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Africa: 'The Leaders are Catching Up with the People'

10 February 2002

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interview

Washington, DC — The launching of the African Union at the OAU's Lusaka Summit of the Heads of State and Government in July last year marks a major transition for Africa, an opportunity to move beyond the post-colonial rollercoaster of aspiration and disappointment.

The legislation that constituted the AU calls for economic and monetary union and the economic integration of the continent. For many, it's a chance to leave failed policies and over-powerful presidents behind and enter a new era of rational, evolutionary change led by competent professionals. Decades of leadership by self-interested leaders in the OAU could be replaced by an African parliament, a central bank, an African court of justice and other pan-continental institutions.

This year's African Development Forum - the annual conference hosted by the UN's Economic Commission for Africa in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa - is focused on the transition to the AU. AllAfrica asked John Githongo, executive director of Transparency International in Kenya, and a member of Transparency International’s global board, to discuss the pros and cons of African integration. Excerpts:

Are people right to be sceptical about the integration of the continent as we move towards the African Union?

I think people have a right to be sceptical, considering the past history. I mean, if you go through all the OAU’s different resolutions...(laugh) one could think they’ve been done by a writer of fiction, I mean, because the OAU sits down and makes resolutions which don’t amount to very much,

However, there have been fundamental developments. I mean, the very fact that African leaders these days don’t sit back when a coup attempt takes place is a very major development. There are other positive things that have happened; like the whole tide of political pluralism that took place after the fall of the Berlin Wall which was really imposed on many [African] countries by outside donor pressure, Western countries who were excited by what had happened in Europe and saw that perhaps the wind of change could blow across Africa as well, which, to a certain extent, it did with imperfect results. Even though the Western governments were very key in pushing for that second wind of change in the early 1990s, their interest or initiative happened to coincide with the aspirations of a majority of the African population, so across the continent Africans supported this change.

Another source of scepticism is the fact that this whole thing is bankrolled, to a certain extent, by Gadaffi; but, number one, I think the idea of African integration resonates for the majority of African people; you’d be hard-pressed to find an ordinary African who doesn’t think that African unity is a good idea at a purely emotional level.

Number two, if one is pragmatic about it, Muammar Gadaffi, despite using his own sort of odd ideology, has nonetheless been the funder of a huge amount of destabilization and bloodshed on the African continent so it’s good, for a change, that Gadaffi is not funding all sorts of crack-pots on the continent to kill Africans. He’s pulling his weight. He’s putting his money and his mouth behind an initiative which meets the aspirations of a majority of African people.

But that is exactly why people are so skeptical. They're asking; "the same people who brought us war and misery all these years are now the people who are now going to deliver us into a unified, and economically prosperous continent?" People feel that there is a fundamental flaw in the thinking here, that this isn’t a democratic process, this is something that’s happening up there at the top; the leaders are just moving the furniture.

I don’t think so. I think, purely by coincidence, this time they’re pushing something which Africans will like.

I don’t think that the current crop of African leaders, especially the old-time leaders like Gadaffi, are going to be the ones to see this project through. I think it’s going to be seen through by a different generation. Gadaffi and company aren’t going to be there forever. A lot of multiparty elections have taken place across Africa. We have constitutional amendments, which were made in the 1990s which mean many of the old guard African leaders aren’t going to be around in five to 10 years time. History has moved beyond the Mugabes, and you have major change. Yes, it’s going to be temporarily very unstable and possibly quite bloody which is sad and unfortunate, but some of these changes are positive ones. I don’t think it’s musical chairs.

I do think that some key African leaders, in my opinion, haven’t yet taken this initiative totally seriously; once Nigeria, South Africa and company take it on board properly, it will have very serious expression.

First, we are going to see the Nepad initiative, which is fronted by Obasanjo, Mbeki, and Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, being integrated with the AU initiative.

The other thing you’ve got to realize, Africans are integrating a lot more rapidly than the politicians. The African Union and other integration initiatives are simply trying to catch up with the integration that is taking place across the continent, partially due to developments in information technology, but also because the borders have become a lot more porous as governments become less functional.

So what characterizes that integration?

What characterizes that integration is a country like Kenya, where 20 years ago, regional trade accounted for 10-15% of overall trade. Now it’s up to 40% and still rising. The same is true for many other African countries. Even Zimbabwe, which is having a rough time economically, is trading a lot more intensively within the region. Now this hasn’t come about because of some grand plan by old-style leaders. It’s come because of ordinary African business people having to face a very difficult international environment and responding to that by realizing that if they’re going to survive they’re going to have to take regional trade a lot more seriously.

What other signs are there that ordinary Africans are ahead of the politicians?

Well, take Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania; if you walk into any Kenyan bank now, you can take Tanzanian shillings, Ugandan shillings and change them. That wasn’t possible as little as 10 years ago, so that’s beginning to happen.

Then there is a lot of informal trade across borders. What is happening in the Congo is very unfortunate, with countries walking in there and fighting a war, trying to sort out their own internal political contradictions on Congolese soil; but in the long term, the whole process will have the effect of integrating the economies of the region in very profound ways. What’s happening now is quite unfortunate with a lot of profiteering and looting; but I think the effects will ultimately be beneficial. We have more progressive leaders like Joseph Kabila and company coming in, younger leaders, they will be able to take advantage of these developments in a more systematic manner.

So in practical terms, what do you now want to see? I mean, people talk about a Central Bank for Africa, they talk about currency unification and a number of other measures. But what, for you, are the three big things that have to happen to support this process?

I think the most important thing is the harmonization of trade regimes which is a hard process; it takes time, even the Europeans took very long, and they still haven’t sorted out issues with regard to agriculture, for example. Within Comesa, we are grappling with it; within the East African Community we are throwing significant intellectual resources at these issues and I think trade liberalization is a start - before you start talking about single currencies and single central banks.

The other thing that’s needed is the rule of law. For example, in East Africa we now have an East African Court which will deal with issues of integration and trade issues between the countries; that’s a very important, positive development because eventually it will mean we have increasingly stabilization of human rights. At the end of the day we want business to grow and people to live in peace and security; for that you need respect for the rule of law.

In states where you have great weaknesses in internal judicial systems, many of which have been 'captured' by ruling elites, perhaps having these regional structures that can act as agencies of final recourse for the citizens of African countries, one step removed from local politics, may be a step in the right direction.

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