Africa: Reconsidering Governance in Africa

opinion

If you follow debate on Africa anywhere in the world, everyone will tell you that the main problem with our countries is governance. Yet this claim is new, picked from the World Bank's World Development Report of 1989. Now it has entered the lexicon of politics as a religion; the very reason we need to focus on it. In the 1960s and 70s, the main issue was that African countries are poor because of their integration into the world economy as producers of unprocessed raw materials.

We African elites have learnt about the governance principles of the western world largely through books, media and in class. Often these sources give us the governance ideal, which, while reflecting an aspect of reality in the West, do not give the full practical application of the ideal. The actual practical politics of the West diverges quite significantly from the ideal.

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