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The Governance,
Security and
Development Nexus
Africa Rising
Edited by
Kenneth Omeje
The Governance, Security and Development Nexus
Kenneth Omeje
Editor
The Governance,
Security
and Development
Nexus
Africa Rising
Editor
Kenneth Omeje
Manifold Crown Research and Training Consult
Bradford, UK
Addis Ababa University
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
This book explores the nexus between governance, security and devel-
opment in Africa as it relates to the narrative that contemporary Africa
has made remarkable progress over the past one and half decades, a
phenomenon captured in influential sections of international media and
academic and policy discourses as “Africa rising.” The book investigates
and interrogates the discursive assumptions and empirical indicators of the
Africa rising narratives. The Africa rising debate is a controversial discourse
postulating that contemporary Africa has made a substantial leap from
the longstanding Valhalla of underdevelopment and its negative gover-
nance and security correlates to the trajectory of sustainable progress. Is
continental Africa finally witnessing what the famous American post-war
economist W. W. Rostow called the “preconditions for take-off” or prob-
ably his actual “take off of self-sustaining economic growth?” In what
specific empirical forms and ways have Africa recorded the highly publi-
cised rising progress or take-off? What are the local, regional and inter-
national factors that have enabled Africa to rise and to what extent are
African states and institutions in command of these variables? Seriously
speaking, what specific countries are rising in Africa—arguably Ethiopia,
Rwanda, Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, Zambia, Uganda, Niger
and Burkina Faso? How well and how fast are they rising? Can we by
any stretch of the imagination justifiably brand any assemblage of the
rising countries the “African tigers”—a conceptual mimicry of the “Asian
v
vi PREFACE
tigers,” the countries that engineered the competitive and rapid ascen-
dancy of the South Asian economies on the global stage over the past 30
years? What is the cumulative national and regional impact of the rising
of any of the African countries said to be on the rise? To what extent
have the ordinary citizens, as well as vulnerable social groups, communi-
ties and states empirically felt the impact of the Africa rising narratives?
Where do we place countries like Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea,
Cameroun, Central African Republic and Eswatini (to mention but a few
of the countries that seem stuck in a protracted limbo) in the Africa
rising debate? How can the continent build on any recorded performance
successes to leverage the governance, security and development nexus
for the overall benefit and well-being of the African people and states?
These are some of the questions explored in this edited volume with inci-
sive contributions from experts in African economics, politics, conflicts,
security, peacebuilding, development and international relations.
This book comprises a total of 19 commissioned chapters, structured
into five thematic parts. Part I explores the conceptual issues and inter-
rogates the empirical indicators of the governance, security and devel-
opment nexus in the context of Africa rising as reflected and debated in
extant literature. Part II is a critical assessment of the global dimensions of
“Africa rising,” examining the trends and dynamics of Africa—EU (Euro-
pean Union) relations, Africa—US relations, Africa—China relations, as
well as the cumulative direction and impact of foreign direct investments
in Africa. Part III analyses the regional imperatives of Africa rising, the
empirical trends, challenges and opportunities of intra-African trade, as
well as the politics of regional development and economic integration.
Part IV discusses specific national contests of Africa rising, taking a case
study of a few states believed to be on the “rise” and conversely exam-
ining a few other states that represent “the forgotten Africa”—countries
that are seemingly trapped in the doldrums and therefore hardly discussed
in the overall debate.
The book is concluded in Part V, which examines the empirical reali-
ties and macroeconomic imperatives of how Africa can overcome present
obstacles to make more meaningful progress within the prevailing regional
and global economic framework. Overall, the narratives that Africa is
rising on the neoliberal path of development discussed in the various
PREFACE vii
ix
x CONTENTS
xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
UNDP, USAID-DAI and the World Bank, and also different government
institutions in Nigeria, including the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Taiwo Owoeye, Ph.D. is a 2018 grantee of the African Peacebuilding
Network (APN) of the New York-based Social Science Research Council
(SSRC). He is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics, Ekiti
State University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria. He is an Alumnus of the American
Political Science Association (APSA) African Methodological Workshop
2013. He was also a co-recipient of 2014 American Political Science Asso-
ciation Methodological Workshop Alumni Networking Grant. Taiwo’s
research interest is in how politics, institutions and history drive economic
decisions in Africa. His publications have appeared in diverse reputable
journals.
Sabastiano Rwengabo is a Ugandan Political Scientist and Independent
Consultant in the areas of Fragility and Resilience Assessments, Polit-
ical Economy Analyses and Institutional Assessments. He is a Country
Expert with the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project of the Depart-
ment of Political Science, University of Gothenburg. He was formerly
a Research Fellow with the Advocates Coalition for Development and
Environment (ACODE), a Kampala-based regional policy research and
advocacy think tank. He completed the History Makers Training (HMT)
and Oakseed Executive Leadership Course (OELC) with the Institute for
National Transformation (INT). Dr. Rwengabo holds a Ph.D. degree
from the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he was a
Research Scholar, President’s Graduate Fellow and Graduate Teacher,
2010–2014. His scholarly interest focuses on areas of International Poli-
tics and Security, Regionalism, Civil—Military Relations (CMR), Post-
Conflict Transformation and Democratisation. One of Dr. Rwengabo’s
latest research products is a book on Security Cooperation in the East
African Community (Trenton, New Jersey: African World Press, 2018).
Usman A. Tar (Ph.D.) is Endowed Professor of Defence and Security
Studies at the Nigerian Defence Academy, and Director of the Academy’s
flagship Centre for Defence Studies and Documentation (CDSD). Prof
Tar has held professional academic positions in Africa, United Kingdom
and the Republic of Iraq. He is a Member of the Board of Social Science
Research Council’s African Peacebuilding Network (SSRC/APN), New
York, USA. He has previously held the positions of Associate Research
Fellow at the John and Elnora Ferguson Centre for Africa Studies
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxi
xxiii
xxiv ABBREVIATIONS
TI Transparency International
TSA Treasury Single Account
TSCTP Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership
UAE United Arab Emirate
UN United Nations
UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNGA United Nations General Assembly
UNODC United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
UNSC United Nations Security Council
USA United States of America
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
WAEMU West African Economic and Monetary Union
WTTC World Travel and Tourism Council
List of Figures
xxvii
xxviii LIST OF FIGURES
xxix
PART I
Kenneth Omeje
Introduction
This edited book is concerned with the nexus between governance, secu-
rity and development in Africa. Specifically, it is conceived to interrogate
the debate and politics of “Africa rising,” a contemporary catchphrase for
what many proponents perceive as the fast-moving economic, develop-
ment and governance transformations of the continent. From all intents
and purposes, the discourses on “Africa rising” presuppose the occurrence
of a planned, sustained and systematic change in the governance, secu-
rity and development landscape of the continent capable of empirically
redefining and repositioning Africa away from its vulnerable subaltern
status in the global political economy. This book offers a searching
critique and assessment of the Africa rising discourses. Has Africa been
rising as many proponents of the euphoric discourses have claimed? If
indeed Africa is rising, how much of the impact is reflected in the living
conditions and well-being of the citizens? Is Africa uniformly rising or
are there just a few countries on the rise while the rest stagnate or
K. Omeje (B)
Manifold Crown Research and Training Consult, Bradford, UK
e-mail: komeje@manifoldcrown.org
even probably regress? Is there any osmotic resonance between the rising
African states and their “non-performing” counterparts? Using a nexus
of context-specific, regional and international data, the various chapters
of this book have been structured to shed light on these intellectual
puzzles with a view to enunciating policy-relevant visions, interventions
and strategies on how Africa can arise or rise sustainably.
Africa entered the 2000 millennium as a heavily beleaguered conti-
nent marked by a post-colonial history of massive governance, security
and development deficits. Decades of states’ policy failures and neopatri-
monial plunder in a bunch of dysfunctional neo-colonial economies that
are overly dependent on production and export of primary commodities
have exposed many countries on the continent to an erratic balance of
payment deficits, rising external borrowing and debt crisis, skewed and
unsustainable development, massive youth unemployment, high poverty
levels and ultimately armed rebellion and civil wars. In its worst post-
independence economic crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, the situation
was evidently exacerbated by the inappropriate therapy of Structural
Adjustment Programme (SAP) foisted on most countries of Sub-Saharan
Africa by the World Bank, IMF and the US Treasury Department, three
powerful global financial institutions based in Washington and altogether
known as the Washington Consensus. SAP placed emphasis on strin-
gent credit financing that attracted conditionalities, such as huge debt
service obligations, currency devaluation, dismantling of state’s social
development obligations, privatization of public enterprises and massive
deregulation of the economy (Dibua 2006; Moghalu 2014). The unbear-
able external debt overhang and debt service obligations associated with
the SAP regime bankrupted African economies and ruptured their polit-
ical systems. At the turn of the last century, Sub-Saharan Africa’s twenty
years economic and political crisis had generated about two dozen armed
conflicts of varied intensities which prompted the London-based maga-
zine The Economist to portray Africa in its May 2000 edition as “The
Hopeless Continent.” The latter was the controversial title of the maga-
zine’s cover story. Despite the apparent hopelessness of the African
long-drawn-out crisis, many African intellectuals, policy practitioners and
statesmen were visibly offended by this pessimistic castigation of the
continent as “the hopeless continent.”
Fast-forward to 2005, the security and economic development condi-
tions and prospects of many hitherto marooned African countries were
looking a lot more optimistic. Many warring parties of the 1980s and
1 EXPLORING THE GOVERNANCE, SECURITY AND DEVELOPMENT … 5
1990s in countries devastated by armed conflicts had laid down their arms
or been defeated in the battlefield to make way for a return to peace.
The civil wars and armed conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire,
Angola, Mozambique, Uganda, Southern Senegal and Rwanda were all
brought to an end. Africa emerged from two decades of war and political
turbulence and profited massively from a long boom in commodity prices
as well as peace, improved governance and a better investment climate
(Grynberg 2016). In recent years, significant de-escalation of hostilities
relative to the peak years of war has occurred in some of the tinderbox
areas marked by persistent armed violence, notably Northern Mali, South
Sudan, Libya, Darfur-Sudan, Eastern Congo, Central African Republic,
Somalia and North-East Nigeria.
Since the 2000s, liberal democracy has spread on the continent like
wildfire, bringing an end to diverse shades of civilian and military dictator-
ships. Through the political conditionalities of SAP, a strong impression
was created in the late-1980s by the leading international financial
institutions (World Bank and IMF) bankrolling economic recovery on
the continent that dismantling authoritarian governance structures and
replacing them with liberal democratic institutions (notably multi-party
electoral system, parliamentary structures and debate, independent judi-
ciary, free press and respect for human rights and civil societies) would
facilitate economic transformation, growth and development. Instead of
the Bretton Woods institutions accepting responsibility for drawing Africa
into deeper crises through the introduction of SAP, the World Bank
produced a document entitled From Crisis to Sustainable Growth in 1989,
in which they blamed lack of good governance and policy reform as the
cause of economic crisis and lack of development in Africa in the 1980s
(Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018: 29). By the 1990s, the ideological prescription
of political reform as a prerequisite for economic development canvassed
by the Bretton Woods institutions had gained strong currency in interna-
tional development quarters and among African civil society organisations
leading to a united pressure on African governments to embrace liberal
democratic institutions and practices. By courtesy of this induced pressure
to democratize the political space as necessary precondition for economic
growth, Africa witnessed a rapid resurgence, spread and consolidation of
the Western neo-liberal model of development throughout the continent.
It is this neo-liberal model of development, which is essentially rooted in
post-Keynesian economic theories of the relationships between monetary
policies, growth, trade and development, that takes the credit for what has
6 K. OMEJE
After decades of slow growth, Africa has a real chance to follow in the
footsteps of Asia. … Over the past decade six of the world’s ten fastest
growing countries were African. In eight of the past ten years, Africa has
grown faster than East Asia, including Japan. … The commodities boom is
partly responsible. In 2000–08 around a quarter of Africa’s growth came
from higher revenues from natural resources. … But the growth also has
a lot to do with the manufacturing and service economies that African
countries are beginning to develop. (The Economist 2011, 3 December)
Interestingly, the AfDB’s seminal research found that the size of the
African middle class has tripled over a space of three decades to 313
million which equates to 34% of the population or roughly “one in three
Africans” (AfDB 2011; African Business 2015, 8 September). In a 2017
Report, AfDB estimated Africa’s so-called expanding middle class to be
350 million (AfDB 2017: 29). The AfDB claims particularly reinforce
the viewpoint of “Africa Rising” protagonists and their narrative that the
continent has “a bulging middle class” with a surge in consumer demand
and promising consumption power. In his masterful critique of the AfDB
report, Patrick Bond (2018: 478) describes the Bank’s claim that “one
in three Africans is middle class” “a hoax-type claim,” arguing that the
consumption levels of $2–$20 per day depicted by the bank as middle
class are all “poverty levels in most African cities, whose price levels leave
them among the world’s most expensive.”
the regional score range were Senegal, with a score of 3.8, closely
followed by Cape Verde, Kenya, and Tanzania, all with scores of 3.7.
Overall, slightly more than half (20) of the region’s IDA borrowers
posted relatively weak performance — that is, a score of 3.2 or lower
(World Bank Group 2018: 4).
that African states, firms and business community are ready for business
(Wilson 2014; The Guardian 2017, 10 July; 2017, 5 September). The
enormous opportunities and prospects for doing business in Africa are
vigorously promoted by “investment promotion agencies” to eclipse all
the hitherto acknowledged deficits and obstacles.
Renowned global business consultant and University of Texas’
Professor of Marketing Vijay Mahajan in his highly acclaimed book titled
Africa Rising: How 900 Million African Consumers Offer More Than
You Think published in 2008 eulogises Africa as “a remarkable market-
place with massive needs and surprising buying power.” Writing with a
density of anecdotal and ethnographic insight, Mahajan (2008) tells the
riveting story of how home-grown entrepreneurs and global companies
are succeeding in Africa, even in the most challenging locations, specifi-
cally detailing how Indian and Chinese investors and the African Diaspora
are extraordinarily driving investments and development on the continent.
Mahajan argues, quite controversially, that the average Gross National
Income (GNI) per capita across Africa has already surpassed that of India,
and that a dozen African countries have a higher GNI per capita than
China, thereby demonstrating the far-reaching investment and consumer
opportunities available in Africa, especially for multinational companies
facing shrinking profits from other emerging markets in the aftermath of
the global financial crisis (ibid.).
In 2010, the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) published a report in
which they described the potential and progress of African economies
as “lions on the move,” (World Economic Forum 2016), implying that
the world is about to witness the “Africa Lions” which could predictably
surpass the “Asian Tigers.” Reflecting on some of the well-known exis-
tential and circumstantial challenges, the World Economic Forum (2016)
argues that despite the collapse of global commodity prices which has
adversely affected many countries of Sub-Saharan Africa and the polit-
ical shocks that have slowed growth in North Africa, “Africa’s economic
lions” are still moving forward, affirming that the continent is still on the
rise.
With these interesting developments, it seems an opportune time to
take a strong analytical stock of the “Africa Rising” discourses. Has Africa
really been sufficiently positioned to rise and is it indeed rising? Are
we already witnessing the “African Tigers” (akin to the Asian Tigers)
or “the African Lions,” and if so, who are they and how are they
performing? What are the empirical indicators that Africa is rising or
1 EXPLORING THE GOVERNANCE, SECURITY AND DEVELOPMENT … 13
$42 billion in 2017, a paltry share when compared to the FDI flows
of $476 billion to the developing economies of Asia and the FDI flows
of $151 billion to Latin America and the Caribbean (UNCTAD 2018:
4 and 38). The top FDI host economies in Africa in 2017 are Egypt,
Nigeria, Ghana and Mozambique, Ethiopia and Morocco—most of them
commodity-exporting economies. Moghalu (2014: 6) further argues that:
In 2010, the combined GDP of the 54 countries that make up the “cel-
ebrated rising” continent of Africa was just barely equal to that of India,
and just 100,000 individuals accounted for 80% of Africa’s GDP, while the
continent’s share of global poverty rose by 8% between 1999 and 2008.
The GDP of the entire Sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa, is just
about equal to that of Belgium or that of metropolitan Chicago, a city in
the United States. And all the electricity produced in Sub-Saharan Africa,
half of which is, in fact, produced by South Africa, is equivalent to that of
Spain, which has 20 times fewer people than Africa.
how much of the impact is reflected in the living conditions and well-
being of the citizens? Is Africa uniformly rising or are there just a few
countries on the rise while the rest stagnate or even probably regress?
Is there any osmotic resonance between the rising African states and
their “non-performing” counterparts? This book is conceived to shed
light on these intellectual puzzles with a view to enunciating policy-
relevant visions, interventions and strategies on how Africa can arise or
rise sustainably.
achieve growth, policies that aim to reduce taxes on businesses and the
wealthy, encourage domestic and foreign savings, capital accumulation
and investments, and as well as enhance efficient technology have to be
actively promoted. The real conundrum in this assumption is the view
that growth is a necessary and sufficient condition for sustainable devel-
opment and that issues of unemployment, education and skills training,
income redistribution, poverty reduction and the likes will logically be
sorted by sustaining growth. In other words, growth has the capacity and
elasticity to generate a paradigm of trickle-down economics beneficial to
all and sundry. The trickle-down economic theory was heavily influenced
by the economic thoughts of the nineteenth-century French economist
Jean-Baptiste Say, among other eminent thinkers.
For proponents, trickle-down theory is based on the premise that
within an economy, giving tax breaks to the top earners makes them
more likely to earn more and to invest their surplus money in produc-
tive activities or to spend more of their time in high paying productive
ventures, which ultimately reinvigorates the economy, creates jobs and
generates more tax revenues from all taxable income earners (Mcgrath
2009). In this way, it is believed that tax breaks for the rich fosters
a supply-side driven economic growth pattern (increased outputs and
production) that benefits all through a trickle-down logic. Hence, as
growth policies stimulate supply, demand logically follows. This was the
dominant economic growth model of the President Ronald Reagan years
in the 1980s and George W. Bush in the early 2000s in the United States,
which also had resonance with many developing countries because of the
global influence of the US government and the Washington Consensus it
unofficially heads. Writing from a Keynesian approach (the theory cred-
ited to the erudite British economist John Maynard Keynes), critics of
trickle-down economics argue that governments should rather promote
consumer demand (as opposed to supply-side entrepreneurial produc-
tion which ultimately results in overproduction) because when people
consume more they create more jobs and production (Mcgrath 2009).
An influential school of post-Keynesian economics amplifies the argument
of Keynes that governments should adjust monetary policies (interest
rates and availability or amount of money in circulation) and fiscal poli-
cies (government spending and taxes) to boost demand (Mcgrath 2009;
Aboobaker et al. 2016).
Another random document with
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census of, 92, 96 f.;
post-Servian, 93-7;
funds for, 93 f.;
opened to plebeians, 94;
equo privato, 94 f.;
equo publico, 95 f., 209;
in comitia centuriata, 209 f.;
prerogative, 211;
after reform, 212, 215, 220, 224, 226 f.;
given seats at theatre, 357, 428;
liable to law against bribery, 378;
made superior to senators, 381;
desert C. Gracchus, 384;
associate with senators in courts, 402, 427 f., 455.
Esquilina (tribus), 50, 220.
Eupyridae, Attic gens, 28.
Exercitus urbanus, 203.
Exile, voluntary, legalized by comitia tributa, 249, 256, 257, n. 5,
267, 446.
Extortion, see Repetundae.
Kalumniator, 400.
Kaput legis, 463, n. 6.
Κήρυκες, 153, n. 3.
King, auspices of, 103;
presidency of contio, 140;
of comitia calata, 154;
curiata, 173 ff.;
right to address people, 145, 173;
as legislator, 177 f.;
irresponsible, 180;
powers of, 181;
jurisdiction, 182;
election, 182-4, 189 f.;
declares war, 175 f., 181, 230.
Klebs, on reformed comitia centuriata, 223, 225.
Knights, see Equites.
Kornemann, on lex Scantinia, 357, n. 13.