Our
intellectuals need to broaden the debate on our failures from individual
presidents to our elite class generally
I think I
have lost my faith in the wickedness of African leaders. A significant amount
of debate on the failure of Africa to develop as rapidly as East Asia has
focused on the personalities of individual presidents. Academic research has
not been spared this fetish.
I write this
article with a lot of humility because I have also been a principle proponent
of this idea. Has Africa’s principle reason for poor performance been due to
bad leadership at the level of its presidents and a few people around them?
In the
process, we miss the inner dynamics that drive our political processes and the
risks or opportunities they present for progress. This is also largely because
we begin our analysis based our own false/ideal illusions of leaders of
successful countries.
The view, for
example, that African leaders have been singularly corrupt, nepotistic or
self-serving is wrong. All leaders across all nations make self-serving
decisions. But these need not blind us to the many they make in the national
interest.
Indeed purely
self serving decisions by individuals can produce socially optimal outcomes as
Adam Smith’s concept of the invisible hand of the market postulates. Anyone
following political developments in Asia and Europe would notice that their
leaders behave like ours – the differences only being the groups they are
seeking to placate.
It seems
obvious that all politicians seek to maximise power. The idealised leader whose
primary objective is to serve the nation is often a figment of our imagination.
Sub-Saharan
Africa is a region of about 46 nations. These countries have had many changes
of leaders over the last 50 years – in all over 300 presidents have ruled
Africa. Basic mathematical probability would tell you that if the personalities
of these individual presidents were the main explanation for poor performance,
out of these 300 leaders Africa would have had a high chance to produce the
hero we have been looking for like a Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore), a Park Chung Hee
(South Korea) or a Chiang Kai Shek (Taiwan). Yet even after 14 presidents of
Nigeria, 10 of Ghana, eight of Uganda, four of Tanzania and Kenya, five in
Zambia etc we have not seen this happen.
Instead, over
the last 50 years since independence, Sub Sahara Africa has produced similar
politics and developmental outcomes. The dominance of poverty for most people,
the continued dominance of peasant agriculture, the poor development of
manufacturing, patronage politics etc are features that all these countries
share with differences in form but not in substance.
If these
realities could be changed by the diktat of an individual leader, at least a
few countries would be looking like South Korea. Yet except for Botswana and
the island nations, SS Africa shares a common developmental predicament.
With such
overwhelming evidence, we possibly need to shift the debate from the individual
presidents to the broader social dynamics within our societies. Besides, our
leaders don’t come from Asia or Europe. They are products of our societies.
Therefore,
even if their venality was the driving force behind our poverty and bad
politics, there must be unique fissures within our societies that produce such
a disproportionate amount of poor leadership. From there we can debate how
these impede the sustenance of progressive politics and how to structure our
political institutions and public policies to respond to these specific
realities?
Issues of
dictatorship, corruption and nepotism begin to disappear when one studies the
Asian tigers. We have an idealised view of Asian leaders. Yet the differences
between them and our leaders are only in outcomes, not in behavior.
There was as
much corruption, dictatorship and nepotism in Indonesia under Suharto as in
Nigeria under its various military rulers. Yet the developmental results of the
two countries were different. In South Korea two former military rulers were
arrested and tried for corruption in the 1990s – Chang Du Hwan and Tae Won Roh
and both admitted to accumulating fortunes worth over US$ 600 million while in
office.
Claims of
morally upright East Asian politicians hiring technically competent bureaucrats
to run their economies have been proven false by detailed studies. Policies
were made to favour cronies and subsidies and cheap loans by interventionist
states were given in exchange for campaign contributions.
The real
question is: what then explains the differences in developmental outcomes
between East Asia and Africa given many similarities in the conduct of their
leaders? It is possible the differences were in the specific endowments – both
domestic and external – in these countries so that these nations transformed
not just because of but in spite of their leaders’ venality.
This tendency
to perpetually condemn our political leaders is actually one way we African
elites exonerate ourselves of the blame we must share and allows us to carry a
holier-than-thou attitude.
Even if our
rulers are venal, how come no one in the private sector has built a Google or
Apple or Microsoft or Sum Sung, Hyundai or LG or Honda, Toshiba or Toyota? If a
president has failed at the level of politics, surely someone should triumph at
the level of the private sector to create a world class company.
Or maybe, if
we searched for those achievements of our leaders within the state or the
market, we would find a lot from which we can learn and draw inspiration. For
now, this condemnation of our political leaders has stripped us of the
necessary moral resources that can provide us inspiration and pride.
Because we
have little within us to inspire us, we retreat to worshiping leaders of other
nations – Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Barak Obama etc. I do not know of a nation
that has been transformed by worshiping foreign heroes.
This is not
to say that African political leaders have been angels or hapless victims of
external and internal factors. Indeed, to say that would be to deny their
individual agency in the fortunes and misfortunes of their countries.
I am merely
saying our presidents are a part, indeed a very small part, of the problem.
Analysts, scholars, politicians and journalists always oversimplify reality. We
hastily select a few variables which we are familiar with to make broad
conclusions about social phenomena. Unfortunately, the real world is a complex
of multitudinous variables we can neither fully capture nor comprehend
completely.
amwenda@independent.co.ug
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