No time for complacency

Getting governance right for development in Africa

David Booth, Africa Power and Politics Programme

The era of pessimism about development in Africa is over.

Almost everywhere, and not least in Commonwealth Africa, there is a degree of buoyancy about economic and political prospects that has not been seen since the end of the 1970s. We should be thankful for this new mood, but wary of the complacency that may come in its wake.

Neither in economic affairs nor in politics is Africa yet firmly on the right track. Economies need transformation, not just growth, and that calls for a policy vision and drive that, with rare exceptions, political systems are not currently providing. This ought to be profoundly worrying to anyone with any degree of responsibility for shaping Africa’s future.

Too much of a mood swing?

The bleak imagery that used to be conveyed by most external and internal assessments of African development trajectories was always somewhat exaggerated. Since the turn of the millennium, this imagery has become increasingly irrelevant as high economic growth rates, significant public health gains and more or less peaceful conditions have come to characterise much of the region.

Not only are economies growing but electoral politics and civic freedoms are becoming entrenched, and the lives of even ordinary people are improving slowly, not everywhere to be sure, but in many African countries.

It is no bad thing that the old pessimism has been swept aside. However, it should be replaced with heightened ambition, not an easier acceptance of the status quo. Too much of the new mood – I would argue – is based on a rather superficial appreciation of the challenges now confronting low-income Africa. I refer not to the many particular issues that remain to be addressed – from Africa’s growing involvement in global criminality, and the burdens of avoidable diseases and premature death, to the threats posed by climate change and premature urbanisation3 – important as these issues are. Rather, my concern is with the political and economic framework within which these and many other particular challenges are to be tackled.

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