CNN: Can Democracy Thrive in Africa?

[M-A Lagrange]

M-A

While I don't disagree with most of your concerns, i would question the statement regarding acceptance of low standards for Africa. By that I mean whose standards and whose acceptance are we questioning? I agree that in a western sense much is indeed adrift if not absolutely of course when it comes to African leaders. But do our standards count when they are largely dismissed by the Africans' themselves?

After the last elections in Sudan, the Russian special envoy said that the elections were good quality for Africa.
For me this is exactly what I call the acceptance of low standards. To please some African leaders, we accept that international standards can be lowered to evaluate thing in Africa. Basically what I do not accept is the: "everybody knows that Africa is a mess...", "in Africa, corruption, nepotisum... are cultural..." approach. The idea that Africa cannot be as good as any other part of the world.
I am also a little up set/frustrated by the African leaders who purposely do not seeck to elevate their countries but try to pretend that because Africa is different, they do have the right to have low standards for anything. Most of the people I have inter act with in Africa expect good governance, quality services delivery, reliable security forces... They do not accept the discours from some leaders who look into history to excuse themselves for have low quality governance, kleptocraty, corruption...
I believe the acceptance of low standards comes from both sides: African leaders who do not what to change a system they do profite actually and from the external actors who support them in this.

It is easy to get irate about Mugabe in Zimbabwe; it is equally fruitless when the greater community of African leadership closes ranks around him in the face of external criticism. My bottom line has been for sometime, if the people with the leadership issue are not inclined, willing, or courageous enough to seek change then I am equally disinclined to suggest forceable change by whatever means.

Bashing Mugabe is easy but actually his discourse is coherent from A to Z from the first day to the last. But that does not make him the choice of his people.

The change has to come from Africa, that is sure. But that does not mean that promotion of high quality values has to be dropped. Forcing changes does not work and does support the old guard.
Actually there is a complaisance in Africa in this state of distress.
But interresting enough, some African Leaders are now looking for achosen colonisation:
This time for Africa: Africa calling Indian farmers

ASSOCHAM, India’s apex industry body, has sent a proposal to the external affairs ministry to consider tapping the emerging agricultural opportunities in Africa and offering to act as a facilitator to help Indian farmers reap the benefits of the huge potential that lie in Africa.
“Hoping to address the huge issue of food shortage, these countries have begun inviting overseas farmers to come and cultivate their lands. These governments are willing to lease land free of cost for 99 years”, ASSOCHAM secretary general DS Rawat said.
Farmers were free to cultivate the land and raise any crop and sell it to the domestic market and also export.
“It is a win-win situation for the farmers and for the African governments”, said Assocham director Om S Tyagi.
“Since the lease is for 99 years, it means that a farmer is in control of the land for his life time. It means land for roughly around three generations,” he said.
The countries that were in the forefront trying to attract agriculturists were Sudan and Ethopia, he said.

http://farmlandgrab.org/14776

M-A

[John T. Fishel]

Tom, interesting thread, but I want to return to your seemingly minor point. As a political scientist and an old guy, I assert that for democracy to exist three conditions need to be present:
1. Free, competitive, and periodic elections to select leaders open to a majority of the adult population as voters.
2. Sufficient freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly so that electoral campaigns can be organized and policies widely debated.
3. An impartial mechanism for the settlement of disputes that in most Western states is an independent court system. (Not required is American style judicial review - see the UK.)
If all of these conditions are not present, then you do not have democracy but something else. What that something else is may be "good" or "bad" but it is not democracy. I would argue that this definition is both universal and necessary for the concept of democracy to have any meaning.

Cheers

JohnT

[Tom Odom]

Tom, interesting thread, but I want to return to your seemingly minor point. As a political scientist and an old guy, I assert that for democracy to exist three conditions need to be present:
1. Free, competitive, and periodic elections to select leaders open to a majority of the adult population as voters.
2. Sufficient freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly so that electoral campaigns can be organized and policies widely debated.
3. An impartial mechanism for the settlement of disputes that in most Western states is an independent court system. (Not required is American style judicial review - see the UK.)
If all of these conditions are not present, then you do not have democracy but something else. What that something else is may be "good" or "bad" but it is not democracy. I would argue that this definition is both universal and necessary for the concept of democracy to have any meaning.

Cheers

JohnT

JohnT

As a westerner I would agree. As an Africanist interpreting probable African reactions, maybe so, maybe not, depending on whom you speak to and of what you speak.

M-A

Reference the debate on assistance, here are the relevant pieces from the CNN series:

Why foreign aid is important for Africa

Nairobi, Kenya (CNN) -- The idea that those who have should share with those who don't is inherent in most societies -- insects, animals and humans alike.

Sharing is essential to maintain and protect the collective, and empathy is an essential value of what it is to be human. It is inhuman to watch another dying of hunger and not share when you have more than enough to eat.

International aid is the instrument by which this very human practice occurs in modern times across borders, and should ordinarily not be controversial. But it is -- very much so....

Why foreign aid and Africa don't mix

By Robert Calderisi, Special to CNN
Friday, Charles Abugre of the UN Millennium Campaign writes for CNN about why aid is important for Africa and how it can be made more effective.

(CNN) -- I once asked a president of the Central African Republic, Ange-Félix Patassé, to give up a personal monopoly he held on the distribution of refined oil products in his country.

He was unapologetic. "Do you expect me to lose money in the service of my people?" he replied.

That, in a nutshell, has been the problem of Africa. Very few African governments have been on the same wavelength as Western providers of aid....

Now I will say that in offering the 2 sides to the question, the 2 commentators are talking apples versus oranges. the first centers on food and aid in general and disaster assistance specifically. When he does refer to developmental assistance, he uses Asia to make a positive case. The second uses the developmental definition for assistance. He is, however, honest enough to say that some countries have broken the dependency mold he uses as an argument against assistance.

Best
Tom

[Rex Brynen]

A happen to be graphing the Freedom House scores for various regions the other day (as part of a project on the depressing state of political freedom in the Arab world), and I'll post the results here since they show Africa too. They show fairly clearly the improvement caused by so-called "third wave" democratization in the 1990s--and the subsequent stalling and even retrenchment as hybrid electoral-authoritarian regimes emerge.



Freedom House scores both political and civil liberties on a 1-7 scale, where 1=most free. Therefore, when looking at the graph a lower numerical score is "more free". I have some quibbles with their coding (especially pre-1990s), but I do with Polity IV and all the other quantitative indicators too.

[M-A Lagrange]

Rex,
Interesting graphic. Africa seems to enjoy a better democratic life than Arab countries.
What I “fear” the most at the moment in Africa is the tendency to look at other models than Westerns ones as better. Not that westerns models are better.
There is a strong tendency to justify autocratic regimes by looking into Asian models, especially China, to justify that democracy is not adapted to Africa. What I would not like to see is a similar reject of democracy because of economical unrelated non development. And that Africa falls in the same model/pit than Arab countries because of the failure of “democratic” regimes.
In addition, I would just say that I have seen excellent work made by individuals coming from South America or Asia in the electoral process in Sudan which has been completely undermined by Africans (not all of them far from it. ! or 2 but that’s enough to maintain a bad reputation). Why? Because they fear their neighbour most of the time or do not want to be confronted with issues. If no voice is raised then there is no problems. Hopefully things are changing.



Tom,

I do agree with you, using relief aid to justify the success or failure of development aid does not make a lot of sense. I am also “afraid” of the tendency to drop development aid on the shoulders of humanitarian organisations. Humanitarian/relief work is not development and vice versa.
The path between the 2 still needs to be found.

[Pol-Mil FSO]

The latest edition of Der Spiegel has an article that reiterates the argument that development aid does more harm than good by fostering dependency:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...712068,00.html

That said, I think that the recent referendum in Kenya is a positive development - hopefully an opportunity to break away from an ethnic-based and corruption-fueled model of governance.

[Fuchs]

Africa has several problems that keep it from developing well (along its own paths).

Insufficient contact among African nations is one key problem (much traffic infrastructure such as railroads was built for overseas exports - orthogonal to the coastline - instead of for the connection of countries/then-colonies).

Another key problem is the lack of a middle class that could actually work out a path of development that works well.

Yet another key problem is the lack of an effective bureaucracy that can harness the workforce of the country.
(I read often of great unemployment and underemployment. This is essentially a waste of workforce. These people get fed anyway, with a bit more food they could be involved in productive projects (dams, irrigation systems, roads, buildings built with local materials, education, training and much more). The European model of a state fails so badly in Africa that they cannot even harness the country's workforce as well as ancient Egyptian Pharao's and Chinese emperors were able to.)


Western-style democracy isn't even close to perfection and doesn't need to be emulated - they might someday find and adopt a better model, at least a better one for themselves. Democracy needs to grow, it cannot simply be introduced. They need to develop the(ir) pillars of democracy, and that will likely involve the development of forms of democracy that suit their conditions.