Supra-national good governance in Africa
By David Simon
MOST discussion of good governance and transparency takes place at the national and sub-national levels, being concerned about the conduct of the affairs of the national, regional and local state. This commentary therefore addresses the relationship between the national and supra-national levels, with particular reference to Africa.
The most notable recent development in this context is the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), originally devised as part of the New Economic Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), launched in 2001. As such, it was perceived by outside observers and donor countries as a key litmus test of how seriously African governments were taking issues of transparency and accountability. While making encouraging noises, however, the donors have adopted a wait-and-see attitude, wanting evidence of progress with implementation before committing any new resources to the NEPAD effort. Conversely, and partly in consequence, many critics, not least within Africa, have come to regard the APRM (and indeed the entire NEPAD project) as little more than the putting of an African mask on a donor-driven neoliberal agenda. In these terms, the APRM is seen as fulfilling the role of a recipient-driven filter to gauge compliance with the donors' political conditionalities for receiving aid.
The APRM has now migrated to fall under the auspices of the recently (re)constituted African Union (AU), and it remains to be seen how it works in practice, with inception now close. By the time of the AU summit in Addis Ababa in early July, over 20 countries had signed up to the Mechanism. The first to do so were those with some of the best recent records of good governance, like Ghana and South Africa. The latest recruits include Angola, a country noted for widespread corruption and the profound opacity of its public accounts, especially in relation to oil and diamond revenues, although now making some efforts to comply with donor demands in order to qualify for a much-delayed IMF Staff Monitored Programme. This would seem to lend credence to the sceptics' view of the APRM, but few could surely deny that if the governments of countries like Angola cleaned up their acts, literally and figuratively, their citizens would benefit.
Another common and very valid complaint in Africa and elsewhere in the global South is that, however laudable improved governance at home might be, the fundamental problems lie with the existing international economic order and the architecture of the institutions of global governance, including the international financial institutions (IFIs). Voting power in the World Bank and IMF is based on national contributions to their budgets, rather than on the one-country-one-vote system that underpins the UN General Assembly and now also the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
This certainly gives the principal donors (i.e. the G7 countries) overwhelming influence over top staffing appointments and the direction of policy, almost invariably reflecting the donors' individual or collective interests. How the onset of the debt crisis was perceived and tackled in the early to mid-1980s " by means of what became structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and their sequels " make the point eloquently. Similarly, it is anachronistic that only the five major powers " comprising the victorious allies in World War II plus China " have permanent seats on the UN Security Council and are able to exercise the right of veto.
The struggle has begun to bring about change in the governance structures of these institutions. Reflecting such pressure, a specially appointed committee is currently examining how to reorganise the membership and structure of the UN Security Council, for example. Moderates argue that reform from within these institutions would address the problems and make the IFIs and UN system more reflective of the current state of global geopolitics as well as more transparent and accountable - the very qualities that they have now been demanding of aid receiving countries for over twenty years but which they themselves have so signally failed to demonstrate. More radical critics argue that the Bretton Woods Twins (the World Bank and IMF), at least, are beyond reform and should be replaced by differently constituted institutions.
Debate is also raging over whether the WTO's procedures and free trade agenda are capable of serving the interests of poor countries. The events at the WTO summit in Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003 certainly represented a watershed, showing that groups of Southern countries, and also one grouping of major primary sector producers straddling the North-South divide, are forming to pursue collective interests. The heated charges of folly and worse emanating from the main Northern delegations, both during and since Cancun, reflect how much they stand to lose if the balance changes significantly. It is quite possible that we will still see a perceptible shift in the unequal terms of trade that underpin the current world-system.
All this shows how much work there is still to do in redesigning this system. It also highlights the na�ve, even myopic, nature of claims by Francis Fukuyama and other conservative commentators that we have reached the 'end of history' because the end of the Cold War means that we are all good (neo)liberal democrats now. However, if the 'end of history' is a fallacy, it also behoves us to look critically at our notions of what we might call 'the beginning of history'. There is still a widespread tendency among progressives (and, ironically but understandably, among corrupt politicians) to blame Africa's problems - like those of the global South in general - on the colonial legacy of inappropriate state boundaries, political institutions and infrastructure to plunder resources rather than to develop the colonies.
The historical truth of this is surely self-evident, but it is also a tired and inadequate explanation. With only a few exceptions, African states have now been independent for some thirty years or more - certainly long enough to have changed substantially the inherited legacy as a growing number of Asian countries have done. Moreover, it does progressive analysts no favours to let the ineffective or corrupt leaders responsible for the current problems of many African countries off the hook, or, indeed, to be seen to be bedfellows with them, on this score at least! Furthermore, African history did not begin with colonisation. Was the territory making up present-day Nigeria (or any other country) a haven of peace and tranquility before the British (or other colonisers) arrived
Did the many regional powers (kingdoms or empires), from those of the Zulu and Rozvi in southern Africa to those of Kongo, Songay and Timbuktu in equatorial and west Africa (or indeed any such polity in human history), arise without violence and often brutal conquest and plunder Did the religions that today predominate in Africa - and remember that Islam was brought south across the Sahara long before the European conquests - arrive and make all their converts entirely peacefully Let us be honest about our continent's history; not all the problems and difficulties we face today are colonial in origin. Whom one might 'blame' depends only on how far back we go, but the past is surely not an adequate basis for mapping the future.
More recently, how many African governments and religious leaders cried out in protest and mobilised action when millions were starving in the Horn of Africa, when Catholics massacred and raped Catholics in Rwanda a decade ago, or now while similar atrocities on a vast scale are being perpetrated by muslims mainly against other muslims in Darfur By and large the silence has been deafening, although one clear sign of hope is the AU's active engagement with the Darfur crisis. Generally, though, we must ask some hard questions. Is rape, murder and pillage any less reprehensible when committed against co-religionists than when non-muslims attack muslims or vice-versa, when we tend to hear much more from outraged religious leaders If the answer is yes, then I would call that racism, not by white against black but by black against black! And if no, why the silence Surely notions of African solidarity born of the liberation struggle cannot legitimately be stretched so gruesomely. Is this the pan-Africanist spirit envisaged by Kwame Nkrumah and his fellow visionaries Is this the solidarity envisaged by President Nelson Mandela when he spoke out at the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit and sought to have Nigeria suspended for its military government's anti-democratic misdeeds, but received only a cold shoulder from other African governments in response
It is precisely in this sense that many Africans who are frustrated and angry with repression and the theft of their resources by governments and politicians, are struggling for a better future. Increasingly, good governance and transparency are being appreciated for what they can bring Africa and Africans, to help in forging a better future and promoting development, rather than being simply a tool of the donors in their own interests. It is therefore also in this context that it is not just donors who will be watching the APRM's operations with interest, but many millions of Africans. Moreover, if we are serious about this and can demonstrate our commitment and some real progress, the rest of the world will take us more seriously. Then, too, will we be able more powerfully to demand the wider changes to the architecture of the IFIs and economic order as of right rather than merely in the expectation that these will come about through some vague sense of colonial guilt or general libertarianism.
Simon, who hails from South Africa, is Professor of Development Geography at the Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom
