The 2018 Foresight for Africa: Top Priorities for the 2020 to 2030 research report bemoans that Africa has a long way to go and without good and inclusive governance, Africa will not achieve its social and economic targets as laid out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
According to the report, the absence of good governance in many Africa countries has been extremely damaging to the government’s corrective intervention role, particularly in the maintenance of peace and security, as well as the promotion of economic growth the creation of wealth needed to confront poverty and improve human development.
It is imperative that countries entrench mechanisms that promote constitutionalism, democracy, and good governance if Africa is achieve its development goals. For example, although there has been substantial decline in the share or proportion of Africans living in extreme poverty – from 54 percent in 1990 to 41 percent in 2015 – the number of Africans living in poverty has actually increased from 278 million in 1990 to 413 million in 2015.
“Unless effective anti-poverty and pro-poor policies are implemented in African countries, global poverty will become increasingly African. Indeed, the least developed countries in the world (as determined by the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index (UNDP-HDI) are also countries with relatively weak, dysfunctional, or ineffective governance structures (as determined by the Ibrahim Index of African Governance),” laments the report.
The report further advises that “fighting poverty and improving human development in Africa must begin with the creation of wealth, a process that requires the existence of a robust entrepreneurial class. In order to achieve these goals, there must be peace and security – especially the peaceful coexistence of the various ethno-cultural groups that inhabit each African country.”
The report decries that unfortunately, weak and dysfunctional governance structures continue to prevent many Africa countries from creating and sustaining the necessary enabling environment for peaceful co-existence, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation.
On the one hand, report further advises that “the type of governance structure that each Africa country should strive for over the next decade is one that should address peaceful coexistence and economic development, inequality, the effects of climate change, health pandemics, and enhanced regional cooperation, as well as ensure the full and effective participation in both the economic and political system of groups that have historically been marginalized (e.g. women, youth and ethnic and religious minorities).
Each country must reflect upon its own governance challenges and engage in robust national dialogue on institutional reforms to enable an effective and inclusive governance system.
The report also advises each African country to produce a set of constitutional principles to inform, guide, and constrain the drafters. Such principles should ensure that the constitution “safeguards against abuse of power. Importantly, each constitution should have a robust amendment process, one that effectively prevents the manipulation of the constitution by opportunistic executives to remain in power indefinitely, as we are currently experiencing in several countries.”
According to the report, all African countries, with the aid of civil society, “should develop and implement education programmes to help citizens understand and appreciate the constitution and its provisions, and recognize the law as a tool that they can use to organize their private lives and resolve their conflicts, including those arising from trade and other forms of exchange. Programmes for empowering the youth and women could be particularly fruitful.”
It is also recognized that each African country should engage in regular dialogue, where necessary, to revisit such important governance issues as the centrality of human rights in the structure of the country’s constitution, as well as a strong and independent judiciary.
Countries should also ensure that governance is inclusive of women and youth, who have historically been marginalized, as well as to cultivate transformative leadership at all levels of government.
“Finally, each country’s citizens, especially its legal and constitutional scholars, including those in the diaspora, should play an important role in shaping the institutional and legal environment for the transformation of Africa’s governance architecture during the next decade”, advises and encourages the report.
The report further doubts if “the continent will be able to successfully and effectively implement and achieve the SDGs in 2030 or Agenda 2063 unless institutions are reformed to enforce good governance undergirded by the rule of law. The policies outlined will help the region accelerate good governance and support its economic transformation.”
Despite the many apparent challenges, the African continent faces in terms of good and proper governance deficit, many African countries have undertaken institutional reforms that have significantly changed their governance structures and put in place new a new set of leaders. More broadly, over the past decade, Kenya, Morocco, and Ivory Coast have led the way.
The Ibrahim Index of African Governance indicates that between 2008 and 2017, these countries experienced significant improvements, particularly in overall governance. Specifically, Ivory Coast registered the greatest improvement in overall governance during the period 2008 – 2017 (+12.7 points), followed by Morocco (+7.3 points) and Kenya (+6.1 points) according to the 2018 report.
The report reckons that “Africa has a long way to go: Too many countries have not yet achieved the type of reforms that can prevent dictatorship, corruption and economic decline. Due to the continued sectarian violence, weak and ineffective leadership, and lack of political will, countries like the Central Africa Republic, Eritrea, Somalia, and South Sudan remain saddled with poor –functioning governance structures.
The report acknowledges that closing the gender gap in African labour markets is good economics though the relationship between female labour force participation rate and economic development is “u-shaped”.
At an extremely low level of income, where most African countries fall, women must work at the family farm or household enterprises. As the economy advances and family income increases, the family “buys” back women’s (wives’) time for home production, such as care for children and the elderly.
The exclusion of women from manual jobs, such as manufacturing and agriculture, due to social stigma as well as discrimination also contribute to the decline in the female labour force participation. It is only at the higher level of income and women’s education that we start to see closing gender gaps in labour markets.
In developing countries, 75 to 90 percent of non-agricultural employment is informal and low-paid work in which women are three times more likely to be employed as contributing family workers than their male counterparts – meaning women are often unpaid and vulnerable for exploitation.
In this case, “the policy priority should concentrate on gender equality and pay and protecting women from exploitation in the short term and on enabling women to become independent and successful entrepreneurs in the long term.”
