Understanding Kenya's Rejected Ballots

Kenya’s future now turns on the technicalities of electoral law.  As Katrina Manson of the Financial Times and Jason Straziuso and Rodney Muhumza of the Associated Press reported last night, factoring in the high number of rejected ballots in a calculation of voter turnout would reduce Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga’s share of the overall presidential vote. 

This would potentially deny either candidate outright victory on the first ballot, sending the election to a second round next month.

The AP wrote:

“Nearly 330,000 ballots — the number keeps rising — have been rejected for not following election rules, raising criticism of voter education efforts.

The election commission chairman announced late Tuesday that those spoiled ballots, as they are called here, will count in the overall vote total. That makes it very difficult, given the tight race, for either top candidate to reach the 50 percent mark needed to win outright. A runoff election between the top two candidates is expected.”

First, let’s deal with definitions.  In the AP article, ‘spoiled’ and ‘rejected’ ballots are said to be interchangeable.  The FT classes ‘spoiled’ ballots as a sub-set of ‘rejected’ ballots.  In this KTN interview, the first panelist also gets it wrong, but is corrected by the subsequent speaker, Elisha Ongoya.

Spoiled (or as it is stated in Kenyan law, ‘spoilt’) and rejected ballots are different animals.  While neither category of ballot counts towards a candidate’s total, Kenya’s General Election Regulations explain:

“71.  Spoilt ballot papers. A voter who has inadvertently dealt with his or her ballot paper in such a manner that it cannot be conveniently be used as a ballot paper may…obtain another ballot paper in the place of the ballot paper so delivered and the spoilt ballot paper should be immediately cancelled…”

Put another way, a spoilt ballot is not a vote at all and does not count towards turnout.  A spoilt ballot never enters the ballot box.  If a spoilt ballot were to be counted towards turnout, it would effectively be counting the same vote or voter twice (as the spoilt ballot would have been replaced by a fresh ballot paper issued to the voter, and presumably correctly cast.)

A rejected ballot is something else.  It might be less confusing if it was called a rejected vote.  This is determined at the count.  Regulations 77 and 78 state:

“77. Rejection of ballot papers, etc.

(1) At the counting of votes at an election, any ballot paper –

a. which does not bear the security features determined by the Commission;

b. on which votes are marked, or appears to be marked against the names of, more than one candidate;

c. on which anything is written or so marked as to be uncertain for whom the vote has been cast;

d. which bears a serial number different from the serial number of the respective polling station and which cannot be verified from the counterfoil of ballot papers used at that polling station; or

e. is unmarked,

shall, subject to sub-regulation (2) be void and shall not be counted.”

However, sub-regulation 2 allows:

“(2) A ballot paper on which a vote is marked –

a. elsewhere than in the proper place;

b. by more than one mark; or

c. which bears marks or writing which may identify the voter,shall not by that reason only be void if an intention that the vote shall be for one or other of the candidates…clearly appears…and the manner in which the paper is marked does not itself identify the voter…”

Legal expert Ehuru Aukot suggests there may be other reasons for a ballot to be rejected, if, for example a ballot were to be cast in the wrong ballot box, but Regulation 78 is silent on this possibility:

“78. Rejected ballot papers

(1) Every rejected ballot paper shall be marked with the word ‘rejected’ by the presiding officer, and, if an objection is made…to the rejection, the presiding officer shall add the words ‘rejection objected to’.

(2) The presiding officer shall mark every ballot paper counted but whose validity has been disputed or questioned by a candidate or an agent with the word ‘disputed’ but such ballot paper shall be treated as valid for the purpose of the declaration of election results at the polling station.

(3) After the counting of the vote is concluded, the presiding officer shall draw up a statement showing the number of rejected ballot papers under such of the following heads of rejection as may be applicable -

a. want of security feature

b. voting for more than one candidate;

c. writing or mark by which the voter might be identified; or

d. unmarked or void for uncertainty,…”

Regardless of the reason, a rejected ballot, therefore, is a cast vote, the result of a voter attending a polling station and placing a ballot in the ballot box.  The ballot should be counted towards turnout, even if it doesn’t count towards a candidate.

If such a ballot were not factored into turnout calculations, it would inaccurately portray participation in the vote, even if unfortunately, the voter has probably with inadvertence lost their ability to elect a candidate.  While it’s too early to know why most votes were rejected, final polling station returns will be able to tell us more, and suggest whether there are reasons to question what appears to be a high number of rejected votes.

Had this vote been conducted under Kenya’s old constitution, there would not have been a debate on rejected votes.  Chapter II, Part I, article 5(3) f. of the repealed constitution states (italics added):

“the candidate for President who…receives a greater number of valid votes cast in the presidential election than any other candidate for President and who, in addition, receives a minimum of twenty-five per cent of the valid votes cast in at least five of the eight provinces shall be declared to be elected as President.”

Article 138(4) of the 2010 constitution, by contrast, says (italics added):

A candidate shall be declared elected as President if the candidate receives—

a. more than half of all the votes cast in the election; and

b. at least twenty-five per cent of the votes cast in each of more than half of the counties.

Valid votes cast’ are those that count towards a candidate, and do not therefore include rejected votes.  ‘All the votes cast’ is a different formulation, and rejected (and disputed) votes therefore matter in determining whether the constitutional requirement for election to the office of president has been met.

Kenya Elects:Its Either Hope Or Despair

Many Kenyans will go to the polls on 4 March with a sense of trepidation.  Three of the four elections since 1992 have been accompanied by significant violence; 2002 being the exception.  On each occasion politicians used local grievances over land and inequality to label supporters of rival candidates as ethnic “outsiders”.  Militias were then used to force those same voters from their homes.  Thousands of people were killed in violence around the 1992, 1997 and 2007 elections and tens of thousands more fled.  Some of these supposed “outsiders” never returned to places where their families had lived for decades; many Kenyans endure rather than celebrate elections.

Those of a nervous disposition would have hoped that this would be a straightforward election.  That is (clearly) not the case as the final result is too close to call.  With President Mwai Kibaki retiring after two terms in office, Prime Minister Raila Odinga is the front-runner.  But his lead in the opinion polls is narrow and he will almost certainly not win the outright majority needed to avoid a run-off in to be held in a few weeks’ time.

Odinga’s main rival is Uhuru Kenyatta, who, if successful, faces the prospect of governing the country while mounting his defence at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.  He and his running mate, William Ruto, are accused of orchestrating the violence that followed the 2007 election.  Rather than standing aside, both decided to exercise their right – confirmed recently by the Kenyan courts – to contest the election, apparently in order to gain a position of greater strength vis-à-vis the ICC.  They promise they can run the country and mount their defences in court through the use of technology.

In 2007 the rest of the world barely noticed the election until violence broke out during the suspiciously prolonged counting process.  This time, however, Kenya has held foreign attention for months before voters go to the polls.  The question that nags both foreign and local observers is a simple one: has enough been done over the past five years to avoid a repeat of the violence that lasted for two months from late December 2007 and claimed the lives of nearly 1200 people?

Much has been achieved, most notably independent inquiries into the management of the election and the subsequent violence, a new constitution and an on-going reform of the judiciary.  But it is hard to escape the conclusion that these reforms are not enough to guarantee a peaceful election.  A collective psychosis has therefore gripped many, but by no means all, local and foreign commentators.

Threatening isolation and fearing further instability should Kenyatta win, a whole array of figures, from President Obama and Kofi Annan down to the local diplomatic corps, have felt the need to advise Kenyans on how to vote – most likely to no or ill effect.  Uganda – whose businesses are still waiting for compensation for goods destroyed during the 2007-8 violence – has made contingency plans in case of disruption to vital imports being transported along the routes that connect it to the Indian Ocean.  Foreign investment slowed in 2012 due to fears of insecurity.  Local businesses have been buying dollars in case the Kenyan shilling collapses if violence follows the election.

So why does this election seem to matter so much?  There is a flippant and, on one level, accurate response to this question; it doesn’t.  For those of a cynical persuasion, one elite politician with a dubious record in government and a limited commitment to solving the problems of their poorest constituents will replace another, regardless of the result.  The candidates hardly have major differences of opinion over policy and anyone who thinks that a victory for Odinga will solve Kenya’s problems with the ICC is in for a shock.  It will take a lot to budge Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, who have access to enormous wealth and political leverage, if they refuse to go to The Hague, whether Kenyatta is president or not.  The ICC will be a constitutional and judicial leviathan, dominating the political landscape, for years to come.

But that does not really answer the question.  The election does matter.  To insist otherwise is to patronise an electorate that will turn out in great numbers and display euphoria and dismay in equal measure once the final result is announced.  The significance of the election can also be gauged from the international attention that this vote has garnered.  Viewed from abroad, Kenya has not seemed so significant since the end of the Cold War.  Its role in the Africa Union’s peace-building mission to Somalia has placed it on the front-line of global counter-terror operations and its economy is seen as the mainstay of a surging regional bloc encompassing North-Eastern and Eastern Africa.

There is another common and simple answer to the question of why the election matters; it’s ethnicity, stupid.  It is true that voting will, with some exceptions, follow predictable ethnic patterns, but ethnicity makes sense as a strategy for voters and leaders alike.

The voters know that there are not unlimited jobs.  

They also understand that land, at least in arable parts of the country, is under pressure for all sorts of reasons and that the state only has a finite amount of money for investment in development projects.  Clubbing together to protect what one holds while trying to work collectively to gain more wealth and influence is hardly irrational.  There may be better strategies for such collective action but ethnicity is what history has bequeathed Kenyans and ethnicity is what they have to work with.

For their part, the politicians are normally wealthy men and women seeking the votes of poor constituents.  Ethnicity provides a mechanism by which politicians can cross sometimes vast chasms of wealth and class to win the votes of individuals with whom they otherwise share little in common.  Kenya’s problem is that those in power have encouraged the divisions between groups to be violent and some of their supporters have followed suit; it is difficult to reverse back down that path.

For better or for worse, ethnicity is the way in which class, inequality and history are debated in Kenya.  Beneath the labels of Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luo, Luhya or Maasai are very different versions of the past and ideas about current and future policies.  One can subject almost any of the great debates in Kenyan politics to such an analysis, but in the interests of brevity take, for instance, devolution.

The subject of fierce debate in the years surrounding independence and in the early 1990s, devolution is a matter of great current significance too.  As well as choosing their member of parliament and the next president, voters will be electing representatives to fill newly empowered county administrations, new county governors and senators to represent the interests of their county in central government.

Many Kikuyu are skeptical about the value of devolution.  To some critics, this is nothing more than Kikuyu ethnic chauvinism.  Two of three presidents, Jomo Kenyatta (1963-78) and the outgoing Mwai Kibaki (2002-13) have been Kikuyu and so the community has been painted as unwilling to tolerate any devolution of significant powers from central to local government.  To be fair, neither president did much to dispel such criticism. 

 But with Kikuyu – to say nothing of the other major ethnic groups – spread across the country, many feel with good reason that central government is a better guarantor of their property rights and personal security than local authorities controlled by communities who see Kikuyu as an economic and political threat.  To many members of other, more economically marginal communities, such as Mijikenda at the Coast or Somali in the North East, an excessively centralized form of government is blamed for the uneven distribution of economic growth, improvements in living standards and investment in infrastructure.

The ICC and devolution are just two of the enormous issues that confront voters.  Others include strategies for continued economic growth, land reform, police reform, the on-going military intervention in Somalia; incidents of terrorism at home; a Coastal separatist movement; and the management of recently discovered oil and gas reserves.  The next government will (obviously) have tremendous influence over all these matters.  

Throw in regional integration and significant fiscal pressure and these are, truly, elections of great significance.

The time available for the next government to attend to any of these issues will, however, be dictated in large part by the conduct of the elections.  Much that is on the agenda will have to be sacrificed if, as with the past five years, time is lost mourning the dead and undergoing prolonged processes of transitional justice without any transition actually taking place.

Those hoping for dramatic change at this election or in the years to come will be disappointed.  Like most of the rest of Africa, Kenya had its Arab Spring – with all its attendant euphoria and disappointments – twenty years ago when the rest of the world was looking elsewhere.  Rather than revolution, a more modest hope for the future is simply for the next election to seem not to matter quite so much.  It doesn’t have to be like this every time, does it?

Kenyan Presidential Election Could have been About Issues ...But

Since multi-party democracy returned to Kenya in 1992, voting at election time has largely divided itself along ethnic lines. In 2007, when President Mwai Kibaki narrowly edged out Raila Odinga under a cloud of suspected vote tampering, the country descended into violence. The perception of blatant manipulation fomented bloodshed, as ethnic groups attached to the candidates attacked each other. Peace came slowly and only after a coalition government was formed elevating Odinga to Prime Minister.

In the aftermath, a country fearful of further division began making changes to the electoral process. Transparency was the watchword, with a new constitution establishing an Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. A presidential debate was also introduced, so candidates could communicate their proposals and people had more opportunities to make a decision based on policy instead of affiliation.

The new processes finally acknowledged that the Kenyan electorate is looking for substance. But even with the new procedures and institutions in place, voters aren’t getting an issues debate – at least not from the frontrunners.

Raila Odinga, who is in the running again as the head of the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD), maintains a slim lead in most polls, though under the 50 percent margin that would avert a run-off election between the two top finishers. The other frontrunner, Uhuru Kenyatta – son of the country’s first president – heads the Jubilee Coalition, while six other candidates round out the field.

The Prime Minister’s campaign is convinced he can still win a first-ballot victory. If he does manage this, it will have to come from a huge turnout in his strongholds, though, because little effort is being made to change voters’ minds in other areas. As the candidate hopscotches the country, he is not using issues to engage undecided voters or the electorate that has defaulted to his opponents because of ethnic affiliation.

I have been following the campaign as it travels around Kenya via radio, TV and social media. Last week Odinga’s team announced a rally in Embu, a town in central Kenya at the edge of Kenyatta’s heartland. By noon a small crowd rested in the shade of the concrete grandstand, as the candidate’s team pitched tents and rolled out a red carpet. Though Odinga wouldn’t show up for another four hours, the group of voters had time to burn.

They were Kenyatta supporters almost to a person, but they were also unemployed and bored and several were willing to give Odinga a chance to persuade them why they should change their vote.

Specifically, they were looking for a jobs plan – an explanation of how Odinga would bring industry to Embu and its outlying areas so they could get to work. Instead, they got a series of speeches from local candidates and leaders excoriating Kenyatta, followed by a short message from Odinga himself. Job creation was mentioned, but only in broad strokes, as if he was just reading from his manifesto. Then the candidate was off, a cloud of dust from his helicopter coating the people sheltering in the grandstand.

The Odinga campaign is content to operate under the traditional system of personality politics. The real work went into building the national coalition, with an expectation that the ethnic bases would follow their leaders. It seemed Odinga was in Embu mainly to remind people that current Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka is running on the CORD ticket for the same seat. Embu is near Musyoka’s hometown. During the stop it was Musyoka’s face that was plastered on cars and hung on walls. That, more than issues, was supposed to convince Kenyatta supporters to change their vote.

It also explains the prominent inclusion of Moses Wetangula in the CORD alliance, with his influence in the Luhya community – the second largest in Kenya.

The decision to run on personalities and coalitions is clearly a strategic gambit. But Odinga has the team in place and the resources to run a different kind of campaign. To send volunteers out to explain his platform in detail. To take advantage of technology and provide savvy voters with a wealth of information and encourage them to engage more with the campaign. To run the kind of issues-based effort the changes to the political system were clearly trying to inculcate.

Ahead of the election, advisors said Odinga was focusing on engaging voters, participating in radio call-in shows and holding town hall meetings. But as election day draws closer, the campaign has shifted exclusively to rallies. Though largely substance-free, they project strength and pressure supporters to come out and vote.

It’s a strategy they’re convinced will work. And despite the changes to the system, it likely will. There has not been enough change to erase the notion that voting is an ethnic affair, even in an electorate that is demanding details.

In the aftermath of the country’s first-ever presidential debate earlier this month, polls tipped Kenyatta and Odinga as the night’s victors. The same continued on their second debate on 25th Feb 2013. While the two got the most screen time, they stuck largely to the platitudes they have been issuing at campaign rallies and in their literature.

On street corners in downtown Nairobi the following afternoon, though, it wasn’t Odinga and Kenyatta people wanted to talk about. It was Peter Kenneth. At a gathering of vendors, civil servants and students, calling itself the People’s Parliament, they were raving about Kenneth, the businessman turned politician, who used the debate to speak with precision about a range of issues and ask pointed questions of his opponents.

Viewers were impressed, but no one was planning to vote for him. The reason being that they don’t believe he has a real chance of winning. A vote for Odinga or Kenyatta felt like more of a guarantee of victory – even if that victory doesn’t necessarily come with the policies the voter is looking for.

Still, the chatter about Kenneth could signal the beginning of the end of the kind of campaign Odinga is running. If in five years voters find little has changed, they might start to ask more of a candidate than where he is from and who is in his alliance. A sparkling debate performance could then deliver more than a bit of street corner kudos.

Why The Next pope Should be African

26 years of my  life, i have met only four atheists in Africa. We Africans seem naturally networked to religion. All meetings — on politics, sport and even business — begin with a prayer. God is invoked on every occasion, private or public. Religion is comfortably woven into daily life. Amid the current economic boom that most African countries are enjoying, huge new numbers of churches are being built, some of them vast halls.

The Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination, is part of the fabric of all African societies. Its schools, community centers and health clinics are trusted far more than state ones and often closer to the people. In wars in Africa it can be  found that Catholic parishes become refuges in which food and medicine are provided — like the monasteries in the chaos of early medieval Europe.

The priests, nuns and church workers who run them are often the best informed about what is happening and the most committed to the local community, unlike foreign aid agencies, which are forced to pull out when there is danger.The Catholic Church in Europe used to be like that, part of the warp and weft of society. And if it wanted to become so again, it should send for an African Pope.

The numbers and the zeitgeist dictate that the next Pope should come from Africa. The percentage of practicing Catholics in Europe and North America has declined steeply. According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Centre, since the 1960s four American-born Catholics have left the Church for every new member. In contrast the number of Catholics in Africa has grown from 55 million in 1978 to more than 150 million today. By 2025 that figure is expected to be 230 million. In the past five years, the number of men training to be Catholic priests in Europe and America has fallen by 10 per cent. In Africa it has risen by more than 14 per cent.

African history is largely untroubled by religious wars. Wherever religious wars are reported in Africa the cause is usually a dispute over land rights involving two communities that happen to be of different faiths. Religion per se is rarely the cause. That traditional tolerance however is now under pressure – not from atheism – but from externally-funded, exclusive fundamentalist religions in the form of Wahabi Islam exported from Saudi Arabia and evangelical Christian fundamentalism funded from the United States.

In Europe and the US the Church has become self and sex-obsessed, out of touch with modern views on sexuality and the rights of individuals and discredited by its failure to face up to its child-abuse scandals — the inevitable product of a celibate priesthood. That has undermined its credibility.

In Africa, where polygamy is still accepted, many priests have wives and children but that is often an open secret, not an issue that seems to trouble their communities.

Spiritual leaders have more pressing and essential issues to confront. In a rich continent full of poor people, death and disease are never far away. At a national level, Catholic leaders are respected and trusted when they speak out on social and economic justice — which many of them do with far more passion and credibility than their Western counterparts.

Would an African pope change the Church’s attitude to homosexuality? Highly unlikely but on social justice, both local and international, expect a far more forthright and vigorous voice. Above all an African pope could bring a revitalizing spiritual enthusiasm and passion. There are 16 African cardinals to choose from — though in theory the cardinals do not have to choose one of their number. The names of Cardinals Francis Arinze of Nigeria and Peter Turkson of Ghana have been mentioned.

The last two Popes have tried to restore — even recreate — the Church as a conservative, European-centred institution, maintaining all the trappings of a secretive and authoritarian ecclesiastical monarchy.

An African Pope would be freed from this baggage. He could restore the Church’s universal vision by moving out of the Vatican and bequeath its magnificent — but almost exclusively European Renaissance — treasures to the world. 

He could then rebase the spiritual, emotional and geographical centre of the Church somewhere closer to a crossroads of modern humanity, a region where Judaism, Christianity and Islam began, a place where religion is most intensely felt, where the destiny of humanity itself may be forged: Jerusalem.

Mali...The Worst is Yet to Come

Retaking the north was the easy part. Now Mali faces guerrilla attacks, reportedly increasing cooperation between rebel groups, ‘the Tuareg problem’, and a divided government.

Early on during the French intervention which began in January 2013, many journalists in the international press were quick to note that Islamist militants had just “melted away” into the vast desert regions of northern Mali. As French jets attacked key strongholds, hundreds of Islamist fighters prepared convoys, which would escort leaders, weapons and fighters away from major towns.

Eye witness accounts confirmed suspicions that the militants’ departure was “orderly” and well-prepared. Their planned withdrawal may indicate their clear intention to redefine the nature of the conflict in Mali on their terms. Indeed, in a document allegedly left behind by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Timbuktu, a senior commander admits that an international intervention would exceed the group’s capability and that they ought therefore to retreat to their “rear bases” for the time being.

Recent events have also shown that local and international troops should prepare for increased resistance and a protracted campaign. Malian soldiers faced the first wave of attacks when various suicide bombers targeted Malian army bases and checkpoints in the city of Gao. A day later, two militants (one Arab and one Tuareg) were intercepted with explosive belts strapped to their bodies. Malian troops were also tested by a significant counter offensive led by the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) in the same city on 10 February.

As Mali’s northern provinces become more secure, Islamist militants will increasingly engage in targeted attacks, using asymmetric warfare to test international troops and regain the upper hand. The caves and mountains of the Adrar des Ifoghas region, for example, are ideal locations for militant groups to hide and prepare hit and run operations.

Another worrying development in recent weeks has been allegedly increasing cooperation between Islamist militant groups across West Africa. Locals in Timbuktu claim Nigeria’s rebel group Boko Haram had training camps in the city. A flyer from another Nigerian militant group, Ansaru, was apparently discovered in Gao in the abandoned home of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the leader of the group believed to be behind the In Amenas attack on a gas plant facility in Algeria. And further suggestions have been made that Boko Haram militants might be using Chad as a rear base to prepare attacks. Chad has sent 1,800 men to fight alongside French and African troops in Mali.

Chad and other fragile states across the Sahel will struggle to police their highly porous borders as heavily armed gunmen move freely across them. The threat Islamic militancy poses to regional stability and beyond cannot be overstated. Mali’s neighbours face a direct threat from militants spilling over. Niger, for example, has agreed to allow the US to deploy drones from its airspace to help police its vast desert regions.

With over 4,000 French ground troops stationed in Mali, the number and size of their base camps growing by the day, and a deteriorating security climate, French forces are unlikely to fully withdraw from the region any time soon.

The deteriorating security climate will have an important effect on Western companies operating there. The tragic hostage crisis in In Amenas prompted security audits among Western companies throughout the region. Policymakers are already urging firms to assess, review and rethink security at their facilities in order to adapt to the mobile nature of these militant groups. French Special Forces have already begun securing vital uranium mines in Niger.

Back in Bamako, the alleged alliances developed over the years between the political elite, smugglers and drug dealers greatly undermined the country’s stability and development. More importantly, Mali and other states in the region will have to address seriously what some are now calling ‘the Tuareg problem’. This will require dialogue and political will to curb marginalisation and stigmatisation from which they and other minority ethnic groups suffer throughout the Sahel.

But divisions at the highest levels of the Malian state hinder Bamako’s ability to adequately address the concerns of Tuareg groups in the north. More recently, differences between pro- and anti-coup factions within the army led to outright clashes in Bamako. The Malian army has also used the French intervention to issue arrest warrants against Tuareg leaders and brush aside their demands. Malian troops are believed to have actively participated in reprisals against local Tuareg and Arab populations in the north. This behaviour, if it is not curbed, will only stoke the flames of ethnic tension.

Mali’s challenges require a multi-dimensional approach, which looks beyond simplistic interventionist agendas. The real roots of the current crisis have been overshadowed by the dominant “war on terror” narrative presented in the media. Beyond the restoration of order and some form of stability, Mali requires responsible and legitimate leadership capable of negotiating long term political solutions. 

The interim civilian government in Bamako alongside civil society and international actors should use the brief respite afforded to it by the presence of foreign troops to address the endemic corruption and legitimate grievances, which lie at the roots of this multifaceted crisis.

Africa Doesn't Need Rescuing, Just a Square Deal

Nobody disputes the charge that Africa’s political leaders are often responsible for the continent’s troubles, says Sudanese-born business tycoon Mo Ibrahim. But he argues that Western governments and corporations could do much more to redress the unfair practices that hinder Africa’s economic development

Images of Africa have long been of a continent mired in conflict, poverty and squalor. Conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Sudan, or poor governance in countries like Zimbabwe, have dominated reporting of Africa. There’s no denying that there are many issues facing our continent, but this picture is nevertheless reductive; it picks the failings of some corrupt regimes, and civil wars or genocide elsewhere to create a toxic mix which pollutes all countries in Africa. This is like claiming that all Europeans are guilty of “ethnic cleaning” on the evidence of what happened in the former Yugoslavia. Yes, some African countries are failed states, but let us always remember that Africa is 53 countries and most of them are peaceful and agreeable places.

Some fantastic progress has been made across Africa. Last year, the annual Ibrahim Index of African governance produced by  Mo Ibrahim Foundation showed that governance had improved in two-thirds of African countries. Another core initiative of the Foundation is the Ibrahim Prize for excellence in leadership in Africa. It awards over $7m to former executive heads of state or government who have demonstrated their commitment to advancing their countries and improving the quality of life for their citizens, while at the same time avoiding corruption and stepping down when they should.

The prize has been  awarded  twice, first to Joaquim Chissano, former President of Mozambique, and then to Festus Mogae, former President of Botswana. If we look at these two along with men like Kofi Annan and Nelson Mandela, we can see the calibre of leadership that Africa is capable of producing. 

Joaquim Chissano led his country out of conflict and established multi-party politics and a growing economy. Festus Mogae consolidated the democracy that had been built by his predecessors in Botswana and rolled out one of Africa’s most successful HIV prevention, treatment and care programmes, as well as successfully managing the country’s diamond reserves for the benefit of Botswanans. And they have continued to contribute to public life on leaving office; President Chissano is working as the UN’s envoy to bring an end to conflict in northern Uganda and also to the political impasse in Madagascar. President Mogae has been appointed as a special envoy for climate change as well as presiding over the newly established Coalition for Dialogue on Africa. Both these men, and many that came before them, show that the new generation of African leadership is capable of solving Africa’s problems. Sustainable solutions to these problems will only come from within. Our international partners can support us and provide much-needed resources and guidance, but only we Africans hold the keys to our future prosperity. So the question we should be asking ourselves is, how Africa can rescue itself. Only victims need others to rescue them, and Africa is not a continent of victims. Good governance is the cornerstone of development. I learned in the private sector that companies need effective management to succeed. Equally, for nations to develop successfully, governments must provide public services to their citizens and ensure that they live safe from persecution, crime and discrimination. Governments must establish an enabling environment for the private sector to create jobs, and governments cannot consider the public purse to be a private bank account. Government is responsible for delivering services, but it is up to civil society to be vigilant and ensure that governments work towards these aims. A strong civil society that monitors and increasingly demands more from government is vital to improving governance on our continent. As with economics, it is demand that stimulates supply. That is why the Mo Ibrahim Foundation  produces the annual Ibrahim Index of African Governance to track governments’ performance across sub-Saharan Africa.It aims to provide civil society and citizens with a tool that allows them to monitor over time the progress of their government. It looks at almost a hundred indicators that measure what governments are obliged to deliver to their citizens, and defines   governance in a new way – as the services that should be provided to citizens. It does not  measure inputs – including aid or natural resource revenues – or government promises and commitments; instead it has chosen to measure the impact of government activities on the lives of citizens. That  foundation is  not alone. Across the continent many other organisations are working to strengthen and empower civil society, to monitor government activities and to hold their leaders to account. The electoral tragedies in Zimbabwe and Kenya last year illustrate how Africans are standing up and demanding that their votes be counted and their voices heard. Africans will no longer stand for the subversion of their democratic processes and African civil society has in many cases become vocal enough and powerful enough to demand change. Alongside this focus on improving governance in Africa, we must also put pressure on our leaders to encourage regional integration. Many small and landlocked African countries will never become serious players in the global economy without increased co-operation within their own region. The current system of haphazard, overlapping regional integration is proving largely ineffective, and this severely hampers the ability of African countries to compete in international markets. Africa’s 967m people are divided into 53 countries, with all the replicated bureaucracy and currency exchange issues this entails. China, with 1.3bn people, is just one country; and even Europe with some 500m in the EU’s population often functions on the international stage as a single bloc. If the small and diverse nations of Africa do not come together they will never be able to integrate properly into the world economy, and so will not reap the benefits of our globalised world. Economic integration needs to be backed up by an increase in intra-regional trade; less than 4% of our trade is between African countries, compared to over 70% in Europe and over 50% in Asia. The International Monetary Fund has credited Asian intra-regional trade as the main factor behind Asia’s export boom and its strong economic growth. There’s no reason why Africa, with its huge and often untapped markets, cannot follow the same path. All these are issues that have to be tackled by Africans, but our international partners, particularly in Europe, also have an important role to play in our development. The debate over the failure of international aid to produce development and the current financial crisis mean that the arguments against development assistance are gaining weight. But the argument should not be about aid or no aid – no one can question aid’s many successes and the importance of aid as a safety net for those who would otherwise be left to suffer. The argument should instead be focused on how to get the most effective results out of aid, both for the recipients and for a donor country’s tax-payers. To my mind, aid is best focused on infrastructure – the bridges, roads, internet cables and power stations that will help our economies to grow and allow us to trade more easily with each other. Accompanying this should be a focus on what I like to call the software of development – health and education. If aid satisfies basic governance conditionality and is directed at these vital areas, Africa will have a far greater chance of progressing. There are other essential areas where our partners in Europe should follow their rhetoric with action and to live up to their commitments to alleviate poverty. For too long there has been international dismay at the state of governance in Africa; corruption and at times a complete lack of accountability among African governments are blamed for all of Africa’s ills. It’s often hard to rebut this argument, but no one can claim that Africans have a monopoly on governance failures. The current financial crisis offers a perfect example as it was poor governance in the banking sector that brought so many of the world’s great economies to the brink of collapse. And while the international community is quick to pounce on African leaders for governance failures, it seems less enthusiastic about examining its own role in the flight of African assets. European and American companies pay bribes to government officials in return for mining concessions or other advantages, and it is in European and American bank accounts that resources looted from Africa are kept. And yet these countries were slow to enact legislation to make overseas bribery illegal, and now it exists there has been limited enforcement of the rules. Then there is the well-known but still unresolved problem of trade barriers. If African products are forced to compete in markets that are skewed towards European and American producers, Africans are not being given a fair chance to develop. The fiercely debated issue of trade barriers speaks directly to the question of whether there is a genuine international commitment to Africa’s development. It’s an issue that is highlighted by events in, Sudan, and its western state of Darfur.  Poorly equipped and under-resourced African Union (AU) troops have been trying to protect civilians. While the AU is providing soldiers to police the conflict, the United Nations and the international community are tasked with providing the resources and equipment that are widely viewed as inadequate. It is just one more example of the way that limited resources are endemic to international peacekeeping operations, particularly in Africa, and always with disastrous results. Africa does not need to be rescued and never will be. But we do need the international community to live up to its commitments and honour its promises, whether that be on corruption and stolen assets, on aid, trade or conflict resolution and peacekeeping.

Africa’s Borders:Unprotected & Blocking Trade & Development

Africa inherited its borders – they were not created by those who live within them, are divided by them or who cannot easily trade across them.  The many straight lines on the map (or even the wiggly ones that follow rivers or other features) are one of the banes of the continent.  On the one hand they artificially lump together peoples whose histories were not the same and who, while not naturally or primordially hostile, would have chosen different paths to nationhood. On the other, they divide peoples across two or even a multitude of states.

These borders were set by colonial rulers but then sanctified at its formation by the Organization of African Unity in 1963 and later reaffirmed by the African Union (AU).  They created multicultural, multilinguistic and multiethnic nation states – just like the treaties after the First World War and the fall of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires created the artificial and doomed state of Yugsoslavia and those in eastern and central Europe whose borders are still bones of contention.  Africa is the same.

There are over 100 continuing border disputes between states in Africa – from the Ethiopian-Eritrean border (constantly in danger of setting off a new conflict between uneasy neighbours) to the current Malawi-Tanzania row over the demarcation of the lake border between them (exacerbated, as are so many global conflicts, by the lure of oil).  Borders are also blocks to economic development, bringing with them border controls, tariffs, customs arrangements (COMESA, ECOWAS and other regional groups notwithstanding).

Africa’s share of world trade is tiny—only 3 percent in 2009, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, but trade between nations is miniscule, making up only 10 percent of total trade. This stands in stark contrast to 22 percent between countries in South America, and 50 percent between those in Asia.  Borders and pointless bureaucracy, combined with the corruption that goes with them, inhibit inter-African trade.

Africa’s borders are even more problematic than those in contested areas of Europe, Asia and Latin America.  Whilst they are usually porous and almost impossible for weak state institutions, small armies and poorly funded police forces to control, they often divide peoples (especially nomadic ones like the Tuareg) and form huge obstacles to trade. Also, corruption and the desire of people to buy and sell goods across borders create endless opportunities for smuggling, tax evasion and cross-border crime – not just problems in themselves, but often providing the funding for insurgency and revolt.

Mali is a perfect example of this.  From its independence in 1960 it has had to accommodate the aspirations of peoples with different languages, cultures, economic and social lifestyles who are geographically separated by huge distances, but are citizens of one state. From its birth, Mali and its neighbours had to accommodate or crush the aspirations to autonomy or statehood of the Tuareg – split across Mali, Algeria, Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Libya.  The Tuareg lived by trade across the Sahel region and across the Sahara to North Africa.  

No one state could, even if they had wanted to, provide an autonomous homeland within an existing state, given that the Tuareg are widely dispersed and their aspirations not limited to the populations within a single state.  The Tuareg repeatedly launched rebellions in Mali and Niger.  These were defeated, but the spark of resistance was never fully extinguished.

The Tuareg were used by Gadaffi in Libya as part of his Islamic Arab Legion, which fought and was defeated in Chad in the 1980s and was made part of Libya’s armed forces – effectively mercenaries helping keep him in power and interfere in the affairs of neighbouring states. Libya under Gaddafi backed rebellions by the Tuareg in the Sahel – armed them, financed them and trained them. 

When he fell, they and other non-Libyan fighters were among the major targets for the militias who, with Western help, overthrew and killed him.  The foreign fighters fled – many Tuareg to Niger, where most were rapidly disarmed.  Others went back to Mali and kept hold of their weapons. They linked up with Islamic groups including many Tuareg who lived by smuggling in the unpoliced north of the country.

The Tuareg launched their rebellion seeking to establish an independent state – ‘Azawad’ – through the MNLA movement, aided by the Libyan weapons they had brought with them.  The rest, as they say, is history.  The MNLA had initial successes, was then dominated and marginalized by Islamist movements and those movements are now being pushed back into the desert by French, Malian and Chadian troops.

 But they will just melt back into the arid, remote and thinly populated Sahel/Sahara with a wealth of porous borders to cross and re-cross to avoid counter-insurgency operations and establish new bases.  Mali has a 1,376 km border with Algeria, 1,000km with Burkina Faso, 2,237km with Mauritania and 821km with Niger.  Even with French support, US drones and the cooperation of neighbouring states they cannot police this whole area.

The openness of borders and the security issues they raise are huge. No solution to the Tuareg issue and the future of Islamist movements (whether linked to al-Qaeda or not) will be possible without cross-border cooperation and security, but that is almost impossible to achieve even if all states were willing to cooperate.  And this then creates all sorts of tangled links between different conflicts.  Islamist fighters from Mali have already been reported as reaching as far as northern Darfur in their search for a new haven. 

Northern Darfur borders the Central African Republic, where a peace deal has temporarily ended fighting, but where elements of the rebel movement funded their military campaign through access to gold mines near the border with Darfur.  Resources like this and the possibility of shifting alliances with local groups are another lure for stateless military groups able to traverse borders with ease.

This lack of border controls, security and policing not only lead to major problems for governments (insurgency, smuggling etc) but also for local peoples.  The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) of Joseph Kony has been pushed out of Uganda and moves between Central African Republic, DR Congo, South Sudan and Uganda killing, looting and abducting people to serve as soldiers, porters or sex slaves.  It survives through these depredations and has now, as have the Janjaweed in Sudan’s Darfur province, moved into the lucrative ivory poaching business. 

The LRA and Janjaweed are said to have killed elephants in DRC, CAR and Cameroon and transported the ivory to Sudan for smuggling abroad – so environmental damage can be added to the list of problems caused by weak African borders.

There is clearly no easy, fast or obvious solution to the border issue.  States may have strongmen in charge but they have weak institutions and limited power over remote areas. They cannot police huge borders which are often the focus of conflict, irredentism, separatism and smuggling – especially when they often lack legitimacy in these areas through political and economic policies which marginalize them. 

What is necessary is a continent-wide approach to borders, for the African Union to go beyond treating the symptoms of conflict through intervention forces, peacekeeping or attempts at peacemaking and look seriously as the body representing the continent at the long-term future of borders and people constrained, split or made almost stateless by them.  A massive, holistic approach is necessary but sadly the will is lacking, as proved by the way that the African Renaissance and NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) came to nought after the initial fanfare.