57708 W O R K IN G PAP E R N O .8 Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction An African Viewpoint and Experience Benjamin William Mkapa WORKING PAPER NO. 8 Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience Benjamin William Mkapa © 2008 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank On behalf of the Commission on Growth and Development 1818 H Street NW Washington, DC 20433 Telephone: 202-473-1000 Internet: www.worldbank.org www.growthcommission.org E-mail: info@worldbank.org contactinfo@growthcommission.org All rights reserved 1 2 3 4 5 11 10 09 08 This working paper is a product of the Commission on Growth and Development, which is sponsored by the following organizations: Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) U.K. Department of International Development (DFID) The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation The World Bank Group The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsoring organizations or the governments they represent. The sponsoring organizations do not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply any judgment on the part of the sponsoring organizations concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. All queries on rights and licenses, including subsidiary rights, should be addressed to the Office of the Publisher, The World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA; fax: 202-522- 2422; e-mail: pubrights@worldbank.org. Cover design: Naylor Design About the Series The Commission on Growth and Development led by Nobel Laureate Mike Spence was established in April 2006 as a response to two insights. First, poverty cannot be reduced in isolation from economic growth--an observation that has been overlooked in the thinking and strategies of many practitioners. Second, there is growing awareness that knowledge about economic growth is much less definitive than commonly thought. Consequently, the Commission's mandate is to "take stock of the state of theoretical and empirical knowledge on economic growth with a view to drawing implications for policy for the current and next generation of policy makers." To help explore the state of knowledge, the Commission invited leading academics and policy makers from developing and industrialized countries to explore and discuss economic issues it thought relevant for growth and development, including controversial ideas. Thematic papers assessed knowledge in areas such as monetary and fiscal policies, climate change, and equity and growth and highlighted ongoing debates. Additionally, 25 country case studies were commissioned to explore the dynamics of growth and change in the context of specific countries. Working papers in this series were presented and reviewed at Commission workshops, which were held in 2007­08 in Washington, D.C., New York City, and New Haven, Connecticut. Each paper benefited from comments by workshop participants, including academics, policy makers, development practitioners, representatives of bilateral and multilateral institutions, and Commission members. The working papers, and all thematic papers and case studies written as contributions to the work of the Commission, were made possible by support from the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the U.K. Department of International Development (DFID), the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the World Bank Group. The working paper series was produced under the general guidance of Mike Spence and Danny Leipziger, Chair and Vice Chair of the Commission, and the Commission's Secretariat, which is based in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network of the World Bank. Papers in this series represent the independent view of the authors. Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience iii Contents About the Series ............................................................................................................. iii Overview ...........................................................................................................................1 Aspects of Colonial Legacy.............................................................................................6 Post-Colonial Cold War Years......................................................................................17 The Post­Cold War Years .............................................................................................35 The Way Forward ..........................................................................................................37 Conclusion: Development Democracy for Africa......................................................57 References ....................................................................................................................... 63 Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience v Leadership for Growth, Development and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience Benjamin William Mkapa1 Overview By 1967, six years after Tanzania's independence, the first President, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, knew enough about the challenges of development that a poor, post-colonial African country like his faced. In that year, he published his treatise on those challenges and the leadership needed to address them. It was called the Arusha Declaration. Among other things he distilled four core prerequisites for Tanzania's development: · Land, and hence the focus on agriculture and rural development. He believed that Africa could best develop by making maximum use of what it had, in this case land, for food security and economic growth through processed agricultural commodity exports. He believed that since Tanzania did not have money, it could not depend on money for development unless it was willing to sacrifice its hard-won independence. · People, especially with regard to human development, human resource capacity and skills development, and sheer hard work. · Good Policies, which aimed at self-reliance and which for him were essentially egalitarian, comprising of three main components: (i) a Villagization Program (Ujamaa villages) as a cornerstone of rural transformation and development through collective production and distribution (from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs), and the facilitation of social service delivery and development infrastructure; (ii) the public ownership and centralization of main economic activities; and (iii) a Basic Industry Strategy to add value to agricultural commodity exports and for import substitution. 1Benjamin William Mkapa is the former President of the United Republic of Tanzania (1995­2005). Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 1 · Good Leadership, which for him included training for capacity building and stringent standards of integrity and ethical behavior. Clearly, he was a socialist idealist and visionary, but his focus on leadership was not misplaced and it has now entered the mainstream of development. Today, the discourse on African development is increasingly focusing on capacity for leadership and governance, and its role in engendering economic growth, promoting development, and ensuring poverty reduction. Examples include the Report of the Commission for Africa, and work on governance by the World Bank Institute, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the African Development Bank. Moreover, there is ongoing work on governance by the Economic Commission for Africa and the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and its Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), as well as the establishment of several African leadership training initiatives and institutions. The connection between leadership and governance on the one hand, and outcomes in terms of economic growth, development, and poverty reduction on the other hand, is not too difficult to discern. What are not so easy to determine are the circumstances that can produce the kind of leadership qualities, in an African context (historical, cultural, and sociological), that can positively impact on the continent's development. This makes comparison difficult. Even more difficult is the effort to develop a theoretical framework for this imperative and synthesize the various experiences into one theory of leadership suitable for wider application on the continent. There is no theory of leadership in post- colonial Africa, except one of "muddling through," learning as we move forward; it is theory, not as articulated but as lived. However, the end of the Cold War has made African introspection possible. Africa has now learnt to come to terms with its post-colonial history. NEPAD and especially the APRM would not have been possible under the cloud of the Cold War. By focusing internally, it has now become possible for African leaders, under the auspices of the African Union (AU), to agree on a set of core principles, guidelines, and values that can guide African governments towards improved leadership and governance for development, without the resentment that such a framework would have elicited if it were prescribed for Africa by developed countries. African ownership of the governance agenda is paramount. Africa cannot forever hold its history of slavery and colonialism responsible for its current poverty levels and economic woes. But a discussion of leadership and governance in Africa will be seriously deficient if it fails to put previous and current leadership, and the developmental challenges they faced, in their proper historical, cultural, and sociological context. In terms of the historical development of independent nations, African nations are in their infancy, still heavily influenced by their colonial heritage. This year, Ghana, the first sub-Saharan African country to become independent, celebrated its 50th anniversary, a very short time in the life of nations. The fact 2 Benjamin William Mkapa that Antoine Gizenga, who was Deputy Prime Minister in 1960 to the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, is still around and competent to assume the role of Prime Minister in the current administration, illustrates how truly young African nations are. African leaders in the period before the end of the Cold War can be put into six categories: · The visionary idealists, such as Nyerere, Nkrumah, Senghor, and Lumumba. · The pragmatists, such as Khama and Kenyatta. · The incompetents, such as Iddi Amin. · The military juntas, of which there were too many to list. · The tyrants and thieves, such as Mobutu and Bokassa. · A combination of two or more of the foregoing. Whatever category of leaders one looks at, it is important for the sake of objective analysis to look beyond what they did, and beyond the dreary economic statistics used as evidence of lost decades in terms of development, in order to understand how these leaders came to power, why they behaved the way they did, and the environment in which they operated. An objective analytical framework for African leadership should go beyond the usual criticism of governance and policies and address the following three key factors: · Ability and skills, which implies the need for some form of preparation for leadership. · The wherewithal to act, in terms of tools and resources, (financial and human) and the state of institutions. · The domestic and external environment (regional and global) that could have been supportive, neutral, or obstructive to what those leaders set out to do. This paper is not intended to absolve any leader or government of any lapses of governance. But before we pass judgment on the performance of the earlier generations of African leadership, and before we look at the economic statistics from those years, we have to answer these questions: What preparation for leadership did the first generation of leaders have that would have given them the capacity, the ability, and the skills to produce better results? What tools and resources--financial, human, and institutional--did they have at their disposal to design and implement policies? How was the internal and external policy and operational environment? Was it supportive or obstructive? It has become common to compare Asia and Africa, in a way that projects the image of better leadership for development in Asia, and poor leadership for Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 3 development in Africa. Using the same three-point analytical framework, it should be possible to see if such a comparison and such criticism of African leadership is justified, and if so to what extent. Such a comparison is not within the scope of this paper but enough is written in the literature to show fundamental differences between Asia and Africa in all these three areas. Perhaps the greatest challenge facing African leaders today is the pressure-- domestic and external--to deliver simultaneously on the three issues of sustainable economic growth (in terms of GDP), sustainable development (in its transformational nature), and poverty reduction (in its distributional sense). This entails addressing the challenge of setting priorities among priorities in the context of resource constraints, and the proper sequencing of policies and interventions in the context of fledgling institutions and low human resource capacity, while retaining the wide political support necessary for democratic legitimacy under current multiparty political dispensations. My own leadership experience, as well as that of my country, convinces me that the following 10 issues are critical for leadership in Africa if the continent is to make greater headway in growth, development, and poverty reduction: · The leadership capacity and ability to create and/or sustain politically stable and peaceful states. · The leadership capacity and ability to create and/or sustain stable and viable economies, in terms of their internal capacity for survival, as well as their external capacity for significance and relevance. This includes capacity for regional integration and significance in a global economy. · The political will to create and sustain democratic, responsive, and accountable governments--both national and local--that bestow legitimacy upon any government. · The imperative to focus on agriculture, food security, and rural development as a cornerstone of poverty reduction efforts. · Human development, including education and health (especially diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB). · Constituting strong governments with effective, efficient, and capable institutions, including regulatory ones. · Leadership to develop and facilitate skills for contemporary Africa, business environment, local entrepreneurship, and guarantees for the property rights of the poor. · Investment in integrative market and economic infrastructure. · Economic and financial market facilitation and intermediation. This includes the advocacy and institutional promotion of a savings and investment culture. 4 Benjamin William Mkapa · Leadership that ensures participation and sharing, not only of political power, but of economic prosperity as well. These are the core African leadership challenges of the future. Partly because I knew him quite well, and partly because even his detractors recognize him as one of the greatest post-colonial African leaders, I will use Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere as a reference point in discussing a number of leadership issues. Granted, some will not want to remember him for his economic achievements, but he will always be remembered for the leadership in creating a united and politically viable, stable, peaceful, cohesive, and sustainable nation, where at independence there was none. For post-colonial African countries, this has to be the priority among priorities--building a strong political foundation upon which an economy can subsequently be built. In reality, most if not all of those countries referred to as "failed states" were never states to begin with. They did not fail; they were never built. As history would prove it, in the long run it does not pay to build an economic mansion on a foundation of political sand. Côte d'Ivoire is an example of what can happen to an economy that is not built on a firm political foundation, and a shared sense of nationhood. Their real GDP per capita declined from US$924 in 1980 to US$574 in 2004 (World Bank 2006: 35). I am credited with having presided over deep and very far-reaching economic reforms in Tanzania between 1995 and 2005. I could only do that because of the strong political culture and foundation that Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, the founding president, laid between 1961 and 1985. The new environment in Africa now, with initiatives such NEPAD and APRM, taken together with declining incidences, levels, and intensity of conflicts on the continent, makes it possible for African leaders to focus on the 10 core leadership issues I have identified. But outcome, in terms of growth, development, and poverty reduction will require much more than good leadership at the national level. It will also require a conducive regional context, in terms of peace, security, and stability. It will also depend on the responses of the bilateral and multilateral development partners to the recommendations of the Report of the Commission for Africa and various G8 Summit declarations from the 2002 Kananaskis summit onward. Likewise, it will depend on the outcome of the Doha round of global trade negotiations, as well as EU-ACP negotiations for Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA). The Doha round of trade negotiations was meant to be a "development round." It is not one yet. With political will it still can be. The point of this paper is to emphasize the importance and role of leadership for African growth, development, and poverty reduction. It is also an attempt to project a more objective assessment of leadership issues during the first three to four decades of African independence. Agreeing on shared responsibilities for Africa's failures in its early years will enable all who want to take part in the continent's renewal to focus on the partnership that is now Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 5 needed to close a sad chapter in Africa's history, and open a new one. The core elements of such a partnership have evolved in the last decade, and this paper argues passionately for the political will, in Africa and outside, for their realization. Aspects of Colonial Legacy There has been considerable debate about how much the European colonial legacy has affected post-colonial Africa; and what influence, if any, this legacy continues to have on the African continent. More to the point, how helpful and constructive, or unhelpful and destructive, was the colonial legacy in terms of the development of post-colonial Africa? How responsible was this legacy for the quality and character of post-colonial Africa leadership? Colonial Legacy is Enduring It is significant that, for the majority of African countries, the period they spent under colonial rule is still far longer than the subsequent period during which they have enjoyed independence and self-rule. European colonial powers ruled most of Africa from 1885 to 1960, a period of 75 years. Portuguese rule goes further back. In some African countries, European colonialism started much earlier than the Berlin Conference which sought to end the scramble for Africa and formalize the "ownership" of what was mostly already claimed. Ghana, the first sub-Saharan African country to become independent, celebrated its 50th year as an independent nation only this year, 2007. It is not surprising, therefore, that until recently the effect of colonial rule on African politics, economics, and social life has remained strong; and not just because Africans were taught and pressed to think and speak in the languages of their colonizers. It is also because at independence Africans inherited, with little variations here and there, the political and economic systems of their colonizers. An objective evaluation of political systems, processes, and governance in contemporary Africa has to go that far back and ask: What did Africa learn and adopt from the colonial rulers, and how has it shaped and directed post-colonial leadership, political systems, and governance in Africa? In all these years of colonialism, the relationship between the rulers and the ruled was basically one of master and servant. Every white man, woman, or child was made out to be superior in all respects, including color and culture, and the black man, woman, or child was made to feel inferior. African confidence and dignity was deliberately undermined. This is a historical fact. Slavery, which in itself was an enforced inferiority on the black people, was superseded by colonial administration that made little if any effort to disabuse the black people of such imposed inferiority. In other words, Africans were 6 Benjamin William Mkapa protected from slavery abroad, but were condemned to be an underclass at home. The white people's democratic values that were maturing in Europe in the nineteenth century were not spread to Africa; and any efforts by Africans to demand democratic rule and civil rights were ruthlessly suppressed. Traditional political and administrative systems in Africa were also rendered inferior to the colonial administrative systems, which were developed specifically for the colonies. These too were presented as superior, except where local chiefs could, through carrots and sticks, be enlisted to be part of different forms of indirect rule. It is also a historical fact that indirect rule, coupled with "divide and rule" tactics, characterized most colonial administrations in Africa, and planted the seeds of post-colonial ethnic conflict, the most tragic manifestation of which is Rwanda and Burundi. How Prepared Were the First Leaders? Leadership is both a science and an art. One can also be born with what is called natural leadership traits. Yet the fact remains that even divinely bestowed qualities of leadership need preparation to make them relevant to the challenges of the day. Among the first generation of independent African leaders were very gifted, charismatic, and visionary leaders. How else could they have mobilized and earned the following of their compatriots in the face of sometimes very brutal repression by the colonial authorities. The question is, there was any effort by the colonial administrators to train and prepare these potential leaders before independence? Even before we look for evidence, this clearly is an unlikely scenario. The colonial authorities would naturally consider those agitating for independence as enemies of the realm to be stopped, incarcerated, or even killed. They would not see them as potential leaders of independent Africa to be properly trained for the job. It would also have been tempting to the departing colonial powers to leave a country in the hands of incompetent leaders who would mess up so much that the nationals would long for the more "efficient" or "orderly" colonial administration. Champions of African independence would then be seen as having been irresponsible in pushing for premature independence, and handing over countries to weak and incompetent leaders. Weak and incompetent leaders would also create a perfect environment for the political influence and economic advantage of the metropolitan powers to persist. Could Traditional African Leadership Be Helpful? Attempts have been made, especially in the African Diaspora, to see if pre- colonial African systems of leadership and administration could have provided a better alternative to post-colonial governance. It is true that pre-colonial Africa is replete with examples of traditional leadership and governance that evolved Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 7 over time, developing institutions and styles of leadership suited to the realities of the time. The debate continues also whether there were in pre-colonial Africa social and cultural norms, political structures, and processes, as well as philosophical underpinnings of governance that could find relevance and applicability in modern Africa. If they existed, were they fundamentally transformed by colonial experience and insertion into the rest of the world, or were they stopped in their historical development, frozen in time, such that they could be unlocked, brushed up, and used to create an essentially African system of democratic governance? This debate, to me, is relevant and should be encouraged as long as it is appreciated that the circumstances and times under which such traditional governance and leadership models developed are completely different from today's national and global realities. For instance, pre-colonial Africa comprised largely nonmonetary, tribe- based economies. The kind of preparation needed to rule in such pre-colonial African economies had to be different from the realities of leadership skills needed for the African economies of second half of the twentieth century. Political entities in pre-colonial Africa were mostly ethnically homogenous. The new leaders of Africa inherited, for the most part, an amalgam of diverse, sometimes antagonistic tribes that were forced into one geographic entity whose boundaries were decided by colonial powers in Berlin in 1884­85. As I will explain later, addressing this challenge required a completely new set of leadership skills and governance systems for the newly independent nations. The global system of which Africa is part today--whether political, economic, social, or cultural--is heavily influenced by factors that have nothing to do with traditional Africa. The current system was designed and spread by Africa's erstwhile colonial masters, through whom Africa was inserted into a global political and economic system initially as mere appendages of the metropolitan powers. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize certain important features and characteristics of pre-colonial African governance, administration, and democracy that could be used to enrich present-day African governance systems, institutions, and processes. What is needed is practical adaptation, not idle romanticism. And there must be something worth adapting. Not all traditional African leadership was without any restriction or responsibility to be responsive and accountable to the citizens. The 2003 literature review that Al-Yasha Ilhaam Williams conducted shows clearly that democracy and accountability were not anathema in traditional African governance. In fact they were the cornerstone of legitimacy. Williams reveals that "the political structure and stability of pre- colonial African kingdoms, some relatively large such as Ghana, Songhai, Benin, Bornu, and Sokoto, and others relatively small such as Nso', Bafut, Kom reveals a combination of leadership strategies, including the important role of democratic processes in traditional governance.... Specific formal practices (which may vary 8 Benjamin William Mkapa between cultures) positioned the citizenry to authorize, critique and sanction the ascension of their ruler, his/her continued reign and the selection and ascension of his/her successor" (Williams 2003). Williams adds from the evidence that "traditional leadership was not just the authority of `kings and queens' ... but was rather composed of queen- mothers and councils, secret societies and mystics, rituals and ceremonies, rules and doctrines, and subject-citizens.... On this account, perhaps African redemption is to be found not in the `return to royalty' but to the democracy which makes a respected leadership possible." I will return to this theme in due course. Was Colonial Education Helpful? Leadership of newly independent African countries that were no longer traditional African entities but appendages of metropolitan powers, inserted into a global political and economic order unfamiliar to most Africans except the educated few, required adequate preparation and capacity building. The first preparation for leadership should have been a good formal education for more Africans. But educating the "natives" beyond basic literacy was not a priority for colonial governments, who left it mostly to Christian missionaries to produce the clerks and the messengers needed to staff the lower echelons of colonial administration. There were, however, a few differences between the approaches of the two main colonial powers in Africa--the British and the French--as far as education for Africans was concerned. And they were philosophical, cultural, and strategic differences. The French, with their background of the 1789 French Revolution that emphasized notions of equality and egalitarianism, adopted an assimilation policy towards their colonies. It was as if they were saying: "Africans are of equal worth to us as long as they are as cultured as we are." Such a philosophical outlook would make education an important part of the French strategy to create an African elite imbued with metropolitan cultural and political values, such that they could even sit in the French Parliament. By its nature, however, such an education was inherently elitist, geared towards a denial of one's Africanness and embracing a new culture irrelevant to the real challenges of leadership and development in Africa at independence. Jules Ferry was twice Prime Minister of France between 1880 and 1885. In a speech to the French Chamber of Deputies on 28 March 1884, just before the Berlin Conference of 1884­85, at which Africa was officially parceled out into colonies of European powers--Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and Belgium--he justified and defended the current French colonial policy. He said, "The policy of colonial expansion is a political and economic system ... that can be connected to three sets of ideas: economic ideas; the most far-reaching ideas of civilization; and ideas of a political and patriotic sort" (Ferry 1884). Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 9 In further justifying the civilization aspect he added, "Gentlemen, we must speak more loudly and more honestly! We must say openly that indeed the higher races have a right over the lower races.... I repeat that the superior races have a right because they have a duty. They have the duty to civilize the inferior races...." The British for their part had no pretences of the equal worth of people, and had no intention to turn Africans into Black Englishmen. Using various sources, the British historian, David Cannadine, described the British philosophy as follows: Like all post-Enlightenment imperial powers, only more so, Britons saw themselves as the lords of the entire world and thus of humankind. They placed themselves at the top of the scale of civilization and achievement, they ranked all other races in descending order beneath them.... (Cannadine 2001: 5) One can only imagine the place of Africans in that descending order. To make matters worse, an African was made to understand that he/she can only be considered civilized upon embracing the language, religion, ways, and mannerism of citizens of the colonial power. Cannadine adds that: By the end of the nineteenth century those notions of racial hierarchy, supremacy and stereotyping had become more fully developed, and stridently hardened, as exemplified in Cecil Rhodes's remark that `the British are the finest race in the world, and the more of the world they inhabit, the better it will be for mankind', or in Lord Cromer's belief that the world was divided between those who were British and those who were merely `subject races'. (Cannadine 2001: 5) The British, unlike the French, preferred to rule indirectly through existing traditional systems, and (with few exceptions) educated to the appropriate level only those few Africans needed for clerical or technical duties to make the wheels of colonial administration turn. In reality, however, the British colonial education also ended up, to a large extent, detaching educated Africans from the real challenges of development at the local level. And these educated Africans were to form the core of the administration of newly independent African countries. Some of the Africans who received this education realized its effect on them--that it was not preparing them for leadership that addressed the development challenges facing newly independent African countries, but rather was putting them in an ivory tower, much removed from the realities and challenges that their people faced. A review of post-colonial African literature by Omoregie (1999) found it replete with concerns shared by African and Caribbean writers as to the effect of colonial education on them. He quotes, for instance, Walter Rodney, who said the following: 10 Benjamin William Mkapa Education is crucial in any type of society for the preservation of the lives of its members and the maintenance of the social structure.... The most crucial aspect of pre-colonial African education was its relevance to Africans in sharp contrast with that which was later introduced (that is, under colonialism).... [T]he main purpose of colonial school system was to train Africans to participate in the domination and exploitation of the continent as a whole.... Colonial education was education for subordination, exploitation, the creation of mental confusion and the development of underdevelopment. (Rodney 1981: 263) Omoregie also mentions other Africans writers such as Amilcar Cabral, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Ferdinand Oyono, Chinua Achebe, Mongo Beti, Charles Mungoshi, Okot P'Bitek, Leon Dumas, S. Ousmane, Pepetela, Frantz Fanon, and Tchicaya U'Tamsi, all of whom lament that colonial education made those few Africans who received it privileged political and economic functionaries in a colonial system that militated against the interests of their own people. He concludes, "Colonial education, therefore, creates a black elite to succeed it and perpetuate its political and economic interests in the post-independence period" (Omoregie, 1999). In other words, not only did colonial education not prepare those who received it for leadership, but it was also not directed to the solution of economic and social problems of newly independent countries. It is true most of these writers wrote in the 1960s and 1970s, a time of particular revolutionary fervor in Africa. But there is no gainsaying the depth of feeling they had that colonial education was not the best preparation for the leaders of post-colonial Africa. Tanzania's founding president, Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, was one of the few educated Africans at the independence of the then Tanganyika (mainland Tanzania today). He was equally unhappy about colonial education. A few days before his country became independent, he wrote an article in the East Africa and Rhodesia, a journal that used to be published in London during those days, and said the following: Our whole existence has been controlled by people with an alien attitude to life, people with different customs and beliefs. They have determined the forms of government, the type of economic activity--if any--and the schooling that our children have had. They have shaped the present generation of Tanganyikans, more than any other influence. (Nyerere 1966: 133) In addition to the inappropriateness of colonial education in terms of preparing Africans for self-rule, the fact was also that too few Africans received any education at all, let alone higher education and specialized skills. When he was still fighting for the independence of the then Tanganyika, President Nyerere raised the need to educate Africans in his statement to the United Nations Fourth Committee on December 25, 1956, only five years before independence (box 1). Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 11 Box 1: Issues on Education Raised by Nyerere at the UN in 1956 · "In Tanganyika education is racial. There are separate schools for the children of different racial groups. All European children and all Asian children receive primary education. Only 40 per cent of the African children go to school.... · "When I sat for the Makerere College entrance examination some fourteen years ago there were only three schools in the country which could send students to that college for higher education. That number remains the same today with the addition of one school for the girls.... · "In 1949 and 1950 five African students, including myself, received Government scholarships to study in universities in the United Kingdom. We were the first and the last.... · "For a country like Tanganyika, the importance of higher education cannot be over- emphasized. Our leadership and progress towards self-government depends on higher education." Source: Nyerere 1966: 41­42. Nyerere was pleading with the United Nations that people from his country should be educated in preparation for independence. The human resource capacity for development needed to be built. But, as I will show later, his pleas and those of other African leaders largely fell on deaf ears. As a result, at Tanganyika's independence in 1961: · Only 15 percent of adults were literate. · Only 23 percent of Tanganyika men and 7.5 percent of Tanganyika women over 15 years of age had attended any formal school at all. · There were only 3,100 primary schools with 486,000 students in a population of 9 million. · There were only about 20 secondary schools with 11,832 students. · The first Tanzanian to get a university degree graduated outside the country in 1952, only nine years before independence. · The few professionals the country had at independence included only 1 agricultural engineer, 1 surveyor, 16 medical doctors, 12 accountants, 158 professional nurses, 50 agricultural scientists, and 427 government administrators. And that is about all (Nyerere 1973: 296­7). That was Tanzania's starting point--hardly the right preparation and capacity building for leadership of a newly independent country. The case of the then Belgian Congo is also instructive. As Larry Devlin, the first U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Chief of Station in the Congo at independence, has noted in his recent memoirs: ...the Congolese were well-educated and trained but only to a limited level. At independence, the country had one of the most literate and healthy indigenous populations in Africa. But out of fourteen million people, there were fewer than twenty university graduates. There was no 12 Benjamin William Mkapa Congolese cadre of doctors, dentists, engineers, architects, lawyers, university professors, business executives, or accountants. The Force Publique, the country's army soon to be re-named Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC), was officered exclusively by Belgians.... What seemed clear was that Brussels planned to allow the Congolese their political freedom while keeping the military, economic, and commercial levers of power in their own hands. (Devlin 2007: 7) A similar situation prevailed in practically the whole of colonial Africa. With the late exception of Namibia and South Africa, there was not a concerted effort by the colonial powers to train and prepare Africans for democratic self-rule and development. Even when, through the United Nations, countries did offer scholarships to African students in preparation for independence, the colonial powers prevented many of them from traveling abroad for studies. A review of United Nations General Assembly Resolutions in 1960 and 1961 reveal great international concern that while the poor preparations for independence should not be used as an excuse to further delay self-rule, it was imperative and urgent to train Africans, to build institutions, and to support the new governments with human and financial resources. The following are a few examples. Resolution 1534 (XV) of December 15, 1960, on "Preparation and Training of Indigenous Civil and Technical Cadres in Non-Self-Governing Territories," among other things, resolved: Considering that the existence of adequate personnel of this kind is indispensable for the effective implementation of plans and programs of development in the educational, social and economic fields, Bearing in mind that suitably trained indigenous civil and technical cadres are essential to the efficient functioning of the administration of the Territories, Believing that the absence of such cadres has, in the past, resulted in serious administrative dislocation in certain Territories upon their attainment of independence ... 1. Urges the Administering Members to take immediate measures aimed at the rapid development of indigenous civil and technical cadres and at the replacement of expatriate personnel by indigenous officers.... Resolution 1643 (XVI) of November 6, 1961, among other things: 1. Notes with regret that full use is not being made of all offers of study and training facilities for inhabitants of Trust Territories; 3. Urges the Administering Authorities to provide all the necessary facilities to enable students to avail themselves of offers by Member States of study and training facilities.... Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 13 Resolution 1696 (XVI) of December 19, 1961, reiterated these concerns regarding colonial authorities deliberately obstructing the use of scholarships by inhabitants of their colonies. The resolution, among other things: Recognizing the importance of rendering assistance to colonial countries and peoples in the field of general and specialized education..., Noting with satisfaction the further response to its resolution 845 (IX) inviting Member States to extend their offers of study and training facilities to the inhabitants of Non-Self-Governing Territories, Expressing regret that, despite the increased interest among inhabitants of the Non-Self-Governing Territories in such offers, a large number of the scholarships offered by Member States remain unutilized, Further expressing regret that in several instances students who have been granted scholarships have not been accorded facilities to leave the Non- Self-Governing Territories in order to take advantage of such scholarships..., Invites once again the Administering Members concerned to take all necessary measures to ensure that all scholarships and training facilities offered by Member States are utilized by the inhabitants of the Non-Self- Governing Territories and to render effective assistance to those persons who have applied for, or have been granted, scholarships or fellowships, particularly with regard to facilitating their travel formalities; Resolution 1697 (XVI) of December 19, 1961, says: Reiterating that the existence of adequate indigenous civil servants and technical personnel in the Non-Self-Governing Territories is necessary for the effective implementation of satisfactory plans and programs of development in the educational, social and economic fields..., Believing that the rapid preparations and training of indigenous civil and technical cadres in Non-Self-Governing Territories will help towards the achievements of the purposes of resolution 1514 (XV), 1. Considers that the situation prevailing in various dependent territories in respect of the strength, composition and state of training indigenous civil servants and technical personnel is unsatisfactory; 2. Regrets that due attention has not been paid to that problem; 3. Urges the Administering Members to take immediately all necessary measures to increase the strength of indigenous civil service and technical cadres and to accelerate their training in public administration and other essential technical skills. Did the Rest of the World Care? Another problem was the general lack of interest in Africa among Western countries, other than the colonial ones. At most it was missionaries from those countries rather than governments that had significant contact with Africa. Addressing the Empire Club of Toronto on March 22, 1962, the then Director of 14 Benjamin William Mkapa Operations Crossroads Africa, Inc., Dr. James H. Robinson, referred to this lack of interest in Africa as follows: At the end of World War II, almost no great nation in the world had any significant plans for relating to what was shortly to be the cataclysmic events of emerging African nations. Most European nations, with the possible exception of Great Britain, still evolved their policies of relationship to the areas of Africa they controlled, in terms of what they thought would be an indefinite extension of colonial relationships. The United States, at the time, did not even have a desk of any consequence in the Department of State to advise on Africa and obviously had no well defined African policy. Our policies, if any, were related to Africa through our colonial allies. (Robinson 1962) This was quite a disappointment for the African intellectuals of the post- World War II era who, having studiously absorbed the American War of Independence, had expected the United States to be at the forefront not only of championing and actively supporting decolonization efforts in Africa, but also in helping to prepare the new corps of leaders of independent Africa. Dr. Robinson pointed out that in the late 1930s there were less than 500 African students studying in European and American universities (Robinson 1962). In his address to the Toronto Empire Club Robinson also referred to an encounter he had with students in Accra, Ghana, in 1954. In discussing the Mau Mau unrest in Kenya he referred to the freedom fighters as terrorists, upon which one student promptly chastised him by saying, "Dr. Robinson, they are not terrorists, they are like your patriots in 1776 fighting for their land, their freedom, and for independence" (Robinson 1962). The natural instinct of the independence leaders in most of Africa was to turn to the West for support in building their newly independent countries. Even those who turned to the East did so as a last resort, having been rebuffed by the West. It was only after being ignored by the United States that Lumumba turned to the Soviet Union. Nkrumah, like Nyerere, maintained good relations with Britain at independence, and kept British advisors, and administrators, for quite a while. The French left Guinea in a pique, even ripping out telephones. Yet, Sékou Touré, the first president, turned to the United States for help, and after he was turned down went to the Soviet Union. Sékou Touré wanted genuine independence, but he did not want to distance himself from France. It was France that did not want to have anything to do with him. Only the Lusophone countries became independent as communist-leaning countries. The rest had more open minds. In other words, despite the colonial history, most independence leaders in Africa reached out to Western countries for assistance, whether in education and capacity building or in economic development. The Western countries had the first option to develop mutually beneficial relations with newly independent Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 15 Africa. They did not always do so, but instead drove some of the African leaders eastwards and then undermined them in a communism containment policy. The Argument I believe that Africa's trajectory of development would have been very different and much more positive had the departing colonial powers behaved differently, including treating Africans with greater respect; helping them to train and build capacity of independence leaders and administrators; helping to build strong institutions to deal with the challenges that the new countries faced rather than trying to perpetuate institutions intended to promote, sustain, and defend Western economic and political interests; and giving the new governments space and the wherewithal to realize the vision and dreams they had for their newly independent countries. Regrettably, it was the colonial legacy that prevailed, and the resultant friction as African governments sought to reassert their rights as independent nations derailed development efforts to a significant extent by shifting the focus and priorities away from helpful trends. Moreover, the colonial economic legacy meant that African countries would become independent with very little wherewithal with which to promote development and meet the phenomenal expectations of the people for a better life. It is common knowledge that colonial economic policy and strategy was never meant to develop the colony in question and reduce poverty. Rather it was an imperialistic economic policy and strategy to secure sources of raw materials for Europe's industrialization through a settler economy, whether plantations or mining operations, as well as to create the infrastructure to make this happen. Quite a few modern metropolises were built across Africa during colonialism to cater for the needs, convenience, and comfort of the colonial and settler community. They were largely islands of prosperity in a sea of poverty. Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) was one. But, to this day, the countryside has little to show for Belgian colonial economic policy except the lasting effect of cruel resource exploitation. As Devlin describes it, "The Belgians ... exploited the huge natural riches of the country. For Leopold, the lure had first been ivory then rubber; for his successors, it was copper, cobalt, and diamonds. Belgians, not Congolese, controlled all economic and commercial enterprises." (Devlin 2007: 6) This then presents the context in which most African countries became independent. · Very low levels of education, and hardly any preparation for leadership, whether political or economic. · Very low governance resources, financial and human; and weak, if any, institutions of independent governance and economic development. · A hostile external environment, as clearly the colonial powers were not happy to leave their "possessions." The domestic environment, 16 Benjamin William Mkapa especially with regard to the settler and colonial commercial interests, were equally obstructive, if not outright hostile. These are the realities that have to be factored in any objective analysis of Africa's leadership of development and poverty reduction during the early years of independence. It is not enough to look at economic statistics. Africa's colonial legacy is not the only reason for Africa's poor economic performance, but it is an important one that others prefer to forget. Post-Colonial Cold War Years The term "good governance" has always eluded a comprehensive definition. The World Bank tried to make a distinction between good and bad governance in the following terms: Good governance is epitomized by predictable, open and enlightened policy-making, a bureaucracy imbued with professional ethos acting in furtherance of the public good, the rule of law, transparent processes, and a strong civil society participating in public affairs. Poor governance (on the other hand) is characterized by arbitrary policy making, unaccountable bureaucracies, unenforced or unjust legal systems, the abuse of executive power, a civil society unengaged in public life, and widespread corruption. (World Bank 1994) If we take this as our working definition then, with few exemptions, it is obvious the leaders of the newly independent African countries were not prepared for good governance, and certainly colonial rule was not a good example for them as it was indeed the epitome of bad governance (except perhaps for widespread corruption). Leadership Capacity and the Wherewithal for Development Before we pass judgment on the first African post-colonial leaders we have to understand to what extent they had the capacity and the wherewithal to do what we think they should have done. And here I am referring largely to the African leaders who were visionary and pragmatic, not the tyrants and looters, or the inept ones. In 1971, Tanzania's founding President Nyerere reminisced on those early days of independence as follows: And in December 1961, Tanganyika did not attain economic power--and certainly not economic independence. We gained the political power to decide what to do; we lacked the economic and administrative power, which would have given us freedom in those decisions. For it is no use deciding to import more goods than you have foreign currency to pay for, or deciding to provide free books for all children if you have neither the teachers, the buildings nor the money to make a reality of that Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 17 decision. A nation's real freedom depends on its capacity to do things, not on the legal rights conferred by its internationally recognized sovereignty. (Nyerere 1973: 263) Recalling the number of African civil servants at his disposal at independence, Nyerere said that "as late as April 1960, only 346 of the posts classified as `senior' were filled by Africans. By independence the position had improved somewhat; 1,170 out of 3,282 senior posts were held by citizens..." (Nyerere 1973: 264). So, largely unprepared for leadership, with very few educated citizens at their disposal, with economies that were basically economic outposts of the metropolitan powers (dominated by a settler community), with an infrastructure geared to consign Africa to a supplier of raw materials for metropolitan economies, and with no recent democratic tradition to look to or institutions to count on, the new African leaders had to contend with the following immediate challenges. First, they had to move quickly to ensure national unity. Independence had removed from the scene colonialism, the one thing that united African people of diverse ethnic and religious affiliations. Once the shared hatred for colonialism had been assuaged, it was important for the new leaders to find something else to keep the people united. As John Reader puts it: In Africa, the injustices of colonial rule inspired nationalist movements that united the most diverse of ethnic groups in the drive for independence. Once independence had been achieved, however, the nationalist movements are too often fractured into political groupings of purely ethnic dimensions, whose struggles for power and wealth not only left national issues inadequately addressed and injustices largely unremedied, but also polarized economic and social discontent along ethnic lines--with some dreadful consequences. (Reader 1999) Second, they had to move quickly to prove to their people and the outside world that they were leaders of truly independent countries, at a time when some ex-colonial powers were waiting for them to fail, or actually plotting to make sure they fail. Two particularly striking examples were the Belgian Congo and French Guinea. Colonial powers did not prepare Africans for democratic self-rule. The forms and systems of government they introduced were not democratic by any measure, they were not concerned about human rights, and those who demanded their rights, including democratic rights, often were incarcerated. Should we have been surprised when post-colonial leaders also incarcerated their opponents? They learnt from colonialism that this was the way to deal with dissent and opponents. The education that colonial powers gave Africans was not meant to prepare them for leadership but to help perpetuate their rule. That is why educated Africans were dismissed from their jobs once they ventured into politics. 18 Benjamin William Mkapa The concept of "African Big Men" is used in vilification of African leaders, or as an illustration of what others may want to portray as African proclivity towards tyranny and dictatorship. But, as Cannadine (2001) reminds us: "the (British) governor was `the fountain of honour and the distributor of patronage and rank', by (among other things) determining who should (and should not) be invited to Government (nowadays State) House." Patrice Lumumba, first Prime Minister of independent Congo, was brutally killed with the knowledge, connivance, or at least acquiescence of some Western countries simply because he refused to be part of a framework of independence where, in the words of Gen. Emille Janssens, head of the army, "Before Independence = After Independence." De Witte (2002) presents damning evidence of Western involvement in his death. In a letter to his wife Patricia, before he was assassinated, Lumumba said: Throughout my struggle for the independence of my country, I have never doubted for a single instant that the sacred cause to which my comrades and I have dedicated our entire lives would triumph in the end. But what we wanted for our country--its right to an honorable life, to perfect dignity, to independence with no restrictions--was never wanted by Belgian colonialism and its Western allies, who found direct and indirect, intentional and unintentional support among certain senior officials of the United Nations, that body in which we placed all our trust when we called on it for help. They have corrupted some of our countrymen; they have bought others; they have done their part to distort the truth and defile our independence. (De Witte 2002: 184) Lumumba's vision and views on independent Congo, and his willingness to die for them, should be contrasted with those of the man the Western powers helped to put in charge of Congo--Mobutu Sese Seko. With the benefit of hindsight, Mobutu was a good student of King Leopold II. The colonial methods of rule, exploitation, human rights abuse, and personal wealth accumulation had an impact on some of the post colonial African leaders, prominent among who was Mobutu. Mobutu, like Leopold II, treated the Congo as his personal possession, plundering and looting its wealth at will. Like Leopold II he used the armed forces to enforce his will. During the Cold War, such leaders could literally get away with murder as long as they were on the right side of the war. In 2002, the Belgian Government apologized to the Congolese people for their role in Lumumba's death, but not for the looting of the Congo during the colonial era, and not for the clear efforts to ensure political independence did not harm the commercial interests of the metropolitan power. As De Witte argues, "The Congolese crisis was ... an attempt by the West to recover a lost colony. While ministers and colonels played out the game, the holding companies doubtless pulled the strings; at the root of the crisis lay their unquenchable thirst for profit" (De Witte 2002). Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 19 The Congo crisis may be an extreme case of what is generally believed to have been the hope of departing colonialists across Africa--that their commercial interests, and their exploitative nature, would be safeguarded by a compliant corps of African leaders. At Congo's independence celebrations, not only did King Baudouin of Belgium outrageously imply in his public address that Congolese independence was a kind of gift, a natural consequence of an undertaking by the "genius of King Leopold II"; but also he must have thought the new leadership so inept that he counseled them to keep Belgian structures and institutions intact, including the army and security services. Third, the new independence leaders had to address the immediate expectations of the people, many of whom wanted fast improvements in their welfare. They realized that unfulfilled expectations carried with them the seed of instability. As the Tanzanian President Nyerere said immediately after independence in 1961: "Our policy is to make haste slowly, but it may be hard to sell this to the people. Freedom to many means immediate betterment, as if by magic. We are not magicians. But unless I can meet at least some of these aspirations, my support will wane and my head will roll just as surely as the tickbird follows the rhino" (Time Magazine, 1961). At independence, hardly any African country had an economy--an indigenous economy--to speak of. Whatever interaction in economic terms they had with the outside world was as appendages of the metropolitan powers, and through their people who were engaged in plantation farming, mining, or trade. Basil Davidson, the acknowledged writer on African history, puts the situation in the following terms: To these political difficulties on the road to stability, all of which were built into the situation on the day of independence, others of an economic and social nature were added. For what the new governments were obliged to take over ... was not a prosperous colonial business, but, in many ways, a profound colonial crisis. (Davidson 1994: 209) Writing only a week after the then Tanganyika's independence, Time Magazine described the economic situation of the newly independent country in the following terms: "[The] biggest immediate problem facing Nyerere is Tanganyika's economic malnutrition. Average per capita income for the country's 9,240,000 people (all but 139,600 of whom are black) is only $55 a year. Periodic famine is a fact of life; only one-third of the country is arable. Industrial development is difficult because the huge deposits of iron ore, coal and columbite in southwest Tanganyika are far from transport" (Time Magazine, 1961). In view of the colonial legacy discussed above it is naïve to imagine that the euphoria of political independence could, simply by virtue of having a national flag, a national anthem, and other paraphernalia of statehood, herald a new era of good democratic governance and economic management and prosperity. 20 Benjamin William Mkapa This legacy meant that independent African states were destined from the beginning to remain small, fragile, unstable, and beholden to the departing colonial powers. When Guinea, for instance, refused autonomy and demanded full independence, France responded by immediately and precipitately withdrawing all economic aid, all civil servants, all skilled people, and even uprooting infrastructure and utilities, knowing well that they had never trained the Guineans to take over. Add to this the haste with which some of the colonial powers left and one can only have a recipe for instability. In 1960 alone, France granted independence to 14 African countries. The British historian, Thomas Pakenham, summarizes this phase as follows: "The scramble out of Africa in the eleven years from 1957 to 1968 was pursued at the same undignified pace ... as the scramble into Africa more than half a century earlier.... For one thing, these countries perceived that the race was to get out through the door before they were kicked through it (Pakenham 1991: 671). He adds further that: "Britain, France and Belgium ruled the mandates as arbitrarily as they ruled their other colonies. There was no supervision by the League, no progress towards self-government, very little education above primary level, abject poverty. The mandates, like the colonies, were ... prisoners of the world economy... (Pakenham 1991: 673) (emphasis added). At independence, most African countries were making--for the first time-- the transition from systems of governance that were blatantly undemocratic, oppressive, exploitative, and racist. It is unrealistic to expect that after half a century under such systems of governance--which exploited ethnicity to divide and rule and thrived on domination and abuse of human rights--the newly independent African country would, simply on account of a hastily drawn constitution, be a perfect democracy and a thriving economy. The colonial powers never taught us democracy, human rights, or economic management. What we experienced and learnt from decades of colonialism was domination, divide and rule, patronage, exploitation, and the abuse of human rights. It was the ultimate insult that at the independence celebrations for the then Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), in the then Leopoldville (now Kinshasa), King Baudouin of Belgium had the temerity, bearing in mind the reality, to say, "It is now up to you, gentlemen, to show us that you are worthy of our confidence," immediately provoking an understandable and justified angry diatribe from Patrice Lumumba (Hochschild 2000: 301). The Challenges of Nation-Building All changes, reforms, and transitions carry with them the seed of instability--and the same could be expected with the independence of the African countries. The most vulnerable spot is the grey zone between the old (colonial rule) and the new Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 21 (self-rule). The old has not completely died, and the new has not yet taken form and root. The successes or failures of the first few years of independence depended enormously on the founding president. To be able to hold the new nation together such a president needed to be charismatic, strong, capable, and honest. Both Nkrumah and Nyerere had these qualities, but Mwalimu (Teacher) Nyerere was also credited with greater humility than the Osagyefo (Redeemer) Nkrumah. Some people think this was partly responsible for Nkrumah's undoing. Nelson Mandela's similar qualities enabled him to hold together a nation that had for decades been built on separateness (apartheid). But going back to the 1960s, the first leaders, at least those with vision and committed to creating nations out of the many ethnic groups they inherited, had to contend with some formidable challenges. The first challenge was how to build nation-states where before there was none. Oswaldo de Rivero puts this challenge in its historical context as follows: In the majority of the industrialised states, national identity preceded the formation of the state authority. The nation, reflected above all in the joint emergence of a middle class and a market of national dimensions, formed the base of the modern state. In contrast, in most of the so-called developing countries, this sequence was reversed. The political authority--the state--emerged from the independence process before the nation, that is, before the development of a true bourgeoisie and unifying national capitalist economy. (De Rivero 2001: 4) What the first generation of African leaders inherited at independence were not nations. They were only an amalgamation of diverse and often-antagonistic tribes bundled together within ridiculous borders drawn by colonial powers in Berlin in 1884­85. The challenges of nation-building at independence and their impact on development should never be underestimated, considering that colonial rulers taught one tribe or religion to distrust another, and that the colonial policy of divide and rule fed on and accentuated ethnic and religious differences and antagonism. It is not surprising that in some countries the departure of the colonial administration triggered coups d'état, civil war, conflict, instability, and accentuated tribalism. One can only imagine the challenge, after decades of indirect rule and divide and rule, of uniting the 250 ethno-linguistic groups of Nigeria into one nation- state. To appreciate the magnitude of the challenge, it is instructive to bear in mind the views of two prominent independence-era Nigerian leaders. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa from the North, who became the first federal prime minister of independent Nigeria, is quoted by Martin Meredith to have said: "Since 1914 the British Government has been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but the Nigerian people themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs and do not show themselves any sign of willingness to unite.... Nigerian unity is only a British invention." 22 Benjamin William Mkapa Meredith also quotes Obafemi Awolowo, a prominent Yoruba leader: "Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression" (Meredith 2005: 8). Both these comments were made in the late 1940s, but the feelings endured long after Nigeria's independence. Tanzania was one of a few exceptions that managed to build a sense of nationhood among its 126 different tribes. Others were not so lucky to have the visionary leadership that made nation-building a priority. In this enterprise, however, Nyerere was helped by the fact that no tribe was big enough to be dominant. He also early on abolished chiefdoms, and promoted Kiswahili as a lingua franca. His policies of one-party democratic state and of socialism also helped his nation-building efforts. Pakenham explains how the Belgians scrambled out of the Congo in 1960. He says: "Unprepared for party politics, the country (Congo) split along ethnic and regional fault lines. When the Belgians scuttled out of the Congo in July 1960, they had left the country well prepared for civil war and anarchy. The prospect of their departure from Ruanda-Urundi, though delayed for two years, had the same disastrous effect" (Pakenham 1991: 678­9). Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that many African countries focused more on the pursuit of the so-called "fruits of independence," engaging in redistribution before production had grown sufficiently to create the surplus necessary for such redistribution. In Tanzania, throughout the 1960s and 1970s we invested heavily in health and education infrastructure before we had an internal economy with the capacity to maintain, supply, and sustain such an extensive network of social services. Was it wrong, considering where the colonial government left us? The challenge of nation-building also required strong leadership and other unifying forces. The first leaders had to symbolize the new nations and had to be strong. It is easy today to accuse them of having been autocratic, or in other ways deficient in their democratic credentials. But this criticism has to be weighed against the imperative to hold the new "nations" together. As Meredith notes, "As founding fathers, the first generation of nationalist leaders--Nkrumah, Nasser, Senghor, Houphouët-Boigny, Sékou Touré, Keita, Olympio, Kenyatta, Nyerere, Kaunda, Banda--all enjoyed great prestige and high honour. They were seen to personify the states they led and swiftly took advantage to consolidate their control" (Meredith 2005: 162). Today it is easy to discredit the words of Houphouët-Boigny when he said, "Democracy is a system of government for virtuous people. In young countries such as our own, we need a chief who is all-powerful for a specific period of time" (Meredith 2005: 162). The one-party political system was also considered an important unifying factor for newly independent Africa countries. The fact that shared opposition to colonial rule united Africans helped the emergence of dominant single parties Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 23 during the first elections, such as in Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Mali, Tunisia, Tanzania, and Malawi. The experience has been that a single-party system, as long as the party was democratic within itself, was a useful tool for nation-building and focusing national attention and priorities. Tanzania is a good example of a country that used a democratic single-party system for about 20 years, and then switched to a multiparty system when it was confident that the foundation of the post-colonial state had been built and strengthened sufficiently to withstand the potentially divisive politics of a multiparty political dispensation. In his terms of reference to the Presidential Commission for the Establishment of a One-party Political System, President Nyerere instructed the Commissioners to ensure that key elements of good governance were adhered to. These include rule of law, equity and inclusiveness, transparency, accountability, responsiveness, and participation, among others. Box 2: Some Terms of Reference to the Presidential Commission for the Establishment of a One-Party Political System a) Tanganyika shall remain a Republic with an executive Head of State; b) the Rule of Law and the independence of the Judiciary shall be preserved; c) there shall be complete equality for all Tanganyikan citizens; d) there shall be the maximum political freedom for all citizens within the context of a single national movement; e) there shall be the maximum possible participation by the people in their own Government and ultimate control by them over all organs of State on a basis of universal suffrage; f) there shall be complete freedom for the people to choose their own representatives on all Representative and Legislative bodies, within the context of the law." (Nyerere 1966: 261­2) In addition, Nyerere promulgated an eight-point national ethic to be embraced by the Commission, one point of which was as follows: 3. Every individual citizen has the right to freedom of expression, of movement, of religious belief, of association within the context of the law, subject in all cases only to the maintenance of equal freedom for all other citizens. (Nyerere 1966: 262) In other words, Tanzania's single-party political system was to embrace all ingredients of a good democratic system except for the absence of opposition political parties. And it should be remembered that Tanzania was in any case a de facto one-party state before this decision in 1963 to make it a de jure one-party state. Clearly Nyerere opted for a one-party system not because he had dictatorial proclivities, but because he wanted to concentrate the national mind on the core challenges of nation-building and unity during those early years. He also did not think a multiparty system was necessarily the best option. He argued as follows: The British and American tradition of a two-party system is a reflection of the society from which it evolved. The existence of distinct classes and the struggle between them resulted in the growth of this system. In 24 Benjamin William Mkapa Africa, the Nationalist movements were fighting a battle for freedom from foreign domination, not from domination by any ruling class of our own. Once the foreign power--`the other Party'--has been expelled, there is no ready-made division among the people. The Nationalist movements must inevitably form the first Government of the new states. Once a free Government is formed, its supreme task lies ahead--the building up of the country's economy. This, no less than the struggle against colonialism, calls for the maximum united effort by the whole country if it is to succeed. There can be no room for difference or division. (Meredith 2005: 167) Cranford Pratt nicely summarized the safeguards that Nyerere instituted to ensure that the one-party system was sufficiently democratic, participatory, inclusive, and a unifying factor. Pratt termed the system "a hybrid constitutional order, democratic one-party state," adding: A few of its [the one-party system in Tanzania] most original features can be mentioned to indicate that it was neither a subterfuge for oligarchic rule nor for an ideological vanguard party on the Leninist model. Membership in TANU (the party) was open to all and any member could be nominated to run for the National Assembly or the representative organs of the party. In each constituency a large and representative body, the annual district conference of TANU, ranked the candidates for election to the National Assembly in order of preference. The National Executive Committee of the party then decided which two candidates would appear on the ballot, an arrangement which had the potential to become an instrument of oligarchic control but whose actual use, Nyerere ensured, was infrequent and unthreatening. The elections, which then followed operated within a set of rules that were designed to ensure as fair a contest as possible. No candidate could spend any money on his own campaign. All election meetings in every constituency were organized by the party and were to be addressed by both candidates. No tribal language could be used at these meetings and no appeal for votes could be made on grounds of race, tribe or religion. No politician or other prominent Tanzanian could campaign on behalf of any candidate. The system was thus designed to avoid the emergence of national factions, be they ideological, regional or tribal, while also securing the election in each constituency of a member in whom the citizens had confidence. Nyerere and his government had thus found a way for popular discontent to replace MNAs (Members of the National Assembly) who had become unpopular, while avoiding the highly divisive impact, which competitive party elections can have in countries whose national unity is fragile. (Pratt 1999: endnote `x') Mathew Lockwood, reviewing the literature, found that indeed single-party political systems tended to strengthen national unity and stability. He says: "It is also true that regimes that did not introduce a centralized one-party system soon after independence in Africa tended to be more unstable, often leading to Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 25 military coups and sometimes state collapse (Allen 1995). In some cases (but certainly not all), political stability has been created out of chaos by authoritarian rule, Rawlings and Museveni being two examples (Lockwood 2005: 116). The one-party system was important in holding the nation together in the first years of independence as part of a concerted effort to build nations. But if the one-party system is sustained for too long it has its own risks. A few months before he passed away, Nyerere was interviewed by Ikaweba Bunting for the Internationalist Magazine. He was asked whether, since in 1990 he supported the creation of a multiparty political system in Tanzania, he thought it had been a mistake for so many African nations to opt for a one-party state. He answered as follows: I never advocated this (one-party system) for everyone. But I did it for Tanzania because of our circumstances then. In 1990 the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) abandoned the one-party state for a multi-party system. But we do not have an opposition. The point I was making when I made the statement was that any party that stays in power for too long becomes corrupt. The Communist Party in the Soviet Union, the CCM of Tanzania and the Conservative Party of Britain all stayed in power too long and became corrupt. This is especially so if the opposition is too weak or non-existent. (Bunting 1999) African Leadership and Socialism It is generally believed that the pursuit of African socialism, in its various hues and shades, was somehow partly responsible for Africa's poor economic record compared with Asia. Evidence does not support this view. There are Asian countries that started with socialist leanings that are more developed than African countries that started with capitalist leanings. Likewise, African countries that began with capitalist leanings are not necessarily much better off than those who aspired to be socialist. Secondly, the value of African socialism should not be seen only in economic terms. One also has to understand and appreciate the political, cultural, and historical basis of African socialism. Hallen (2002: 72­89) has attempted to identify the philosophical underpinnings of the attractions that the early leaders of independent Africa found in various forms of socialism (rarely Marxism). For only the Portuguese colonies emerged from colonialism with Marxist or communist leanings. The majority of African countries called themselves socialists, of various kinds. Even capitalist-leaning Kenya called itself socialist. Clearly African socialism was much more than an economic system. It is true independent Africa was born into the Cold War, and the temptation to side with the noncolonial East against the colonial West must have been great. But as Hallen and others have shown, and what I know from my first-hand experience, very few if any newly independent African countries were spiteful towards the West. Not only had most of their leaders studied in the West, 26 Benjamin William Mkapa acquiring in the process great admiration for some of its historical figures, events, and institutions, but they were also not ready to throw away one form of domination for another. Time Magazine (1991) intimated admiration for "Nyerere's moderation and his strongly pro-Western attitude...." The adoption by a number of leaders of some form of pragmatic African socialism (rather than scientific socialism or Marxism) was partly an effort to pursue an independent, authentic, and hence nonaligned political, social, and economic framework for development. They looked back to pre-colonial Africa to find guideposts and inspiration towards an authentic African philosophy, if not ideology, for social organization and economic development. Capitalism as a form of economic organization and management had a clear disadvantage in post-colonial Africa, being firmly associated with colonial powers. Not that private property was anathema in pre-colonial Africa; rather the paramountcy of community over private welfare tended to smooth the rough edges of the African version of capitalism. In reviewing the two most notable exponents of African socialism, Nkrumah and Nyerere, Hallen points out that (contrary to those who thought Africa was becoming communist per se) the vision of these early leaders was that: "... socialism in the African context was to be formalized, (economically and politically) are institutionalized expression of indigenous humanitarian social and moral values" (Hallen 2002). There has been criticism in the literature to the effect that people like Nkrumah, Nyerere, and others tended to romanticize pre-colonial systems of social organization. In any case, there was no uniformity of culture or social organization in pre-colonial Africa. But there is no doubt that the vast majority of pre-colonial African politics shared some or all of the following thoughts advocated by Nkrumah and Nyerere. · Individual self-interest, when pursued at the expense of community interest, carried with it seeds for the erosion of moral values. · The notion of one, and shared, humanity · The equal and intrinsic value of the human being and of humanity. These early efforts by African leaders to chart an independent, authentic, African adaptation of the pre-colonial and post-colonial Africa were misconstrued as necessarily taking sides in the Cold War, or becoming communists, and hence a fair target in the Cold War. The West could not countenance the emergence of a successful socialist experiment in Africa under those circumstances. Many independence African political systems and economic policies were deliberately obstructed from maturing for fear that they would be communist. As Devlin admits with regard to Congo, "In those days, when everything was measured in Cold War terms, we were convinced that we were observing the beginning of a major Soviet effort to gain control of a key country ... as a spring board to control much of the continent. With the full Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 27 backing of Headquarters, the station began work on a plan to remove Lumumba from power" (Devlin 2007: 66). This was despite the fact that, as he admits in another part of his memoirs, "Most of us at the Embassy regarded him as a disaster in the making. There was (however) no reason to believe that he was a Soviet agent or even a communist, but he was all too close to the Soviet Union for comfort" (Devlin 2007: 25). The articulation of African socialism rang a positive chord among many African people. That is why even those African countries that had capitalist leanings had also some socialist pretenses in word, if not in deed. African socialism added legitimacy to post-colonial governance, while one-party states were an important strategy in ensuring national unity during the early years of independence. One of the greatest tragedies of post-colonial Africa was the use of power and ethnicity for personal economic gain. The other was the emergence of the category leaders I referred to earlier as tyrants and looters. This harmed efforts at nation-building, and ultimately led to political instability and economic collapse. Nyerere from the beginning was a vehement opponent of the use of public office for private gain. It seemed he had a disdain for personal wealth, which made the people trust him enormously. He believed that the pursuit of personal wealth would exacerbate the issues that could undermine unity, such as ethnicity and abuse of power. In outlining his objectives for a socialist Tanzania he said: "This is the objective of socialism in Tanzania. To build a society in which all members have equal rights and equal opportunities; in which all can live at peace with their neighbors without suffering or imposing injustice, being exploited, or exploiting; and in which all have a gradually increasing basic level of material welfare before any individual lives in luxury" (Nyerere 1968: 340). It is this spirit of justice and equality that helped to cement the links that strengthened the sense of nationhood in Tanzania for so long. The Cold War and Military Coups One terrible effect of the Cold War on governance in Africa was the possibility it gave some African leaders to play one side of the war against the other, get away with lots of misdemeanors, and misplace their national priorities. Oswaldo de Rivero describes this phenomenon as follows: During the Cold War, many of the unfinished national projects, euphemistically called `developing countries', acquired strategic value.... This provided them with room for manoeuvre, enabling them to obtain economic aid and political support from one of the two power blocs, and to finance their economic non-viability in this manner. This strategic subsidy allowed many countries to survive despite profligate economic policies and excessive state interventions and it allowed them to indulge in extravagant dreams. (De Rivero 2001: 5) 28 Benjamin William Mkapa One of the other worst things to happen to independent Africa was the phase of military coups d'etat. Some were externally instigated or influenced as part of the Cold War. Some were internal as leaders failed to keep independent African countries united. Some were a result of the crisis of unfulfilled expectations for the "fruits of independence." Some were preemptive as people in the military feared for their lives or wealth. Some were manifestations of, or responses to, ethnicity in politics and commerce. And some were a combination of one or more of the foregoing. With the benefit of hindsight the question should be asked: Were those military coups a consequence of bad leadership, or were they in fact the main cause of bad governance across Africa? The outcome as Reader points out was that between the first sub-Saharan military coup d'etat that led to the assassination of Togolese President, Sylvanus Olympio in 1963, to the overthrow of Mobutu in 1997, more than 70 coups had taken place in 32 countries over a period of 34 years; an average of two military coups each year (Reader 1999: 667). It did not take long for the military in Africa to realize their power. Colonel Gamel Abdul Nasser in Egypt had grabbed power away from King Farouk in Egypt in 1952. In 1963 the military took power in Togo. In Algeria, Ahmed ben Bella's socialist schemes did not work well and created discontent, and in 1965 Algeria's leading military man, Houari Boumedienne, took power. In November 1965 in the Congo, the army, led by Mobutu, overthrew the Congolese president, Joseph Kasavubu, which started Mobutu on more than 30 years of corrupt rule. In January 1966, the military in the Central Africa Republic overthrew civilian rule. Three days later in the then Upper Volta (today's Burkina Faso) the military took power. That same month the military took power in Nigeria. The coup in Nigeria encouraged many in Ghana who wanted Nkrumah out of office, and a month after the Nigerian coup the military in Ghana overthrew Nkrumah. In 1967 the military came to power in Sierra Leone. In 1969 Colonel Muammar Gaddafi overthrew the monarchy in Libya, and, that year, army officers took power in Somalia. Nzongola-Ntalaja describes the Congolese experience in the following terms: The negation of democracy and the popular will through Mobutu's usurpation of power in 1960, 1965 and 1972, and through Kabila's self- proclamation in 1997, were made possible by the external backing and/or endorsement that these actions obtained in the international community. For these external forces with a vested interest in the Congo's enormous size, geographical location and bountiful resource endowment, it is preferable to deal with rulers who they can hope to influence and manipulate, rather than democratically elected leaders who are accountable to their national constituencies. (Nzongola-Ntalaja 2002: 2) He adds that the following: "Since then (1885) the enormous wealth of the country has served not to meet the basic needs of the people but to enrich the Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 29 country's rulers and their external political allies and business partners" (Nzongola-Ntalaja 2002: 2). In his study of military coups and coup attempts in Africa, Naison Ngoma came to the conclusion that while democratic governance is a good deterrence for military coups, this has not always been the case in Africa. Many democratically elected governments, beginning with that of Lumumba in Congo, were removed unconstitutionally regardless of their democratic origins. According to Ngoma: the democratic governance-stability connection should not be accepted uncritically. The continuation of (coups) in an environment that seeks both political and economic pluralism clearly shows that the mere transition to democratic governance is no guarantee that military coups will not occur ... sheer greed and the crises of expectations play a significant role as `push factors'.... Military coups are prevalent in Africa because of the generally low levels of literacy. Such uninformedness leads the majority of the citizens to respond--or indeed react--to political economic reforms in a manner that is premised on naivety, ignorance or gullibility. The role of some foreign governments and foreign business is another issue that has been articulated.... (Ngoma 2004) There is no doubt that military coups are to blame for a significant part of Africa's economic problems and poor record in terms of poverty reduction. Military coups disrupt economic activity at home and certainly discourage foreign direct investment (FDI). But the evidence also shows that the military coups were not always caused by bad governance and poor leadership; certainly not during the Cold War when most of the coups took place. At that time a government democratic record was subordinated to where it stood in the East- West divide of the Cold War. This too has to be factored in if we want an objective analysis of Africa's poor economic performance in its first 50 years of independence. Wars of Liberation and other Conflicts It was not only the Cold War that affected negatively leadership for development. An equally significant distraction from development was the liberation struggle in some parts of Africa, principally Southern Africa and to an extent West Africa. At Ghana's independence, Kwame Nkrumah said the freedom of his country was meaningless if the rest of the continent remained under colonial occupation or supremacist minority rule. This was a sentiment shared by most newly independent African countries. Colonies were the creation of Western countries, and white minority regimes on the continent were a legacy of Western imperialism. The West could have ensured a peaceful and quick end to colonialism, apartheid, and white minority rule. They did not, which pushed Africa closer to Eastern countries that were willing to support African liberation efforts. Whether this was only another 30 Benjamin William Mkapa dimension of the Cold War is not the issue. The issue is that Western attitudes towards decolonization in Africa made it necessary for African liberation movements and supportive governments to look to the East for support. But contrary to popular belief this did not, ipso facto, make every liberation movement and any supportive government communist. There are still some ongoing conflicts in Africa which unnecessarily hamper economic and social development. But the conflicts around the liberation struggle in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s were necessary, and the disruption of economic and social development was equally a necessary price to pay for African freedom, human rights, democracy, and dignity. The disengagement from South Africa that countries of the Frontline States in the liberation war in Southern Africa had to undertake had far-reaching economic and social implications for the region. Lives were lost, resources were directed away from development, infrastructure was destroyed, and agricultural production suppressed. But the struggle was a top priority for the leaders of the independent countries in the region. Statistics on economic performance during those years do not tell this side of the story. But there was no way countries in Southern Africa could focus on growth before the conclusion of the freedom agenda. Development in the Southern part of Tanzania was almost frozen in the 1960s and 1970s as the liberation war against Portuguese colonialism in neighboring Mozambique, which Tanzania fully supported, raged on. In 1970, Guinea, which like Tanzania actively supported the liberation struggle in the then Portuguese Guinea (today's Guinea-Bissau), was invaded by opponents of the then president, Sékou Touré, supported by the Portuguese. Guinea prevailed in what was henceforth referred to as Portugal's Vietnam in Africa. But the effect on the economy was unavoidable. There have also been many other African conflicts that have caused much suffering and economic and social disruption, and not all of them were instigated by, or a consequence of, Western action. But many were made possible by the Cold War, and others like those in the Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda were a direct legacy of Belgian colonialism. Among the conflicts that the West supported, instigated, or otherwise acquiesced to, the most tragic is Uganda. The West, led by Britain, thought Uganda under Milton Obote and his "The Common Man's Charter" was becoming too socialist. But with the benefit of hindsight, to think that one would consider Iddi Amin a better alternative to Obote, whatever Obote's problems, would be laughable if it were not so tragic. But look at the implications of this tragic mistake for the development, not only of Uganda, but of the whole of East Africa. The East African Community, which by the early 1970s was far ahead of the European Economic Community in terms of the level of integration, was dealt a fatal blow with the emergence of Iddi Amin as President of Uganda. Invading Tanzania in 1978, Iddi Amin forced the country into a war that eventually Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 31 removed him from power, but proved exceedingly costly for Tanzania, at a time when commodity prices were tumbling, and the oil shocks were being felt. Not only did the war with Iddi Amin disrupt economic activity in those years, it took Tanzania over 15 years to weather its long-term effects. To think, therefore, that Tanzania's poor economic performance in the 1980s was simply a leadership or governance issue would be short-sighted. Much more was involved than governance. Economic Crises and Failed Experiments In looking at Africa's post-colonial economic history one always comes across statistics that show Africa was performing better in the early 1960s than say in the "lost decade" of the 1980s. But these statistics are not always put in their proper historical context. Africa's main exports then (as now for nonoil exporting countries) were agricultural commodities. And prices of such commodities were historically high during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The 1980s, on the other hand, were a time of great volatility and depressed commodity prices. Secondly, the plantation economy of the colonial era, and the early post- colonial era, accounted for a substantial share of the commodity exports. Twenty years later some of the settler community that owned and managed the plantations had left, either because of uncertainties they felt, or nationalization as happened in Tanzania. Socialism in Tanzania was a major factor in instilling a sense of respect, dignity, unity, and national identity. I am sure many African countries that have gone through difficult and development-disrupting conflicts and instability would pay any price for the kind of political stability, national cohesion, and unity that Tanzania has largely taken for granted. But it is also true that economic performance under that framework was not too impressive. In his interview with Ikaweba Bunting, Nyerere was asked about where he stood with regard to the Arusha Declaration and the socialist policies he had so passionately and energetically promoted. His reply is instructive for its candor and enlightenment. He emphasized the role of the declaration and socialism in nation-building, and he insisted on its virtues, but he was equally critical of some of its outcomes. When asked if the Arusha Declaration would still stand up at that time he replied: Tanzania had been independent for a short time before we began to see a growing gap between the haves and the have-nots in our country. A privileged group was emerging from the political leaders and bureaucrats who had been poor under colonial rule but were now beginning to use their positions in the Party and the Government to enrich themselves. This kind of development would alienate the leadership from the people. So we articulated a new national objective: we stressed that development is about all our people and not just a small and privileged minority. 32 Benjamin William Mkapa The Arusha Declaration was what made Tanzania distinctly Tanzania. We stated what we stood for, we laid down a code of conduct for our leaders and we made an effort to achieve our goals. This was obvious to all, even if we made mistakes--anywhere one tries anything new and uncharted there are bound to be mistakes. The Arusha Declaration and our democratic single-party system, together with our national language, Kiswahili, and a highly politicized and disciplined national army, transformed more than 126 different tribes into a cohesive and stable nation.... The floundering of socialism has been global. This is what needs an explanation, not just the Tanzanian part of it. George Bernard Shaw, who was an atheist, said, `You cannot say Christianity has failed because it has never been tried.' It is the same with socialism: you cannot say it has failed because it has never been tried. (Bunting 1999) And when asked what he thought his main mistakes as a Tanzanian leader were, or what he would, given the chance, do differently he said: There are things that I would have done more firmly or not al all. For example, I would not nationalize the sisal plantations. This was a mistake. I did not realize how difficult it would be for the state to manage agriculture. Agriculture is difficult to socialize.... The land issue and family holdings were very sensitive. I saw this intellectually but it was hard to translate it into policy implementation. (Bunting 1999) This paper does not seek to underestimate the effect of policy choices, economic management, and leadership on economic performance in Tanzania in the 1980s. We do now realize, and I personally advocated this during my presidency, that macroeconomic fundamentals when properly tailored to what we want to accomplish nationally are critical for success. But in those years, the prescriptions of the International Financial Institutions, especially the Structural Adjustment Programs, were unacceptably arrogant and unrelated to the reality on the ground and their impact on people. The Washington Consensus prescription was in fact not a consensus at all because the patients were not consulted. It is now admitted that the Structural Adjustment Programs of those years made the patients worse off especially in terms of human development. In Tanzania it became difficult to maintain the wide network of social delivery services, especially education, health, water, and the maintenance of infrastructure. School attendance and literacy, which had climbed steadily after independence, plunged and the health care deteriorated to the point where there were often acute shortages of medicine in public clinics. On top of that, in the case of Tanzania, events completely outside the control of the government in the 1970s prepared us for a really difficult time in the 1980s. These included: · The drought of 1973­74. Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 33 · The breakup of the East African Community in 1977. · The war with Iddi Amin's Uganda in 1978­79. · The oil crises of 1973 and 1979. · The commodity price crashes of the 1970s and 1980s. All this shows, at least in the case of Tanzania, that while issues of governance and leadership may have had impact in terms of our poor economic performance, the external factors were also responsible to a significant extent. Elsewhere on the continent there were also cases of economic crises and failed experiments. A typical case is where ambitious industrialization programs, all with good intent and with external concurrence and support, either did not produce the desired results or, like in Nkrumah's Ghana, diverted attention from agriculture, before industrialization could take up the slack in exports and GDP contribution. Again it was not simply a question of governance and leadership. Land One thing that Nkrumah and Nyerere had in common was the approach to land ownership and usage. This is one of the pre-colonial aspects of Africa that they wanted to adapt to modern-day Africa. In most of Africa, it is land usage that was personal, not land ownership. Land was communal, but the people of that community had user rights over the land. The logic behind this "communal ownership, private use" dichotomy is that for Africans land is much more than a factor of production, to be acquired, used, disposed off like other factors of production. There is an element spiritual attachment to land that escapes outsiders who argue for wholesale free-hold rather than lease-hold forms of land ownership. Failure to understand this logic has led to too much trouble in Africa so far, and carries with it seeds for even greater trouble in future. Whatever others may think, to the vast majority of Africans the land redistribution process in Zimbabwe was both necessary and long overdue. One may question how it was done, but not why. The impatience with the speed of land redistribution that is done differently in South Africa and Namibia is something to watch. Over the last few months we have read of violent conflicts about land in several African countries. Some of Africa's active or latent land conflicts are a colonial legacy, like in Zimbabwe, where at independence 75 percent of prime farmland was owned by 4,500 white farmers out of a population of 8 million. Others are ethnic. Yet others are a result of commercialization of land, and the competition between different land uses. Whatever the cause, competition for arable land and pastures is increasing, and open conflicts over land are increasing. The North-West province in Cameroon has witnessed open land conflicts almost on a yearly basis. Last year, angry villagers beat their chief to death and burnt his corpse, and they also stoned to death the policeman sent to arrest the 34 Benjamin William Mkapa suspects. The reason was that they suspected that their chief had sold farmland to wealthy cattle breeders. This year, in the same province, villagers burnt down 300 homes, forcing thousands of people to flee over a dispute on farming land. Between December 2006 and early February 2007, about 60 people were killed and tens of thousands fled from their homes due to escalating clashes over fertile land in the Mount Elgon region of Kenya. A local member of parliament, John Serut, was quoted in a Reuters (2007) story saying a group calling itself the Sabaot Land Defense Force was responsible, claiming to represent people forced off their ancestral land by successive governments. According to the member of parliament, the problems in the fertile area dated back to the 1960s. While the land policies and laws of countries such as Tanzania have sometimes been criticized as being an obstacle for development, they have actually spared Tanzanians from some of the worst land conflicts on the continent by guaranteeing access to land for everyone. The spiritual attachment that Africans have to land, especially ancestral land, and the fact that the majority of them depend on arable land and pastures for their very sustenance, make land potentially one of the most destabilizing factors in Africa. It is, therefore, a critical area for leadership, and it is encouraging that a number of bilateral development partners, as well as the World Bank in its report "Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction," have recognized the importance of land issues. Additionally, it should be recognized that secure property rights over land and other immovable assets have now to take center stage in poverty reduction efforts. The Post­Cold War Years Especially with regard to governance, I have always maintained that next to independence the best thing to have happened to Africa was the end of the Cold War that had turned Africa into the battleground of East and West. In fact, the end of the Cold War also helped to accelerate the dismantling of the apartheid regime in South Africa, and make Africa truly free in the political sense. Independent African countries were literally born into the Cold War. Decolonization itself became part of the Cold War. The Cold War forced countries to look externally rather than internally at an important defining moment of their history and formation as nation-states. With the end of the Cold War, and denied the opportunity to play one side against the other, African leaders were forced to look inward, and they were also increasingly held to higher standards of governance by development partners and international financial institutions. Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 35 In terms of political governance, economic governance, regional integration and cooperation, and results in terms of stability and economic performance, Africa has much to show following the end of the Cold War. While the 1980s were literally a lost decade for Africa, the continent changed in very profound ways--politically, economically, and socially--albeit from very low levels. The facts speak for themselves. · The number of conflicts in Africa dropped to just five in 2005, from a peak of 16 in 2002. · There was a time when more than half of African governments were military juntas. There are none today, and the African Union has served notice that it will neither recognize nor accept in its councils any leader who comes to power through unconstitutional means. · Since 1990 many African countries have undergone political transformation. Political competition and participatory processes improved more in Africa during the 1990s than in any other region, even if from a low base. In 1982 only one-tenth of African countries had competitively elected executives. Today the majority of leaders are competitively elected. · Civil society is much more engaged and vibrant, and a thriving private media is generally free to criticize most governments. Human rights are being taken much more seriously, and women are participating more in representative and decision-making bodies. Judiciaries and legislatures are being strengthened, and are more free and independent than before. · The African Peer Review Mechanism to which about half of the African countries have submitted themselves is a welcome innovation for mutual support along this path. Its mandate is to ensure that the policies and practices of participating states conform to the agreed political, economic, and corporate governance values, codes, and standards that are contained in the AU Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic, and Corporate Governance. · On average, between 2002 and 2005 over two-thirds of African countries had single-digit inflation. More than ever before countries are attaining macroeconomic fundamentals. · Net private flows into rose from an average of US$6.8 billion in 1998­ 2002 to US$17 billion in 2005. Africa is more open and attractive to investment, both domestic and foreign. · Between 1995 and 2005, 17 sub-Saharan African countries grew at average rates exceeding 5 percent annually, up from only 5 countries during the previous decade. By 2005, 9 countries were near or above the 7 percent growth rate threshold needed for sustained poverty reduction. 36 Benjamin William Mkapa The growth momentum was sustained, with overall real GDP growth rate of 5.7 percent recorded in 2006 compared to 5.3 percent and 5.2 percent in 2005 and 2004 respectively. For the second consecutive year, Africa's average growth rate remains higher that that of Latin America (4.8 percent). Twenty-eight countries in Africa recorded improvements in growth in 2006 relative to 2005 while 25 recorded improvement in 2005 relative to 2004 (ECA 2006: 3­5). · Corruption remains a problem but many countries have begun in earnest to deal with it through institutional reform, legislation, and more robust investigation and prosecution. This optimism has dominated the debate on Africa in recent years, and is captured in the Report of the Commission for Africa, of which I was a member. The real challenge now is where we go from here, for it remains a fact that, despite positive trends, sustainability is not yet assured, and whether Africa will meet the Millennium Development Goals remains doubtful for a good number of countries. The Way Forward As more African countries stabilize politically, socially, and economically, the time has come for the leadership to think in a more structured and strategic way, focusing on long-term and sustainable growth strategies. For all their worth, the Millennium Development Goals are only minimal development goals, hardly ambitious in terms of the people's right to development. They are also short-term and not directly focused on growth. Yet there can be no poverty reduction without growth--long-term and sustainable growth. Africa must think beyond survival. That is a challenge of leadership. Africa has to move from social and economic crisis management to strategic planning. But strategic thinking is about making choices, and at Africa's level of development the choices are very difficult. Yet they have to be made. Africa had quite a few political strategist and visionary leaders at independence, such as Nkrumah, Sékou Touré, Nyerere, Leopold Senghor, and finally Nelson Mandela. Nyerere, who I know much better, made very difficult but visionary and strategic political choices at independence. Those choices helped to forge a united nation where before there was none. With others Nyerere championed the liberation struggle in Southern Africa, constituting and chairing what was called the Frontline States (against colonial and minority rule in Southern Africa). Today, where is the same sense of mission, vision, and willingness to make difficult strategic choices--this time not political, but economic? Where are the new Frontline States against poverty and for growth? It is one thing for African Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 37 economies to be on the growth path; it is another to actually move along that path. It is one thing to be on the runway; it is another to take off. And it is the take-off that needs the greatest power. The strategic and visionary economic thinking needed has to have a domestic, regional, and global dimension. Globalization is a reality and the challenge of leadership is how to position ourselves in such a way as to maximize its benefits and minimize its side effects. In the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, which I co-chaired with the President of Finland, H.E. Tarja Halonen, we exhorted Africa and other affected developing countries to begin at home. (ILO 2004: 54­74) Beginning at home brings into focus three critical issues. The first is developing national capabilities and policies, especially in relation to governance (both political and economic), economic liberalization and the role of the state, strengthening economic capabilities, addressing the special needs of agriculture and the informal sector, enabling and empowering people through education and skills, work and employment, as well as sustainable development and resource productivity. Second, it is about empowering people and institutions at the local level, including strengthening participatory local government, strengthening the local economic base, and using and protecting local values and cultural heritages that are helpful in strengthening accountable government and participation. Third, it is about regional integration and cooperation as a stepping stone for profitable engagement at the global level. Beginning at home requires strategic economic leadership that not only better positions a country nationally and regionally, but also engages the outside world in a strategic compact for growth and development. On one hand this involves a nationally determined strategic engagement with bilateral and multilateral development partners. On the other hand it involves determining parameters of a mutually rewarding engagement with international private capital. Regardless of positive trends, Africa will not get far without the correct and significant engagement of these two players--the development partners and private capital. As the Commission for Africa report showed, we need a surge of official development assistance over a period of at least another 20 years to address the fundamental and paralyzing weaknesses of African economies, not only in terms of governance and policies, but also in terms of human resource capacities, institutional and other structural reforms, and the creation of the infrastructure that will get African markets to actually work within and across its borders. This calls for a big push in terms of external support to what Africa is doing. For no matter how much the new generation of African leaders focus on the priority issues, and no matter how clear their strategic choices are, they do not on their own have at their disposal the wherewithal to see them through. 38 Benjamin William Mkapa If, on the other hand, through NEPAD and APRM, the OECD countries were to agree to a surge of aid resources to ensure that any of the weaknesses that APRM identified are actually dealt with, and that the strategic economic choices are fully funded, we could have indeed a new Frontline States against poverty and for growth. Also, Africa needs an APRM compliance dividend as an incentive for others to join. Only about half of the African countries have acceded to the APRM. Those countries that have not yet acceded would like to see if it is worth their while to open up to so much external scrutiny, which I am sure no rich developed country would agree to. If those who have already acceded have nothing to show for it, why should they join? In a way it is like HIV/AIDS. Once you assure people that if found HIV positive everyone will receive care and treatment, more people will come forward to test. There is no incentive to know of one's status if there is no treatment. Likewise, there is no need to join the APRM if no one will help African countries address the weaknesses in governance that the process will identify. Foreign Direct Investment The debate on whether Africa needs FDI for its development has long ended among serious people. African leaders must now accept that attracting and retaining FDI into their countries and continent has to be an integral part of efforts and policies to engender economic growth, social development, and poverty reduction. The attraction of FDI must, however, go hand in hand with deliberate efforts to build domestic productive capacities and an indigenous middle class. At the current level of African development, especially its low capacity for manufactured exports, it is equally important for African leaders to create the policy framework and guidelines that will ensure FDI is better integrated into the local economy, not only in terms of technology transfer, skills development, and managerial know how, but equally important in terms of forward and backward linkages to the domestic economy. If this is not achieved, efforts to attract FDI, especially in the natural resources sector, will not be politically sustainable in the long term, in a democratic and democratizing continent. Here too you need African leaders who can earn the trust and confidence of the people, and who can provide strong leadership. But for them to succeed, they will need, perhaps more than ever, the support and cooperation of foreign investors and developed countries. The truth is that with its present geography and structure of investment and trade, Africa cannot develop through trade. The truth is that many sub-Saharan African countries are still locked into an exploitative and asymmetrical relationship with their major trading partners, supplying raw materials to North America, Europe, and recently Asia, and importing consumer goods, capital goods, and manufactures. Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 39 The outside world now has to decide if it wants to work for Africa's interests in changing this state of affairs or to continue to consign Africa to its current state as a supplier of raw materials. Properly managed and supported, FDI from the economic North, as well as from the economic South in the context of South- South cooperation, is the most viable way to wean Africa out of the current exploitative relationship with the outside world. It is of little benefit for rich countries to offer Africa duty-free access for products it cannot competitively produce. FDI and the Domestic Economy Africa simply does not have the capital and technology necessary to produce sustainable growth, and hence impact decisively on poverty. Any discussion of African economic growth and poverty reduction must, therefore, include a discussion of the important role of private investment capital, mostly FDI. Properly targeted and facilitated FDI will not only bring into Africa needed capital and technology, it will also improve government revenues for social service delivery, create skilled and semiskilled jobs for a restive growing number of African young people, and bring with it a new culture of management and an opening to the global market place. So the question is not whether, but how best. Here the challenge for leadership again is vision, courage, and focus. Difficult choices have to be made. It is certainly not enough to have an open economy with an attractive investment climate. That alone will only lead African countries into the so-called "race to the bottom" as each wants to portray itself as the most fair of them all. It will also not be politically sustainable in a democratic dispensation when the benefits of opening up the economy are seen to be too narrowly distributed, or when the outcome is not indigenization of foreign capital, but externalization of the domestic economy. As shown earlier, there lately has been a significant increase of FDI towards Africa, driven by a combination of an improving investment and business climate and rising global demand for minerals, oil, and gas. It remains uncertain how long this interest will last. This is why Africans have to capitalize on the present trend to send out a more positive image of the continent, while at the same time trying hard to anchor FDI more firmly in the domestic economy. Each African country has to do a lot of self-diagnosis in the context of strategic thinking as to how best to attract FDI and link it with the domestic economy so as to build linkages that will help to maximize returns at the local level. Here too leadership is about vision and determination. If the focus is on urgent export promotion to take advantage of preferential trade market access, (such as through the African Growth and Opportunity Act [AGOA], Everything but Arms program [EBA], and so forth), then one might focus on things like textiles. If, however, the interest is on a technologically driven economy, special efforts might be needed to attract FDI in the technological field. 40 Benjamin William Mkapa Africa should not necessarily extend a blanket invitation and facilitation for FDI. It may wish first to develop a strategic direction for growth and poverty reduction within specific timeframes, then determine the kind of FDI necessary for that strategic direction to take shape. Once such a determination has been made, the relevant African government should do what is necessary to attract that kind of FDI, even if it means actually head-hunting and providing special incentives, not only to come in, but also to be embedded into the domestic economy. Legal and Economic Empowerment of the Poor Linking FDI with the local economy is one aspect of empowering the poor. The other is linking the small, formal, legal domestic economy with the large, informal, and extra-legal2 economy. Looking forward, and as African economies are increasingly becoming market economies, we need the hardware of the market (such as physical infrastructure) and the software of the market (macroeconomic fundamentals, business environment, entrepreneurship, saving culture, a legal system, and so forth) to make the market system work and produce growth and development. And if the goal is poverty reduction, we have to find ways to bring the majority poor into the market, not to be exploited but to participate and benefit, and to make the legal system an accessible asset working for them, rather than an obstacle to their economic emancipation. To me, of equal if not greater importance to giving African people the right to democratic participation is the importance of giving them the right to economic participation. One of my greatest fears for the future of Africa, politically and economically, is that we are giving the people more room for political participation without a corresponding increase in economic participation. For me economic inclusion is not ideology, it is political common sense. We are giving people political power over an economic system they have no personal stake in. They are politically included, but economically excluded. Consequently, income inequalities are increasing across Africa. That is political dynamite, and it has to be addressed as a matter of urgency. African governments and their development partners have to find ways to connect the island of the formal legal sector of African economies with the vast ocean of informal extralegal economic activity that characterizes and defines the life of the rapidly increasing semi-urbanized population. To a large extent they constitute a separate economy that does not always appear in the national accounts. 2For the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), "extralegal" refers to economic activity that takes place outside the law or is limited or handicapped by the law. It is not synonymous with "illegal" or "lawless." Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 41 Sub-Saharan African countries have the highest rates of rural-urban migration in the world. We note in the Commission for Africa Report that, at about 5 percent, urban growth in Africa is twice as fast as in Latin America and Asia. Close to 40 percent of Africans now live in cities and that figure will rise to more than 50 percent over the next 20 years. But sub-Saharan African cities are not ready for such a huge influx of people. The size of its cities bears no resemblance to their economic wealth and capacities. That is why over 166 million of the people live in slums. The vast majority of these people end up operating on the margins, if not completely outside the formal market, with its laws and regulations. Regardless of government efforts to improve the business environment, these people will not be in a position to make use of an expanded market until they are able to operate within its formality and legality. And they also cannot come to the market empty-handed, but what they have is not recognized by formal market players. This situation makes the work of Hernando de Soto critical for political stability and economic participation and inclusion. African governments cannot give the poor the capital with which to take part in a market economy, but they can help them unlock their own dead capital. As de Soto said: "The poor inhabitants of these nations--the overwhelming majority--do have things, but they lack the process to represent their property and create capital. They have houses but not titles; crops but not deeds; business but not statutes of incorporation" (De Soto 2000: 7). Working with Hernando de Soto's Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), we did a diagnostic study of the informal, extralegal sector in Tanzania and found that a staggering 98 percent of all businesses operate extra-legally (a total of 1,482,000) and 89 percent of all properties are held extra-legally (1,447,000 urban properties and 60,200,000 rural hectares, of which only 10 percent is under clan control). Whatever margin of error one may provide for; there is no gainsaying the magnitude of the problem. Businesses in Tanzania Property in Tanzania Extralegal Extralegal entrepreneurs properties Legal Legal entrepreneurs 11% properties 98% 2% 89% Source: ILD 2005. 42 Benjamin William Mkapa Second, we tried to put a value to this wealth that is held outside the law. We found these assets to be worth about US$39 billion, or ten times all FDI accumulated since independence, and four times the net financial flows from multilateral institutions in the same period. Again, whatever criticism one may have for the methodology we used, and providing for any margins of error, there is no gainsaying the huge value of assets that the poor hold outside the formal, legal economy. Third, we realized that having failed to make the transition from informality to formality these people have developed their own archetypes of organization and processes to transact business among themselves. In other words they have learned to operate outside the mainstream of government. Tanzanian Relevant Indicators (in US$ billions) Value of extralegal Tanzanian assets 29.3 Net financial flows multilateral institutions since independence Foreign direct investment since independence 7 3.1 Sources: ILD, World Development Indicators 2005. Adjusted by U.S. CPI. Tanzania has a legal and administrative system largely inherited from colonial days that makes it difficult if not impossible for the poor to identify with it or access its services. For them, the law is distant, inaccessible, incomprehensible, costly, and in reality an obstacle rather than a facilitator and protector. We found that it is virtually impossible for 90 per cent of Tanzanians to enter the legal economy. The obstacles that Tanzanians would have to overcome to access the legal system and obtain organizational structures, credit, capital, markets beyond their immediate families, and legal property rights, are insurmountable. If a poor entrepreneur throughout a 50-year business life obeys the law, it will require him/her to make cash payments of US$91,000 to the state for the requisite licenses, permits, and approvals, and spend 1,118 days in government Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 43 offices petitioning for them (during which the entrepreneur could have earned US$9,350). The same entrepreneur would have to wait another 32,216 days for administrators to resolve all his/her requests, and during that time lose another US$79,600 in potential income. The grand total of these costs: almost US$180,000--enough money to create 31 additional small enterprises (ILD 2005). Again, whatever criticism one may have for the methodology we used, and providing for any margins of error, there is no gainsaying the huge obstacles that the poor would have to contend with before making the transition from informality to formality--from exclusion from the rule of law, to inclusion in the rule of law with the protection it provides. I believe this is a fundamental aspect of governance that has to be addressed if the war on poverty is to won in the context of market economies. At the international level, the Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, Co- Chaired by Madeleine K. Albright and Hernando de Soto, hosted by the UNDP, aims to make legal protection and economic opportunity not the privilege of the few but the right of all. As its Website (http://legalempowerment.undp.org/) explains, we want to address the challenges of those locked out of prosperity by the legal system (see box 3). If African countries and their development partners agree to give this matter of legal and economic empowerment of the poor as much attention as they give to political rights, democracy, and corruption, then we will have a balanced and more comprehensive onslaught on poverty. Microfinance is without doubt a key instrument of economic empowerment, but without a rule of law that includes everyone it will always be difficult for the poor to take advantage of the expanding and expanded market. Box 3: Locked Out of Prosperity The majority of the world's three billion poor--many of them women and children--live outside the rule of law, without the basic legal protection that recognizes their homes, assets, and hard work. Without property rights, they live in fear of forced eviction. Without access to a justice system, they are victims of corruption and violence. Without enforceable labor laws, they suffer unsafe and abusive work conditions. If they own an informal business, they cannot access the legal business protections that entrepreneurs in the developed world take for granted--they are locked out of economic opportunity in their own countries and in the global marketplace. Many are unregistered from birth and have no access to basic public services. Outside the law, the ability of the poor to create wealth is frustrated; without legal empowerment, their dignity is violated. While most of the world's poor possess assets of some kind, they lack a formal way to document these possessions through legally recognized tools such as deeds, contracts, and permits. These people live and work in the "informal economy," outside a set of widely recognized and enforceable rules. For many people, a confusing patchwork of overlapping and conflicting regulations makes access to the formal system impossible. Laws and legal procedures that would guarantee rights are often not enforced and are not designed to work for the poor. Source: http://legalempowerment.undp.org/challenge/. 44 Benjamin William Mkapa Investment Climate Facility for Africa (ICF) The Commission for Africa Report zeroed in on the link between growth and poverty reduction; and not just growth in aggregate terms, but growth in which many more poor people, including women and youth, participate. The goal mentioned in the report--of 7 percent growth by the end of the current decade sustained over the long term--is achievable, judging from what is already happening in some African countries. Evidence of the political will in Africa to work for such levels of growth is plenty, and NEPAD as well as various declaration of the AU are examples of that. What is not in evidence is the external support in terms of actually facilitating FDI to Africa; doubling support for infrastructure projects in Africa; and supporting African efforts in improving the investment and business climate, including entrepreneurship and skills training for all levels of business activity. Moreover, the bad news from Africa is still eclipsing the good news from the continent, and this impacts negatively on the possible role of international capital in Africa's economic growth. Too much of inward FDI to Africa is still invested in extractive industries that are not sufficiently linked to the domestic economy. This does not portend well for sustainability, not only economic but political. A two-pronged approach like that of the Commission for Africa is necessary for the IFC. African leaders must continue to improve economic governance and create a conducive environment for private sector participation in the economy. Specific and targeted policy instruments might be needed to focus private investment so that it forms part of a collective strategy for sustainable economic growth. On the other hand, special efforts are needed to present a more objective and balanced picture of Africa to the outside world. The IFC is, therefore, an initiative to bring together all previous initiatives to enhance investments in Africa into one big and coherent push. These important previous initiatives and commitments include the G8 Africa Action Plan that came out of the 2002 G8 Summit in Kananaskis, reinforced at the 2004 G8 Summit in Sea Island, and fully embraced at the 2005 G8 Summit in Gleneagles. The 2005 report of the World Bank, entitled "A Better Investment Climate for All," was very helpful in designing the ICF. The ICF provides an innovative, and in a sense a unique, opportunity for African governments, developed countries, the private business sector, and international and regional financial institutions to work jointly, in partnership, to tackle barriers to domestic and foreign investment, to create a more attractive investment climate, and to spread a more positive image of Africa where warranted. This is a partnership underwritten by a shared commitment to respond to the needs of African governments, depending on their own self- determined priorities, and following a clear commitment to reform. The ICF does not get involved where such a commitment is in doubt. Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 45 Box 4: The Investment Climate Facility The ICF is a new vehicle for improving investment conditions in Africa. It has been endorsed by key African institutions, including NEPAD, major donor agencies, and key private sector interests. It provides the private sector, G8 countries, and donor agencies with a practical opportunity for reducing barriers to investment in Africa. The ICF will be managed according to business principles and will support appropriately targeted practical interventions. It will systematically focus on areas where practical steps can be taken to remove identified constraints and problems. The extent to which a given country provides an enabling business environment strongly influences the decisions of domestic and international investors. Business environments are created by government policies, laws, and regulations, and the way in which these are implemented. African policy makers are increasingly recognizing that obstacles to both domestic and international investment are seriously impeding Africa's development. The initial phase of ICF operations will be driven by three strategic themes: · Intra-African trade--improving Africa's import and export environment and improving and simplifying administration in order to facilitate cross-border trade. · Facilitation of business development and expansion--focusing on ICT and infrastructure development, business registration, and licensing and property rights. · Facilitation of financial and investment environment--developing capital markets, increasing access to finance for enterprises, improving the regulatory environment for second- and third-tier institutions, and facilitating improved digital infrastructure. The ICF will also work towards improving Africa's image as an attractive investment destination, publicizing, among other things, improvements made to the investment climate. The objectives of the ICF are to: · Build the environment for investment climate reform. · Encourage, develop, and work with coalitions for investment climate reform, and support business-government dialogue. · Get the investment climate right. · Support governments in creating a legal, regulatory, and administrative environment that encourages businesses at all levels to invest, grow, and create jobs. · Encourage business to respond. · Improve Africa's image as an investment destination through a coordinated effort to publicize improvements in the investment climate. Source: http://www.investmentclimatefacility.org/. The ICF efforts have also to be supported externally to reduce the element of political and business environment risk. As mentioned earlier, the ICF engages in only those countries with a proven political will for reform, and by implication, those with the lowest political risk. But especially during the transition, foreign and domestic investors would need the comfort of insurance against such risks, until those countries' track records speak for themselves. Of equal importance is the role that the ICF can play in providing a good governance dividend for the truly reforming African countries. The APRM would be more attractive to more African countries if once a country has been evaluated by its peers, and shortcomings found, there would be the necessary external support to address those shortcomings. 46 Benjamin William Mkapa Harnessing Technology A defining characteristic of globalization is the rapid development and use of technology, not only to speed up and reduce the cost of production and services, but also to speed up and reduce the cost of business and trade. Africa cannot expect to benefit from globalization unless--nationally, regionally, and continentally--it develops a clear strategy to identify, internalize, and use available technology to enhance productivity and facilitate cost-effective business and trading regimes. Hopefully, Africa can design and develop its own technology. And this is a question of leadership. Right now it is as if technology is imposed on Africa from outside rather than Africa identifying and attracting that kind of technology best suited to its needs and its level of development. I fear that sometimes Africa opts for unnecessarily, expensive, and complicated technology without much value addition in terms of the core objective of increasing production and improving productivity, as well as facilitating cost- effective commerce. Globalization is also about instant communication, and the cellular phone has, perhaps more than any other device, helped to produce a phenomenal surge in the capacity for instant communication among Africans. First, the number of cell-phone service subscribers increased tremendously in a relatively short period, and evidence suggests that this has helped to facilitate and speed up commerce. Second, cell phones have shown that Africans can indeed hook into the kind of technology needed to participate in the broader market that globalization provides. Third, cell phone usage has shown that even those Africans in rural or poor urban areas, and those in the informal sector, can fairly quickly understand and apply new technology. This also helps to emphasize my other point that Africa has to choose, rather than simply take, available technologies for its use. To most Africans, what they need is a basic handset that enables voice and text message communication. There is nothing wrong for people who can afford it to have handsets that are more for status than for their utility. Moving across Africa, one can see people with handsets loaded with costly features they do not need, and perhaps not even understand. It is a challenge for leadership, through fiscal or other policy measures, to make sure anyone who needs a cell phone can have access to one. A combination of booming numbers of subscribers and fiscal measures targeting basic handsets should enable such handsets to be very cheaply available to more subscribers. What I have said about mobile phones is equally valid for computers. The youth of Africa will be highly constrained to participate in the broader labor and economic market without a certain level of computer access and literacy. Africa needs computers not as status symbols, but as essential basic tools for education and capacity building in an interactive global economy. Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 47 Canada, a G8 member country, has an impressive program called Computers for Schools (CFS), through which government, crown corporations, and private companies and institutions donate used computers to the program. The computers are fully refurbished and distributed to schools, libraries, and other not-for-profit learning centers across Canada. The program Website (http://cfs.ic.gc.ca) states that since its inception in 1993, CFS has distributed 775,000 computers to schools and public libraries, with a current annual capacity of distributing 113,000 additional computers from over 50 refurbishment centers the program oversees across Canada. The centers are staffed by volunteers, including current and retired telecommunications professionals and students, who acquire technical skills in the process. As far as I know Kenya is the only African country, as I write, that has learned from the Canadian program and created a similar one that is up and running (http://ctsk.org). And Canada is ready to share this experience. Yet, Africa, with the lowest access rate to computers, has not fully embraced this shortcut to rectifying the problem. The other option, of course, is the US$100 laptop computer program. This is a problem essentially of leadership. There are even some African leaders who discourage the importation of used computers to Africa, invoking among other things the challenge of e-waste management and disposal and its environmental implications, as well as the thought that the technology is obsolete. This is misguided, for the following reasons: · If Canada, a wealthy country, cannot afford new computers for its children, there is no way Africa can. · The e-waste disposal challenge is not confined to refurbished computers; even new ones will in due course have to be disposed of if they cannot be refurbished. · Rather than creating an e-waste problem, computer refurbishment centers actually deal with the problem by making it possible to postpone the disposal issue through recycling. · The CFS program in Canada has shown that even much older computer versions can still be used. One refurbished Pentium III or IV computer can act as a server for a whole classroom of refurbished Pentium I computers. With progress being made on Education for All, pretty soon all African villages will have schools, which in turn could become village e-centers (or tele- centers) not only for training children, but also for enabling parents to leverage technology in their income-generating activities as well as creating possibilities for e-government. Coming to the actual application of technology for development, a recent good example is the Ghanaian software firm that has developed and launched an 48 Benjamin William Mkapa innovative and interesting agricultural market information service called tradenetINTL. The tradenetINTL service is based on a simple and straightforward model of providing an online clearing house for offers and price alerts for products that Africans produce and wish to trade in. The service, according to its Website, (www.tradenet.biz), enables producers and traders across Africa to exchange product prices, contacts, and offers using their mobile phones. One of the pressing challenges of leadership in Africa is how to increase intra-Africa trade. Yet, as I write (in early February 2007), only 11 African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, and Uganda) have signed up to the tradenetINTL service. Even as Africa has to focus on addressing the infrastructural and fiscal obstacles to intra-African trade, the momentum can be built now by linking buyers and sellers using available technology. This service also provides a good opportunity for private-public partnership, with governments providing facilitative and capacity-building services. There is also no reason, with the technology available, not to launch similar services at the national or regional level, such as the East African Community, Southern African Development Community (SADC), or Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). There is also the case for leadership in ensuring wider application of technology on the production side. The vast majority of Africans subsist on agriculture and can only develop by improving yields and quality of their agricultural produce. Also, there is the need to reduce post-harvest losses that currently beset African peasants and farmers. Possibilities for enhanced agricultural production using modern technology go beyond modern agricultural practices, e-commerce in agricultural goods, agro-processing, soil analysis, or better weather forecast. Information and communication technology (ICT) in particular offers a digital solution to the chronic problem of the property rights of the poor. A pilot scheme in Tanzania has made it possible to embark on e-registration of land ownership, providing accurate and reliable data on land, housing, and farming activities. Such registration has made it possible for banks to offer farmers loans with which to improve agriculture. Ultimately the application of ICT can help to increase transparency and reduce transaction costs for trade and service delivery, as well as increase the scope for good governance. Trade and Development One of the greatest challenges, indeed imperatives, facing leaders of the first category of countries is not just the attainment of Millennium Development Goals, important as they are, but equally important, how to wean their countries off dependence on external aid. For them this should now be a priority. Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 49 This implies not only a conducive investment regime but also equally improved capacity for domestic revenue generation. Clear targets have to be set by which year after year domestic revenue yields would enable these countries to meet most of their budgetary needs from their own economies. To succeed, this requires a very high level of political commitment and clarity of vision. Increasing domestic revenues requires expanding the tax base, and not everyone would be glad to be caught in the tax initiatives net. But the outside world also has a role. In the medium term, most sub-Saharan African governments would depend on tariffs to enhance their revenues. If the rich industrialized countries want Africans to reduce their dependence on aid, and hence develop with dignity, they should not impose on Africa conditions the effect of which is to undercut Africa's revenue base. It is true there are long-term benefits in trade liberalization and open markets. But Africa needs gradual, managed trade liberalization, and it needs leaders who can articulate and defend this position, in addition to arguing for "fair" rather than simply "free" trade. A recent study commissioned by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa looked at the economic and welfare impacts of the EU-Africa Economic Partnership Agreements and, while mindful of their imperative and importance, strongly discouraged the adoption of full reciprocity in trade liberalization between the two groups of countries. The report says that, "full reciprocity will be very costly for Africa irrespective of how the issue is looked at, in terms of revenue losses, adjustment costs associated with de- industrialization and its undermining effect on regional integration" (ECA 2006). If the European Union is truly keen to help Africa develop through production and trade, it should not impose on Africa policies that in effect undermine Africa's capacity to produce competitively and trade. It would be scandalous for the WTO to demand compliance with reciprocity requirements especially for Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Recommendations from the ECA report should guide African leaders in their negotiations with the EU, or even in the broader framework of the WTO. The following points are particularly pertinent: 1. The focus in the next 10­12 years should be on deepening intra-African trade, through stronger and effective regional economic groupings (RECs). 2. The RECs should be given practical support and sufficient lead time to allow member countries to build diversified supply capacities and the competitiveness with which eventually to engage the rest of the world. 3. The EU and other development partners should facilitate intra-African trade through, among other things, supporting the development of infrastructure to facilitate and reduce the transaction costs of intra-Africa trade. In addition the donor community should provide compensation 50 Benjamin William Mkapa for those countries in Africa that will suffer verifiable revenue losses from dismantling barriers to intra-Africa trade. 4. Unrestricted and tariff-free access to the EU market for African exports must continue for at least 15 years before introducing reciprocity. Aid Effectiveness Central to Africa's development efforts always has been the subject of resources, especially from external sources. Admittedly, the continent has benefited from external financing in the form of official development assistance (ODA), including debt relief and FDI with significant cross-country variations in the receipt of such finance. In particular, FDI has favored countries rich in oil and other natural resources. By 2004 aid levels to Africa had recovered from their 1990s dip. Much of the recovery, however, came in the form of debt relief and emergency assistance that, though helpful, did not expand the fiscal space for governments. One source estimates that direct aid to African governments declined from US$24 billion (in 1993) to US$20 billion (in 2004) in real terms. Over the same period, emergency and debt relief grew from 15 to 32 percent of total ODA. More important than the total aid amount is its sectoral composition. Between 1994/5 and 2003/4, the share of aid going to social sectors grew from 27 to 43 percent and that to productive sectors declined from 16 to 14 percent, as did budget/ program support, from 20 to 11 percent. The literature on aid is full of criticism revolving around the issue of aid effectiveness; and rightly so. The record of aid effectiveness in most African countries, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, is far from being impressive. But the progress achieved in recent years, and the new aid modalities emerging from best practices, should ensure this is no longer be an obstacle to increasing aid volumes. Both sides must be ready to learn from past mistakes. As pointed out elsewhere, aid and concessionary loans will be needed even more in the days ahead if the external world is to give the new leaders of Africa the tools with which to realize the goals and objectives encapsulated in the NEPAD document, and subsequent African Union decisions and declarations. No amount of good leadership and democratic governance can produce the growth and development results one would wish to see in Africa in the medium term without this new push in external support. For that to happen, the genuine and widely shared concerns for improving aid effectiveness must be adhered to, and there is no better place to start than to review what went wrong in the 1970s and 1980s. The review must objectively balance responsibility for poor aid effectiveness. It is true some African leaders bear large responsibility for this state of affairs. But the outside world, both bilateral and multilateral partners, have to bear their fair share of the blame. Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 51 It is true, for instance, that some of that early aid was not properly targeted, prioritized, and sequenced. But this was not simply a result of leadership problems among African governments. There was in those days much less domestic ownership of the development agenda as we are trying to create now. Aid allocation was as much a factor of domestic politics as it was a factor of politics in donor countries and institutions. It is true some of the aid and loans were misused or misappropriated. This was especially true during the Cold War, where aid and loans became part of the Cold War arsenal, as both sides sought to contain each others' influence in Africa while promoting their own. Much of the thieving during the Cold War was with the full knowledge, connivance, or acquiescence of some of the donor countries. It is true some of the aid and loans never reached the project level. But this problem was not the monopoly of African leaders. There have been projects in Africa where over 80 percent of aid resources ended up meeting the administrative overheads of the aid bureaucracy, including salaries, allowances, medical care, and traveling expenses of expatriates and consultants--including ensuring their comfort in Africa through the construction of special, air- conditioned houses, furnished from Europe or America. And all those expenses were counted as part of the aid to Africa. Add to this "tied aid," where aid programs could very well be considered part of the export strategy of donor countries. I could go on and on, and do not accept people's talk of problems of aid effectiveness as if it was inherently a problem of African leadership. The blame must be shared equally. Today there is a better understanding of what it takes to make aid more effective. It is an understanding that spreads fairly the burden of ensuring that this indeed is the case. The efforts of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in this direction are highly welcome. The Rome Declaration on Aid Harmonization, as well as the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, are landmarks in a long journey to make aid more effective. The decision of some DAC members to evaluate themselves against agreed benchmarks in these areas is welcome and encouraged for others. The initiative of the Center for Global Development (http://cgdev.org) to rank donors against a commitment to development index is a good innovation that helps everyone to focus on the core objective of development and poverty reduction. And at the national level, a system of Joint Assistance Strategy as we have in Tanzania and in a few other countries, and the Independent Monitoring Group, provides a much better environment to make aid more effective on the ground. The outcome of these welcome initiatives is to put more ownership, responsibility, and trust in African leaders and provides the instruments needed for transparency and accountability to ensure we do not relapse into the aid mismanagement and inefficiencies of the 1970s and 1980s. There are some who are still hesitant in making the transition from project to program aid, and from 52 Benjamin William Mkapa project support to budgetary support. The challenge for the few African governments that are pioneers in this transformation in aid relationships and channels is to prove that it is workable and make it possible to spread the mechanism to other countries. And the bottom line is good governance, transparency, and accountability. The commitment of the donor community, both bilateral and multilateral, to this transformation must be clear and unequivocal. Everyone has to focus less on politics and more on the growth, development, and poverty reduction priorities of the African countries. Corruption There is now no doubt whatsoever that corruption, in its broad sense, is bad for economic growth, development, and poverty reduction. Although it does not always get reflected in the international media, it has also been established without a doubt that the vice of corruption and bribery is not the monopoly of Africa and other developing countries. The motivation and methods for corrupt behavior may be different. How governments react to corruption may differ. Capacities to prevent, investigate, and prosecute corruption and bribery cases may differ. But there are no saints. First, I fear there is some exaggeration as to how much corruption, especially in the post-Cold War era, is responsible for the continued underdevelopment of Africa. It has become common, especially in the international media, to simply write off Africa's misery as the outcome of bad governance and corruption. This is naivety and an oversimplification of very complex phenomena, which may have the effect of removing the incentive to look for other equally important causes of poverty. We need a better balance between an appreciation of the harmful effects of corruption and bad governance, and the extent to which we can hold bad governance and corruption responsible for the development problems of different countries around the world. Second, what type of corruption and bribery is worst for development? Is it the petty type of corruption, of hungry Africans bribing hungry Africans, or is it the grand corruption in which rich companies from rich developed countries bribe poor Africans? For a country at Tanzania's level of development, the big contracts and licenses that would attract grand corruption would normally involve aid-funded projects and companies from rich industrialized countries. Third, we must not forget intellectual corruption. We have journalists who would mould public opinion for or against someone, or some cause, for a price. We have academics and researchers for hire. With their low wages, they will produce research findings or evaluation reports to the tune picked by the payer. And sometimes government decisions, in either donor or aid-receiving countries, are based on such research findings or evaluation reports. The debate about corruption in Africa should take a broader perspective, shifting away from the Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 53 narrow confines of bureaucratic corruption, to political corruption, legislative corruption, intellectual corruption, and the whole spectrum of issues that mould societal thinking and provide the information base for decision making. Box 5: Bribe Payers Index "Bribing companies are actively undermining the best efforts of governments in developing nations to improve governance, and thereby driving the vicious cycle of poverty," said Transparency International Chair Huguette Labelle. "It is hypocritical that OECD-based companies continue to bribe across the globe, while their governments pay lip-service to enforcing the law. TI's Bribe Payers Index indicates that they are not doing enough to clamp down on overseas bribery," said David Nussbaum, Chief Executive of Transparency International. "The enforcement record on international anti-bribery laws makes for short and disheartening reading." "The rules and tools for governments and companies do exist," said Nussbaum. "Domestic legislation has been introduced in many countries following the adoption of the UN and OECD anti-corruption conventions, but there are still major problems of implementation and enforcement." Source: http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/bpi_2006#pr. And finally, what examples do the rich industrialized countries give Africa? I appreciate World Bank efforts in fighting corruption. I especially appreciate the concrete action in terms of blacklisting those companies found to have won World Bank­financed contracts through corruption and bribery. Most of the over 400 blacklisted companies are not African companies, and I have not heard evidence that action against these companies has been taken in their home jurisdictions. What I hear on the contrary is that some countries want the World Bank to take it easy on the corruption agenda. In 1999 Transparency International (TI) developed the Bribe Payers Index (BPI) but it is far less known than the Corruption Perception Index (CPI); and while the CPI comes out yearly, the BPI has come out only three times in eight years. Comments by TI officials (see box 5) on releasing the latest BPI expose a weak link in the war on corruption and bribery because the perception is that while all rich developed countries have signed and ratified the OECD Convention on Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, many have yet to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), and in both cases there is little that has been achieved in terms of actually prosecuting the culprits in those countries. Another aspect is the one raised by Eva Joly and carried in the journal Development Today (2007). Joly supports supporting the Tax Justice Network's point (see box 6) that tax havens are part of the corruption network and should be brought into the war on the vice. The fact that this idea has been received coolly by TI, and coldly by rich industrialized countries, will keep open this escape route for big companies as we seek to prosecute corrupt bureaucrats and politicians in poor countries. 54 Benjamin William Mkapa Box 6: Tax Havens Cause Poverty "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society" The world's leading development agencies have taken a lead in the current debate about corruption and development, but have ignored civil society concerns about how tax havens encourage and enable capital flight and tax evasion. In a world of globalised capital markets, tax havens create an offshore interface between the illicit and licit economies. This interface corrupts national tax regimes and onshore regulation, and distorts markets by rewarding economic free-riders and misdirecting investment. Tax havens are a major cause of inequality and poverty. They function as a result of collusion between banks and other financial intermediaries and the governments of states and micro- states that host their activities. The major culprits include the United States, Britain, Switzerland, and other European countries that promote tax havens and prevent efforts to clamp down on their activities. Source: http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/front_content.php?idcat=2. Theory of Leadership Just as we could not discern a single theory of leadership for development in the first 3­5 decades of Africa's independence, we cannot prescribe a single theory of leadership for development in the years ahead. But as in the past, so will it be necessary in the future to keep in mind the centrality of the following: · A strong sense of nationhood and shared destiny. · Good democratic governance, preferably with constitutional term limits. · Good economic governance, especially in terms of macroeconomic fundamentals, as well as strong, capable, and facilitative regulatory institutions, a strong financial sector, and promotion of entrepreneurship. · Greater investment in infrastructure. · Human resource capacity building, including health, education, and skills for contemporary Africa. · The advocacy and institutional promotion of a savings and investment culture. While no two African countries are the same, recent trends enable us to put African countries in three categories in terms of trying to venture a broad range of leadership challenges in the years ahead. The first category of African countries are those that are ahead of the pack in terms of nationhood, peace and security, good democratic governance, stable macroeconomic fundamentals, and openness to business. These would include countries such as Tanzania, South Africa, Mali, Senegal, Kenya, Uganda, and Mozambique. These must now resolutely shift from a short-term crisis management mode to a longer-term strategic leadership mode. Nationally, this requires a new set of leadership qualities that can balance the enhanced risk element that a bold strategic vision may entail, and the need to safeguard achievements to date in terms of political stability and growth prospects. Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 55 Externally, this will require a new and heightened engagement by the development partners, both bilateral and multilateral. The concept of local ownership of the development agenda will have to be deepened more than ever before, while being supported even more than before. If these sub-Saharan African countries that are ahead of the pack keep to their current commitment to peace and security, good democratic governance, and sound economic management, and with a new surge of external support, they can cross the threshold towards a new era of sustainable growth, development, and poverty reduction. The second category includes most African countries that are in transition towards stable and democratic political and economic dispensations, but which still need more careful nurturing to avoid back-sliding. These are the countries on the verge of getting debt relief, or who have had their first democratic elections, or those who have recently ended an era of conflict. These include countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, and Liberia. These countries need leadership skills that emphasize nation-building and unifying leaders that can earn the respect and trust of previously antagonistic groups. But they also need to produce quick results in terms of peace dividends. In this respect, for instance, following the Second International Conference on the Great Lakes in Nairobi in December 2006, external support for regional growth and development has to be forthcoming soon, either bilaterally or through a dedicated African Development Bank window. The third category of countries consists of what has come to be known as "failed states" or "dysfunctional states," in the sense that operationally their statehood is little more than nominal and territorial. These are the likes of Somalia, but also include countries that are currently in conflict situations such as Côte d'Ivoire. For these, the top priority should be peace and security, the smooth transition to functioning democratic political dispensations, and the fundamentals of economic management. Such countries need statesmen or stateswomen in the true definition of the term. They must be leaders willing and able to rise above personal or parochial interests. They must be willing to sacrifice short-term gain for long-term stability and the common good. Attempting to build an economy on shaky political foundations will only produce an economic house of cards. Lastly, Africa needs strong, capable, and effective states. We cannot on the one hand lament "failed" or "dysfunctional" states while on the other hand we impose or pursue policies whose ultimate result is the weakening of what are already very weak states. So I can't understand when people say true democracy is when political competition is such that no party is too strong. At Africa's level of development I ask: too strong for what? If a party is strong for development, that is good. If it is not strong for development, the other parties will coalesce into a stronger opposition that can win subsequent elections. But democracy that 56 Benjamin William Mkapa presupposes weak governments, or that which believes a victory by the ruling party implies no true democracy, is not developmental democracy in Africa. It is naïve to see African democracy with the lenses of Western democracy. Italy can afford to change governments almost on a yearly basis. It does not undermine the state. In Africa, a similar scenario would be the recipe for "failed" or "dysfunctional" states. In Africa to be an effective state is to be a strong but democratic and accountable state. And to think that democracy in Tanzania and South Africa is deficient just because the ruling parties have an overwhelming majority is to miss the point. The real issue is that at Africa's level of development, the agenda for development is pretty clear-cut and the policies and strategies would not really differ very much from one serious party to another. Any significant difference would be on how and who, rather than on what needs to be done. Conclusion: Development Democracy for Africa It is, I think, generally accepted now that good democratic governance is important for economic growth, development, and poverty reduction. What remains unresolved is to what extent good governance is required, and therefore what other requirements are needed for growth, development, and poverty reduction. What I fear is the debate shifting from one extreme, like during the Cold War when not much attention was focused on governance, to another extreme, where governance is peddled as the panacea. As those in this business know, development, especially in Africa, is a very complex matter. There are no panaceas, only a combination of necessary ingredients, of which good democratic governance is one. Mathew Lockwood argued strongly for "developmental states" in Africa, but based on several studies he also comes to the conclusion that: [T]he case for democracy is far from straight forward. Statistically the general relationship between democracy and poverty reduction is weak (e.g., Moore et al. 2000, pp. 8­9). In Africa, the advent of multi-party systems did not make a decisive difference to overall economic performance in the early 1990s (van de Walle 2001, pp. 247­54). (Lockwood 2005: 115­6) The Commission for Africa Report (2005) singles out governance as Africa's core problem. It says that without improvements in governance, economic, social, cultural, and other reforms will have limited impact in the race to make poverty in Africa history. It points out that good governance is about much more than periodic multiparty elections, sound policies, and the challenge of putting policies into effect. It places strong emphasis on capacity building for governance and on getting systems of governance right. African leaders are urged to Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 57 improve accountability, and to do so by broadening the participation of citizens in governance (Ch. 4, pp. 133­156). The Report also made reference to the role of colonialism in establishing nonviable states. I have tried to explain in this paper how this has affected social attitudes and shaped the moral and institutional foundations of today's politics in Africa. As I look back over our recent history, I am convinced that Africa needs a home-grown new democracy, focused on development. After almost half a century of independence, and bearing in mind our pre-colonial and colonial experience, we should now know enough of what works and what does not work in Africa to be able to develop a synthesis based on our history, our experience, and on global realities. Such a synthesis has to revolve around the following eight points. Education The first is education. There is no denying the fact that low levels of education was one of the major problems related to governance during the first years of our independence. Many people were given important positions of leadership without the education, skills, and experience needed to discharge their duties properly. In addition, they were deliberately denied the preparation they needed to assume leadership. Thus poorly equipped, they had to courageously muddle through unknown terrain. Today we are independent. Free, fair, and regular periodic elections in multiparty political systems are very important. But they are not enough for the new democracy for Africa that I envisage. We must also properly prepare our people for leadership, not simply by expanding enrolment in different levels of our education systems, but also by improving the quality and the relevance of that education to the needs and challenges of today and tomorrow. We also need to identify potential leaders early, and develop and nurture them. But education is also the means by which ordinary people can acquire the tools and the courage to make informed choices during elections, and to hold leaders to account after elections. Without this, free and fair elections will not amount to much. For us in Africa, education must be not just for social mobility, wealth creation, and poverty reduction, but especially as a means to encourage and facilitate good democratic governance. Building Capable and Sustainable Institutions and Systems The second point is building capable and sustainable institutions and systems for good democratic governance. There is today a lot of talk about the capacity of African institutions to deliver on good governance and on development. In extreme cases, we are concerned about the so-called "failed states." It is obvious from history that colonial powers only focused on those institutions and systems that worked to ensure firm control over their colonies. 58 Benjamin William Mkapa They did not focus on developing institutions and systems to ensure democratic governance and development after independence. Neither was the development of such institutions and systems a priority during the Cold War in most African countries. Today, in the era of multiparty politics, with the divisive tendencies they often spawn, and in the competitive environment of the market nationally, regionally and internationally, the question of effective, efficient institutions and systems to guide, regulate, and monitor the political, economic, and social life of our people and countries becomes pertinent and urgent. Moreover, we must now create systems of political and economic management that are strong, that are resilient, and that are capable of outliving their founders and current leaders. Tolerance and Inclusion The third point is on tolerance and inclusion. As I pointed out earlier, the colonial legacy in Africa is one of divide and rule, of playing one African group against another--one religion against another, one tribe against another, one clan against another. Today, from the experience of the last few decades, we can attribute most civil wars and cross-border conflicts to the legacies of the policies of bigotry, intolerance, and exclusion. The new African democracy I advocate must have at its heart the politics of tolerance and inclusion, not as a product, but as a fundamental, deliberate goal and priority. I am sure that if we look far back enough into our history, to the period before colonialism, we can find archetypes of politics of tolerance and inclusion that can today inform our efforts to design a new, more inclusive, form of democracy with African characteristics. Today, there are people who ridicule the African extended family. It is true some aspects of it are now anachronistic and unhelpful. But the extended African family is an expression of a sense of belonging, of inclusion, and of participation. Yet, when we embraced Western forms of democracy we fell into the trap of making political parties, not as mechanisms for tolerance and inclusion, but of intolerance and exclusion. The concept of "winner takes all" has no African roots. Traditional Africa is corporate, if not communal. It is inclusive. In the new African democracy, political parties will not be an excuse to exclude people, but a reason to bring them together. Political parties must never be based on divisive things like religion, tribe, or race. Some religions are minorities, some tribes are a minority, and some races will always be a minority. No political system should institutionalize the disadvantages generated by such minority status. No one wants to be perpetually excluded, and if they see no light at the end of the tunnel, they take desperate measures to be taken note of, and to be included in governance. Additionally, inclusion must also cover the social and economic spheres. Africa must avoid social and economic policies and practices that exclude some people from the benefits of national ownership of natural resources, of national Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 59 investment, and of growth and development. As in politics, people who feel permanently excluded from the benefits of growth can be desperate and hence be a potential force for instability. Inclusion is necessary in politics, but it is equally necessary in development and prosperity. This is not ideological posturing; it makes political sense in Africa for leaders who want to entrench stability. The widening income inequalities in Africa are a recipe for instability and must be addressed as a matter of policy. Participation The fourth aspect is participation, which I deliberately want to treat separately from inclusion. Inclusion is one thing. Actual participation is another. And here too we can find in traditional African societies archetypes of participation in the social, economic, and political systems on our continent. We have to think out of the box, and refuse to be constrained by what we have been conditioned to accept as the gospel of democratic participation. An African proverb made famous by U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton says, "It takes a whole village to raise a child." This is the kind of participation I should like to see emerging in the new African democracy. The relationship between governments and people should not be about us and them; only about us--one team, one destiny. It is common now to hear of the imperative of ownership in socioeconomic development. But ownership is pointless without actual participation, including the full participation of women. Decentralization of government--of resources and of responsibilities--is one way to address the needs of inclusion and participation. But it has to go far, embodying and illustrating more trust and more confidence in the people. Former colonial rulers underestimated the capacities of Africans. Today, governments in independent Africa must not repeat the same prejudices and mistakes. They must never underestimate our people's capacity to plan, to prioritize, and to do things for themselves, with government support. In traditional African societies people used to sit under a tree or around a fire and discuss issues thoroughly until solutions with buy-in from all people were found. This may be considered inefficient in today's fast-paced societies, but we can always find ways of incorporating some of these positive elements in a new democratic paradigm for today's Africa. Transparency The fifth aspect is transparency. The attitudes of political leaders and public officials about the necessity to be more open and transparent in the operations of governments need to change. It is not about being open on all government matters, at all stages of formulation and implementation, but about acknowledging the people's right to know what the government is doing in their name. Inclusion and participation will not be possible if people are not well- informed. Effective participation requires effective government communication. 60 Benjamin William Mkapa In the new African democracy I envisage, it is the government's duty to communicate. And I use the broader concept of "communicate", not the narrow one of "inform." For, important as the duty to inform is, it is much more important to communicate, to create space for dialogue, and to facilitate free flow of thoughts and ideas. Communication, rather than information, builds stronger institutions and processes for good governance. It is about improving interaction between governments and the governed, in whose name decisions are made, and government revenue spent. Elections every five years are important for democracy, but they are not sufficient to ensure the people have a greater say in the way they are governed. In between elections, the people must continue to feel relevant, to feel they are listened to. That is the heart and culture of the new democratic good governance for Africa I am advocating. The multiparty constitutional order prevailing in most African states requires openness and accessibility as pillars of legitimacy, and as determinants of government popular support. A democratic government thrives on popular support, but such support cannot be in the abstract. It must be based on what the people know. They cannot feel part of the general polity if they do not hear, and are not heard. Accountability The sixth point is on accountability, which flows logically from the previous point of transparency. Being open is exposing oneself to public scrutiny, and hence being accountable. And when people are open and accountable, little room exists for the scourge of corruption. In the new African democracy I envisage, all stakeholders have to be open and accountable. Those who want to hold the government accountable, such as the media, political parties, and civil society, must indeed be themselves examples of integrity, transparency, and accountability before they can demand the right to hold the government accountable. Additionally, African media and civil society will have to develop an African agenda. It is my perception, rightly or wrongly, that most civil societies in Africa are not only externally funded, and hence beholden to those who pay the piper, but also they have no agenda of their own, preferring to echo and respond to an agenda set by others. Likewise with our media. In Tanzania I always ask the media not to be like the proverbial knife, which thinking it is only destroying an old sheath, is actually destroying its own home. An Ashanti proverb says, "Do not call the forest that shelters you a jungle." African media need to pay heed to this adage as they relate to their own countries and continent. It is bad enough that the international media hardly sees anything good worth reporting on Africa. The real tragedy is when they are fed the negative, stereotyped stories by Africa's own media. The media should not shy Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 61 away from revealing the truth, but should they strive for objectivity, balance, and professionalism. Effective and efficient government communication critically depends on the quality of the mass media. For the media are the bridge between the government and the governed; they are the mechanism for interaction between them, and a forum for the exchange of ideas. Once the credibility of the mass media is eroded, they cease to be effective partners to the government in the promotion of open and accountable governance. And, very importantly, the media people should not assume a role that could be construed as supplanting representative democracy. They should instead play better their role of societal watchdogs, whistle-blowers, signalers, and initiators of action to promote good governance. One problem I discern is the trend to turn the concept of a free press upside down. Some think the plethora of media is a reflection of a free press. Does the production in my commercial capital of Dar es Salaam of five English language and eight Swahili language daily newspapers truly empower our people to participate in democratic governance more effectively? The quintessential question of quality versus quantity needs attention. Above all, a free African media should uphold African decency, respect for authority, and the right of maligned people to respond and to legal redress. A free press is not a license to lie, to misrepresent, and to insult. I yearn for a free press, with African characteristics; one that seeks to build, not to destroy; to heal, not to kill. Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law A seventh point is constitutionalism, and the rule of law. Governments and especially leaders must respect their oaths of office, which invariably include a commitment to respect the constitution and the rule of law. One of my great concerns, however, is that too many people in Africa have to operate outside the law because they cannot access the law. We have expensive legal systems in Africa that serve only a tiny minority of the people who can afford it and who can understand its intricacies. To me, justice for the few only is not only discriminatory, it is inherently unjust. All citizens deserve the protection of the law in practice, not only in theory. And certainly, the latent entrepreneurial spirit of Africans cannot be fully harnessed for development until the property rights of the majority poor are recognized and protected, within the law. Corruption The eighth and last point is corruption. This needs no further elaboration. Corruption imposes a high cost on development and indeed it undermines in a very serious way the development agenda. But corruption has to be fought on all fronts, including on the supply side. 62 Benjamin William Mkapa With such a framework, I believe Africa will have the kind of leadership that will translate recent gains into a new momentum for growth, shared development, and poverty reduction. References Allen, Chris. 1995. "Understanding African Politics." Review of African Political Economy 22(65). Bunting, Ikaweba. 1999. "The Heart of Africa. Interview with Julius Nyerere on Anti-Colonialism." 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As quoted online at: http://www.gdrc.org/u-gov/ governance-understand.html ------. 2006. Africa Development Indicators 2006. Washington, D.C.: World Bank Publications. Online at: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/ INTSTATINAFR/Resources/ADI_2006_text.pdf. Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience 65 Eco-Audit Environmental Benefits Statement The Commission on Growth and Development is committed to preserving endangered forests and natural resources. The World Bank's Office of the Publisher has chosen to print these Working Papers on 100 percent postconsumer recycled paper, processed chlorine free, in accordance with the recommended standards for paper usage set by Green Press Initiative--a nonprofit program supporting publishers in using fiber that is not sourced from endangered forests. For more information, visit www.greenpressinitiative.org. The printing of all the Working Papers in this Series on recycled paper saved the following: Trees* Solid Waste Water Net Greenhouse Gases Total Energy 48 2,247 17,500 4,216 33 mil. *40 inches in height and 6­8 Pounds Gallons Pounds CO2 Equivalent BTUs inches in diameter The Commission on Growth and Development Working Paper Series 1. Perspectives on Growth: A Political-Economic Framework (Lessons from the Singapore Experience), by Tan Yin Ying, Alvin Eng, and Edward Robinson, March 2008 2. Exchange Rate Economics, by John Williamson, March 2008 3. Normalizing Industrial Policy, by Dani Rodrik, March 2008 4. The Real Exchange Rate and Economic Growth, by Barry Eichengreen, March 2008 5. Globalization, Growth and Distribution: Framing the Questions, by Ravi Kanbur, March 2008 6. Growth Strategies and Dynamics: Insights from Country Experiences, by Mohamed A. El-Erian and Michael Spence, March 2008 7. Political Competition, Policy Making, and the Quality of Public Policies in Costa Rica, by Fabrice Lehoucq, April 2008 8. Leadership for Growth, Development, and Poverty Reduction: An African Viewpoint and Experience, by Benjamin William Mkapa, April 2008 Forthcoming Papers in the Series: Growth Strategies for Africa, by Paul Collier (April 2008) The Role of Institutions in Growth and Development, by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (April 2008) Electronic copies of the working papers in this series are available online at www.growthcommission.org. They can also be requested by sending an e-mail to contactinfo@growthcommission.org. T his paper emphasizes the importance and role of leadership for African growth, development, and poverty reduction. It also attempts to project a more objective assessment of leadership issues during the first three to four de- Commission on Growth and Development cades of African independence. Agreeing on shared responsibilities for Africa's Montek Ahluwalia Edmar Bacha failures in these early years will enable all who want to take part in the continent's Dr. Boediono renewal to focus on the partnership that is now needed to close a sad chapter in Lord John Browne Africa's history, and open a new one. The core elements of such a partnership have Kemal Dervis ¸ evolved in the last decade, and this paper argues passionately for the political will, Alejandro Foxley in Africa and outside, for their realization. Goh Chok Tong Han Duck-soo Benjamin William Mkapa, President of the United Republic of Tanzania, Danuta Hübner 1995­2005 Carin Jämtin Pedro-Pablo Kuczynski Danny Leipziger, Vice Chair Trevor Manuel Mahmoud Mohieldin Ngozi N. Okonjo-Iweala Robert Rubin Robert Solow Michael Spence, Chair Sir K. Dwight Venner Ernesto Zedillo Zhou Xiaochuan The mandate of the Commission on Growth and Development is to gather the best understanding there is about the policies and strategies that underlie rapid economic growth and poverty reduction. The Commission's audience is the leaders of developing countries. The Commission is supported by the governments of Australia, Sweden, the Netherlands, and United Kingdom, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and The World Bank Group. www.growthcommission.org contactinfo@growthcommission.org