Gaborone — Dr Zibani Maundeni, a University of Botswana political science academic, has said that a developmental state must be able to dictate to the elites, including military elites in order to develop.

Presenting a paper on 'Weak Developmental States in Africa' at the just-ended Economic Policy on Africa conference, he said that a state must mobilise its socio-economic resources making sacrifices for the development of the country. Using the example of civil-war Angola, he said that a good part of the country's population and resources were unfortunately controlled by rebels who ran the country into poverty, by using the minerals to purchase weapons of war.

In a developmental state, said the university don, there must be institutions within the state that are focused on developing its people. He warned against the use of the best people in the military as they would dominate the state.

"You must create a prestigious institution that would be respected by all sections of the society and this people must be highly educated," he said.

The history of civil-war Angola and Tanzania during its post-independence period are classic cases of states which failed to develop their economies and virtually ran into an economic downslide, he said.

In the case of Angola, he said that the ruling party came into power during civil war and went on to channel all resources to the war.

"They focused on building military institutions to win the war. Matters became worse in the 1990s when superpowers pulled out of African wars. Local combatants had to finance themselves. This was the time when UNITA fought for control of minerals whilst the ruling party fought to control oil mines. So resources were used not for development, but militarism," he said.

According to Transparency International, Angola was pegged at position 151 out of 158 corrupt states in the world. He said that this was mainly due to the fact that the Angolan government resorted to corrupt practices to finance the war, diverting resources meant for development to war purposes. Owing to the secretive nature in which minerals were expropriated, corruption was entrenched into the population, right to the ordinary man on the street.

Maundeni said that as a result of its war history, it was quite difficult to do business in the country.

"By building a big military institution, it turned itself into a predatory state, thus feeding on its own people, extracting resources to buy weapons of war", he said.

"The MPLA government had over 150, 000 troops. They had to be fed, housed, transported and given guns. All these activities had to be financed from the nation's resources. This was also the case with UNITA," he said.