III. Thematic Overview: Governance
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The origins of Africa’s policy engagement with governance can be traced back to norms that predated the AU and NEPAD. Key among these was the 1990 Arusha Declaration on Popular Participation, which stressed the centrality of citizen participation and emphasized democracy as a prerequisite for African development. The Declaration reflected a series of external factors that impacted Africa – among them the end of the Cold War and the impact of a decade of structural adjustment programs. Another seminal governance-related moment was the emergence in 1991 of the Conference on Security, Stability and Development Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA), which argued that progress for Africa must necessarily involve the four calabashes of security, stability, development and cooperation. Proponents of these views, which also featured in the 1981 African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment (AAF-SAP), argued that pluralism, democracy and people-led development were values inherent to the African personality.
External conceptions of governance have therefore been persistently resisted. CSOs rallying around the emerging AU agenda have continued to assert the primacy of the African personality, including indigenous views of governance, while rejecting external views. This was evident in the widespread CSO criticism of NEPAD as an externally imposed agenda. To this extent, governance remains a value-laden concept, and there are differing views as to what it should mean for Africa.
Inevitably, few CSOs espousing such views have benefited from donor support. Instead, the emphasis remains on supporting less ideological, more technocratic CSOs focused on such aspects of governance as electoral democracy. Bilateral donor agencies, along with IGOs such as the European Union and Commonwealth Secretariat, and northern NGOs such as the Carter Center remain market leaders in this field.
Although electoral democracy remains a core concern, it has been subsumed as part of a broader, increasingly hegemonic governance agenda rooted in the emerging aid relationship between Africa and its development partners. Treaty-based frameworks such as NEPAD have been pivotal in advancing the prevailing governance paradigm, which constitutes something of a consensus position between Africanist and external views. While asserting African ownership and leadership of its development, the consensus recognizes interdependence as a fundamental principle.
Thus, NEPAD represents a two-way compact—between Africa’s leadership and its people, and between Africa and the outside world. The quest for good governance cuts across both of these dimensions. On the African side, and in addition to the incremental consolidation of electoral democracy, there is recognition that strong institutions of political, economic and corporate governance are needed if the continent is to achieve growth and development.
In terms of relations with the developed world, Africa’s ownership of its own development is accepted as a fundamental principle—at least on paper. As enshrined in the G8 Action Plan, Africa and its partners must be mutually accountable in a new aid relationship that assigns responsibilities to both sides. Linked to this is the recognition that policy coherence is needed on both sides of the relationship.
Think tanks focused on Africa have begun to engage with aspects of the new aid relationship. Nevertheless, aid as a driver of development remains more of a concern among northern CSOs, while African CSOs and emphasize issues of economic justice—such as campaigning for a fair global trading regime and advocating for African developmental states with strong industrial policy. Emblematic of such actors is Third World Network–Africa (see profile on p.329), which seeks to mobilize African CSOs around trade and investment, mining and development, and gender and economic policy, and to promote alternatives to prevailing policies. Such CSOs are less doctrinaire than selective; they may, for example, choose to criticize NEPAD as neo-liberal while valorizing the APRM (see below) as an important process for strengthening governance within and above the African state.
An African vision of good governance
The continuing tensions between NEPAD and the AU, under whose leadership it has been officially subsumed, are reflected in the AU-led Declaration on Governance, Democracy and Elections, a bold attempt to develop a shared set of principles on the conduct of government within countries. Adopted by the AU’s Addis Ababa summit on 30 January 2007, the Declaration omits a crucial phrase, present in an earlier draft, proposing that African leaders be limited to two elected terms. Nevertheless, it provides a sound basis for citizens to hold their governments more accountable and demonstrates that governance as a theme has become well entrenched in the continent’s development discourse. The Declaration is consistent with protocols on governance, peace and security in the RECs. SADC and ECOWAS, for example, have both denounced unconstitutional changes of government, while SADC’s electoral principles, norms and standards are used throughout Southern Africa (see profile).
The UN Development Program (UNDP) defines governance as “… the legitimate exercise of political, economic and administrative authority through decision-making mechanisms and processes, institutions and management of development which reflects the requirements of participation, transparency, responsibility, efficiency and the primacy of the law”.
This technocratic definition encapsulates ongoing efforts, particularly among AROs, to define an African vision of good governance. Such a vision spans effective leadership, transparency and accountability, rule of law, a clear separation of powers, more effective parliamentary, judicial and administrative processes, a vibrant and empowered civil society, peace, stability and security, respect for human and people’s rights, a free and responsible media, and constitutional guarantees including property rights.
Key challenges to African governance include weak political systems and flawed multiparty democracy, insufficient capacity in civil services, weak judicial and legislative institutions, a lack of citizen voice and participation in decision-making, the failure to harness traditional institutions in modern governance, and corruption. The consensus on African governance covers most of these aspirations. However, there remains a concern that the anti-corruption agenda—driven largely by the World Bank, IMF and northern governments—does not sufficiently take into account the fact that there is a giver as well as a taker. As such, northern NGOs such as Transparency International lead the charge to address corruption in Africa, even though it appears as a key indicator in African codes and standards developed to measure governance (see below).
Critically, HIV/AIDS has gained recognition as an overarching governance challenge that, unless halted in its tracks, will derail Africa’s development and bring about a new era of crisis. The recognition of the wider socioeconomic implications of the pandemic, including a World Bank prediction that by 2020 Africa’s per capita GDP could drop as much as 7 percent, has spurred campaigns for the right to health as well as research on governance scenarios for Africa’s future.
Women’s empowerment is also a continuing governance challenge across the board. More African women live in absolute and relative poverty today than a decade ago. The toll of HIV/AIDS on women and girls is disproportionately high, while women’s access to the justice system is limited by legal illiteracy, lack of resources and gender insensitivity as well as bias among law enforcement agencies. In a number of countries, women are denied property rights. The incidence of violence against women, including rape and domestic violence, remains staggering.
The African Peer Review Mechanism
These concerns are reflected in the indicators underpinning the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), which seeks to operationalize the continental aspiration of good governance. As agreed in Durban, South Africa, in 2002, its purpose is to “… foster the adoption of policies, standards and practices that lead to political stability, high economic growth, sustainable development and accelerated sub-regional and continental economic integration through sharing of experiences and reinforcement of successful and best practice, including identifying deficiencies and assessing the needs for capacity building”.
Countries submit to the APRM by signing the NEPAD Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance, considered by many to be a ground-breaking document. One the one hand it reaffirms and renews the commitment of Africa’s leaders to a host of previous norms and standards—including the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981) and the Framework for an OAU Response to Unconstitutional Changes of Government (2000). On the other, it lays out an ambitious and far-reaching governance agenda on four critical fronts: Democracy and Good Political Governance; Economic and Corporate Governance; Socioeconomic Development; and the APRM itself.
On the basis of the peer review processes in Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa and Kenya to date, the APRM is emerging as a significant opportunity to strengthen governance across Africa using a continental mechanism to apply pressure on individual countries. That 26 countries have agreed to submit to the process opens up tremendous possibilities for increased debate and citizen participation in national and continental policy-making, and again demonstrates the potential of regional approaches. Aside from challenges of financing, ensuring inclusiveness and implementing the Programs of Action, the APRM’s non-adversarial nature as a voluntary process for mutual learning means there is no enforcement of agreed codes, standards and norms.
Nevertheless, CSOs are starting to push for a seat at the table and opportunities to take ownership of the governance agenda. An important CSO initiative is the African Governance Monitoring Project (AfriMAP), which seeks to address conceptual and practical gaps in the APRM process, in part by monitoring government compliance and ensuring space for citizen involvement. While it started out as a reactive process to the APRM, AfriMAP has evolved into a far more substantive program that commissions research and facilitates advocacy on key dimensions of the African governance agenda, including justice and rule of law and democracy and political participation.
The APRM has spawned a series of efforts to develop and refine indicators for good governance, within and outside Africa, revealing the extent to which governance has become a technocratic agenda. A number of AROs have substantially reconfigured their programs to support the peer review process—notably the African Development Bank (AfDB) and Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), two of the APRM’s three Strategic Partners, whose role includes sending experts as part of country review teams. However, CSOs are increasingly coming to terms with the fact that they too will have to address the technocratic aspects of the governance agenda, if only to generate research to inform issued-based campaigns. In the next decade or so, governance will evolve, both in the way it is conceptualized and in the extent to which different actors can influence the agenda. Conceptually, it will be seen more in terms of a contract between African governments and citizens. Moreover, the link with development will be strengthened and there will be less emphasis on self-conditionality aimed at the outside world. The APRM and ongoing processes will continue to create space for citizen pressure on governments. This will lead to greater emphasis on compliance with agreed actions.
