A core question today is whether government and governance is cost effective, whether budgets are justified, whether the people should not pay more, for less. In other words, there is a supply-side assessment and projection of governance in relation to the people. To take into account or make money and budget look as the most important thing in government serves two purposes; first it gives the impression that money has more value than the people, and second it equates money to the key thing in government. Both are related points. We have found that all over the world, people and places are differently endowed, some have natural resources others do not, some have human resources others do not, and some have both. Some countries have highly skilled manpower others do not, some live off rentier resource others live on tax, some live on consumerism others live on trade, some live on technological innovativeness, patents, and others live on tourism.
Africa has remained a grossly underdeveloped third world continent. All its key so called economic and social indicators are embarrassingly in bad shape. Even if we take the political context, two decades after the democratization processes, and three decades after the Third Wave of democracy, we will find out that Africa, in spite of the initial euphoria, have disappointed the people of the continent. We still look up to the west for economic and financial guidance and assistance.
Our economies are still crawling, our people still live in poverty hunger and disease, humanitarian groups and International crisis and rescue organisations are still the ones courting and bailing our people out in critical situations. HIV/AIDS and various wars have had their toll. Post-conflict reconciliation and stable governance have remained elusive. Governments keep taking a ruler-subject approach to governance and the so-called dividends of democracy that everybody so enthusiastically talk about are yet to be harvested by the people.
The leaders seem trapped and unsure about what to do, they have exhausted all the slogans in their arsenal, and new ways of decolonising the minds of the people and getting them to be sheepishly followers is over. But the people are doing soul-searching about what went wrong after the struggles and resistance of the late 1980s and early 1990s? Why is it that the new crop of leaders that took over the mantle of leadership has not been able to improve the lot of the people as against those they took over power from? These are the questions that we need to answer.
There are three main reasons for this. The first has to do with the way democratisation struggles in Africa were conducted. In most cases the focus was that military rulers and sit-tight one-party dictators must go. Hence in countries such as Nigeria, the campaign was anti-military and less about democracy. The military –civilian conundrum created a situation whereby we did not care about who took over power so long he/she was a civilian. We did not reflect on the kind of democracy, the kind of transition and the kind of power relation we wanted to have in place. To be sure, some people and group raised this critical questions but majority of the people were simply tired of military rule and wanted something else. On its part, those who designed transitions and political projects that led to civil rule were concerned about how to create loopholes for their friends, colleagues, and the allies of international financial institutions of IMF and the World bank approved allies of the United States of America, to take over power. And indeed more than two-thirds of those who took over power fall in this category.
The second point had to do with an understanding what the people need. Many of our leaders on the continent had come on the populist platform to power without really knowing what the people needed. Some of them may have experienced or seen the agony and poverty of the people, but they simply had no clue about how to remedy them. They felt that street agitation or resistance was the same as good governance, that being critical and to criticise the ancient regime was the same as providing correct and acceptable leadership. When some of these people got to power, they took more time criticising those they took over power from rather than putting new things in place. They took time to attack others rather than be constructive. In the end some of them filed their pockets with the taxpayer’s money. Such was the case in Zambia under Chiluba.
The third point is that the new set of leaders began to do worse that what the erstwhile leaders who inspired the struggles of the 1980s did. They began to reverse the gains of democracy in various forms: the dividends of democracy did but come, political and social institutions were stretched to capacity, the judiciary was heated and in certain countries politicised, corruption became rife, political in-fighting due to lack of tolerance of opposing view, even within dominant/ruling parties became common place. This led to more disappointment from the people.
But what can be done? There are many things, but I will like to talk about a few examples from India and Britain. Few months ago, I wrote about the India’s example in elections, in spite of its electorates which stand at over 700 million. India has many examples from which we can learn, as a continent, only if we have the humility and comportion. India manufactures cars. It has recently put in the market, so far, the cheapest car in the world-cheap to purchase and easy to maintain. Why and how did India do this? It did it because India since 1947 realised and has always worked under the assumption that majority of its people suffers material poverty. There is the view that social policies must address the interest and needs of majority of the people. This has been a principle that most governments in Indian, including the BJP have come to accept.
The second and related point is that India has always worked under the assumption that it is a Third world country and therefore an underdeveloped country. This assumption then means that India has to formulate policies and programs that do not come from the advanced countries, but that are rooted to the experiences of a typical third world country. India has never deceived itself that it is semi-third world or transiting to advanced country. Such kind of originality and honest acceptance of the social and economic location of India have made the people extremely patriotic and nationalistic and believe in the need to grow the nation. Many Indians talk about their country in that spirit. And it helps a lot, it helps to set a map, chart a path, and develop a compass.
Lastly, in the related spirit of the foregoing point, India has been able to mobilise its professionals, especially computer experts, and scientists to embark on technological development including in space science and nuclear armament. India did this by taking a path many in third world will refuse to take. In education, in primary and secondary schools it is mostly free and in some places university education too is free. Where there is tuition even at the post graduate level, the school fees or tuition is almost nil.
I have a friend who is a lecturer at Makerere University. He did his Ph.D in India and was told that he was going to pay tuition. At the end, he discovered that his tuition was not up to US$300. And he even got scholarship to offset the tuition from Indian government. This is the secret that has led to the rise of education in India and that has resulted in many scientific innovations by Indians and India’s technological development. Indeed, in terms of technological improvement or development, it will be unfair to characterise India as a third world just as it is also difficult to so characterise China.
The other example I will like to give is about Indians’ attitude or disposition to healthcare. Because majority of the people are in rural areas, there is a “community approach” to health care provisions and training of health care providers and care givers. These people normally have at least some level of education, and they are trained in ways that they are able to cater to the needs of their communities and could give referral on complex cases or things they are unable to handle. These healthcare givers do so on voluntary basis, others are paid just a token to sustain their spirit of volunteership, but basically the understanding is not that of money making. In this way, many lives have been saved in India and many people have come up for such training and empowerment to give community service.
We can in Africa begin to cultivate many of our unemployed nurses and midwives, many youth who read related courses such as Biochemistry and Biological sciences, and others who read social work, anthropology and sociology. If we took a census of such people we will at least find out that we have three million of them across Nigeria. These people will bridge the health needs of not only rural areas but urban slums or ghettoes. Increasingly, many people do not attend hospitals because of prohibitive cost and inability to afford. As a result, many of them resort to self-medication or herbal treatment or both, others simply resign to faith. As a result, we have had fatalities resulting from wrong diagnosis, infections resulting from example, use of syringes, and so on.
In Britain, due to the welfare system, the health care is free to all under the NHS. The implication of this is that no matter whom you are, whether rich or poor, there is general access to health care. This has worked wonders for Britain. It may be true that many have complained of the “massification” of the NHS, but the reality of health care in Britain is not such that lowers quality but one that has been riddled with bureaucracy. Britain still has some of the best medical doctors in the world, Britain still attracts high intake of Medical doctor form other parts of the world and also, as a policy, agree to medical experts in areas that are not available, to be flown at government expense to take care of the ill. These are laudable services and policies that need to be emulated.
Our population is today endangered in Africa. Problems of HIV/AIDS, of cancer and diabetes have become so rampant or common place, because of lack of early detection, lack of awareness and lack of resources on the part of Africans to pay medical bills. For example, many people in rural Africa are not screened for cancer, there is not even ingenuity on the parts of our leaders to put in place a policy that will make it possible to launch cancer screen machines on mobile vehicles and get them to move round villages on market days, employing chiefs and town criers to get the people to come out to do cancer screening. The same thing with HIV/AIDS, there is much claim about VCCT. However, such a policy does not make meaning to the rural people, who indeed are enthusiastic to do the screening but have no access or means. Knowing one’s status is important, but denying one access is criminal. There is in the literature on AIDS in Africa that most Africans inherit wives of relations who had died of AIDS. But is this assertion correct? How many people have scientifically verified this claim? Furthermore, have such widows being screened and proven to have HIV? Africa needs to be treated with dignity and our people need to be provided with basic things that will make their status as human beings to be worth the while.
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