come as a result of political rather than economic factors. He said the post-colonial period saw the emergence of one-party states that took charge of economies through nationalisation and the creation of parastatals.

”Politics became an increasingly violent zero-sum-game in which those in power were to exploit the resources of the state before rivals did,” he said.

When Africa was crippled by debt in the late 1980s, international financial institutions prescribed streamlined state responsibilities and privatisation as a structural adjustment programme to boost development.

According to Chabal, this resulted in cutbacks on state expenditure and subsidies that ultimately led to further poverty and reduced social services. The phenomenon also created space for increased levels of corruption and the weakening of state control as responsibility for service delivery moved into private hands.

Chabal said that African leaders need to look at the mirror and see the cause of the problems within Africa. ”Without working state institutions it is difficult to see how we can achieve development.”

Chabal advocated the example of the Asian Tigers, saying that the experience of the Far East proves that developing countries can create their own agendas independent of the West. The examples he put forward explained how corrupt and authoritarian regimes used corruption itself as a means for nationalist development. The cultural concept of shame was utilised to force corrupt business to reinvest in their countries of operation therefore stimulating local development.

Lastly Chabal called for the wide publication of developmental steps and accountability measures. Continued lack of development is what ”feeds political violence…[and] destroys the state,” said Chabal.

Ending his key note address, Professor Chabal made a call for what he defined as an effective state and good governance. Good governance he said is described as an ”efficient rather than morally palatable state.”

His views came under sharp criticism from a number of delegates at the conference.

”We cannot look at government purely in terms of efficiency and not morals. These two go together. There has to be morality, but the question is what kind of morality and in what proportion?” said Ahmed Mohiddin, a senior scholar from Kenya based at the Twenty-First Century Africa Foundation. A balance needs to be created between the moral and efficient, he added

Mohiddin agreed that to some extent African leaders need to introspect and deal with the issues affecting their countries. He said, ”We are the ones who have to look at our problems, we cannot blame other people. They have created problems for us, yes, but these are our problems, we cannot just go on and say it is them. Other countries like India and Indonesia were colonised like we were but they decided that they need to find the solutions.”

The answers to the African problem need to be home-grown and come from within the continent. Somaliland and its establishment of political representation and accountability is one such example. The area has seen an end of violence, the reconstruction of basic infrastructure and the organisation of a functioning administration. These accomplishments have been reached without formal international recognition of the state itself.

Chabal concluded by saying that simply using ‘best practice’ policies advocated by the west as a carbon copy, ”…will make no dent on the problem until those who exercise power in Africa and those who advise them, face up to the task of translating such an agenda into policies that can overcome neo-patrimonialism.”

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.