Dianna Games
19 November 2007
analysis
Johannesburg — THE world seems to be awash with indicators lately.
Last week we had the latest World Bank Africa development indicators and the World Economic Forum global competitiveness index, which followed the African competitiveness index, which followed Transparency International's corruption index, and so on.
Looking at the results, I sometimes wonder about their value. The same 10 countries generally top global lists -- such as Denmark, Singapore, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland. The bottom is also eminently predictable -- Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Angola, and so on.
Then there is another list that measures growth in gross domestic product. That puts fragile and failed states such as Chad, Angola and Equatorial Guinea -- and it is no coincidence that they are all oil producers -- right near the top. These rankings do not measure the effect of this growth on development. That is left to the United Nations development indicators.
Are all these measurements making any appreciable difference to how Africa works? Are they even meant to?
A few governments, such as those of Rwanda, Mozambique and Mauritius, believe that achieving better ratings on such indices is a challenge to be met through improvements on the ground. But, on the whole, do they really care? Zimbabwe has crashed down every index in the past seven years and the government remains unperturbed. The Obasanjo administration in Nigeria routinely dismissed the country's poor ranking on successive corruption indices as being misleading -- even while almost all its state governors were under investigation for graft.
The incredible detail contained in each of these indices/lists/rankings suggests that officials and business people are spending a good deal of time providing statistics and information to international researchers.
As a result, research fatigue sets in. When African researchers, such as me , come along, it is often difficult to interest people in seeing you.
African researchers have an added problem -- the perception by many Africans that anything produced by Africans living on the continent is somehow substandard. This is not to say much of it isn't. There are many reasons for this, mainly the predictable problems of resources, capacity and training. But the attitude is ironic, given complaints among Africans about how information is distorted by "those from the west" who come to "patronise" the continent.
On a research trip to Swaziland a few years ago for a South African think-tank, I had some difficulty getting to see one minister. He eventually spent a lot of our meeting extolling the virtues of research projects funded by overseas agencies. He seemed unmoved by the argument that home-grown research was valuable as it had a local perspective and context.
Of course, I was lucky to secure a meeting with a minister at all, coming impertinently without a European Union or World Bank badge. Sometimes I am not so fortunate.
With many African countries still dependent on development and budget funding flowing out of the first world, it is understandable its researchers get to the head of the queue. But that does not explain the mindset problem.
A senior World Bank official, born in Africa, said it is because top African professionals are so undervalued by their own governments that they inevitably seek jobs elsewhere, often in the World Bank. In this capacity, many return to the continent as "foreign hire" to do what they could have done as Africans in the first place.
Africans cannot complain of being the subjects of westerners' charity projects if they do not embrace their own work. Rather than mutter about foreign hegemony, countries should place value in African research, and establish their own benchmarks for success and evaluation.
While international indices may give a sense of direction and achievement, governments could better use their time to address the weaknesses that put them so low on the world's endless lists in the first place. In short, they need to get their index fingers out.
Games is director of Africa @ Work, an African research and consulting company.
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