Interview with governance expert Prof Okey Onyejekwe

Professor Okey Onyejekwe is an expert on African governance at the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Here, during a conference in Addis Ababa on good governance, he tells IRIN why he believes the credibility of Africa’s new development blueprint, the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), is threatened by the unwillingness of African leaders to hold each other accountable. QUESTION: What role should good governance play in Africa? ANSWER: The realisation is important but the idea that it is a precondition for development came much later. I think the consensus has emerged that when we look at the social, political and economic problems in Africa, including the issue of peace and security, the missing link is the absence of good governance. Without an environment where you have democratic governance, transparent participatory government, respect for human rights, civil liberties, you cannot crack economic policies in the absence of these constitutive elements of good governance. So it has become an instrumental concept. Q: Is civil society playing a significant role in shaping African society? A: I would attribute a lot of the progress we have made to the explosion of civil society and also the media explosion where government no longer controls information. But civil society also has its own governance issues – the same issues facing the public sector. They have to learn with time how to be more effectively engaged because sometimes they see government as an advisory. If we could forge better partnerships between the states and civil society a lot more can be achieved but this will come with time. Q: Why are African governments still striving towards good governance despite talking about it for 20 years? A: I think this is down to simply rhetoric. Governments have talked a lot about the transition to multiparty elections, but it was half-hearted and thought that this was a way to access foreign resources and even sometimes a mechanism for self-perpetuation. Elections that were not credible were just a way of trying to minimise the pressure from outside and within. But good governance is a lot more embracing and the global picture and context has changed considerably because there is no tolerance any more for these dictatorships, for the kind of political dispensation we had in the past. Q: So are African leaders taking on board the idea of good governance? A: They have – at least through the instruments of the NEPAD framework and that is one of the major differences between NEPAD and previous frameworks where they recognise that good governance is integral and essential to development without which you cannot make progress. The tendency in the past was to focus on economic growth without looking at the other layers. So we hope they are truly committed and I would say there are a few success stories where the political space is opening and reforms are taking place – but not fast enough and that is where the challenge is. Q: But there are also numerous failures – coups and civil wars? A: I think the best thing to do is judge it on an incremental basis. Even when we talk of the reversals, coups taking place, we have also seen that African leaders have refused to accept these new coup leaders. We have a case in point in Sao Tome when the African leaders refused to accept the new government that came to power through the barrel of a gun and they revised the situation. We also have a case where the African Union refused to accept Madagascar into the Union. Q: But it has now? A: It has now because it has method and conditions. Even the recent case in Guinea Bissau, there was an agreement between African leaders. I think that if you look at it in the context of what we had in the past, we are now beginning to accept that no political dispensations should come about through force or the barrel of a gun. But this is not to say the challenges are not there. But we are also seeing the winding down of the major intractable conflicts in Africa because there is a realisation in Africa today that the crisis of Africa’s development or the path towards the African renaissance cannot be achieved unless we get the government situation right? Q: Within NEPAD what framework monitors good governance? A: The African Peer review mechanism is one of the most attractive components of NEPAD and really gave it its credibility. African leaders themselves by including the peer review mechanism, which is a monitoring mechanism albeit voluntarily, can monitor each other’s performance and are able to assess how they are doing and can use it as a way of nudging them to improve. Q: Is it working? A: The challenge is that it is a voluntary process and people have said that is a problem. The second criticism is what sanctions mechanism do you have? For now 16 nations have volunteered to be part of this process. For a lot of critics the fact that it is only going to include economic and corporate governance and will exclude political governance is problematic because the argument for a lot of people is you cannot separate both – that without good political governance you are not going to have good economic and corporate governance. So the challenge for these African leaders to lend credibility to this process, for people to take it seriously, is to accede to include political governance as part of the peer review mechanism. Q: Does that mean that NEPAD could become another failed African development blueprint? A: I think that is quite right. I think that for people who really believe that the NEPAD framework is quite a creative framework I think it could either rise or fall depending on how it addresses the peer review mechanism. I think that it is not only a question of the process itself but has to be seen as a credible process for the African people themselves and the outside world to take it seriously. So I think that this is a major task for the leaders to overcome whatever reservations they have and see that the credibility of this process will depend a great deal on this Africa peer review mechanism. And this political dimension of it is a key component. Q: How do you see the future? A: It is a process with ups and downs. There are also a lot of challenges – in particular the so-called governance dividend. That is to say while the government accepts the tenants of good governance, it must translate into improvements in the social and economic conditions of people. So that in a condition of poverty and economic depression I don’t think you can sustain the progress we have made. So one of the key challenges is how to improve the economy and improve access and better services to the citizens so that they can see there is a dividend because they are interlinked. Although democracy has its own intrinsic values in the reality of the world in which we live it must have some instrumental value in people’s lives – that is one of the key challenges. Q: Which governments are achieving these goals? A: Some countries have done better in terms of democratic governance. Some have done better in terms of the economy. So the usual cases of South Africa in terms of democratic dispensation, Mauritius, Botswana, and rising cases like the Benin Republic and Namibia and of course we have seen what has happened in Kenya. Q: Which countries have to improve? A: I think those countries that have not fully accepted good governance as a way of life. Those countries who have leaders who do not believe in periodic change of leadership, are not committed to transparency or human rights are a dying breed because the tolerance is no longer there. That is why the African peer review mechanism is so important. African leaders must speak truthfully and honestly to their counterparts because if we are talking about ownership of governance in Africa there is also a responsibility of the leaders to be forthright in addressing their colleagues and we know who they are.