Blind spots in analyzing Africa's place in world politics.

Taylor, Ian

In discussions of sub-Saharan Africa's relations with the outside world, critiques suggesting that the continent's elites are simply the victims of structural pressures and hence bereft of responsibility for Africa's current predicament are common. (1) Colonialism, neocolonialism, debt, structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and now "globalization" are all said to provide explanations for the continent's plight, while its leaders have been tacitly exonerated (or have absolved themselves) from almost all blame. Although there are numerous books criticizing SAPs, most authors are silent as to why SAPs were introduced in the first place--namely, gross malgovernace and the imminent bankruptcy of many states on the continent. (2) Attempts to rectify this state of affairs are often met with accusations of "Afro-pessimism" or worse. In doing so, such scholars effectively bolster the positions of elites such as Obiang Nguema, president of Equatorial Guinea, in his complaint that "Africa is the victim and not the guilty party. Our continent has suffered because of its huge mineral resources ... we are being prevented from achieving our aims because of foreign meddling and interference in our African affairs." (3)

The tendency to solely blame external factors for the continent's predicament is, however, becoming less and less credible. This is not to say that external factors are irrelevant. Volatile commodity prices complicate economic policymaking and planning, and an unequal trading relationship helps to maintain Africa's marginalization, particularly with regard to subsidies and tariff and nontariff barriers in the developed world. External political intrigue, more common during the Cold War but still in evidence today, also has a pernicious effect on the continent. (4)

However, power relations between Africa and the developed world can no longer simply be understood as top-down impositions from "the West." Rather. African elites are themselves agents in--and arguably major causes of--the continent's demise. Indeed, although responsibility for the continent's decline is often placed on such historical factors as the collapse of commodity prices, those who advance such ideas have seemingly forgotten that by April 1970, Liberia and Somalia had already received seven stand-by agreement loans from the IMF to help them address balance of payments and budgetary crises; Burundi had received five such loans; Ghana, Mali, and Rwanda four loans; Sierra Leone and Sudan three; and Congo/Zaire had completed its first IMF supervised devaluation. The granting of multiple stand-by agreements in less than a decade of independence suggests an almost immediate deterioration in management. (5)

In other words, malgovernace and misrule were undermining Africa's development trajectory long before the factors that are usually given as reasons for the continent's demise were making themselves felt. Therefore, a critical evaluation of the nature of the state in Africa and the behavior of its ruling elites is required if we are to gain realistic explanations for the continent's denouement.

The State in Africa

Political power in Africa is less about capable administration and the concomitant provision of broad-based benefits to the populace and more about "the giving and granting of favors, in an endless series of dyadic exchanges that go from the village level to the highest reaches of the central state." (6) The concept of neopatrimonialism captures this reality. (7) Remarkably, few studies of Africa's external relations recognize this feature of politics on the continent, even though it must be the starting point for any analysis; as a result, many analyses are marked by a certain naivete.

Understanding how the state in Africa really functions has critical implications for analyses of initiatives such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Power in Africa must be understood in terms of the systemic exercise of patronage as a fundamental operating framework for politics. Although this is frequently exercised through institutions, in spite of the facade of the modern state, power in most African polities is intensely personalized and presidentialist in nature; it is exercised neither to promote the broad public good nor to promote development and is characterized by alarming levels of corruption. The implications of this are that if the elites in charge of African countries are willing to sacrifice such objectives as development in order to stay in power at all costs, then it is very difficult to see how the MDGs will ever be reached.

Indeed, the MDGs are premised on good governance and sound administration. Of course, terms such as good governance are not politically neutral, and they possess, through their promotion by the international financial institutions (IFIs), a certain neoliberal spin. Nevertheless, fair elections, the rule of law, and other basics are indisputably improvements for ordinary citizens, regardless of the origins or promoters of such norms, and--economic prescriptions aside--it is difficult to see something intrinsically wrong with encouraging democratic values and tolerance in Africa.

Yet Africa's elites have been remarkably adept at circumnavigating demands for reform. SAPs and the ostensible waves of democratization have been noteworthy in their failure to fundamentally restructure the state in Africa--a precondition for advancing the MDGs or NEPAD. Furthermore, it is false to argue that SAPs have stripped African elites of any maneuverability and that they are simply recipients of advice, which they must religiously follow. In fact, neopatrimonialism and the agency of the governing classes have survived and have even been further entrenched by such "reforms." As K. Omolo has written about Kenya, In Kenya "big man" politics has outlasted the change from the one party to the multiparty system. Aside from the implementation of laws allowing for multiparty politics, there has not occurred a fundamental structural change in the country's politics. Moreover, the enduring political values of a single party order are reinforced by a preponderance of political players from the ancien regime. In the typical fashion of patrimonialism, politics remains a cottage industry with significant economic gains for the favoured: it offers exclusive access to public sector jobs seen as sinecures for prebends and economic rents for the privileged elite. The lucky few can become incredibly rich in a short span of time. Inevitably though, the process has led to a pervasive atrophy of state institutions and an increase in poverty for the average citizen. (8)

In such circumstances, the MDGs are far less a concern to elites than the continuation in power of rulers and their clientilistic networks. Ordinary Africans in such circumstances either opt out of democratic involvement or live their lives in parallel.

Critics of recent attempts to promote "partnerships for development" in Africa miss the point when they argue that such partnerships are neocolonial plots. (9) In fact, most African elites would never countenance genuine attempts at partnerships for development, because that would limit their ability to grease the wheels of their patronage systems. As the Rwandan journalist Shyaka Kanuwa notes, "How can rulers who are themselves clearly the problem be part of the solution? [They] preside over decaying military or police states. They benefit from a hybrid of African patronage and farcical parliamentary, judicial and other institutional procedures that contrive invariably to act in the big man's interests." (10) Indeed, "a very small elite (whether civilian or military) ... generally favours self-preservation over policies and political structures truly designed to benefit the disempowered majorities of most African countries. In case after case, ruling elites continue to impede the process of sharing political and economic power." (11) This is why conditionalities are resented and why most reform efforts fail, with the end result being Africa's continued subjugation in the global community.

The irony is that the solutions advanced by projects such as the MDGs and NEPAD would actually deprive rulers of the means to maintain their patronage networks. In order for the MDGs to be realized, or to have an Africa predicated on NEPAD's enunciated principles, the elimination or at least the erosion of the neopatrimonial state is required. Are the elites who benefit from misrule likely to commit class suicide so that the MDGs can be achieved?

With very few exceptions (Botswana, Mauritius, and South Africa), the majority of African heads of state lead typical neopatrimonial regimes. In other words, they are the antithesis of what documents, such as NEPAD, say regarding good governance and are direct enemies of the MDGs. The malady affecting the continent is not simply, or even primarily, economic, nor is it external. It is political and endogenous and can be located in the behavior of the continent's governing elites; any policies, whether neoliberal or dirigiste, will be exploited by elites for private or political advantage. The debate between liberalizers and those opposed to neoliberalism is not only academic, but it also undermines the argument that if the external environment were to be "fixed," then all would be well in Africa.

Where the World Is Responsible

At the same time, the external world is not blameless. Acknowledgment of the sovereign status of state formations, however dysfunctional and fictitious, has allowed and even encouraged the current situation. Gaining control of an African state immediately supplies recognition and prestige from the outside world and provides external diplomatic backing and access to aid, which then further lubricates the patronage networks on which the state is predicated. In addition, assuming office automatically leads to membership in an elite club of African rulers who, as has been repeatedly demonstrated, band together for mutual support and protection against both external threats and, regrettably, domestic opposition to their rule; the current silence on Robert Mugabe is only the latest example. Such recognition, be it external or intra-African, is based on a concept of sovereignty that grants opportunities to rulers of even the most dysfunctional and weakest states. The use and abuse of the notion of sovereignty also allows an assortment of non-African actors to successfully construct commercial and military alliances with state leaders and their courtiers as well as with private corporations.

In short, many state elites in Africa use the mantle of sovereignty not to promote the collective good but to bolster their own patronage networks and to weaken those of potential challengers. The international system is complicit in such a charade. Malgovernance is perpetuated on the continent by the doctrines of sovereignty and noninterference, and it is no coincidence that Africa's elites are among the most enthusiastic defenders of these principles. This remains the case, despite the African Union's ostensible claim to provide an increased scope for intervention.

The main stumbling block is not a conspiratorial West hell-bent on maintaining power over Africa, but the logic of neopatrimonialism that militates against development and democracy and the international tolerance for this situation through unfair trading practices, disbursals of aid to corrupt regimes, and international recognition of even the most heinous regimes.

The persistence of bad leadership has often been explained through the argument that "dependent" elites in Africa are agents or compradors working for the West, whose interests are somehow served by a perpetually crippled Africa. (12) However, apart from their tendency to jealously cling to power, a great many African presidents are astonishingly inefficient and probably unable to create the conditions that might facilitate the West's supposed mission to exploit the continent for all its worth. One struggles to see how the collapse of Africa's infrastructure and productive capabilities aid global capitalism, or how widespread hyperinflation, war, and pestilence benefit the West.

The Way Forward

Working with many ruling elites on the continent is ineffectual, developmentally speaking. They are mendacious, they oppress their own people, and they utilize resources for purposes other than the promotion of broad-based development. In this light, strategic partnerships with those few governments that do demonstrate a commitment to agreed values should be the way forward, putting the ordinary African at the center of development initiatives. Conditionalities are essential for the continuation of such assistance, even if it does clash with notions of sovereignty. Such conditionalities are not neocolonial; they are commonsensical and aimed at helping the ordinary African. Although such a stance would involve hard choices, in the long term it would benefit the whole continent and its peoples. The reconfiguration of state power across the continent should be encouraged, and technical resources should be provided to those communities that are serious in their reform efforts. Fundamental reform of the global trading system, particularly vis-a-vis subsidies in the West and unfair barriers to African exporters, would be part and parcel of such a project. Promoting liberalization in Africa while keeping the West's doors closed to Africa's products is cynical and must come to an end. Harmonizing aid among donors and making it more accountable (through perhaps outcomes-based evaluations) would also help.

Yet it is also imperative that African state elites receive sustained encouragement to construct broad-based relations with their own citizens rather than with international donors, corporations, bankers, foreign governments, and investors or with the narrow circles of clients within the domestic patronage system. Humanitarian aid and technical assistance must continue, but mutual accountability (and accountability to the citizenry in both granting and recipient states) needs strengthening. But fundamental political changes must ultimately come from within Africa. As Zaki Ergas notes, It is true that slavery and colonialism exacted an extremely heavy toll in sub-Saharan Africa and that the international exchange system does not always function to the benefit of [Africa]; but African governments did have some room to maneouvre, to bring about more development; they have, in final analysis, proven to be notoriously deficient in that respect. (13)

From this perspective, accounts that seek to place excessive emphasis on exogenous factors as the causality of Africa's predicament, or those that studiously avoid confronting postcolonial misrule, must be abandoned.

Notes

Ian Taylor is lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews, United Kingdom, and visiting research fellow in the Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. He was previously senior lecturer in the Department of Political and Administrative Studies, University of Botswana.

1. See Ibbo Mandaza and Dani Nabudere, Pan-Africanism and Integration in Africa (Harare: SAPES, 2002); Guy Martin, Africa in World Politics: A Pan-African Perspective (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2002); and Bade Onimode, African Development and Governance Strategies in the 21st Century: Looking Back to Move Forward: Essays in Honour of Adebayo Adedeji at Seventy (London: Zed Books, 2004).

2. For an exception, see Nicolas Van de Walle, African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

3. T. Nguema, "Laying the Foundations for Prosperity," interview with President Teodro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, African Business, no. 298 (May 2004): 41. Nguema deposed (and killed) his uncle in a coup d'etat in 1979, officially declared himself president, and currently leads one of the most corrupt and oppressive states in the world.

4. Ian Taylor and Paul Williams, eds., Africa in International Politics: External Involvement on the Continent (London: Routledge, 2004).

5. Van de Walle, African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999, p. 121.

6. Ibid, p. 51.

7. For an overview of neopatrimonialism, see Michael Bratton and Nicolas Van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

8. K. Omolo, "Political Ethnicity in the Democratization Process in Kenya," African Studies 61, no. 2 (2002): 219-220.

9. R. Kamidza, K. Matlosa, and A. Mwanza, "The Role of the State in Development in the SADC Region: Does NEPAD Provide a New Paradigm?" Paper prepared for Third World Network (TWN)/Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA), "Africa and Development Challenges of the New Millennium," Accra, Ghana, 23-26 April 2002.

10. Quoted in the Johannesburg Mail and Guardian, 12 July 2002.

11. Peter Schraeder, "Elites as Facilitators or Impediments to Political Development? Some Lessons from the 'Third Wave' of Democratization in Africa," Journal of Developing Areas 29, no. 1 (1994): 85.

12. Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1981).

13. Zaki Ergas, "In Search of Development in Africa," in Zaki Ergas, ed., The African State in Transition (London: Macmillan, 1987), p. 309.