Good governance in sub-Saharan Africa: Recipe for poverty reduction and development (IV)

Introduction

The last instalment of this treatise dealt with corruption as the enemy of good governance through the prism of centralized state takeover, the cult of personality complex and fairness in rules of engagement. This week, we shall continue with the connection between good governance, leadership and poverty reduction. Thereafter, we shall explore the evolution of good governance as a key policy tool. Enjoy.

Good governance, leadership and poverty reduction

According to Dr. Pikay Richardson in his article, titled “Good Governance: The Challenge of Leadership in Africa,” being a paper delivered at the Nigeria Institute of Management’s International Management Conference 2008 (retrieved from http://www.managementnigeria.org/images/governanceandleadership.pdf on 17-6-2011) the main ingredient of good governance is principled-centered leadership. “Governance” derives from the word “govern”, which means; to rule a country, to control or direct the public affair of a city, control, influence something or somebody and to determine something. Governance is the activity or manner of governing. In a similar vein, “leadership” derives from the word “leader”, which means, someone who shows people or something, the way to follow, especially by going in the front, to hold and guiding someone or a group of people to a particular direction.

From these meanings, it is obvious that governance and leadership point to the same thing and that direction and leading. While there can be no progress without good governance, leadership is the pivot around which good governance revolves. Leaders are people who develop visions of future progress, develop strategies and align people behind them to achieve the visions. A good leader must be able to render selfless service and desist from selfishness; he must make provision for training and empowering his people and encourage self employment; he must be serious with issues that concerns the youths as they are the future leaders and should treat the adults with respect.

Good governance and leadership are concerned with one thing: the good and prosperity of society as a whole. Unfortunately, the model of leadership and governance in Sub-Saharan Africa has, in the main, disappointed and betrayed peoples’ trust. The attitude of selfishness, desire for power for power sake and a drive for money has been very pervasive. With this kind of governance and leadership, there is little wonder that poverty is pervasive and economic progress has eluded most of sub-Sahara Africa in much of the Post-independence era.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) an American non-profit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs (in an Article titled: Good Governance Still Africa’s Achilles Heel, posted on their website), drawing a direct nexus between good governance and poverty reduction postulated thus:

“Lack of good governance in Africa is galling because it condemns millions to poverty and fails to unleash the continent’s great potential. A 2010 McKinsey Global Institute report offers some eye-catching findings on Africa’s economic promise. Between 2000 and 2008, it was the world’s third fastest-growing region, with real GDP expanding by more than 46 percent. Its economy is also broad-based, with natural resources accounting for less than a quarter of the continent’s growth during that time”.

Given the statistics above, there is no doubting the enormous potentiality for Africa’s development and poverty reduction. The only foreseeable impediments are bad governance which is usually catabolised by bad leadership. For Good leadership begets good governance. Good governance makes the wheels go round, mitigates conflict between and within nation-states, contributes to positive economic growth and therefore to the alleviation of poverty, enhances food security, and responds directly to the expectations and needs of citizens (see Robert I. Rotber: Challenges, Opportunities, And Emerging Issues In Sub-Saharan Africa (Policy Brief #10) Being a paper presented at the World Peace Foundation, on October, 21 2008).

The evolution of good governance as a key policy tool

According to David Sebudubudu, in his write-up “The impact of good governance on development and poverty in Africa: Botswana – A relatively successful African initiative; African Journal of Political Science and International Relations Vol. 4(7), pp. 249-262, October 2010”. Good governance has been recognized over the past two decades as a major policy consideration that makes a difference to development. A democratic government is more responsive to the needs of the population such as in providing opportunities in education, health and social welfare, better housing, equitable distribution of development projects including roads and other infrastructural development. Such physical projects taken to local communities and different regions usually provide some employment opportunities even though some may be temporary and business opportunities which enhance people’s quality of live.

Good governance is one of the essential preconditions for development and poverty reduction. For instance, countries such as Botswana, Mauritius and Namibia, which follow good governance will normally device pro-poor policies and programmes and target programmes to educate children of the poor and disadvantaged groups. Such policy measures tend to generally improve people’s capabilities as with better education and health they are often able to experience progression in the social structure better than was possible during their parents’ generation. Such beneficiaries then provide additional social safety nets (SSNs) to their families and siblings who might not had been able to make a break from the poverty cycle of the parents. The Botswana’s case is illustrative in this regard.

The first three decades of independence saw many young educated people from extremely poor backgrounds making it to higher levels of the education ladder and subsequently making rapid occupational mobility and substantially higher incomes and social status than their parents. This “new middle class” has been a backbone to poverty reduction in their families and their relatives. Consideration of governance as part of the top of the policy agenda in the last two decades of the twentieth century came from the experience of the crises that bedevilled many developing countries in general and particularly Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s.

As Hyden Brian (Archaeology Department, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby BC, Canada VSA 1S6), The Dynamics of Wealth and Poverty in the Transegalitarian Societies of Southeast Asia), writing in the early 1990s observed, Africa’s crisis was identified and perceived as “a governance crisis”.

In the words of Miguel Martinez, “good governance” appears to be the missing link in the road to development and poverty eradication. Furthermore, promoting good governance is part of the deal developing countries have undertaken in the framework of the “global partnership for development” enshrined in the Millennium Declaration and ratified at the Monterey Financing for Development Summit (See paragraphs 4 and 11 of the final document, A/CONF.198/11.). Currently, the relationship between governance and poverty reduction is practically taken as given. It is so deeply rooted in the discourse of multilateral institutions, bilateral donors and even non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that good governance is inextricably linked to poverty reduction.

Consequently, donor organizations and governments started to increasingly link economic aid to political reform, including the fight against corruption in pursuit of good governance, thus marking a fundamental departure in policy choices which used to consider governance as an unimportant political matter best left to internal affairs of individual governments.

Although governance and poverty received close attention in development circles for the past two decades or so, it was only in 2002 that the UNDP succinctly identified and recognized the centrality of politics to development.

Leftwich Adrian in his book: Democracy and development: Theory and Practice; Polity Press, (Cambridge, UK and Cambridge, MA), emphasized the primacy of politics to development. Before then, the UNDP’s human development reports had more or less followed those of the World Bank and the International Money Fund (IMF) in overemphasizing economics, especially economic growth, and thus downplaying politics in promoting development. This has since changed. The emerging consensus is that politics, particularly governance (since its re-conceptualization), has an effect on poverty reduction – albeit not automatic.

Thus, good governance has since been recognized as the “missing link” in promoting development and poverty reduction (see United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (2002). Human Development Report 2002: Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World. http://hdr.undp.org/). To Alan R. Ball and B. Guy Peters, Modern Politics & Government, 6th ed. (Chatham House, 2000), Politics is defined as both a system that distribute power and allocate resources.

Governance is politics and is, therefore, a crucial determinant of the allocation of resources, especially public goods, within a country. Good governance exists where there is responsiveness, equity and consistency in the way resources are allocated to the needs especially those of the poor people. It also affects the quality of decision-making more generally, for instance, those determining economic and social policy.

If governance is weak and democratic accountability is poor, then resources are more likely to be appropriated by specific interest groups that may exclude the poor and the resulting policies would be unlikely to reflect the national interest or pro-poor imperatives. It is in this context that poverty reduction strategies identify and recognize good governance as one of the important pillars.

Thought for the week

“the biggest determinant in our lives is culture, where we are born, what the environment looks like. But the second biggest determinant is probably governance, good governance or a certain kind of governance makes a huge difference in our lives”.

– Nicolas Berggruen

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